by Ally Blake
She kept her feet firmly planted in the hall.
“Are you waiting for a formal invitation, Ms Croft?”
“To what? Here?” She poked her head inside, and counted the desks—one, two. “With you? I’m to be working in here with you?”
“For me,” he qualified.
Well, that was way better.
“Of course, if you are second-guessing your decision to take on the role, I can let Jonathon know—”
“Are you kidding? I’m delighted. Thrilled! Look at me.” She stretched a huge smile across her face to prove it. Then, hitching her backpack higher onto her shoulder, she nudged past, catching a waft of lemongrass, of cedar, of clean, groomed man.
Evie took off her beanie and blew out a breath, a wave of hair sweeping away from her face. “Any chance you might have told me this morning?”
The edge of Armand’s mouth flickered, before his face settled into its usual blank cool. One hand slid into the pocket of his suit pants, his scruffy hair slipping over one eye. “The work is sensitive. We will not be discussing such things in public venues.”
She opened her mouth to say Won’t we, now? but, considering the kind of work she was used to doing, she believed him.
When Evie turned Armand had moved deeper into the room. She tipped back so fast she had to take a step away. “Look, you were right. This morning in the train. Today is a new beginning for me. As such I’d like for us to start again too.” She held out a hand. “Hi, I’m Evie Croft. Nice to meet you.”
The pools of golden light created shadows upon shadows over his dark form, so she nearly missed the spark that flickered to life in his eyes before he reached out and took her hand in his.
Once again, a zap of electricity shot from his hand through hers like a delicious little shock.
“Armand Debussey,” he drawled. “Enchanté.”
She offered a most professional nod, then quickly pulled her hand away. “So, what now?”
Armand glanced at her a beat longer before his dark gaze swept past her and he motioned with a tilt of his chin. “Now we get to work.”
She moved to follow the direction of his gaze, but at the last moment saw him surreptitiously rub his thumb into the palm, as if trying to rid himself of pins and needles.
Had he felt it too? The zap? No. Surely not. It was probably just nerves. Or static electricity from the commercial carpet.
A small voice in the back of her head said, Work, monkey business, a million miles apart. Her train crush and his poem—or not—could not matter from this moment on. They were colleagues, nothing more. Zip. The end.
One of the desks had a single yellow banker’s lamp, paper calendar, a pristine notebook, pencils lined up just so. Definitely his.
In the other corner, the second desk was big, shiny and black. Hinged for sitting or standing. Ergonomic chair. Linked to three huge monitors. And was that...? It was! An encrypted solid-state hard drive, the likes of which she’d only heard rumoured.
“Please tell me that’s mine.”
“It’s certainly not mine.”
That was all she needed to hear.
She all but ran across the room, dumping her backpack, gaze dancing from one glorious technological wonder to the next. Whatever she had been hired to do, she’d been given state-of-the-art hardware with which to do it.
She’d set up employee name, password, fingerprint and retinal ID with Imogen the day before. With a single swipe of her finger, the system turned on.
“Pinch me,” she muttered.
“Pardon?” Armand said, now leaning back against the edge of his desk, hands gripped lightly around the wood, watching her settle in.
Her heart fluttered like a butterfly at the sight. But she pushed the feeling back down.
“Okay, then, boss. Where do I begin?”
Armand did the chin-tilt thing, motioning to a note on her desk. Apparently, she was to click on the only icon on the screen and follow the prompts.
She’d been so untethered by the events of her past week she couldn’t wait to get her teeth stuck into something solid.
As for Hot Stuff in the Swanky Suit? She’d find a way to work with him without swooning, or snapping, or she’d die trying.
* * *
Armand, who wished to get back to the slew of work he had to get through, instead watched as Evie brought a flexible plastic rectangle out of her backpack, uncurled a thin cord from one corner and plugged it into the hard drive of the main computer.
He might not know much about software, but he had a handle on mechanics. And this was not regulation. “May I ask what it is you think you are doing?”
“Hmm?”
He pointed to the foreign object on her desk.
“Cool, right? Not a Qwerty keyboard. Programmed so that only I know the order of the keys.”
Armand, who typed with two fingers and only when forced, asked, “Why?”
“Security.”
“I’m not sure Jonathon would concur—”
“He knows. I emailed him the specs last night.”
“Again, why?”
Evie’s fingers stretched as they hovered over the shiny black contraption. “Fair question, since I’ll be working with...sorry, for you. In my last job, someone used my access code to embezzle from the company.”
The hairs rose on the back of Armand’s neck and his fingers curled in on themselves as he glanced in the direction of his friend’s office.
“It’s okay,” Evie said. “Jonathon knows.”
Armand glanced back at her and stretched out his hands. It wasn’t okay. It wasn’t even close to being okay.
“How did it happen?”
“The person, the embezzler, was the boss’s son. And my ex-boyfriend. Turned out he’d hidden cameras in my office so he could copy my key strokes.”
She rested her hands gently over her blank keyboard then blinked at him, her eyes big, shining, sombre. “I was a total dewy-eyed naïf. The only reason I don’t still lie awake at night berating myself is that the authorities are confident the money will all be recovered.”
She’d been worse than naïve. As Armand saw it, she’d been grossly negligent. But he also knew about lying awake at night, riddled with regret.
“If he’d been smart enough to code, if he’d even touched my computer I’d have known it. I could have stopped him. Ironically it was the fact he was clueless that gave him the advantage over me.”
Armand bristled. He had degrees in law, economics and art history. He owned an internationally renowned private-security company. He could defuse a bomb with his bare hands. But if a computer locked up he’d have to call Tech Support.
Not that he’d been near a bomb in some time. Now he spent his days sorting fake Picassos from real for his family’s art collections, his mother claiming the genteel world of art was where someone with his intellect ought to be. Not out “playing the hero”, nearly killing them all with worry.
“Anyway,” Evie went on, “it taught me to be extra-vigilant. No one’s ever going to pull the wool over my eyes again. If you’d like I can show you how this thing works...”
Armand held up both hands. But it was shiny and space-age and he was a man. Curious despite himself, he asked, “Where did you find such a thing?”
“It’s a prototype. I invented it.”
“You?”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah, me. Ironically if I’d not worked all those extra hours at my last job, I’d have had more spare time to finish this baby and Eric would never have had the chance to do what he did. Anyway, while I can only hope you don’t plan to frame me for embezzlement, I’m using the keyboard and that’s that.”
Armand waved a hand in acquiescence. “Have it.”
Which she did.
Leaving Armand to wonder what the hell Jonathon wa
s thinking.
Perhaps she was innocent, but she’d been duped. Her instincts were less than exemplary. Her relative youth might be an asset when it came to the job at hand, but her naivety was a proven liability. She jeopardised the entire team.
Armand sat behind his desk, running a hand over the bristles on his chin. He knew exactly what Jonathon was thinking. The hero complex that terrified his parents would have him fall head over heels for one ingenuous brunette.
Jonathon had been a player his whole life. Gambling with ideas, with investment and invention. Only this time he was playing with people.
One who wanted this job with her whole heart.
One who had no heart left.
Meaning the sooner the job was done, the sooner he could leave the game. Go back to Paris. And sink back into a life of ease and comfort where he’d never put a loved one in the path of danger again.
* * *
Two hours later Evie’s leg ached from jiggling.
The icon on the smaller screen had led to a slew of training videos covering everything from how to turn on a computer to proper workplace language, each finishing with twenty-five inane multiple questions to answer at the end. It was mind-numbing. Life-sapping.
She glanced up to find Armand still poring over the papers on his desk. The man’s focus was impressive. Figuring he could keep it up for hours, she wriggled on her seat, and with a few relatively easy clicks found her way into the back end of the program she’d been forced to undergo. Another half an hour and she was done. Each program now registered as complete.
“Done!” she called out.
Armand took a moment to glance up at the analogue clock on the wall beside his desk. “You’re finished?”
“Yep. What’s next? Unless I’ve been put in this room with you as some kind of scientific experiment. See how long it takes me to crack. Or you!”
Armand slowly leant back in his chair. “Am I to expect this level of chatter to continue?”
“Oh, yeah. My granddad was a big one for curiosity. Whether I was keen to know about tractor engines, or constellations, or ant hills, or bones in the wrist, he’d take time to answer any questions I posed. I posed a lot.”
Ah, Granddad. Evie wondered what he was doing in that moment. He seemed to truly be enjoying life in the lovely local retirement village, which was so wonderful. Costing her every spare penny to cover the rental, but better that than sell the farm—his lifeblood, her home.
She blinked back to the present to find Armand sitting still, breathing slowly, exuding such an air of rakish sophistication he could well have been part-vampire. She’d always had a thing for vampires.
“My turn,” Evie trilled. “If I’m Chatty Cathy, why are you taciturn?”
He blinked. For him that was as telling as a flinch. “I don’t see the point in speaking unless one has something of worth to say.”
“Ouch. That was a dig at me, right?”
The edge of his mouth flickered and Evie held her breath. A smile? Was it coming? But no, his face eased back into its usual watchful repose.
“Here’s something worth discussing,” said Evie. “Tell me about the project I’ll be working on.”
Armand blanked, and sat up tall. “We’ll get to that. Why don’t you take a break?”
Evie rolled her eyes and stood, grabbing her backpack and heading for the door. But she stopped before she made it past his desk. “You will have to tell me eventually, you know. Give me full and proper access to all the boxes with the wires and engines and microchips.”
She paused, deciding how best to put a dent in her cohort’s perfect façade. “It’s not a big leap to figure out what I’ll be doing. I’m a hacker. Jonathon needs me to hack. Find errors and to clean up the mess. Right?”
Anything? A glimmer of surprise? Of admiration at her powers of deduction? Nope. Nada.
“Here’s something to mull over—while I have yet to find a system, a program, a game, a brand of software that I cannot infiltrate, I can’t analyse that code unless I actually see the code.”
Armand rose, forcing Evie’s chin to tilt as she looked up into his shadowed face. Only he moved to the shelves, where he picked out a heavy-looking text and brought it back to his desk, where once again he sat.
Evie felt totally flustered. Not that there was anything rushed about him—more an overwhelming sense of power well-leashed.
He picked up a pencil, perfectly sharpened, and gripped it between his teeth as he sat back in his chair and began to read.
Which was when it hit her. “Where’s your computer, Armand? Your cell phone? I see pencils, I see notebooks, I see a lot of paper. You’re a technophobe!”
She clapped her hands together before jumping out into a star. Ta-da! Only her audience wasn’t clapping. She shuffled her feet back together. “I’m going on a break now. Want anything? Coffee? Tea?”
She—very smartly—stopped herself from saying Me? Even in jest. She hadn’t needed to take a quiz on Appropriate Interpersonal Office Relations to know it was best to steer clear of those kinds of conversations with Armand from now on.
“No? Then I’ll see you in half an hour.”
* * *
Evie headed down the stairs, grabbed an apple from her bag and made her way towards the exit in search of fresh air. Though she soon found herself waylaid by the noise and bling of the Bullpen.
She slowed, dawdling past the little alcoves to find a couple of guys duelling on pinball machines, a couple talking string theory while playing vintage Ataris, and—
“Evie.”
Evie spun on her heel. “Jamie. Hi.”
“Looking for someone?”
“Break time,” she said, holding up her apple.
He blinked as if he’d never seen such a strange food. “I’m thinking you’ve not yet found the Yum Lounge.”
“I have not.”
Jamie cocked his head, motioning for her to follow. Follow she did, but not before glancing up the stairs as if expecting to see Armand hiding in the shadows, watching over her like her own personal avenging angel.
The “Yum Lounge” turned out to be Game Plan’s private restaurant. Jamie pointed the way to a two-seater table together in the corner of the room. When their meals came out they looked and tasted like something out of Masterchef.
Evie sat back, holding a hand over her belly. “Amazing. But I do not want to ask what that just cost me.”
“Not a cent,” said Jamie with a grin.
She sat up straight. Oh, no. No, no, no. “No, Jamie, you can’t... This wasn’t...”
He grinned. “Relax. I didn’t. It’s all part of the package.”
“Seriously? Pinch me.” Evie held out her arm.
Jamie grinned at her. Then reached out and gave her arm a pinch. Right as a shadow fell over the table.
As one they looked up to find Armand looming over them. Hands in his pockets, face dark and stormy.
Cheeks heating like crazy, Evie tugged her arm back to check her watch. She’d been gone for thirty-five minutes. Dammit.
“Back to the grindstone,” she said, quickly wiping her mouth with a napkin and pushing back her chair.
“Stay,” Armand commanded.
Evie made a point of sitting upright like a good girl.
Something flickered behind Armand’s dark eyes before he added, “I am not your keeper, Ms Croft. You were not answering your phone, therefore I sought you out to let you know I will not be in the office when you return.”
“Oh. Okay.” Glancing at Jamie, who was watching them carefully, she was judicious in her choice of words. “This morning, the keypad...”
“Programmed.”
“And what should I work on while you’re gone?”
“I’ve left a note.”
“Cool. Great!” she effused, his soberne
ss somehow making her want to double up on the sunshine factor. “I’ll get on it right away.”
As if he knew exactly what she was doing, Armand drawled, “Enjoy your lunch, Ms Croft,” before walking away.
“I did thanks,” she called. Then after a pause added, “Mr Debussey.”
His next step may have faltered slightly. He was too far away to truly tell.
“Wow,” said Jamie, drawing out the word. “Wait a minute—you’re working with him?”
“I am.”
“Huh. He’s been lurking around here for a few weeks, holed up in Jonathon’s office. Very cloak and dagger. In fact, there’s a pool going. Is he an auditor? A psychic? Private eye? I have fifty bucks on bodyguard.”
Despite not enjoying Armand’s clear hesitation in giving up the details to her, she had to figure he had good reason. With a friendly shrug she went with, “First day—still not quite sure.”
Jamie squinted, but took her word for it. “Is he as big a stiff as he seems?”
Evie opened her mouth before snapping it shut as a strange kind of protectionist sensibility washed over her.
Armand might be difficult, but she had to trust that Jonathon Montrose had put them together for a reason. And, well, something about him made her feel as though he was used to looking out for other people rather than the other way around.
“First day, remember,” she said.
“Right.”
Evie glanced through the restaurant in the direction Armand had gone. She could practically see the trail of his mysterious aura. Wondered what stories, what secrets lurked beneath the elegant façade. Such as...had he ever written a lonely heart?
“Jamie?”
“Yes, Evie?”
“Have you ever written poetry?”
“Poetry? Good God, no. Unless...would you like me to?”
Her gaze slammed back to his. “What? No! I didn’t mean it that way. It was just a random query...” She shook her head and pressed herself to standing. “Anyway, I’d better get back to work. I’ll see you round.”
Jamie opened his mouth as if he had more to add, but she spun on her heel and bolted.
