Moments of Julian (25 page)

“
Nah, sharing suits is
kinda’ gross,” Kale says as he pulls his shirt over his head. I
look away embarrassed when he unbuckles his pants on the way to the
door and drops them. He’s just in his boxer briefs. “I’m good,” he
says with a smile in our direction before he sprints across the
deck and cannon balls into the pool.

“
Your brother is very
comfortable in his own skin, isn’t he?” Julian chuckles as we watch
him resurface with a victorious yelp.

“
Since the day he was
born,” I shake my head. “My parents couldn’t keep clothes on him
until he was about twelve, and even then he preferred to be half
naked. As you can see, he still does. I’m surprised he hasn’t
flexed for you yet.”

We watch through the window as Kale
tries to talk Lake into getting in as well. Lake looks around the
area, his military showing in blaring colors. Finally, he strips
down too and gets in. They immediately start a dunking and
splashing war.

“
You’ve got some pretty
awesome brothers,” Julian says as he slips his hand into mine.
“They’re protective. I always wondered what it’d be like to have a
younger brother or sister. You’re lucky.”

“
I know,” I say as I look
up into Julian’s eyes. I lean in and gently press my lips to
his.

“
You want to see the rest
of the house?” he breathes.

“
Uh huh,” I nod, my nose
brushing his. A grin curls on his face.

Hand in hand, Julian leads me through
the living room into the billiards room. The table alone had to
cost over ten thousand. There are old movie posters framed on the
walls, as well as an old set of golf clubs and what I’m pretty sure
is the bumper of a classic car. This room is most certainly a man
cave. “Mic’s other favorite room,” he explains.

“
I think I need to get to
know this Mic character more,” I say as I wander around the pool
table. “He seems like an entertaining guy.”

“
He has his moments,” he
says with a smile that says even though Mic ousted an embarrassing
secret, he’ll be forgiven. “Are you ready for the proof that I do
actually have my own car?” Julian moves on. I can hear the
hesitance in his voice and can tell he doesn’t really want to do
this. He’s embarrassed by his money, and I find that incredibly
endearing.

“
I need to see it with my
own eyes or it isn’t real,” I taunt him.

He heaves a huge sigh and opens the
door to the garage. He flicks the lights on.

There are only two cars inside, but
they leave an impression none the less. In the middle bay is a
rugged black Land Rover with aggressive tires and enough dirt on it
to tell me it’s been a while since its last washing. And in the bay
closest to us is a candy apple red sports car that doesn’t even
look like something that belongs on the road.

“
Does that even drive?” I
ask. It looks like a toy model of a space car from the
future.

“
It does, although I
admit, I have been too scared to drive it more than three times,”
Julian says. I look at him in disbelief and the embarrassed look on
his face confirms he is telling the truth. “They only made three
hundred seventy five McLaren P1’s. I put my name on the list for
the heck of it, knowing I’d never have a shot. I only got it
because the guy ahead of me died.”

“
And you aren’t afraid to
drive it just because of your mazeophobia,” I say with a
grin.

“
No,” Julian admits with a
shake of his head.

“
Uh huh,” I say with a nod
as I close the door and walk past him back into the
house.

That car had to cost a fortune. Julian
isn’t just afraid of driving in it in cities. He’s afraid to
breathe on it.

I don’t wait for Julian to catch up
and he follows me up the stairs.

When Julian said he had a guest
bedroom, he really meant he has three. They’re nice and simple and
manly, and do the job of giving someone a place to
sleep.

“
And where do you sleep,
Mr. Dohring?” I ask as I trace my fingers up his tattooed
arm.

There is hunger in Julian’s eyes as he
looks down at me and every fiber in my body jumps to life at his
gaze. He licks his bottom lip and bites it. He nods his head toward
the end of the hall and keeps his eyes on me as he walks backward
toward a door.

I may spontaneously combust before we
reach it.

When we get to the end of the hall,
Julian finally turns, releasing me from his smoldering stare. He
opens the door and stands to the side to let me in.

Julian’s bedroom is quite simple. The
floors are long, grey stone tiles. The walls are covered in thickly
textured black wallpaper. The wall across from the window holds a
queen-sized bed. The headboard is a padded dark charcoal and the
pillows and blankets are the same color. To either side of the bed
there is a simple night stand.

Breaking off to the side of the
bedroom is a smaller room that also looks out over the water. There
is a desk in the middle of the room and it is loaded with monitors,
keyboards, and stacks of papers. It is an office that looks well
lived in.

There is no door between the bedroom
and the bathroom. The walls are solid concrete and there is no
shower door splitting the shower off from the enormous concrete
sink and counter top. It all flows together in an oddly comfortable
industrial way.

To the other side of the bathroom is
an enormous closet. I can see Julian’s many suits hung neatly and
the rest of his clothes are hung or folded just as
precisely.

“
This room is…” I struggle
for just the right word. “Sexy.”

Julian chuckles and looks toward the
ground. “I like it.”

“
Hmm,” I say as I once
again wrap my arms behind Julian’s head. I stand on my tip toes and
reach for a kiss. I linger there, our lips barely brushing. For a
moment, I just breathe him in. The complicated world my life has
become fades away and for this second, there is just the perfection
of moments with Julian.

“
Will the guard let a
delivery guy in if I order pizza?” Lake’s voice booms up the
stairs.

Julian’s jaw clenches tightly and he
closes his eyes for a moment. A giggle works its way up my
throat.

“
Someday, we’ll have an
uninterrupted moment,” he says, pressing an aggressive but quick
kiss to my lips. He then turns back to the door and heads down the
stairs.

I cross to the window and look out
over the lake. A ridiculous smile crosses my lips and I press a
hand to it.

I am happy. Deliriously, ridiculously,
cheesily happy.

CHAPTER
TWENTY
-ONE

For four days, the investigation
continues.

The FBI interviews the entire IT
department. They have flooded the Digit building and are sorting
through records like crazy.

Digit has lost six major clients in
the last week, and fifteen smaller ones.

This scandal will cost Digit
billions.

Because, suddenly no one is sure they
can trust us to protect our money. They couldn’t even protect me
from being targeted.

Julian spends the vast majority of his
days trying to help Digit out. He even brings Mic in to help.
They’ve found the hole the hacker managed to bore into each of the
bank accounts. I don’t understand the details behind it all, I am
far from a computer whiz, but Julian is fixing them all, one at a
time.

If ever there was a time we needed
something new and even more secure, it is now.

But what good will launching the Red
Door do when the hacker is within our own walls?

Finally, on Wednesday I cannot stay
away from Digit any longer. I am still not officially hired back
into the Digit fold, but I do know that they cannot afford to not
have me on board.

I have bills to pay, a life of my own
to try and put back together. And I keep all of that stuff at
work.

“
You wanna come with me?”
I ask Kale as I grab my purse and dig for my keys. Julian is
already at Digit and my brothers are still watching me around the
clock.

One would think I was in the middle of
some drug run scandal with guns and henchmen instead of money and
stolen ID to buy fancy cars.

“
Sorry, I got a night
scene shoot in twenty minutes,” he says as he steps out of his
room. He’s buttoning up a burgundy suit shirt and is wearing
slacks. There’s no way he afforded that suit himself. It’s a
costume for the shoot.

“
And Lake is helping Mom
and Dad with their yard,” I say as I head for the garage. As nice
as it has been playing house with Julian the last few days, it
feels good to be back home, even if it is only for a few minutes to
get clothes and check on things.

“
But Julian is at your
work, right?” Kale asks, guilt in his eyes. “So you just have to
get there and he’ll keep an eye on you?”

“
You make me sound like a
toddler who might wander off and fall into the creek,” I say as I
shake my head and head for the garage.

“
Be careful,” he calls. I
wave and walk out the door.

This is the first time I’ve gotten
alone since this whole mess started other than to use the bathroom.
The men in my life are going overboard in a major way.

It was amusing at first, having three
of my own personal body guards, but the vanity of it all wore off
somewhere around day two of lockdown.

I take the long way to work, just to
enjoy my own company.

“
Well, there’s that
gorgeous girl I haven’t seen in far too long,” Dustin says with a
smile as he leans on his forearms in the guard station window. I
smile at him through my rolled down window. “I’m sorry to hear
about what Corbin did to you.”

“
Thanks Dustin,” I say.
“It’s nice to see you again.”

“
You’re welcome to see a
lot more of me again, anytime you want,” he calls as I pull into
the parking garage. I can’t help but smile.

And smile more when I see Julian’s
Land Rover parked in the mystery spot. I’ve wondered who it
belonged to all these years. Now I know.

It’s eight o’clock at night by the
time I walk into the building. My access card thankfully still
works and I swipe it to let myself into the locked door. The lobby
is deserted, but I can hear a constant hum and murmur from the
upper floors where the FBI is still going through all our
files.

I step in the elevator and press the
button for the tenth floor.

The top floor is completely quiet and
only a few lights dot the hall. It’s a strangely comforting
feeling, being a place that is so familiar, but so to myself at the
moment.

Gretchen has a drawer with all of my
personal mail that comes to the office. She still hasn’t been
released from custody and is still one of their prime suspects in
the investigation into who framed me. Her desk looks oddly messy
and chaotic for her extremely organized personality.

I squat and open the drawer and start
looking through envelopes and folders. There are paid bills,
automatic transactions, stock exchange statements. And finally, I
find the folder marked TO BE PAID.

I hear the elevator ding and am about
to see who’s joined me on the top floor when I hear cursing and
heavy breathing and shuffling feet. My brows furrow and I debate
with myself for a moment on what to do.

Suddenly, a figure storms past
Gretchen’s desk and straight into my office.

My eyes grow wide and my pulse
rockets. Being careful not to make a sound, I slide forward onto my
hands and knees, and crawl to the end of her desk. Very, very
slowly, I poke my head around the corner and look into my
office.

The person inside has their back
turned to me and is rifling through my files with speed. With a
loud curse, he slams the filing cabinet shut. Next he turns toward
my computer and his face comes into view.

Brian’s face is flushed red and
covered in a sheen of sweat. He’s clicking through something on my
computer with furious intent.

This is how he got access to my
personal information. He went through his girlfriend, Gretchen, and
got his hands on everything.

I pull out my phone and thankful that
it is already set to silent, text Julian.

Meet me at my
office.

I put my phone away and look back at
Brian. He slams his fist on my desk and curses loudly again. His
hands knot in his blond hair and he turns away from the computer.
He sounds like he is hissing as he breathes loudly through clenched
teeth.

He is seriously stressing and
panicking.

The screen on my phone brightens and I
see a text from Julian.

On my way up.

There’s a loud clatter, and the sudden
sound of glass shattering makes me scream.

Brian has just picked my computer up
and hurled it through the window.

And now he knows that I am
here.