“What? With a reaction like that you can’t not tell me.”
“You know I like to cook.”
“You want to be a chef?” She didn’t see why that would embarrass him.
“I want to own my own place.”
“You want to open a restaurant.”
“Nothing big. Not fancy-assed. Something that only serves breakfast and lunch.”
“Like a diner.”
“More like a deli, but not.”
“One of those little food carts?” Maybe he thought former Marines should do something more dangerous, but she thought he’d be really amazing at this.
He loved to feed her. The suite h mini kitchen and he did most of the cooking.
“That, or a little coffee shop–style place. Though I’m not looking at serving a bunch of fancy-assed coffees either. There are enough places that do that already. Not in Boston, but maybe in California. Mama and her teacher moved there a few years ago and they do enjoy the sunshine.”
“Where in California?”
When he named a town only about thirty minutes from the one her parents lived in, Danusia felt the inevitability of destiny shiver across her soul.
Max hung up the phone as Danusia stood up and stretched. She’d been working hunched over the suite’s fairly ample desk for the past six hours. He’d never seen anyone get so lost in deskwork for so long. Well, except maybe Spazz, but he was too antsy not to get up every hour or so and work off a little of his extreme extra energy.
Her pretty breasts pressed against her top, her nipples hardening as she moved, probably in response to the now flowing blood in her body. She turned to him and caught him looking.
He grinned. “Nice view.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying the perks of babysitting me.”
“Professor, I can guarantee I don’t see you as a child.”
She smiled and sauntered forward, putting a sexy sway in her hips she only did around him. He liked it. And he liked that she did it for him. “I need to go to the library.”
“Too dangerous.”
“How long are we going to be here?” she asked, though he could tell she wanted to argue about the library.
“The spooks are setting up a sting at your apartment. Making it look like you’re moving back in. They want the hit team.”
“That tells me what they’re doing. Not how long it will take.”
“There’s no way of telling, but we don’t have to stay here, Professor.”
“I’m not taking this trouble back to Roman’s place. What if they find me there?”
“My condo is ready and the movers delivered my furniture today.” He’d been thinking about taking her back to Boston since the threat level escalated with the Luminescent employee’s death, but he’d known Danusia wouldn’t go for returning to her brother’s apartment.
She looked at him, waiting for more.
“Come stay with me.”
“I . . .” She looked over his shoulder, though he knew there wasn’t a damn thing of interest to see.
“You said you’re defending your thesis in October. Does that mean you aren’t signed up to help with classes in the fall?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
“So, you’re just working on your thesis?”
“Yes.”
“Does it have to be done here?”
“The university library is here.”
“And you still need it?”
“Not exactly.”
“Why the trip today then?”
“I want to verify some facts and a couple of resources.”
“Sounds like busywork.”
“I’m ready to get out of this suite.”
She’d lasted longer than a lot of people would have. “I ge that.”
“So?”
“So, come home with me.”
“For how long?”
Shit. He’d known this question was coming and damned if he hadn’t decided what his answer was going to be. “For as long as I can get you to stay.”
“You mean like in sickness, health and corrupt pharmaceutical companies trying to get to me?” she asked, as her gaze came back to him.
“Yeah, like that.”
“I . . .” She was looking at him again, but her eyes were filmed with tears. “I thought you didn’t want a relationship.”
“I want you.”
“Any way you can get me?”
“Pretty much, but damned if I’ll settle for casual.”
“You sound like a man who knows what he wants.” She sounded like a woman who wanted what he did.
“I am.”
“And love?” she asked.
“It comes with the package.”
“You’re not going to say it?”
Damn. He opened his mouth, but closed it again. He hadn’t said those words to anyone in his adult life. Last time he’d said it to his mom, he’d been about ten years old. They weren’t a kissy-huggy-tell-you-I-love-you-all-the-damn-time family.
Danusia smiled, but shook her head. “We’ll go to your place for now. We’ll work out the details later.”
That was better than he expected after all the times he’d claimed he didn’t want a relationship. She didn’t ask for explanations. She didn’t demand those three words he found so hard to say.
She was perfect for him.
They flew back to Boston in the helicopter. Danusia left her car for the female agent baiting the trap. They settled into a routine. She worked on her thesis during the day and he went into the Atrati headquarters to his job when Stateside.
The hit team took the bait three days after the female agent moved into Danusia’s apartment. The threat was over, but nothing was said by either of them about her returning to her apartment. One drawer in his dresser held her clothes, as well as some hangers in the closet.
His spare bedroom had become an office with an oversized desk and overflowing bookshelves.
The spooks wanted Danusia’s help building their case against Luminescent. She gave it, though he knew it put her behind on her thesis.
When Roman’s team went off the grid in Africa, Max didn’t hide the truth from Danusia, trusting her to keep silent about it. Just like she’d managed to not give even a hint of her own involvement in an illegal-weapons case at the federal level, or the fact she’d been the target for a hit team, despite several phone calls with family.
Her mother wanted a visit. He was thinking on that. On what to do about visiting his own family and getting to know Danusia’s . . . besides Roman anyway.
Then a team with his name on it got assigned a job in South America and Max had to make a choice.
Danusia was just sending some more support documentation off to the U.S. Attorney General’s office for the case against Luminescent Pharmaceuticals when she heard Max arrive. He wasn’t due home for three more houran>
With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she went looking for him. She’d been waiting for this day since returning to Boston with Max. She was sure she knew what was coming. They found each other in the hall outside the room he’d given her to make into an office.
The serious expression in his eyes made her stomach clench. “What’s going on, Max?”
“I got an assignment. South America. Fly out oh-four-hundred.”
She nodded, her throat tight, her mouth suddenly so dry, she didn’t know how she was going to force words out, but she had to. This was where their relationship moved forward or broke forever. “I’ll get the rest of my stuff moved in here while you’re gone.”
Something moved in his dark brown eyes, something like hope and joy. “You didn’t ask how long I’d be gone.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll be waiting here for you when you come home.”
“This is home for you?”
“Wherever you’re going to be when you’re not working, that’s home for me.”
“Oh, God.” And it was a prayer not a curse the way he said it. He pulled her ti
ght against him, in a way that had become familiar. “I love you, Danusia.”
“I love you too, Max, so much.” Hot tears ran down her cheeks.
He’d finally said the words and hers had been the right ones. He didn’t want to get rid of her. He wanted her to stay. He really wanted her.
“I refused the assignment.”
“What? You? What?” She couldn’t breathe for the happiness blooming inside her. She was scared to trust it, but his dark gaze made promises.
“I’m not leaving you. You’re my family. My dad, maybe long-haul trucking was all he knew. Maybe it’s all he wanted. But damn, him and my mom? They weren’t happy. Maybe they wouldn’t have been even if he was home the other twenty-two days of the month, but I want a family with you . . . a life that includes time together.”
“I thought you weren’t ready to retire from soldiering.”
“I thought I wasn’t either, until I met you.”
He wasn’t going to leave her alone. She meant so much to him that he was going to change his life for her. Danusia felt the happiness burst in her chest and she started laughing, even as the tears still tracked wetly down her cheeks.
He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
“You really like carrying me.”
“Just call me Power Man.”
She giggled as he dropped her on the bed. “I’d rather call you Max. You’re the man I love.”
He leaned down to kiss her, his lips right against hers as he said, “I love you. Always.”
After they made love (which was so much more fun than packing him up to leave the country and put his life on the line again), she was snuggled into his side, drowsing when he asked, “Once you finish this Ph.D. thing, how do you feel about moving to California, closer to our families?”
“You’re really serious about us, aren’t you?”
“I refused any more field assignments. I’d say so, yes.”
She grinned against his dark, warm skin. Every time he said it, she loved hearing it—as much as hearing his I love yous.
“Matej and Elle’s company has already made me an offer of employment. I wasn’t sure about it, though it’s exactly the kind of place I feel I could make the best income.” Maybe she could build closer, more normal relationships with her siblings now that they were all adults and the age gap and the brain gap just wasn’t that important anymore.
He squeezed her tight, his hand settling on her hip. “We’re going to do it, aren’t we, sweetheart?”
“What?”
“Work on that happily-ever-after so many people talk about.”
“Yes, yes, I think we are.”
Hot Mess
JAMIE DENTON
To Kristine Bammerlin Thompson,
for being there every day.
I couldn’t have done this one without you.
CHAPTER 1
Alyssa Cardellini considered herself a work-in-progress. Unfortunately for her, not everyone agreed. Case in point—the razor-thin woman with mean eyes, glaring at her as if she were nine donuts shy of a dozen.
“Imbecile!”
Flat on her ass in the middle of Los Angeles International Airport and being called names while covered in her favorite flavor of frozen coffee, was not how Alyssa had planned to start her day. Hell, she hadn’t even dreamed she’d be anywhere near LAX, for that matter. But, she wanted to keep her job at Primo Security Services and therefore had no other choice. Those pesky love/hate relationships she had with food and keeping a roof over her head required constant funding. Just her luck, her savings account was on life support. Besides, the quadruple booking was her fault. Since she’d been the only available body left to play watchdog to corporate whistleblower Charles Rolston, here she was, being called an imbecile and wishing she could have a Groundhog Day do-over.
Under her breath, the woman muttered a string of curses vile enough to make a truck driver blush. Alyssa narrowed her eyes at the bad-tempered female, dressed in a black micro-skirt and the highest freaking heels she’d ever seen. Feeling none too charitable herself, she flicked a melting piece of ice from her skirt and said, “What kind of dork wears four-inch spike heels when traveling?”
The woman struggled to stand. “Idiot,” she practically snarled as she slipped in the puddle of frozen coffee and landed on her ass again.
Alyssa smothered a giggle. Dressed in much more suitable jewel-studded flip-flops, she easily stood and swiped at the damp spots on her denim capris, without bothering to tell the gangly woman in black to try taking off those skyscraper heels first. Let her figure it out for herself, especially after she flung another murmured f-bomb at Alyssa.
The woman finally managed to get to her feet on her own. “Watch where you’re going next time,” she snapped, grabbing the handle of her carry-on, then stalking away unsteadily, an angry frown on her pinched face.
Alyssa let out a sigh as she stooped to pick up the placard scrawled with Rolston’s name. She shrugged off the woman’s bad manners. She’d been called everything from a dingbat to a screwup, and names far worse than what that scrawny witch had called her.
As much as it pained her to admit it, there was some truth to the name-calling. Ever since kindergarten, she’d been trying to find herself, and not doing a very good job of it. All through school, there hadn’t been a student activity she hadn’t tried. Some she’d done well. Some had bored her to tears. Others were nothing short of a bona fide disaster. If she were a betting woman, she’d lay odds that Melinda Wilcox would still refuse to speak to her. Forget that it’d been ten years since the toppled cheerleader pyramid incident. Was it really her fault Sean Bakker had waved to her and she’d waved back?
She let out another long-suffering sigh. From the minute she’d walked into the office this morning, she’d had a bad feeling today was going to be another one of those days. The sun in Venice Beach had been playing peek-a-boo behind a heavy marine layer, making for a hazy day. She hated hazy days. They just never felt quite right to her, and something invariably went wrong. Like Mercury was in retrograde and on steroids.
Today, apparently, was no exception.
She was supposed to be in the office preparing a bid proposal for security services at an on-location shoot for one of the big movie studios, not standing around LAX with a hand-scrawled placard in her hands. Surrounded by a bevy of professional chauffeurs and other drivers passing time until the passengers of Flight 546 from Charlotte, North Carolina, deplaned hadn’t been on today’s To Do List. But since she’d been the one to screw up the date, she had to make it right, even if waiting for some geeky pharmaceutical company whistleblower to arrive was so not in her job description.
A Jillian of all trades, but master of few—that was her. She was the go-to girl, the copy girl, the fix-the-website-again girl, the type-up-this-letter girl. She fetched coffee, sorted the mail, fixed the fax machine and ran to the deli for the guys. She was the office staff. And, because she’d obtained her commercial driver’s license when she was in college so she could make rent by working part-time as a school bus driver, she was also the occasional take-the-limo-for-detailing girl. But her primary nine-to-five responsibility was answering the phones and keeping the schedule for Primo Security Services, a private security firm started by a pair of California surfers looking for a way to make a living and support their passion for hanging ten. In the twenty years Perry Zellner and Craig Newberry had been in business, Primo had been providing security for everyone from Hollywood’s A-list to high-powered executives, with a few big-name politicians thrown in for good measure. Whether playing bodyguard for an out-of-towner at a star-spangled media event, or carting some coked-up starlet off in style to the county jail to serve a week out of a ninety-day jail sentence, no job was too big or small for Primo Security Services.
The first wave of passengers arrived, and Alyssa jockeyed for position with the other drivers. Problem was, she had no clue what Charles Rolston, the former accountant for Bastian Pharm
aceuticals and the federal prosecutor’s star witness, looked like. Once she’d realized her mistake this morning, she’d been in such a rush to get to the airport on time, she hadn’t thought to Google the guy to at least see what he looked like. A quick search using her iPhone, while standing in line at Starbucks, hadn’t helped because neither Rolston’s name or photo had been released to the press. Odd, considering the of instant information. All she had was a stupid placard with the guy’s name scrawled on it in her doctor-worthy penmanship.
And now she was a mess, thanks to the anorexic skyscraper who’d mowed her over. She looked down at her damp and stained top and capris. Rolston would probably take one look at her and hightail it back to the Carolinas, wondering about the federal prosecutor’s seriousness in keeping him safe until it was time for him to testify.
The People of the United States vs. Bastian Pharmaceuticals had been making daily headlines ever since the federal grand jury had returned an indictment. The Justice Department had then filed criminal charges against the top executives of the company. Bastian Pharmaceuticals had developed Tocalis, the first drug appropriate for both sexes for that “total sexual experience,” as the television ads had proclaimed. While half of the Tocalis users were busy getting it on, the rest had suffered serious side effects. For those with uncontrolled cholesterol, Tocalis had led to off-the-charts triglycerides, which had resulted in deadly cases of pancreatitis, pancreatic cancer and in some cases, heart failure. And the bitch of it was, the execs had known about the negative side effects for five years and had done nothing to warn the public, earning the company the nickname “Bastard Pharm.”
Each night on the nightly news shows, People v. Bastian Pharmaceuticals was rarely less than the number three story, commonly with a report of yet another fatality. Despite dire warnings from the Justice Department not to air the special, and threats from both parties of being buried in enough legal paper to kill off an entire forest, NBC’s Dateline had gone forward with a two-hour investigative report on the case. They had, however, taken Justice’s threats into consideration and had kept the identity of the prosecution’s star witness a secret.
Bodyguards In Bed Page 7