“Tess, wait.” Adam froze, his fingers digging into her hips, holding her in place. His face was strained, teeth grinding against each other. “I have to go get a condom.”
“But you feel so good, Adam.” She would kill Mia if her sister were to do what she was contemplating but here she was. “I’m on the pill. Nothing on my last blood test a couple of months ago. I’ve never gone without a condom and I’m not sleeping with anyone else.”
He stared at her, the wheels spinning as he weighed the decision between them. When he spoke, it was direct, clear. “I tested negative for anything three months ago. I’ve not had anyone since then but you, and I’m not sleeping with anyone else.”
She nodded, heart pounding with the weight of this decision. But she wouldn’t go back. She didn’t want to go back.
She was not safe with this man. She wanted to protect him, to comfort him, to be with him. He’d worked his way inside her heart and she’d done nothing to stop him. It was as if she was finally acknowledging why she was here now, why she’d agreed to this fling in the first place. It hadn’t been just sex. It hadn’t just been an itch to scratch.
Adam is it for me. He could be the one for me.
She traced the contours of his face, his cheekbones, his eyelids, his lips, and then ran her fingers back up to lightly caress the dark shadows underneath his eyes. Adam reached up, grabbed her hand and pressed a kiss onto the palm. The sweetness of the gesture, combined with the fullness of his body deep inside her made her breath catch, her heart actually skip a couple of beats.
“I need you, Tess. I want you so much.” His gaze caught her own in a stare of unflinching unapologetic need and desire. “I’ve wanted you since the beginning.”
“Adam.”
“I want you, baby. Come on, you know I can make it good for you.”
Adam pulled her down again and kissed her, his tongue thrusting inside with a brutal, possessive hunger that overcame all of her senses. This was possession, ownership, laying claim. The point of no return. But she claimed him back, so glad to know that she wasn’t alone in this. They needed to know that they weren’t alone in this; they had each other.
Their bodies moved together, beginning a slow rise and fall, an easy rhythm that would get them both there eventually. No rush. Nowhere to be except here with each other.
She sat up, bracing herself on each side of his shoulders, eyes locked on each other as they gave and took from each other. Tess was so wet, her body gripping him on each stroke. The loss was acute every time he pulled out and built the hunger again with every thrust back in.
I want you.
I need you.
I love you.
Their bodies said everything that neither of them was willing to say tonight. It was enough that they were honest with each other about what this was, what it had become. It would be impossible for them to go backward. Adam knew it. She knew it. But they’d jumped off that cliff together and would figure it out later. It might be something. It might be nothing. It might be forever. But none of that would be settled tonight.
Her orgasm was on her before she realized it. Sudden and powerful, it wrenched a long, deep moan from Tess that she shouted into the open air, hearing its faint echo as it bounced along the ravine below. Adam groaned beneath her, his fingers grasping her hips as he thrust upward, once and twice and then three times. He came then, deep inside her as she collapsed against him.
Their bodies were slick against each other, sticky with their efforts, boneless and heavy as they sank deeper into the cushions of the lounger. Tess couldn’t move, didn’t want to move as she came down from her high, happy to be where she was and with the man who made her feel safe and wanted. Adam clung to her, large arms wrapped around her body, the aftershocks of their pleasure causing him to shiver against her.
Tess shifted a little, moving her head so that she could look at him. He met her eyes, his sleepy but satisfied.
“Are you cold? Do you want to go inside?”
She shook her head. “Let’s stay here a while. Under the stars.” And then she remembered what he’d said to her that night at the Lick Observatory. He’d been talking about his lost family but for her this sky would hover over only two people: Mia and the man in her arms. “I just want to lie under the same stars that shine down on the people I love.”
Fourteen
She found him.
She yelled in triumph, so glad to be in her home office and not the spaces at Redhawk/Ling. Her shout would have had the security guards running to see what the hell was going on.
Tess fumbled with the keyboard, her fingers trembling with excitement as she pressed the keys to print the information displayed on her screen. She didn’t need to print it, everything she’d been searching for was right there on the screen but she was so panicked that it would all disappear that she needed to get it in her hands. On paper. Not just pixels on a screen.
She picked up the phone, hitting speed dial for a number she knew by heart anyway. The line rang and rang, the ringtone shrill in her ear, but there was no answer and the system eventually clicked over to Adam’s voicemail. She could have pressed the code to skip his message but she loved hearing his voice, a little awkward but very, very sexy in its directness.
This is Adam Redhawk, CEO of Redhawk/Ling. Leave a message. I’m not great at checking my message so if this is urgent, call my office and leave a message with Estelle. She always knows how to reach me.
She’d already called and left a message with Estelle and sent him a text with no reply so she’d have to wait to deliver the news that she’d found the mole and who he was working for. It was information that Adam would need to protect Redhawk/Ling and it would also be something she could use for her own purpose. She would see him tonight—they had a date to attend one of those fancy-schmancy fundraiser events at the Nestledown Retreat and she could tell him the news then if he didn’t call back sooner.
She grabbed the paper from the printer, scanning the words and data, marking the most important parts with a highlighter. The mole had all of the skill sets necessary to hack into any system and undermine the launch of the app so finding him at this critical point was momentous. It had taken her until the eleventh hour, but it was still momentous.
And he was also someone who could help her. Adam and Justin were reluctant to discuss the act of pressing charges against the person who was trying to sabotage their company. Making those kinds of headlines so close to the launch would pull the focus off their business and place it all on the company. And exposing the fact that you had been susceptible to a hack was never a good look for a tech company.
But the guy would absolutely lose his job and an unemployed man would be a desperate man and a desperate man would be vulnerable to job offers that highlighted his particular skill. Tess needed a hacker to get the final information on Franklin Thornton to expose him as the thief and destroyer he really was. And now she had one.
Pushing back her chair, Tess strode across her office and pulled out the box where she kept everything she knew about Franklin Thornton and her father. Folders and files, papers yellowed with age, stained with late-night coffee, and likely some tears. Some shed in grief and many more shed in anger. Tess let out a huff of air as she flipped through the stacks and stacks of papers—some of which she’d memorized—as she searched for that fury, the blinding rage that usually asserted itself when she indulged in these walks down memory lane.
It was all here on the table: years of instances when Franklin had taken advantage of people a lot like her father. Franklin didn’t just play games with men and women of his same stature and wealth and power; he played with those who were less than him, taking their dreams from them when he wanted what they had. And he never cared about what happened to them. He never gave them another thought when he’d taken from them everything they had of value.
Franklin hadn’t
cared when he’d destroyed her dad. And he hadn’t even cared enough to see Michael Roberts’s daughters when they’d gone to him to beg for help. Both she and Mia had been turned away, hadn’t even gotten past the administrative assistant.
So why was she hesitating now when she almost had him in the crosshairs?
Tess knew why. Adam Redhawk.
She pulled out the chair nearest the table and slumped down into it. She was tired, exhausted and queasy and wanting desperately to go back to bed. Tess touched her forehead, wondering if the infection from three weeks ago hadn’t fully cleared up but she had felt fine after a few days of rest and all of the antibiotics. In truth this was probably related to the long days and even longer nights she’d been spending with Adam since the night of the dinner with this family.
That night had transformed everything between them, turned the entirety of their arrangement completely upside down, and she’d never been so happy and so scared in her whole life.
That wasn’t true. She’d been terrified, bone-deep cold with fear, when she’d suddenly had to face raising Mia all by herself.
But this fear was something different; this was risking it all. To do this with Adam, to give in to what she felt for Adam would mean giving up this vendetta against Franklin. Not because she was worried that Adam would be implicated in any of it but because it would hurt him.
There was no love lost between Adam and his adoptive father but that didn’t matter when it came to Adam and his huge heart. He took responsibility for the people in his life, carried so much of their burden as his own and this would be a blow she couldn’t bear to see him take.
Adam’s strength, his need to take care of everyone, was what made him survive the childhood in Franklin Thornton’s house. He had needed to get through it so that he could find his family someday. He had needed to succeed at school and in his company so that he could take care of his employees. He’d paid for her to do anything necessary to find his siblings because he carried the guilt of having let them down.
If she exposed Franklin, she would hurt this man.
A man she wanted to protect because of what he did for everyone else.
A man she was falling for.
In frustration she grabbed the files on the table and shoved them back into the box. She couldn’t believe that she was seriously contemplating giving up on her father for the son of the man who destroyed him. But Adam was a decent, good man in spite of what had happened to him. He was sexy and funny and smart and he needed her. He wanted her.
And no one had ever made her feel like she was enough.
That just having her in their life would be enough.
Tess squirmed in her chair, her stomach clenching with nausea that made her gasp with the intensity of the feeling. She checked her watch and realized that it was midafternoon and it had been many hours since she’d eaten a bagel along with her coffee.
Heading to the kitchen, she took a mental inventory of the contents of her fridge: leftover Chinese, cold pizza, yogurt, eggs. The eggs made her smile, thinking of the omelet Adam had made her when she was sick. It had been surprisingly decent; nothing that was going to get him on the Food Network but it was good, filling when she’d needed it.
She opened the fridge and grabbed the carton of eggs, butter and cheese and placed them on the island counter. Tess shifted to the coffee maker, popping in a cup and turning it on to perk while she threw some bread in the toaster. Soon the smells of melting butter and coffee filled the air as she worked at the cooktop and her mouth watered at the thought of breakfast for supper. It was one of her favorite things to cook, remembering many meals with Mia where bacon and eggs filled their bellies.
Her mouth watered again and her stomach rolled with another wave of nausea. Tess leaned heavily on the counter, breathing in deeply through her nose and pressing a trembling palm against her stomach. A cold sweat broke out between her shoulder blades, streaking down her back and her arms and along her scalp.
Tess turned off the burner and bolted to the bathroom, flinging up the toilet seat as she fell to her knees in front of it and emptied everything out of her stomach. She heaved, every muscle straining as she wretched, her nails digging into the palms of her hands. Finally, minutes that felt like an hour later, she slumped back against the side of the tub, legs extended on the tile floor. The chill of the porcelain seeped through her leggings and made her shiver.
It had to be the sickness back again but even during the worst of it she hadn’t felt this bad, hadn’t thrown up like she drank too much of the grain alcohol fruit punch at a fraternity party.
Tess stood and moved towards the sink, splashing cold water on her face. She felt better but not completely settled so she dried off and opened up the medicine cabinet, reaching for the Tums when the box of tampons caught her eye. She paused, shaking her head at the random thought that skittered across her brain and reached for her phone. It was crazy. Impossible.
Tess tapped the app that tracked her cycle and the dates on the display made the ball of anxiety in her gut expand to rivers of ice running under her skin.
She closed the app, slid her finger across the screen and searched for Mia’s number. She was visiting for a long weekend, out running errands, and Tess might be able catch her in time.
She pressed the number for her sister and when she answered, asked for what she needed and settled in to wait.
* * *
The quickness of Mia’s footsteps on the floorboards gave away that she was running at a clip.
Tess couldn’t help herself. “Mia, I’ve told you a million times not to run in the house.”
Her sister’s face was ruddy with excitement and concern as she skidded to a stop in the doorway of the bathroom. “Tess, if you call me and tell me to pick up a pregnancy test or two on my way home and you expect me not to run? You are out of your mind.”
“Fine. Fine.” Tess waved off her arguing and held her hand out for the test. “Just give it to me, please.”
Mia paused a moment, eyes locked on hers, and Tess had to look away to avoid the pain and confusion swimming in them. She didn’t see disappointment there, not yet; she wasn’t sure she could handle that right now.
The drug store bag rustled, the box was placed in her hand, and the door shut behind Mia with a gentle click. With shaking hands, Tess opened the package and followed the directions. When she was done, she opened the door and went to find Mia, taking the stick with her.
Her sister was on the couch, huddled with her knees pulled up to her chest. She glanced down at the stick, eyebrows raised in question.
“I have to wait a couple of minutes,” Tess replied, slipping down on the sofa and easing down to lean on Mia’s shoulder. “I don’t want to wait alone.”
The moments slid into each other, feeling both forever long and speeding by at the same time. Tess refused to look at the stick, refused to stare it down in a feeble attempt to get it to reveal its secret sooner rather than right on time. Mia fidgeted beside her, her distress advertised with every crossing of her legs and deeply troubled sigh.
“Do you want a baby?” Mia asked, her fingers plowing through Tess’s curls.
What a question. What a question she didn’t have an answer for.
“I’ve never thought about a baby.” She spoke with conviction but that was a lie. She’d thought about children but only in the context of something she’d never have—along with a marriage. She’d raised Mia and she had an all-consuming purpose to see her father done right, and none of that left room for fantasies about commitments and children she was never going to have. “This wasn’t planned. Antibiotics and unprotected sex.” She cut a stern glance at her sister. “I knew better. I should have done better.”
The next question came in a small voice, a tentative inquiry mumbled into her shoulder. “Would you keep it?”
“Yes.” She answered be
fore she thought about it but the answer felt right, was right. It would be a complete rocking of her world and she doubted that she would be very good at it but the answer would be yes. “I didn’t screw up too badly with you. I think I could do it.”
“What would Adam do? Does he want a family?”
Now that was the question. And she had no idea of the answer. He was a natural family man, a loving and caring brother, even though he thought he was a failure.
And he had quickly become the one person she would take a chance with, the person she trusted to take a risk.
She glanced at her watch and it was past the time for the stick to tell her future, like the psychic woman at the carnival. But instead of getting a bunch of cryptic premonitions about meeting a dark-haired man, this wouldn’t be hocus-pocus. It would be the definitive end result, the end game, the final score. No wiggle room. No multiple interpretations.
And if the result of the test told her that she was carrying Adam’s child could she still use the information sitting in her office to take down his adoptive father?
Adam would be thrilled, vindicated, and relieved to be told about the mole. But she had no idea if he’d be as thrilled to be a father. For a woman who had spent so much of her life avoiding unnecessary complications, she’d created a Rubik’s Cube mess of her life. Making up for lost time, she supposed.
Tess reached out, pausing to squeeze the shakes out of her fingers, finally grasping the long white plastic stick and looking at the answer.
“Well,” she said, swallowing hard and reaching out to take Mia’s hand. “Isn’t that something?”
Fifteen
“I was right.”
Adam leaned in close to whisper into Tess’s ear, brushing a soft kiss against the sweetest spot on the back of her neck as they walked into the gala to benefit the children’s hospital. Held at the exquisite Nestledown Retreat, it was one of his favorite venues if he was forced to attend a five-thousand-dollar per plate dinner and endure hours of small talk with people who’d never made him feel like he belonged. Surrounded by magnificent redwoods and twinkle lights, it felt like they were walking across the starlit sky.
Taking on the Billionaire Page 12
