by Lexi Blake
“Did I set up a scenario where the client showed up and you made an ass of yourself? No.” Kyle pulled his briefcase off in anticipation of the search he was about to go through. “Did I see an opportunity and take it?” He gave Hutch a predatory grin. “Oh, yes. I’ll take Ms. LaVigne upstairs. Don’t worry about her.”
But he kind of wanted to now. He glanced over and she was handing the security guard her cane. She seemed to brace herself and then walked through the scanner to the other side, where she stopped because the guard was examining her cane.
She didn’t want to walk without it. In that moment he didn’t see a potential threat to his own freaking loneliness. He saw a pretty woman who was vulnerable, who was trying hard not to show it, probably because he’d been such an asshole. A woman who’d gone through so much, who still carried the burdens of her past but could smile the way she did.
“Hey, Howard, it’s just a cane.” He knew the security guys. “She’s a client of Mr. Taggart. I don’t think she’s got a cannon in there or anything.”
Kyle was moving through the scanner. Hutch handed over his laptop bag.
“Never can tell these days.” Howard gave Noelle back her cane. “And I don’t know if we should let anyone take a bunch of baked goods up. There’s a senator coming to meet with Mr. Dean. We were told to be extra careful. Miss, I’ll keep these down here for you. If you’ll fill out a form…”
“Do you want to explain to Big Tag why he didn’t get the lemon muffins he ordered?” Hutch was not letting her bag of treats go. She’d made them and carried them all the way here. She got to keep them.
He knew he was doing an awfully fast 180, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d said things she should never have heard, and he felt like crap about it.
“He didn’t actually…” Noelle accepted her cane and seemed to figure out what he was doing. “They’re a surprise. Mrs. Taggart ordered them for her husband. Should I call her?”
Howard immediately handed over the bag. “Nope. If Mrs. Taggart wants them upstairs, then upstairs they go.” He frowned Kyle’s way. “Do you need all these guns?”
Kyle shrugged. “They’re my favorite accessory.” He grimaced when the scanner turned red. “Sorry. I forgot about the knives. Give me a second.”
He moved to the side, and Hutch hoped the man didn’t have to undress to get through security. It gave him a shot at going first since he wasn’t carrying. He stood still and let the scanner do its work. The second guard waved him on, and he grabbed his laptop and joined Noelle, who seemed to be waiting on Kyle.
“Could I carry that for you?” Maybe being a gentleman would smooth things over. “I can walk you up to the office. I’m Hutch. Sorry about the joke I was playing on my buddy over there.”
“Sure. You were joking,” she said, not moving an inch. “Mr. Hutch…”
She had the sweetest accent. It was very Southern and polite. “Just Hutch. My name is Greg Hutchins, but I was named after my dad who was an abusive asshole, so I prefer Hutch.”
“All right, Hutch,” she replied evenly. “Let’s not mince words. You don’t want to do this job, it’s fine. Kyle mentioned someone else.”
“Kyle doesn’t assign agents.” Though apparently he liked to fuck them over.
“I don’t want to cause trouble.” She leaned a bit on the cane. “I’m fairly certain we’re going to find out that this wasn’t worth all the time and effort. If you’ve got a junior team member I can work with, I’ll be happy to make the switch. I was told you’re the top computer guy.”
It was sometimes hard to believe but he’d been heading the cybersecurity unit for years now. “I’m good at what I do. I can figure out if you have a problem. So your dad did Big Tag a favor once?”
“The ties are more complex than that.” She looked him up and down. “My Aunt Lisa said you were cute. She didn’t mention how highly you thought of yourself.”
He knew that name well. The Daley family had close connections to MT. “Lisa Daley?”
Noelle nodded. “She goes by Guidry now. She’s my stepmom’s sister, but I call her aunt anyway.”
Kyle seemed to have gotten through, and he hurried over. “Yeah, it’s weird, right? Like I don’t have any blood relation to Big Tag or Charlotte, but they consider me family because Sean’s my stepdad. It can be hard to figure out what to call those relationships when you’re an adult. As a kid you call everyone aunt and uncle.”
He kind of wished Kyle had stayed on the other side because at least then he could pretend Noelle had one of those faces that always looked a little frowny. Nope. She smiled Kyle’s way and pretty much lit up the room.
“That’s a lot of knives,” she said. “I’m sure my dad would approve.”
Kyle knelt down and shoved one into his boot. “It’s only three. And I’m carrying extra guns because I borrowed a couple to try out at the shooting range. I’m trying to find a good semi. Come on and I’ll get you upstairs. I’m afraid we’re late.”
Hutch didn’t like the “we” part. He moved to the other side of Noelle. “Tag will understand. He has to know what the situation is downstairs. I’d like to talk to you a bit before we go into the meeting. I’ve read through the files but sometimes talking it through can give me a better perspective.”
“I thought it was all the overblown rantings of small-town hicks who think the big city is scary,” she replied as they made it to the elevator.
“I might have been overstating that case,” he admitted. “I’m really sorry you heard that.”
“I’m really sorry you said it,” she shot back.
So she wasn’t the woman who would let a guy get away with shit. It did something for him. He hated it when a woman felt like she had to smile and forgive simply because the man who’d hurt her apologized.
He’d dug a deep hole with this woman, and it sucked because he was a nice guy. He was the guy who made sure everyone got home and who sat with his friends when they weren’t feeling well. He was the caretaker of the group. He was the guy ladies slept with because he was safe and would be nice.
Naturally the one woman to spark his interest he’d been a jerk to.
Not that he was…
Screw that. He was interested, and there was no way Charlotte had set her up with Kyle. No way. That bit of sunshine had been meant for him. Had he been his normal, flirty, nice-guy self she might be eating out of his hand by now. And he would have her muffins halfway down his throat. Yep. It did not escape him that he wanted to taste all her sweetness.
The elevator doors came open and Kyle gallantly held it for Noelle.
He should have done that. Hutch sighed and got on the elevator. “I’m sorry I said it, too, since I know what it’s like to be stereotyped. It was a dumb thing to say and I apologize. I hope I can make you feel comfortable working with me.”
“Or you can talk to Charlotte and get another agent on the case. Hutch is not the only tech guy we have,” Kyle said helpfully. “There’s even a lady tech, if you would feel more comfortable with a woman.”
“Yes, she’s on my team.” It was time to take control. Kyle seemed more than willing to throw him under the bus. “I’m in charge of assignments when it comes to my team. Ian asked me to take this case because I’m the best.”
“I thought his wife asked you because she wants to marry you off,” Noelle quipped.
“Or it could be me,” Kyle offered. “He said he wasn’t sure. I am single, too.”
Kyle was married to his weapons. Hutch shook his head. “It’s me, and I still think Charlotte had a hand in this, but I was given the case and I’m keeping it. I’m also the senior agent. I’m in charge.”
“I’m the client,” Noelle began and then frowned. “Who isn’t actually paying anything, so I’ll take what I can get. You should know, Mr…Hutch, that I am not interested in being set up. I won’t be throwing myself at you or expecting anything beyond your help in one specific situation. You’re perfectly safe. Also, I think you’ll
find your part of the job is pretty simple. I brought my laptop with me. We might be able to figure it all out this morning and go our separate ways. I do think my dad’s being paranoid. He also warned me you’re a horndog and I should stay away from you.”
“I’m a what?” He’d never heard the expression.
Kyle snorted. “From some of the stories I’ve heard, it’s a pretty accurate description.” The doors opened and there was the entrance to McKay-Taggart. “Come with me, Noelle. I’m more than happy to show you around while Hutch sets up our briefing. And those muffins smell delicious. Would you like some coffee?”
“I would love some. Thank you.” Noelle completely ignored him as she walked off with Kyle. “It’s a lovely office.”
She had a lovely backside. And muffins. And she smelled like vanilla.
That was a good thing to remember. It hadn’t worked with a vanilla woman. He could have tons of vanilla sex, but it didn’t fill his soul the way it should. He needed more control than most women were interested in handing over.
He took a deep breath and followed. Sometimes mistakes were made for reasons. He had to hope that was the case here.
And he had to figure out what a horndog was. He sighed and moved toward the office. His day was already going bad.
* * * *
Did he have to be so cute? Noelle sat across from the man her father had warned her about and wished he wasn’t pretty much her exact type. If she was going to build a guy she found attractive, Hutch checked off all her superficial needs. He was gorgeous, had that strong jawline that made her heart go all girly. From the look of his forearms, he spent a lot of time in the gym. And he had beautiful eyes. He wasn’t so big that he overwhelmed her, but he also looked solid. His emotions seemed to play across his face. In the short time since she’d met him, she’d seen what he looked like when he was frustrated, embarrassed, and angry. She’d caught sight of him grinning with some of his coworkers, and that smile of his lit up the room.
Why couldn’t she like the Kyle Hawthorne, superhot and broody type? Any one of her friends would have taken one look at him and been a puddle at his feet, but she’d merely felt an artistic appreciation for the man’s perfection.
She didn’t like perfect. She liked laid back and fun. She liked a guy she could read, who didn’t constantly hide everything he felt.
“So you work for Genedyne?” Ian Taggart’s deep voice brought her back to the reason she was here, which was absolutely not to stare at Hutch while he stared down at the screen of his cell.
Her dad had told her Taggart had recently turned fifty, but he didn’t look it. He was hot, too, though in the Kyle Hawthorne way. He looked like a man who regularly dodged bullets.
He’d asked her a question. It was a tribute to how flustered Hutch had her that she couldn’t focus. She always had to focus. She had to be the smartest person in every room because not only was she a woman in a male-dominated field, sometimes her coworkers saw her in a wheelchair.
How to explain what Genedynamic did. “Yes, I hired on straight out of college. One of my professors had worked with Jessica Layne when she first started out. It’s pretty much my dream job because Ms. Layne is known for funding some big ideas and letting her researchers kind of go wild. She’s got several labs around the country, but Dallas is her base.”
Her boss was a controversial figure in the scientific world. She was known for offering young women the kinds of jobs that tended to be reserved for mature men, but she was also known for loving publicity and suing the hell out of anyone who offended her. Oh, she called it protecting her patents, but some of those suits had little ground to stand on in Noelle’s opinion.
“And what kind of projects do you work on?” Charlotte Taggart was a gorgeous woman, light to her husband’s dark. She wore a power suit and some killer heels, her strawberry blonde hair in an elegant bun.
“I’m actually working on helium.” She totally knew what came next. If she’d concentrated on a lesser-known element, she wouldn’t always have to explain. If she told someone she was studying ways to make a stronger magnet by using neodymium, most people’s eyes glazed over and they were back to talking sports or what movies they’d seen lately pretty damn quick. But everyone knew helium.
“Like balloons?” Kyle asked, his lips quirking up.
Hutch’s eyes were suddenly on her, studying her intently. “Seriously? Are you looking for alternatives?”
“Alternatives?” Kyle asked.
“Is this about the helium shortage?” Big Tag proved he’d actually read up on her. Or he knew more about science than most people.
“Shortage is in the eye of the beholder,” she said. “Some people think it’s merely a break in the supply chain and the fact that the new big deposits have been found in countries like Qatar and Russia, and sales can be influenced by political situations. Every couple of years something goes wrong and anyone who requires helium to run their machines gets nervous. We’re in one of those times when it’s a bit of a scarce resource. The price has gone up significantly in the last few years. But the truth of the matter is helium is a nonrenewable and vital resource. You think peak oil is a problem, meet peak helium.”
Kyle frowned. “Okay, I’m going to get the award for dumbest guy in the room when I ask this, but why are we worried about something we use for kids’ birthday parties?”
Hutch shook his head. “It’s way more than balloons. Helium is a cryogenic element.”
She bit back a laugh at Kyle’s expression, which told her Hutch was talking way over his head. But not hers, and she thought it was sexy that he understood what she was working on. It made her want to talk about gas chromatography and whether or not nitrogen was the solution. They could start slow and move on to more complex scientific conversations. But she remembered where she was and what she was doing. She also remembered he was kind of an ass. “He means helium is an element we can use to cool any number of systems. Helium has a low boiling point which means we can easily turn its natural gas state into liquid. Liquid helium remains in that state all the way to absolute zero.”
Hutch sat up straighter. “That’s zero on the Kelvin scale. It’s more like negative 450 Fahrenheit. Should I explain why we would use Kelvin?”
Taggart shook his head like a father dealing with obnoxious kids. “We know you’re a smarty pants, Hutch. You don’t need to dunk on him.”
Kyle ignored them both. “Does this have something to do with quantum computing?”
So Kyle kept up with the state of technology. “Among other things. Liquid helium is used to cool magnets in machines like supercolliders and medical imaging. It’s important, and my lab is trying to refine a process that allows us to use less helium to do the same job. We’re also trying new techniques to better recycle the helium we use. It’s important to do that and to store it properly because if helium leaks out, it floats to the upper atmosphere and we have no way to recover it.”
“So what you’re saying is you’re working in a high-tech field where your research could make people a lot of money,” Kyle surmised. “Hence, you being worried someone might have accessed your laptop. You’re worried about corporate spies.”
“She should be worried about spies of all kinds. The technology she’s working on is the kind governments would be interested in obtaining for themselves,” Hutch added. “When did you first start to worry someone was messing with your computer? Is your laptop where you keep the majority of your research?”
“I have some of it on my laptop, but the majority stays on the systems in the lab. I’ve got a bunch of statistics and reports from the experiments, but they don’t include the protocols on how we ran the experiments. The company wants to keep a lockdown on employees potentially selling sensitive data,” she explained.
“I thought Ms. Layne did that by threatening to sue anyone who looks at her the wrong way.” Charlotte sat back. “She’s famous for it. Do you like working for her?”
Her boss was extrem
ely litigious, but she also allowed a kind of freedom no one else in the business ever did. It was a bit like walking a tightrope. “I rarely see her. She’s pretty hands off at this stage. If my research pans out, that’s when I’ll have more contact with her. The truth of the matter is if rumors get out that someone’s had access outside the company to my research, it could be bad for me.”
“She’s sued former employees before.” Hutch continued her line of thinking. “Mostly over loss of income due to the former employee not following security protocols. Did you sign an employment contract?”
“Of course.”
“We should have legal take a look at it.” Hutch’s tone had changed as though he was shifting to a more…dominant role. “I’ll run a search on your laptop, and I think we should also take a look around Ms. LaVigne’s apartment and check on anyone who has significant contact with her. I’ll need a list of everyone you spend time with. Have you had any new neighbors recently?”
She wasn’t sure what her neighbors had to do with it. And he wanted a list of her friends? This wasn’t what she’d expected. “Uhm, a new couple moved in two doors down from me last month. The woman who lives next door is pretty new, too.”
Cara was a freelance journalist who’d moved in a couple of months after Noelle had. Noelle liked her and they’d become fast friends. They spent a lot of time drinking wine and bemoaning their romanceless lives. Still, she hadn’t mentioned Sanctum to the other woman. No one but Aunt Lisa knew. Well, and her stepmom, but she tried not to think about that. She wasn’t sure why, but it hadn’t seemed like something to bring up with Cara. It was also a private club, and it seemed mean to talk about something she could never take her friend to.
Kyle had a notepad in front of him. “I’ll need names, but then we should probably play it safe and run traces on anyone in the building, and also at least the employees who would come into contact with Noelle.”
