“How?!” she demanded.
“Because… I refuse to be wanted for one thing any longer. No one knows me, Savannah. I want to be known. Completely. I won’t be cast aside.”
Her disbelief and outrage and shock all just sort of deflated at his words. There was no arguing with that. She realized that this wasn’t a disagreement that logistics or semantics could solve. No. He wanted something completely different from what she did. And he had every single right to want it. He was lonely and he wanted connection from someone he had feelings for.
“I can’t fault you for that, Moreau. If that’s what you want, that’s what you deserve.” She wracked her brain for how to possibly explain this next part. “But that’s not something I can give you. Or anyone. First of all, I’m not built for relationships. Second of all, my life is such a sinking mess right now, there’s no way in hell you actually want to climb on board. Trust me.”
She expected sadness or disappointment in his eyes. But instead, he just eyed her, reading her. Watching her.
“What do you mean you’re not built for it?”
She sucked her teeth, thinking. “Ah. I mean that I’ve never had a relationship. It’s… just not a part of who I am.”
He smiled, bright and blinding, and damn near had her squinting against the delicious burn of it.
“Just because you haven’t, doesn’t mean you can’t.”
“Moreau—”
“And of course I want to be onboard your shipwreck of a life. Mine is a shipwreck too. We’ll drown together. Happily.”
She let out a puff of confused air. “There’s no room in my life for a relationship. Especially not with a famous person.”
His face dimmed considerably. “So the fame is an issue for you.”
She imagined the shitshow her personal life would become if she were suddenly in the eye of the world as Moreau Davy’s girlfriend. There would be paparazzi and tell-all exposés about every little mistake or misstep. Every aspect of her fashion and appearance would be picked to pieces. She’d be alternately decimated and lauded online. Her privacy would be in shambles.
And worst of all, her father’s secrets would be exposed. The men who he owed money to would know that she had a multimillionaire piggy bank in her bed. They’d come after her to get to Davy.
She could never, ever let that happen.
“I can’t be your girlfriend, Davy.”
He frowned, but a determined look was dawning on his face. “But you would hook up with me?”
“In a heartbeat,” she answered, ever-mindful of her still wet panties, the ache between her legs.
He considered her. “Would you consider a compromise?”
Now she was the suspicious one. “What kind?”
“We can fool around.”
“Great!”
He smiled but it was bittersweet. “But we will not have sex unless we are committed.”
She frowned, feeling like she’d just been duped. “Your idea of a compromise is attempting to withhold sex in order to extort me into a relationship?”
He laughed. “No, my plan is to put us on a playing field where you try to tempt me into having sex and I try to tempt you into a relationship.”
She caught the competitive look in his eye and grinned. Cocky, combative Davy was a Davy she knew how to handle. A sly smile had formed on those perfect, devilishly talented lips of his and Geo knew she was mirroring the expression back to him.
“Fine,” she nodded. “Challenge accepted.”
She leaned across the bed and their hands met in a rough shake. Sealing the deal.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rook was exhausted. He wasn’t even that old. But every time he looked in the mirror he seemed to see another line on his face. More gray hairs. More stress.
He needed a vacation.
He thought, wistfully, back to the last vacation he’d taken, more than six months ago now. A week with his ex-wife and his daughter. Oh yeah. And his ex-wife’s then-boyfriend. It was of a particular delight to Rook that the asshole hadn’t lasted the week.
The last four days of that vacation had been the happiest of Rook’s last five years. Since the divorce.
It had been nothing but boogie boarding and windsurfing with Ricky, surreptitiously glancing at May in a bikini. Late night movies and extended brunches with his girls.
He’d been able to pretend that that was their real life. That the three of them went on vacation together because they were still a bonded family with no rifts.
Then, every night, they’d go to their bungalow and he’d go to his. Alone.
He shook his head and came back to the present. Sitting in his office, as usual. Alone. As usual.
He’d always been sort of a loner. May was the social one. Even in high school, when they’d first started dating, she’d been the one to drag him out, to this party or that dance or whatever. He’d always gone, as long as it meant being with her.
When she’d gotten pregnant at eighteen, at first he’d been terrified. But then he’d been relieved. Because it meant that when he enlisted, she’d still have someone there with her. Their kid. She wouldn’t have to be alone.
To his idiotic teen-aged brain, that had actually made sense. Now, of course, he realized that leaving his teen-aged, pregnant wife behind to deal with raising their daughter on her own had been the thing that had ultimately killed his marriage. Even when he was finally home for good, when Ricky was six years old, and he truly gave fatherhood a shot, they couldn’t recover from all the years May had spent feeling abandoned. They’d soldiered on for a year and a half before May asked for a divorce. He’d spent a year trying to talk her out of it. Then half a year attempting to get it over with as soon as possible.
Now, half a decade later, he was as used to being a single parent as she was.
He shot off an email to Detective Wilkes, hoping against hope for a little more information on how the case was going. He desperately wanted to end their lockdown for Davy.
He knew that Davy was most likely still in danger, which meant that Rook would do anything he could to keep him safe. But Rook missed his daughter. He hated going all these weeks without seeing her. When he wasn’t in lockdown, he saw her almost every day. She still let him pick her up from her mother’s to give her a ride to school. And at least three nights a week he ate dinner with her, sometimes with her mother as well. He also got to have Ricky every other weekend and every Wednesday night no matter what. As long as he wasn’t on lockdown.
Ricky understood, and now that she had a cellphone it wasn’t as bad as it used to be. He and his daughter texted a lot, he followed her Instagram, and they battled each other in online Settlers of Catan whenever he got a free moment.
But he missed his little girl.
And he freaking missed his ex-wife. But that wasn’t a matter of being on lockdown.
Rook roused himself out of his pity party and scanned through the rest of his emails. A few of them were from former clients, a few from prospective clients, and the rest were spam.
The former clients he responded to diligently and thoroughly, because he owed them that. The prospective clients he used a much more critical eye on their requests. Because of their contract with Moreau, Rook was able to take on a different kind of clientele for the rest of their time. Davy was extremely generous with what he paid Rook Securities, and that basically meant that Rook was able to start scheduling quite a bit more pro bono work. It was important to him that they use their talents to start protecting people who truly needed protection, not just the rich people who could afford them.
He opened up a prospective client email from an email address labeled future365, his brow furrowed down hard, his blood pressure rising.
There was no subject line and the body of the email contained a picture. It was of the outside of the Rook Securities bunker, an address that was definitely not published online.
Below the image were the words I know you’re in there.
; Rook leaned back in his chair and stared at the image.
“Shit.”
In an extremely rare show of temper, Rook whipped a pile of folders and paper and a coffee cup off of his desk and onto the floor.
“Shit,” he repeated, clutching at his buzzed hair.
He picked up his phone and called Detective Wilkes.
***
The next night, at dinner, Moreau nearly choked on his pasta when something warm, rude, and curious snaked its way up his inner thigh.
His eyes shot across the table at Geo who, amazingly enough, was still able to carry on a conversation with Rook despite trying to unzip Moreau’s pants with her toes. He watched her face carefully and the only concession she gave to the lasciviousness happening under the table was the smirky half-smile on her face when her foot teased him into getting hard as a rock.
Damn it! He was sure that she’d intentionally waited until the end of dinner. He was going to have to stand up in about a minute and a half. He was wearing basketball shorts! The tent would be obscene!
Determined to fight fire with fire, Moreau caught her eye, kissed his fingertips, and pressed the kiss into the arch of her foot before carefully brushing her off his lap. She blushed and frowned and he felt that he’d just gained a point.
He’d presented the challenge between the two of them as if it were a competition that either of them could win. But the truth was that Moreau was determined to win her over.
Kissing Geo last night had made it brilliantly clear just how strong his feelings were for her. He’d never felt like that before. His emotional reaction to her nearness was just as strong as his physical reaction. He’d read about it, seen it, and even acted it in certain roles. But he’d never felt it before.
He’d stayed awake half the night after Geo had returned to her room. He knew of many celebrities who were able to carry on with secret relationships in order to shield their partner from public scrutiny. And he would be more than happy to do that for Geo if that was what really bothered her. But there were always risks. He was rich, but he wasn’t a superhero. If rumors started to swirl about her, he wouldn’t be able to protect her privacy completely.
And he understood why someone wouldn’t want to go down that road. Especially if she had reservations about him as a person and a partner.
Which was why mission number one, in his mind, was to make her realize just how good things could be between them and just how sweetly and completely he’d care for her if given the chance.
The only problem was that, just like Geo, he’d never really had a partner before. He’d had many affairs, many one-night stands, many extended hook-ups, but no real partnership. He needed advice if he was really going to be able to throw down for her, because she was already proving to be a formidable opponent.
She’d already given him four separate hard-ons today. The first had involved heavy eye contact and a grape popsicle. The second had been with a ridiculous amount of stretching before she’d run on the treadmill (he’d had to pretend he needed a break from his physical therapy so that he could hide his boner from Leary). The third had been in the TV room, when he, Atlas, and Cedric had been watching a basketball game, she’d snuck up behind Moreau and sucked on his earlobe while no one was watching. And the last had been footsie at dinner.
She was going to give him a stomach ulcer if she kept this up.
Dinner wrapped up and Moreau immediately left the kitchen to follow Sequence back to his office.
He could feel Geo’s eyes on his back, as if she knew he was up to something, but he scrupulously ignored it.
Sequence looked up in surprise when Moreau knocked on his door.
“What’s up?”
Sequence was the member of Rook Security whom Moreau was least close to. It probably had to do with the way Moreau had treated Sequence’s now-wife when he’d first met her. Perhaps a bit too amorously.
“Do you have a minute to talk?”
Talking was one of Sequence’s least favorite things to do on Earth, and the expression on his face showed exactly that, but he gritted his teeth and nodded toward the chair across from his desk.
Moreau balanced his crutches to one side, took a seat, and opted to clear the air before he asked his questions. “We’ve never really addressed this, but do you know why I used to hit on Naomi?”
Sequence’s eyebrows rose up and he crossed his arms over his chest. His blonde hair was buzzed short and the tattoos all the way down to his fingertips looked especially stark in the bright lighting of his office. He looked like someone who’d attend a fight club for the purpose of relaxation.
Moreau refused to be intimidated.
He might not be able to take Sequence in a hand-to-hand combat, but who could? Over the course of Moreau’s career he’d met all kinds of scary dudes. Industry giants, tycoons, bruisers, you name it. Moreau had never gotten caught up in anything he didn’t want to be a part of, mostly because he refused to be intimidated. He stayed in his lane, unwaveringly. He leaned on that personality quirk now.
“I assumed it was for the same reasons that I was hitting on Naomi,” Sequence said dryly.
Moreau laughed. “She’s beautiful, of course,” he agreed. “But I wasn’t actually attempting to start a relationship with her.”
Sequence scowled and Moreau figured he’d dragged on this part of the conversation long enough.
“I paid attention to Naomi in order to gain the attention of someone else. Childish, I know. And as soon as I realized that Naomi was in love with you, and carrying your child, I left her alone. I had no wish to interfere in something so important. Especially not for my selfish gain.”
Sequence nodded, and Moreau could tell, from the look on his face, that his memory of those events coincided with Moreau’s recounting of the tale.
Sequence’s brow furrowed after a moment though. “Someone else’s attention? But we were on lockdown then, the only people here were… Oh.”
Moreau figured that either Sequence had deduced that Moreau had a thing for Geo or he’d just started wondering if Moreau was gay. Moreau didn’t have an issue with either thought, but one was the truth and one was not.
Moreau nodded. “I’ve been in love with her for a very long time.”
Sequence’s eyebrows rose up. “Dang. You got a thing for punishment or something?”
Moreau laughed and Sequence cracked a smile.
“Apparently. She sure doesn’t make it easy on a man.”
“Can’t imagine she does.”
There was a silence while Moreau tried to figure out what to say next and Sequence did absolutely nothing to guide the conversation along.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Moreau asked slowly.
Sequence’s face barely moved, but he gave just the slightest impression of a grimace. “You can ask.”
Translation: But I might not answer.
Moreau nodded and again gathered his thoughts. “My impression that things were not always smooth for you and Naomi. Correct?”
Sequence nodded. He was quiet for a second, then to Moreau’s surprise, he actually volunteered information. “I was kind of a dumbass for a while and didn’t quite realize what I had on my hands with her. How special she is. By then, we’d already found out she was pregnant and she was kind of… done with me. She had the baby to think of and didn’t want to risk dramatics with me.”
Moreau was leaned forward in his chair, drinking in every word. It was exactly as he’d expected. “So, how did you end up back together?”
Sequence cleared his throat. “I kind of had to convince her. Prove myself.”
“And how did you do this?”
Now Sequence raised his eyebrows. “You planning on writing my biography or something?”
Moreau grimaced and leaned back. “I apologize for prying. I…” He threw his hands up in the air. “She doesn’t want a relationship with me and I’m not sure how to make my case.”
Sequence bounced on the back of
his swivel chair for a second, his arms crossed in front of his chest, looking out the window. “Have you ever seen Geo with Brookie?”
“Brookie is your daughter?”
Sequence nodded.
“No. I have never met her.”
Sequence’s eyes clouded. “Oh. That’s weird. I thought you’d been over to my house before.”
Moreau was surprised. He’d never been invited to any of the team’s houses, and to him, that was stark and obvious. Apparently that wasn’t as obvious to Sequence. “No.”
“Well,” Sequence said with a shrug. “You’ll meet her at Ced’s wedding.”
“You were saying about your daughter and Geo.”
“Right. Geo is this total hardass normally. She’s not into feelings. She doesn’t want to go shopping or have girltalk. You know her. But get her around Brookie and she’s a pile of mush. She loves her. She obviously loves babies. A lot.”
Moreau waited, thinking there was going to be more, but after a few moments passed and Sequence didn’t continue on, he realized that Sequence’s point had apparently been made. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Davy, the woman might have a tough exterior, but on the inside she’s a stuffed animal.”
“So, you’re telling me…”
Sequence looked exasperated. “If you really want her, you got to hit her in her sweet spots, not the ones that are all armored up.”
“Like the baby thing?” If it was possible, Moreau was even more confused than before he’d started this conversation with Sequence.
“I don’t know, man. But maybe. I’m just saying, Geo’s good at telling herself what she doesn’t deserve, all while really wishing she did.”
“I’ve noticed,” Moreau grumbled. After a moment, he marveled at Sequence’s apparently prodigious observation skills. “How did you figure all this out?”
“It’s my wife,” Sequence grumbled. “She might look like she’s all bubbles and sunshine, but the woman is a genius. Be glad she’s on our team.”
***
Moreau was reading The Atlantic later that night, sitting on top of his covers, when Geo slammed into his room. It was ten PM and the others were all watching a movie in the TV room across the bunker. But she closed and locked his door anyways, a scowl on her face.
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