Defended & Desired (3 page)

Trey spoke through clenched teeth. “That was the only professional development seminar that didn’t require books or reading and writing.”

“I haven’t sat behind a desk since high school. There’s a reason I dropped out at fifteen,” Adam warned.

“I know.” Trey channeled his frustration with Adam into overcoming his cousin’s resistance. Their locked hands swayed back and forth over the table’s centerline.

“Then what the hell am I doing here, Trey?” Angry red streaks crested Adam’s cheeks. “I’ve never worked in a damn office building. I don’t care about this place. I don’t want to be here.”

“I know that, too,” Trey muttered. “But this is where you are. Get used to it.”

“Don’t think so.”

“You’ll find your place.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Maybe not today.” Trey ended the match by slamming the back of Adam’s hand onto the hard surface of the table.

Adam leaped off the chair and cursed, massaging his knuckles. “You’re a dick.”

“Devon gets her money.”

He glared at Trey. “This isn’t over.”

“We’ll talk later.”

Stone-faced and silent, Adam stalked out of the conference room. Sorens were notoriously bad losers. Their Viking blood refused to tolerate failure.

Trey nodded at Liam. “Go do some damage control.”

“You got it.” Liam followed after his brother.

The two brothers were tight, closer than Adam and Trey had ever been, or ever would be, for a lot of reasons. Although Trey was only six months older than Adam, they were worlds apart in personality and attitude. Trey needed calm and balance and consistent planning to stay grounded, unlike Adam who thrived in conflict and aggression and chaos. Adam had used those things as outlets to ignore the deeper issues that stemmed from his struggle since childhood with dyslexia.

The death of Adam and Liam’s father when they were in their teens had cemented Adam’s heart in a block of concrete. Trey, instead, took his own father’s more recent death five years ago as a catalyst for change.

Adam didn’t buy into change as a positive thing. In fact, his idea of settling into a new city was befriending the local motorcycle gangs. Not the type of people Trey wanted associated with their new aboveboard reputation. Adam had deep ties and attachments to the old way of doing things. He’d fought Trey on this move from the start, as though if he accepted this new business he was betraying the legacy of his father and their family’s bounty hunter roots.

Regardless of their personal differences, Trey believed Adam would eventually settle in and discover his niche at the company—kicking and screaming all the way, but he would find it. They weren’t going back to their old lives. The sooner Adam accepted that fact, the better off they’d all be.

Within two hours, the whole building seemed to know what went down in the conference room. Isaac and his fifth-floor sales team already started a bidding war on who’d win the next match. Not exactly the morale-boosting, team-building exercises Trey had envisioned for his company. Though the win earned him a few hearty slaps on the back from his managers. No doubt they wanted their proposals passed, too.

Employees he recognized but never spoke to directly started coming up to him in the hall or cafeteria, smiling or making small
talk. As the gossip mill continued churning all afternoon, he noticed the incident had suddenly made him more approachable, something he’d tried to prompt in the past, but never achieved to the extent he’d wanted.

Meanwhile, Adam stewed and sulked behind his closed office door. Trey wondered if he’d heard about the attention their stunt received. He didn’t want this to be about who won or lost. Somehow, he had to explain that
to his hot-headed cousin.

At the end of the day, Trey knocked on Adam’s door. After the third knock, he tried the handle. The door was unlocked. He walked in to find the office empty. The disappearing act didn’t bode well for future dealings when he needed his cousin on his side. Adam was family, and Trey genuinely wanted his cousin to do well and build a good life here. It would devastate Trey if Adam picked up, headed back to Las Vegas, and rejoined the treacherous underworld that would eventually get him killed.

Early the next morning, Trey looked up from his desk to see Devon breezing through his doorway.

She came to his desk and fanned her face with one hand, batting her eyelashes. “Well, I do declare, what’s this I hear about you redeeming my fragile reputation in a mighty duel?” she asked with a southern
belle accent.

Trey
failed to staunch a grin. “Ma’am, it was my duty to defend your honor at all costs. A man does what he has to for the sake of a lady.”

She dropped the act, setting her hands on her hips. “When I submit a budget proposal in the future, should I expect boulder tossing and pissing contests? Or was this a one-time thing?”

“Remains to be seen. Adam is…Adam.” He sighed.

“He needs six weeks of boot camp. That’ll get his attention. It worked for me and my smart mouth.” Her teeth tugged at her glossy lower lip. “Well, mostly.”

“Considering Adam’s issues with authority, he’d get kicked out on day one.”

“What’s his problem?”

“Do you have three hours?”

“No,
and neither do you. I want to show you something.” She paused, staring past his shoulder at the floor. “Is that your girlfriend’s yoga mat?”

He noticed the frosty nip in her voice and experienced a wave of satisfaction.
Especially since she’d shown zero sign of being affected by his kiss the day before, which had bothered him. He wanted some sort of response. He wanted her
affected.
Damn it, he wanted her period. Her kisses, her throaty moans, her smile and humor. He didn’t care that she worked for him. He wanted to explore a relationship with her, and taste more of her kisses. “No girlfriend. The mat’s mine.”

Her expression relaxed. “Really?”

“Yoga is an intense workout for the mind and body.” Not that he’d had much time to devote to the practice lately. Another reason he’d stooped to arm
wrestling Adam. Trey needed intense physical outlets, too. He just didn’t resort to the ones Adam preferred.  Except maybe sex. That hadn’t happened lately either.

He could remedy that with one phone call to his willing ex-fiancé, but he had severed those addictive ties to Jenna geographically and emotionally when he’d moved away from the life he’d purposely left behind. Jenna was as unhealthy to his peace of mind as bounty hunting. Manipulative and conniving, she’d steered him in the wrong direction one too many times. Six months ago, he’d called her anyway and chartered a private jet to Vegas. That night, she’d tried to rope him into another one of her schemes. The next day, he’d fiercely regretted his lapse of judgment. He’d left her bed less satisfied than if he’d maintained his celibacy. He hadn’t told anyone about his secret excursion, not even Cade. His brother had always accused him of being self-destructive when it came to the women he chose, and he hadn’t wanted to see the accusation in Cade’s eyes.

Devon glanced at the yoga mat again. “I’m not into stretching and contortion. If I’m going to sweat, I’d rather be active and moving around.”

He glanced at her gorgeous legs and imagined ways they could move around together on his bed.

“Anyway, when you see what I have to show you, I think you’ll find it interesting,” she said.

“Okay.” His gaze strayed to her lips.

“Are you coming or not?” she asked.

I’d love to, what are you doing for the next forty-five minutes?
Instead, he answered, “Right behind you.”

They rode the elevator to the fourth floor and Devon led him to her office. The marker scrawls covering her whiteboards looked like a roadmap of hell.

For a minute, he almost felt guilty for pulling the plug. But he definitely didn’t regret what happened after. Kissing Devon had awakened his lust, and he knew his intense attraction to her wasn’t going to fade anytime soon. Devon was brilliant, classy, and completely different from any woman he’d ever dated. Which made him want her even more. He wanted something positive and permanent in his life for a change. An amazing woman to share his success with, who understood and appreciated how hard he worked to make a better life for his family. Something beyond mere lust.

“Hey, eyes up here, pal.”

Slowly, he lifted his gaze to lock with hers. “Sorry. Your mouth is distracting.”

“Thank you.” She shot him a grin that quickly turned into a frown. “But we’re not here to talk about that kiss.”

“Which one?”

“Both. Neither.” She threw up her arms. “Stop distracting me.”

“Now you understand my predicament.”

Devon grew serious. “We do have a predicament. Or…I do.”

That gave him pause. “Explain.”

She gestured for him to stand beside her at her keyboard. “Better if I show you than try to explain it without context.”

He slid in behind her, leaving less than an inch of space separating their bodies. She
smelled delicious, and he loved when she wore her hair swept up in a tight twist. The slender arc of her neck tempted him. New jewelry blocked his view or would bar him from lifting his hand and tracing the delicate curve from her neck to her shoulder.

She bent over her keyboard and entered several keystrokes. “One of my guys isolated a bizarre string of sequences in the hacker’s code.”

A window popped up on her screen, white text against a black background. “Bizarre, how?”

“It forms a riddle, sort of a code within a code. It’s something I’ve rarely seen. This guy has mad skill.”

If she meant “mad” as in “talented psycho,” he was inclined to agree.

When she pressed the Enter key, an image flooded the screen. A pixilated picture of a black flag with a skull-and-crossbones motif.

She explained, “There was a guy I met a few years back at a tech convention called DEFCON. Ground zero for the best, elite hackers and programmers in the world. Well, I didn’t meet him, exactly. He hooked up with our group remotely, and together we executed a brilliant hacking strategy that won our team a lucrative military contract.” She swallowed. “He went by the name of Captain Jack.”

He blinked. “I don’t get it.”

“Captain Jack Sparrow, from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.”

“A pirate. Great.” He scowled. “What does this pirate want with you?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know.” She hugged her waist. “I’m not sure I want to know. Except he went to a whole lot of trouble to track me down and get my attention.”

“So it’s is personal.” Trey’s hackles rose and his jaw clenched. Some super
nerd had invaded his company, turned his tech department into a war zone, and put Devon in a vulnerable position at the center of his raid. Trey needed to know one thing. “Is this guy dangerous?”

She shrugged. “Do I think he’ll come after me with an oozie? No, not likely. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t capable of inflicting serious damage.” She paused then gave a decisive nod. “I know what I need to do.”

Waves of tension traveled over his tight muscles. “I’m listening.”

“I need to redirect his attention away from the company. I’m planning to set up an interaction with him on my own, at my house, to put his attention on me, not Soren Security.”

“A sting.”

“Basically, yes.”

“I don’t like this,” Trey said darkly. He slashed his hand through the air. “No. Forget it.”

She stared at him as if “no” was a foul word. “Excuse me?”

“I won’t let you take unnecessary risks.”

Her eyes snapped with challenge. “Who are you to forbid me to do anything?”

“I’m your boss. The guy who signs your paychecks.
The man responsible for your safety.”

“My safety?
Since when?”

Since I started falling for you the day we met.
“This is a work-related issue
,” he insisted. “If this guy wants to mess with me and my company, I’ll bring the fight to him. Right beside you.”

“Trey, I can handle this.”

“I’m sure you can. But you’re not doing it alone.”

She crossed her arms. “Okay, I’ll have one of my guys sit in on the exchange.”

“No. It’s my company. I want to be there.”

She blinked. “The whole time?”

“As long as it takes.”

Suspicion clouded her eyes as she peered at him. “This is way beneath your pay grade and job description.”

“As an owner of the company, my job description is whatever I make it. I’m overseeing your sting. Don’t fight me on this. You won’t win.” But he would. And while he had her alone, he’d find a way to convince her that the two of them had something between them. Something that deserved exploring.

“Fine. God, you’re stubborn.” The icy glare she sent him could freeze lava.

He didn’t care.

What she’d proposed could go from innocent to dangerous within a few lines of code. This hacker-stalker had crossed a serious line. If the guy went this far to get Devon’s attention, no telling what other ethical or moral lines he’d cross if he caught Devon alone and defenseless.