“Grayson had a house in the Rockies that went to my mother,” said Lori. “Michael and I can hole up there for a week at least. Mom would probably appreciate us taking a look at the place and making sure it’s in good shape.”
Evelyn nodded. “That would be great. Make sure you tell as few people as possible where you’re going. We’re thinking that an agent of ours might’ve told the Thirteen Stars who I was, so don’t trust any agent who’s not me, understand?”
Michael narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure who to be more afraid of—Longineu or your people.”
Luke turned and stood between Evelyn and Michael. “Hey. Evelyn has been working her ass off to finish this investigation. This isn’t her fault.”
Michael and Lori exchanged a quick glance. “Well, that’s a switch,” muttered Michael.
Luke clenched his jaw. The last Michael had seen, Luke and Evelyn were barely on speaking terms, and Luke wasn’t about to start explaining what changed. Hell, he didn’t even know what changed. So maybe Evelyn wasn’t the ice queen he first thought, and he wasn’t the spoiled little rich boy she’d expected. None of that was Michael’s business for the moment.
“Maybe we should get started on those arrangements.” Lori set a hand on Michael’s arm.
Luke forced himself to calm down and grinned at his brother’s girlfriend. “How did my brother get so lucky to find you?” Really, he didn’t remember the last time his brother had dated anyone, let alone someone who seemed to be able to read his moods as well as Lori. Normally he and Michael would just hash it out in a screaming match and then make up over a bottle of Scotch later. But since Lori had been around, there hadn’t been any screaming at all. “You need to marry this girl before she realizes she’s too good for you.”
A red blush crept up Lori’s neck and Evelyn let out a laugh from behind Luke. “You two did not elope!”
“No!” Lori emphatically shook her head.
“Not yet,” clarified Michael.
Luke glanced between the now incredibly guilty-looking couple. “What’s going on?”
Lori looked back to the ground and Michael set an arm over her shoulders. “We’ve just been...talking,” he said.
“Talking about eloping,” clarified Luke. “You didn’t think this was important enough to bring up?”
“There wasn’t a good time,” said Lori. “I told him to call you but every time we started talking about marriage, we’d get...distracted.”
Evelyn made a sudden choking noise and Luke looked back to see her holding a hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she choked out through her obvious laughter. “I just inhaled orange juice. You all are ridiculous.”
Luke shook his head at her and turned back to his brother. “Do what you want, but I need to be there, understand? And Emma, too. If she doesn’t kill you, she’ll sic her guard dog of a boyfriend on you.”
“Unless they’re going to get married without you too,” said Evelyn, completely unhelpfully from behind him.
Lori held up her hands. “We understand! No big decisions without you.”
“Damned right,” he muttered.
“Control freak,” said Evelyn under her breath.
Luke narrowed his eyes at her. “I heard that.”
“I meant for you to,” she said with another serene smile as she drank some more of her juice.
“Umm...” said Lori, interrupting their moment. “We should probably get headed out if you really think this guy, Longineus—”
“Longineu,” said Evelyn and Luke at the same time.
“Longineu,” clarified Lori, “is coming after us.”
Evelyn nodded. “I can’t say for sure, but better safe than sorry.”
Michael pushed away from the counter and led Lori back to the door. “I’ll call Emma and make sure she knows about the changes in the situation.”
“And I’ll update Jace,” said Evelyn.
Luke wasn’t Jace’s biggest fan, but damn if it didn’t make him feel better to know that the former SEAL was looking out for his little cousin.
He finished up good-byes with Michael and Lori, and in the next few moments, he was alone with Evelyn again. She turned back and padded to the kitchen, where she started to scoop out another serving of eggs. A rush of pride filled him. She might not like him all that much, but she liked his cooking. Ladies couldn’t resist the added cheese.
“So how exactly do you know Jace?” Luke sat on the stool next to hers.
“You read my file. Shouldn’t you know everything about me?”
“Funny thing about your file. Now, I have contacts. Lots of contacts really high up in the Department of Defense. Yet no one could get me a file that didn’t have your military record redacted.”
“At least there’s still some privacy in government.” She winked. “And I think the fact that it’s redacted and you know I worked with Jace should tell you everything you need to know about my military time.”
“Yes, but—”
“And it should tell you not to ask questions that I can’t answer.”
He nodded in defeat. “Fine. No more questions about your terrifying past.”
“Awww,” she said condescendingly as she sat down next to him. “You’re safe with me. Don’t worry.”
He rolled his eyes at her teasing. “You must be really pissed then.”
“I’m normally pissed about something. Care to be more specific?”
“The guy in your apartment last night. He got the jump on you. That’s never happened to you, has it?”
“Oh, it’s happened. Just not often. And yes, I’m pissed. The son of a bitch pepper sprayed me. I had him and he took a coward’s way out.”
“I didn’t realize pepper spray was for cowards.”
“I almost had him.”
“You’ll get him,” promised Luke. “I’ll throw all my resources behind the search. We’ll bring this guy down and Longineu in the process.”
“No. You’ll keep your head down and out of the way. You do your job of wining and dining all the big-time clients of DevX and I will do the criminal catching, okay?”
“Technically, our biggest contract is with the government. So, me helping you catch Longineu would be a good way of keeping ourselves in the FBI’s good graces.”
Evelyn rubbed her temples. “I keep forgetting how much money we throw at you. Are my tax dollars paying for this place?” She motioned around her at the lavish apartment.
“Maybe for the bathroom.” He winked. “The FBI actually doesn’t use our software. The Pentagon and a few branches of the Army do, and that’s a pretty damn big chunk of people. Keeps us on our toes.”
She tilted her orange juice glass toward him. “Well, thank you for keeping our country safe from behind a computer screen.”
“And thank you for keeping our country safe from behind a gun.” He set a hand on her knee. He didn’t know why he did it. Touching her just seemed natural. Right.
And for some reason, Evelyn didn’t remove his hand. She glanced down where he touched her bare leg exposed by the pajama shorts. His fingers weren’t too high on her thigh and there was nothing overtly sexual about the touch.
But somehow everything he did around Evelyn turned sexual. Every look she gave, every time she laughed at one of his jokes—which was rather difficult considering she was a tougher critic than most of the people around him—it was like an electrical charge would fill the room.
It had always been that way, now that he thought about it. Somehow they’d put all that energy into hating each other before. But now that he’d spent more time with her, it was clear that what he thought was a mutual hatred before was actually just a really, really intense chemistry. A chemistry he had never experienced before.
And Luke had thought he was an expert on chemistry.
“Are you planning on getting out of town too?” she asked, still not removing his hand.
“I think that would be best,” he said carefully. “With my FBI escort, of cours
e.”
“Of course.” She rolled her eyes. “So where are we going?”
“I don’t want to go too far. I have a place in the Hamptons. It’s off-season right now, but we can still escape there for a few days. I can have Cali reschedule all my meetings that need to be in person and call into the rest.”
“Sounds good. I have my boss looking into who at the FBI gave Longineu my information. He’s discreetly following up on a few leads.”
“Any ideas?”
“One. I don’t know many people at the New York Bureau, but there was one woman who seemed to go out of her way to make me comfortable. I’m starting to wonder if maybe it wasn’t my charming personality that won her over.” She pulled her knee out from under his hand, and he could see the tension creep into her shoulders.
“It might not be her.” Luke had no idea what to say in a case like this, but it was obvious that Evelyn didn’t want this woman to be the one giving information to Longineu.
“We’ll know for sure when we pull her bank records. Back in Texas, this was my job, you know. Sniffing out dirty cops. For some stupid reason, I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with it here. That I could let my guard down. Should’ve remembered that corruption isn’t solely around the Mexican border.”
“And yet you still want to go back?” asked Luke.
“At least there I know the rules. Rich bad, poor good.”
“Really?”
“Only the bribed cops are the ones driving the fancy cars. The good ones all get shot.”
“Like you.”
“Like me.”
“Maybe it’s time for a change,” he said. “New York needs good agents.” He didn’t know what he was talking about. If Evelyn hated the city, who was he to ask her to stay? But he didn’t want to think about the idea of her leaving. Especially not after solving this case. Because he wanted Longineu to pay, but he didn’t want him getting what he wanted to coincide with something else he wanted leaving the state.
“I have a confession.” Evelyn turned to face him.
Luke took advantage of their newfound closeness and set both hands on her knees, testing her new boundaries. “I love confessions. Is it sexy?”
She didn’t move his hands. “Not sexy. Stupid. The woman who I’m suspicious of—Gail—before yesterday, I trusted her. And since you’re important to this investigation and Longineu saw me in your office, I had Gail tail you.”
“You were worried about me?”
“Worried about the investigation,” she clarified. “So basically, there’s a chance that I had a dirty agent follow you last night.”
“Oh, that is a juicy confession.” Luke leaned forward. “I’m going to make you pay for that one.”
Evelyn leaned in just the slightest bit, and Luke held his breath. If she kissed him, there would be no stopping this time. He’d carry her right up to his bedroom and not let her leave until he’d made her orgasm at least three times. She’d be screaming his name until her voice was raw...
“You’re not going to go easy on me?”
“Not in the slightest,” he warned.
“Ass,” she said with a smile as she jumped off her stool, breaking the moment.
Shit. Cold shower for one, coming up.
“I have to make some calls. How soon will you be ready to leave?”
“Just have to shower and pack,” he called as she turned the corner out of the kitchen.
“Meet you down here in an hour!”
Just a few more hours, he promised himself. Then they’d be alone for days in his secluded Hamptons cottage. And then he could do whatever he wanted with her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Evelyn was in over her head. She tapped her pen repeatedly on the notebook in front of her as the scenery outside passed by. Luke was at the wheel of his Pagani Zonda and for some reason felt the need to drive at breakneck speeds down the highway.
Maybe it was a natural New York complex. So much time was spent being in stop-and-go traffic or waiting for a subway—not that Luke ever rode the subway—that when they finally did get out of the city, they needed to get some of their speed demons out.
But that didn’t make the eighty-five miles an hour he was going legal. Or less terrifying. “You do know I carry a gun, right?” she asked as he passed a driver going the perfectly normal speed limit.
“I have a lot of things to get done today.”
“And you will get them done a lot faster if you’re alive,” she pointed out.
He glared at her from over his sunglasses but lifted his foot off the gas just a bit.
“There you go. Happy?”
“I’m happy I’m not dead. Besides, there are eggs in the back. Please don’t ruin my chance of having a pancake breakfast,” she said. They’d stopped at a grocery store outside of the city to pick up supplies to stock the mostly empty cabinets of his Hamptons home. She looked back to her empty notebook. There was nothing she could do without her laptop at the moment, but it made her feel better to have something in front of her.
“You won’t have to deal with my driving much longer.”
“Good.” Evelyn let out a deep sigh and looked out the window. Just a short drive until she and Luke were trapped together alone in his cozy little cottage. Of course, cozy for Luke was probably over four thousand square feet.
But she couldn’t pretend she didn’t know what was going to happen there. The kiss at her apartment. The affectionate way he’d said goodnight. The touching in his kitchen that morning. No. When they got to the Hamptons, Luke wasn’t going to stop with a chaste kiss, and Evelyn didn’t think she would try to stop him.
One last hurrah before going back to Texas. Or maybe multiple hurrahs before going back to Texas. The whole thing seemed so...certain. But wholly inconvenient.
She’d had a one-night stand before. An agent in from out of town for a week. They’d hit it off, gone back to his place, and after a good time, she’d slipped out at three in the morning and never spoken of it again. Neat and over. She had a feeling whatever she was getting into with Luke would be messy and definitely last longer than one night.
“Did you tell Cali where we were going? I would hate for all this to mess with you running the company.”
“Not yet. She was off on her romantic weekend, so I’m trying to not mess things up for her. But Monday morning she’ll have the wonderful surprise of rearranging my whole schedule.”
“Give her the weekend and screw her over Monday? Nice.”
“I know Cali. If I tell her now, she’ll spend half the day working. And once she gets started rearranging the schedule, she’ll see something else that needs to be done. She’s a workaholic. Which I love about her, but I don’t want to destroy her life. And...” He trailed off, and glanced around the road.
“And what?”
“She already wants to leave. If I mess up her work-life balance any more, I don’t think I can hold onto her much longer.”
“Luke Devereaux being possessive? I don’t believe it.”
“Good help is hard to find. If I can keep her with me for another year, I’ll take it.”
“Well, she seems to like you for some strange reason. So you’ve got that going for you.”
“Life was much easier when women weren’t ambitious.” Luke shot her a look to see her reaction.
“Oh, come on. Women were always ambitious. We just used to have to pretend we weren’t. Or convince the menfolk that it was their idea.”
“I guess I can’t fight you on that one. Lord help the man who ends up with you whispering in his ear.”
“Well, I talk dirty, so I haven’t had many complaints.” The second she said the words, she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. As though Luke needed any opening to talk about sex.
And from the way he suddenly clenched the steering wheel, she had a feeling he hadn’t missed her slipup. “You talk dirty?”
“No! I was just talking out of my ass,” she quickly clarified. “Really, I didn�
�t mean anything...”
“Maybe you just need someone to teach you how to do it then,” said Luke in a deep, husky voice.
Evelyn fidgeted in her seat, her jeans suddenly seeming too tight and the car too hot. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted Luke to turn around and hightail it back to the city or whether she wanted him to drive faster.
She looked out the window and took a deep breath. Maybe it would be best if she could just keep her mouth shut for the rest of the drive. Hell, the rest of the weekend.
An hour later, Luke pulled into the driveway of his Hamptons cottage. Dark, fall skies didn’t detract from the beauty of the beach and waves crashing on the shore. As pretty as it was, Evelyn couldn’t stop staring at the perfect little blue house. “This isn’t what I expected,” she said as she headed up the steps to the wooden, wraparound porch.
“Expecting a mansion?” Luke took the steps two at a time to beat her to the door and unlock it.
“Well, I hate to sound spoiled, but it’s rather shocking that your apartment in one of the most crowded places in the country is bigger than this.”
“My father bought this place right when he started making money. Not even he knew back then how big things were going to get. We’ve fixed the place up a few times over the years, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to make it any bigger. This was my father’s gift to himself and he loved it as is. I have some good memories of coming out here back in my college days.”
“Still bigger than my place,” she said as he held the door open for her.
The inside was the same upscale nautical theme as the outside. The front door opened to a living room that took up the entire right side of the house and was filled with natural light from the picture window that faced the beach. The walls were adorned with decorative anchors and a few other pieces of boat memorabilia, mostly blues and whites but with a touch of red here and there.
“It’s very charming.” She set her bag on the floor next to the couch and turned back to face Luke.
“Beautiful.” But Luke wasn’t looking at the cottage. He was looking straight at Evelyn.
Testing The Boss (Billionaires In The City, #5) Page 9
