Reckless (Renegades #1) (3 page)

Her gaze roamed and roamed, trying to memorize him. Words like intense, deep, and complicated came to mind—not descriptive at all—but all ways she would have described him.

“Looks like someone’s zeroed in on you,” Rubi said quietly beside her. “Get your ass out of this car, girl. He’s hotter than nuclear fusion. What’s wrong with you?”

“I…can’t breathe,” she said without breaking eye contact with Biker Boy.

Rubi laughed again, making Lexi smile. The man’s lids grew heavy. His tongue slid over his bottom lip, and Lexi’s lungs seized to hold back a moan.

Oh, yeah. It had definitely been too long.

“Dude,” Golden Boy called across the truck to his friend. “Hel-lo, dude. Did I just waste my breath?”

Biker Boy’s long lashes fluttered like he’d come out of a trance. He turned away from Lexi, focusing on the other man, who said something else Lexi couldn’t hear and shook his head.

“I’m Rubi Russo.” Rubi called, drawing Golden Boy’s gaze again. “In case, you know, you become available.”

Biker Boy swung that horrible duffle over his shoulder, turned away from both the truck and the Ferrari, and walked into the terminal without looking back. His jacket had a white strip of leather high across the back and the letters of the motorcycle company, Brutale, in red block letters from shoulder to shoulder.

That was the most gorgeous jacket…

On the most gorgeous man…

And he was walking away.

Disappointment pinched Lexi’s chest, but oh, the way he moved…fluid, smooth, confident… Then he was gone, leaving an unfamiliar hunger deep in Lexi’s gut.

“Is he the lead singer of Hysteria?” Rubi asked Golden Boy as he opened the driver’s door of the truck.

The man glanced toward her and laughed. “Him? He can’t carry a tune to save his life.”

“He looks familiar,” Rubi said.

Golden Boy shrugged.

“Is he taken too?”

“Rubi,” Lexi whispered.

Golden Boy grinned. “Trolling, beautiful?”

“I’m not asking for me. I’ve only got eyes for you.” She tilted her head toward Lexi.

Golden Boy’s gaze jumped to Lexi and held. She didn’t experience any of the same sensations one look at Biker Boy had slammed through her body. Golden Boy glanced at the door his friend had disappeared through, then back at Rubi. “He’s…got a lot on his plate right now. It’s not a good time for him.”

The man reached for the driver’s door handle.

“Hey, handsome,” Rubi said.

He opened the door and paused again.

Rubi sighed dramatically. “Nothing. I just wanted one more good look. Thank you. My dreams will be sweet tonight.”

He gave her a killer smile, a two-finger salute, and slid into his truck. Rubi sighed as he drove away, and the two waved to each other out their windows as he disappeared.

Lexi collected her hair into a ponytail, coiled it into a bun and slid on her hat, thinking how quickly two people could make a connection through a smile and a few words. Or a look. And grew all tingly again at the memory of that hot, deep gaze in Biker Boy’s eyes when they’d connected with Lexi’s.

“You know he’s going to think about me when he does his girl tonight,” Rubi said, her voice dreamy, watching Golden Boy’s truck disappear onto the 405. “It’ll be the best sex he’s had in months. And he’ll remember me.”

Lexi closed her eyes and dropped her forehead into her hand. Then pushed her door open and stood.

“Biker Boy is flying your airline,” Rubi said, using the same temporary name Lexi had applied to the man in her mind. She and Rubi did that a lot. Rubi glanced back at Lexi, took in her hat, and smirked. “But he’ll never know you were the hottie he wanted to devour if you’re wearing that.”

“But it will keep other guys from trying to tell me their life story or asking for my phone number.”

Rubi tossed her hands in the air. “That guy looked at you like he’d do you in the nearest bathroom. Go find him. The extent of your conversation can consist of ‘yes.’ You certainly won’t be worrying about any other guys talking to you.”

Lexi set her carry-on down and shut the Ferrari’s door, shaking her head. “Screwing in an airport bathroom. That would be paparazzi heaven, wouldn’t it?”

“No paparazzi here, Lex. No reporters on your trip who know what you do or who your clients are. None of your customers will ever know. That is the beauty of a business trip. I’m not talking forever, girl. And you know I’m not serious about the bathroom. I’m just talking about letting go a little.”

God, that sounded good. Lexi would love to let go—a lot. It felt like forever since she’d been able to.

“But since I know you,” Rubi said, her voice filled with resignation, “and I know you won’t be doing anything more enjoyable while waiting for your plane, take a few minutes to play with my app and give me some feedback. I loaded the prototype onto your phone. I’m going to build the final app off that model and want to have it spit shined when I meet with those guys next week.”

Those guys were top men at the National Security Agency. That was a very different group of people than Rubi was used to working for or dealing with, but she seemed as confident as always.

“If they lowball me,” she said, “I’ll make a few quick changes and offer it to Apple and Google for a whole different purpose. There’s an instruction screen when you open the app.” She grinned. “But read it fast, it self-destructs in five minutes.”

Lexi laughed. “You kill me, you and your fascinating world. Can’t wait to see what top-secret stuff you’ve hidden on my phone.” Lexi met her friend’s gaze. “Rubi, drive like me—for me.”

“If you’ll go find Biker Boy, I’ll drive like you.”

She grinned, had no intention of doing any such thing, but said, “Deal.”

“An easy hookup with an anonymous hottie, Lex,” Rubi said, revving the engine, poised to pull away from the curb. “It will improve your mood and your designs.”

Three

After clearing security, Lexi wandered along the rows of stores and restaurants in the airport corridors, stopping into Hudson News for a bottle of water and a magazine. But with nothing interesting to look at and no more Biker Boy sightings, she planted her pathetic ass in a quiet corner at her gate.

Instead of pulling out her sketch pad, as she usually did whenever she had a free moment, Lexi stared down at the magazine she’d picked up. And smiled. This wasn’t the first cover one of her designs had graced, but this was the cover and the design that had prompted Martina Galliano to come calling. And Lexi had been thrilled to find it on the newsstand. She hadn’t thought it would see mainstream distribution for another three or four days.

Two men came into the area’s open seating area chatting, and their deep voices carried to Lexi. Recognizing the use of reporting terminology, Lexi glanced at them from beneath the brim of her cap. She recognized one man as a writer for the Style section of the
LA Independent
, but not the other, and relaxed when they sat in another row of seats facing away from her.

She opened the magazine to the spread showing the cover gown and several of Lexi’s upcoming pieces from her fall line. The dresses were haute couture—one of a kind—the simplest design priced at twelve thousand dollars and going up to twenty-five thousand. They’d each been put together completely by hand, every fabric panel, every gather, every individual bead hand sewn. The fabrics were the highest quality and often European, the designs complicated and utterly unique.

Seeing layouts like this always reminded Lexi of just how far she’d come—all the way from the ghettos of Kentucky. Emotion swelled inside her, tightening her chest. She was proud of what she’d accomplished. Excited about her future. But she had to admit, she was also lonely. Too often painfully so. She knew mindless sex wasn’t the answer, but it wouldn’t be a bad start either.

To keep her mind off the fact that more bankers than studs had frequented her life for far too long, Lexi pulled out her phone and slipped her Bluetooth headset onto her ear, then tapped into the speech-to-text program.

She opened Rubi’s Secret Squirrel app without ever touching her screen. Even after she’d read both the introduction and the instructions,

Lexi was more confused than ever.

By voice, she directed her phone to dial Rubi’s cell, then switched back over to the app.

“Lexi,” Rubi answered, “you know I love you, but I’m a little busy, if you know what I mean. Are you okay?”

“Sure, fine. Tell me about this app.”

“Did you just hear—?”

“He’ll wait,” Lexi said, referring to whatever hot guy she’d picked up between the time she dropped Lexi at the airport and now. “They all do. What is this app all about?”

“It’s an information-gathering app. A highly secured and encrypted tool. Did you read the—?”

“Yes. You might be a brilliant designer, Rubi, but you’re not the best technical writer.”

“Couldn’t possibly be the reader, could it?”

Rubi whispered something to whomever she was with. Fabric rustled.

“Okay,” she said, “it’s not a complicated application. It uses technology hundreds of other apps out there already use, called augmented reality. You know the ones where you use your phone’s camera to view the surrounding area and the app overlays information on top of the picture—like neighborhood restaurants and the type of food they serve or gas stations with their prices.”

“Sure.”

“This app is exactly the same, only I’m gathering different information from the targets.”

“Targets?” Lexi frowned at the screen. “I don’t think I like the sound of that. How is the NSA going to use this?”

“I can’t say. That’s why it’s called Secret Squirrel.”

Lexi heaved a sigh as fatigue settled in. This day had been almost twenty hours long. “Fine.”

“For testing purposes, the prototype simply collects cell phone numbers. So just start the app and scan the area. Where there is a cell phone, the number will register on your screen.

“Then, just call the numbers by tapping on them to make sure the person possessing the phone on your screen is the person who answers that phone in reality. That’s it.”

“But, what am I going to say? I can’t just hang up on them. They’ll have my number, they’ll call me back—”

“Your number is both blocked and encrypted. Their numbers have no identifying information attached, so unless you were to go to crazy lengths to get it, their privacy is retained. I don’t need any lawsuits. If you get confused about who you’ve contacted, you can assign tags to their numbers. That way you’re not contacting one person multiple times by accident.”

“Still…that’s kind of uncomfortable.”

“You never made crank calls as a kid, did you?”

“We didn’t have a phone when I was a kid.”

Or a car. Or air-conditioning. Or, often, food. Heat and water had been sketchy too. Medical and dental had been covered through welfare. Lexi had told Rubi she’d grown up poor but no more. That was another one of their opposite traits—Rubi’s father was a multibillionaire, and Rubi was a millionaire in her own right. She’d made her share of the money modeling, but far more from her IT consulting as a programmer and these crazy apps she created. Lexi had funneled all her modeling income into LaCroix Designs—her real passion and the only reason she’d modeled to begin with.

“Can I text them instead?” she asked.

“As long as you can be sure the number you see on the screen corresponds to the person holding the phone, that’s fine. The data is transmitted to me through the app, and I’ll analyze it on my end to make sure the program is pulling in what I need, the way I need it from the radio signals being used. All I want to do right now is test the app under different circumstances and make sure it’s targeting accurately.”

Lexi glanced around the terminal at the unsuspecting travelers whose privacy she was about to breach. With the app open, she lifted the phone toward the lobby. Several people sitting nearby appeared on the screen. Within half a second, phone numbers popped into view above their heads like thought bubbles.

“This is kinda creepy,” Lexi said.

“This is our national security at work.”

“That makes it even creepier. I like your other apps better. The ones that do frivolous everyday tasks or create games to reach a goal or—”

Biker Boy strolled around the corner, an open magazine in one hand, a large coffee cup from one of the restaurants nearby in the other. He had his duffle slung over one wide shoulder.

Lexi’s breath caught.

“Look at it this way, Lex,” Rubi said. “If NSA buys this, you will have aided our national security. If they don’t, we’ll do something frivolous and fun with it. Deal?”

When Lexi looked down at her screen, Biker Boy appeared in the viewfinder. And,
pop, pop
, so did
two
little white bubbles above his head, both with local phone numbers.

Holy shit.

Lexi laughed, the sound rolling out of her so unexpectedly she covered her mouth. “Sure,” she said. “Sounds good. Hey, Rubi? If I get two phone numbers for one person, does that mean they’re carrying two phones?”

“Yes. Any last questions? I’ve got a very hot boy waiting for me.”

So do I. He just doesn’t know it yet.

“You’re absolutely sure none of these people can get my phone number or my name or any other information about me, right? ’Cause that could be incredibly…awkward, not to mention difficult to explain.”

“Positive, Lex.”

Lexi disconnected, watching Biker Boy from the corner of her eye. She kept her head down and maintained rapt interest in her phone. He glanced around the lobby, and she could swear his gaze paused on her, but surely he couldn’t recognize her from the car. Not with her hair up, the hat hiding her face.

When his gaze drifted past her, Lexi let out a breath—of both relief and disappointment.

Damn those reporters. If they weren’t here, she might just be desperate enough to do something impulsive—like be the one to initiate a conversation.

But not with Justin James from the
Independent
sitting a couple of rows away. The reporter had been at Lexi’s studio just two weeks before for a joint interview with Lexi and her client Bailey Simmons, daughter of Hollywood director Charles Simmons. James had been fascinated with Bailey’s thirty-thousand-dollar haute couture gown, which included one-of-a-kind fabric from France, pearls, and Swarovski crystals sewn over the entire bodice, and a thirty-foot train with embroidered cutouts.