The Kiss Plot: Book Two of the Quicksilver Trilogy

by French, Nicole

  His eyes darted toward the Town Car driver, then back to me before he folded his arms across his chest.

  “Nothing,” he said as the car turned down Skylar and Brandon’s street. “I was just trying to be nice.”

  “Well, next time you want to be nice, treat me like an adult, not a toddler.”

  He shot a sly look my way. “Pretty sure I’m not allowed to do that anymore.”

  My mouth dropped. His thumb drifted over the top of the wine bottle, and Eric smiled—the kind of smile that would have had me falling out of my seat if I had anywhere to go. My heart gave a loud thump. I squirmed uncomfortably.

  Bastard.

  Eric was still smirking when our Town Car pulled into Brandon and Skylar’s circular driveway.

  “Aunt Janey!”

  I opened the door to find Jenny, Brandon and Skylar’s daughter, pelting out of the house and into my arms. Luis, her chubby brother who actually was a toddler, made a beeline for Eric, who picked him up.

  “Hey, kiddo!” I swept the little girl into a bear hug. “How’s kindergarten, eh? Are you murdering the ABCs?”

  “Murder?” Jenny asked, her little red brows screwing up in confusion. She turned to where Skylar was following the kids out the front door. “Mommy, what’s murder?”

  Skylar gave me an exasperated look. “Jane.”

  Beside me, Eric chuckled. “Don’t listen to your inappropriate Aunt Jane,” he said to Luis, taking the little boy’s hand and waving it back at him. “She’s a bad influence.”

  Luis squealed, the kind of full-throated giggle that only children under three can pull off. Then he kicked his legs furiously until Eric set him down, freeing him to sprint toward the orchard around the side of the house.

  “Well, you better go get him,” Skylar said as we all watched Luis’s crooked run for the trees. “He’ll just keep going until someone tracks him down.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Eric grinned, gave her a mini-salute, and jogged after Luis.

  Skylar turned to me and her daughter. “Jen, go tell Daddy that his guest is here, okay?”

  Jenny nodded and headed back into the house after I set her down. Skylar rubbed my arm while we watched Eric chase Luis around in the trees. What was it about watching a full-grown man get down on the level of a small child? Every butterfly in my stomach was flapping around in there.

  “I didn’t know Brandon invited him,” Skylar said apologetically. “He did it last week when I was at work.”

  I shrugged, guilty that my friend felt she had to choose sides at all.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I should have invited him myself.”

  “That’s magnanimous of you.”

  “Sometimes I can be the bigger person. It doesn’t happen often, but I think I can manage it as long as we keep ten feet between us.”

  Skylar pressed her lips together—it was obvious she still thought this whole thing was ridiculous. She wasn’t wrong.

  I turned toward the front door. “Let’s go inside. It’s freezing, and I’m ready to eat my weight in mashed potatoes. If I can’t have sex, a carb coma is the next best thing.”

  * * *

  “So, what’s with the construction site on the other side of the orchard?” Eric asked after we had said our hellos to the rest of Skylar and Brandon’s family. He was referring to one of the two outer cottages, which had looked from the outside like it was being completely gutted.

  Skylar and Brandon’s parents—Ray, Susan, and Danny—were camped out in the living room watching football with the kids while Sarah, Skylar’s bubbe, shooed everyone out of the kitchen. The four of us lounged in the solarium, munching on carrot sticks and trying not to get too drunk on empty stomachs. I accepted a glass of wine from Skylar while Brandon fixed Eric a vodka on the rocks.

  Eric smirked at me over his drink and took a sip.

  “It’s my new lab,” Brandon said proudly.

  “Sterling Labs just won a big government contract,” Skylar said. “Which, of course, Brandon took to mean he needed to construct an entire facility on our property.”

  “Hey, I didn’t want to leave you and the kids all day long,” Brandon said. “If I had to commute to MIT, I’d never be home. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”

  “I just told him it couldn’t actually be in the house. Some of us have issues with work-life boundaries.”

  “I’m sorry, who was it who brought home three boxes of depositions last weekend?” Brandon retorted as he flopped next to Skylar on the loveseat. He slung his arm good-naturedly around his wife and kissed her fondly. “I’m just kidding, Red. She’s a killer, this one. Boston Magazine is doing a profile on my girl, did you hear?”

  “No, I didn’t,” I murmured, unable to stop watching the way my friend glowed under her husband’s affections.

  Eric’s shoulder brushed mine. It wasn’t an arm around my waist, but when I started at the sudden contact, then looked at him, he was also watching our friends with naked envy. He also did not move away.

  “Would you like a tour?” Brandon asked.

  I didn’t, but it was obvious by the look on Brandon’s face that he was dying to give us one.

  “Oh, go ahead,” Skylar said, getting up. “You guys can be his fresh audience while Bubbe and I finish up. I still have to make the cranberry sauce.”

  “And that’s all you’re allowed to do!” Sarah piped up from the kitchen, where she was currently whipping a giant batch of potatoes.

  Eric and I followed Brandon out of the main house and across the orchard that was still hanging with a few lingering leaves. The construction site around the cottage had been abandoned during the holiday, but it was clear that some major work was going on.

  “Cottage” was a misnomer. When Skylar and Brandon originally bought the property, it had come with two granny flats—one-story, two-bedroom guesthouses that they had originally imagined for Skylar’s dad and grandmother to use. But Sarah had been adamant about staying in her own house, and where she went, her son did too. So they had simply been a guest lodging for people like me.

  Until now, apparently. Eric and I followed Brandon into the gutted house, which bore absolutely no resemblance to the quaint place where I had stayed several times. The walls had been completely demolished, the carpeted floors torn up, and the kitchen was all but eradicated.

  “This is remodeled?” Eric asked doubtfully.

  Brandon shook his head as he stepped around some of the debris. “Oh, ha. No. The top floor is the last step. The house had to be elevated first so we could dig the downstairs.”

  “Dig?” I said. I remembered some construction going on here a few weeks ago, but hadn’t asked about it, as upset as I was. Now I felt kind of dumb for not noticing more.

  Brandon stopped in front of a thick steel door. Eric and I watched as he pressed his thumb to a fingerprint scanner, unlocking a set of stairs into the ground. “I hope you’re not scared of enclosed spaces.”

  “Suddenly I feel like I’m in the middle of a video game,” I said. “Do people still play the Legend of Zelda?”

  “Only the best ones,” Brandon replied.

  We followed him down the stairs, past another code-guarded door, and into a room that was at least twice the size of the entire structure above us. It was clean, a far cry from the lab I remembered in the attic of the main house. Two of the walls were lined with stainless steel worktables, a bank of dark-screened computers stood against the far wall, and a small conference table occupied the middle of the room.

  “This is the lab,” Brandon said with supreme satisfaction. “Sterling Labs is getting serious.”

  “It seems more like a bunker,” I remarked. “Are we expecting a nuclear attack anytime soon?”

  Beside me, Eric chuckled.

  Brandon just tipped his head from side to side good-naturedly, like it was an actual possibility. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “But part of the requirement of the contract was that we had certain securit
y measures in place. I did my part. I consider it an investment in my company.”

  I looked around doubtfully. “You don’t think this is a little overkill, Ian Fleming? I feel like I’m in Q’s lab from MI-6.”

  Again, I was rewarded with a snort beside me.

  “Spies are real,” Brandon argued. “And everywhere, according to the State Department.” He turned to Eric. “Speaking of which. Are you still trying to find…”

  He trailed off with a glance at me—obviously indicating that he would wait until I was gone to continue the conversation.

  I snapped a finger in front of him. “Right here, gentlemen.”

  “It’s fine,” Eric said. “And yeah, I am.”

  “You’re trying to find what?” I asked, irritated at being left out of the loop.

  “The bug,” Eric said. “The way that…you know…the way he knows if…”

  I blinked, and then his ambiguity made sense. Carson. The bug. Eric was trying to figure out how we were being tracked. If, I thought, we were being tracked at all. I honestly wasn’t convinced it was more than a stupid threat.

  “I don’t think it’s visual,” Eric was saying to Brandon. “If it was…we would have heard from him. About certain things.” He glanced at me, and his ears turned slightly pink.

  Because you fucked me with a vodka bottle? I didn’t say it out loud, but the haughty look on Eric’s face told me he knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “I’m guessing it’s some kind of audio signal,” he continued. “But I can’t for the fucking life of me figure out what it is. Tony scans the apartment every day before I go in. My office too. We can’t find a damn thing.”

  “Why do you think it’s audio?” I asked. “Why do you even think there’s a signal at all?”

  Eric turned to me, a bit dejected. “Because of this.” He pulled out his phone and swiped to a message before handing it to me.

  Titan: Be careful. You are getting attached.

  I scrolled up and down, but that was all there was. No exchange. Nothing. I looked up. “That’s it?”

  “Look at the time stamp.”

  12:32 A.M.

  I handed the phone back to him.

  “That was about an hour after you returned from your…date,” Eric said, just barely unable to hide the acerbity in his voice.

  I opened my mouth, then closed it. Suddenly my forearms were covered in goose pimples. We’d fought. He hadn’t said much out loud that night, but it certainly would have revealed his jealousy.

  “That’s all?” I couldn’t help but wonder. “Just ‘be careful.’”

  Eric’s eyebrow rose. “Why would there be anything more?” he asked, though his expression dared me to say it out loud for the same reason I knew he would not—that we were somehow quiet enough that no one had understood what we were doing.

  I frowned. Certain things made sense now. Why he was so quiet—deathly so—in the apartment. Why he never seemed to respond to anything in meaningful ways. Why he never asked me verbally to sleep with him, but found ways to make it happen anyway.

  He knew I wouldn’t be able to stay quiet if we did what both of us were dying to do. But he couldn’t stop himself completely either.

  I wasn’t sure if I should be mad or satisfied by the realization. Maybe some of both, I thought.

  “Well, at least you don’t have to worry about it in here,” Brandon said as he gestured around the room with pride. “One of the benefits of a secure location, I guess. This conversation stays between us for now.”

  “Secure?” I asked. “Like a safe?”

  Brandon nodded. “Basically. We outfitted it like a Faraday shield to block any electromagnetic radiation, but also made sure radio waves can’t interfere either. It’s like being locked in a microwave.” He patted the wall beside him. “In other words, if there’s a signal coming off one of you—your phone or something like that—it’s not getting out of this room, and nothing gets in. Those computers over there are one hundred percent local. All we have is a land line to communicate with the outside.”

  Eric stood stock-still. I frowned at the telephone in the corner.

  Brandon turned, looking between us both. “Did I say something wrong?”

  But Eric and I just turned to each other as the meaning of what Brandon was telling us sank in. Was it possible that in this moment we weren’t actually being watched? Recorded? Overheard in any way?

  Before anyone could respond, there was a sudden blare of the telephone in the corner. All three of us jumped.

  “Shit,” Brandon muttered as he crossed the room. He picked up the handset. “Hey, Red.”

  I sighed. Of course it was Skylar. No one else would have known we were here, much less the phone number.

  “Jenny did what? And now Luis is—actually, never mind. I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone. “Sounds like the kids unleashed holy hell on Sarah while she was making the gravy. Jenny just tipped two pies on the floor, and apparently Luis dumped a bowl of cranberry sauce on his head.” He made for the door, but paused when he realized we hadn’t moved. “You guys coming?”

  I didn’t answer. I was glued into place.

  Eric cleared his throat. “Do you, um, think we could look around a bit more? DVS wants to build a space like this at, uh, one of the offices. It would be good to have a model.”

  Brandon’s brow rose. “Have a ‘look around’? Sure, sure. Just, ah, clean up when you’re done.” He caught my eye and winked. “Who’s the rabbit now, Jane?”

  Then he turned, leaving Eric and me alone together. And this time, without any kind of audience.

  Seventeen

  The door closed behind Brandon, swallowing his footsteps and leaving Eric and me blanketed with tension. The room was silent, and Brandon’s last words about the “security” of the building echoed.

  Nothing could get through.

  No signals.

  Nothing.

  Eric turned to me with a gaze so fierce that I stumbled backward into a pod of rolling office chairs, sending them into a traffic jam behind me.

  “Jane.” Eric’s tone was almost dangerous as he stalked toward me.

  “Eric.”

  I pulled one of the chairs in front me, oddly wanting to put something between us. Not because I didn’t want him to touch me. Because the intensity with which I wanted it was…terrifying.

  Eric picked up the chair and hurled it behind him.

  “Whoa,” I whispered. “That was…violent.”

  “It was in the way.”

  I glanced at the chair. “I think you just broke the wheel.”

  “I’ll buy Brandon another.”

  “I don’t think he’ll be impressed.”

  “Jane.” Eric’s big hands wrapped around my waist and yanked me to him. “Shut up.”

  He kissed me, and for a moment, I couldn’t think. His lips, soft, pliant, but also demanding, quieted my mind in that way they always could.

  Well, almost.

  Shut up.

  “No.” I pushed at his arms, shoving him off me. “Fuck you, no.”

  “Jane—”

  “Don’t tell me to be quiet! Don’t silence me, you asshole.”

  “I’m not—”

  But it was too late, everything was bubbling up, like I really was that volcano ready to explode.

  “You and that vampire dick who calls himself my father are manipulating me like a fucking puppet, and I’ve had it! Even if it’s just down here, I DON’T WANT TO BE QUIET!”

  Eric pushed a hand through his normally combed blond hair. The action made a few strands stick up, charmingly boyish over his intense expression.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “Okay, I get it. That asshole has been pulling my strings for months too. Between him and my dead grandmother, I feel like a damn marionette.” He exhaled a long, low sigh. “But it’s been torture. Don’t you get that? Fucking torture. Worse than the actual torture that fucker put me through.”

  “Yeah,
it’s not exactly fun being a fucking chess piece, is it?” I snarked.

  Eric glowered. “I don’t mean that. I mean having to coexist with a woman who drives me crazy but makes me want to live. Having to share our fucking home with you and not be able to touch you. Kiss you. Not be able to love you, Jane! FUCK!”

  He rubbed a hand roughly over his face, which he hadn’t shaved before coming here. The leftover stubble, combined with his aristocratic brow and the locks of hair flopped over his forehead, made Eric look like he had walked right out of a Jane Austen novel—the chilly, dark-eyed Darcy of any woman’s fantasy.

  He caught me looking, and his hand dropped. A smirk spread across his face. “You misunderstand.” His voice was soft, but foreboding. “I don’t want you to be quiet, pretty girl. I want you to stop talking so you can start screaming.”

  We stared at each other, chests heaving, for more than a minute.

  Then we lunged at each other again, and this time, I didn’t fight him off.

  His kiss was loud, hungry, full of grunts as he devoured my mouth and sucked hard on my neck and chest. Good God, I was going to have more bites than a malaria patient by the end of this—but I didn’t care. I wanted him to mark me everywhere he could.

  We made quick work of each other’s shirts, resisting the desire to send buttons flying. After all, we did each have to walk out of here in one piece. As I ran my hands up and down his rigid muscles, he had the cups of my bra yanked under my breasts, palming them both almost violently.

  “Ah!” I cried out as he pinched both nipples.

  “You have a safe word, gorgeous.” His deep voice rumbled against my throat just before his teeth found it. “If it gets too rough, use it. But I want to hear you sing like that for the next twenty minutes.”

  We toppled onto the conference table together, clawing like animals in heat.

  “We don’t have much time,” Eric heaved as his hands went exploring, pulling up my skirt so quickly I worried it might rip.

  “We—don’t—ah!” I couldn’t even get a full sentence out before I was turned over facing the table, underwear pulled down and thighs forced apart.