He put as much distance between himself and the coffee shop as quickly as he could. At least the show was wrapping up for the day, so he didn’t have to meet with, or pretend to be civil to anyone else. He was starting to regret that the three of them were sticking around through the weekend just to enjoy Vegas.
He ignored Mikki’s weak protest behind him as he wove through the crowds. The night before and this morning ran in a non-terminating loop in his head.
He walked without purpose, letting his feet pick the direction.
How had he missed so much? The signs about his nonexistent chances at promotion. Getting hooked on a woman who’d lied to him, used him, and betrayed him. Buying into the delusion that she had the right idea about work and life.
And still a part of his mind reminded him she didn’t have to track him down last night or today. Whispered she’d seemed to be as into him as he was into her.
The words sank under his annoyance. Into her. The thought hit him harder than he expected, and a sharp pang ticked in his chest. Was he actually falling for her? The revelation tumbled in on top of the question, and he ground to a stop in the middle of the foot traffic. How fucking stupid was he?
“Watch it asshole.” Someone jostled him from behind, and then someone else.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts, but it didn’t work. She was flighty and impulsive and unpredictable. She was too young, worked for the competition, and wore sheer red lace to business dinners. Oh, and she thought breaking and entering was fun.
He stepped aside in the Skriddie booth and gave Tate a weak smile. Apparently the sales meetings had finished.
Tate joined him, dropping his voice so only Jared could hear. “V tells me you were Karened.”
Great. Now my past is a verb. A growl rolled through Jared. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have anywhere, but especially not in public. Still, the answer rose to his tongue. “She didn’t tell you that. She doesn’t think the two are the same at all.”
He wasn’t sure how he knew that, or why he said it. They were similar enough that it didn’t matter. And why was he delving into this? He’d already made up his mind.
“She didn’t use those exact words. She didn’t use many at all.” Tate and Viv frequently didn’t see eye to eye, so Jared wasn’t surprised the conversation had been brief.
“She probably told the story better than I would have,” Jared said.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry it came to this.” Tate kept his voice low. “You know what I say about business and pleasure, but I’m still sorry.”
Jared wouldn’t mind going the rest of the day without one of his friends pointing out how they thought the physical part of this mess had been stupid. He knew that, and it hurt a lot less to focus on the ethical issues he had with the entire thing. Still, he couldn’t take his frustrations out on them.
He could make his excuses and walk away long enough to get his head on straight, though. “Yeah, thanks. I need...” What? The words died in his throat, assaulted by an avalanche of conflicted thoughts. He shook the jumble away. “I need to get some work done.”
“Sure.” Tate shrugged. Jared turned away. Tate’s next question made him pause. “Would you have done it?”
Jared bit back a sigh. He didn’t want to delve into this. “Done what?”
“Say you’re up for the job of a lifetime, at least so far in your career. You can’t get your foot in the door because you’re young and inexperienced on paper, but you’ve found a place that looks promising. They say prove your skill, and you realize you’re on a Microsoft network.”
Jared clenched his jaw, not liking where the question was going.
“Do you really walk away and not touch it? Even if you don’t work with the company after, because ethics. Do you really keep your fingers by your sides and not even test your skill?”
“I thought you were on my side.” Jared didn’t like the immature sound of his own response, but it was better than letting himself admit what his answer was to the question.
“I am,” Tate replied. “The last thing I want is to see you devastated like last time. And not just because you’re a superior ass when you’re heartbroken.”
“Thanks.” Jared spat the word out. He wasn’t heartbroken. Furious. Betrayed. Pissed off beyond belief. But not heartbroken. He strode away without another word, not sure what else to say.
The longer he wandered, the more his friends’ words gnawed at him. Their logic mingled with Mikki’s apology. It was true, both had warned him away from her in their own way. But neither seemed to think it was reasonable to hold her transgression against her.
He couldn’t let it go, though. This wasn’t the kind of thing he could just forgive. That realization warred with the bits of him that adored Mikki. It had been a fling, a stupid decision, and something he needed to put in the past now.
If it had really been just a fling, his chest wouldn’t ache this much. He wouldn’t keep coming back to how much it hurt that she’d betrayed him, even if she hadn’t done it intentionally.
And he wouldn’t be itching to talk to her again. To see if this could actually be made right. Stupid, fucking, irrational attachment. Goddammit, why did he have to want her in his life so badly?
Chapter Seventeen
Mikki couldn’t believe she’d started to fall at all, let alone so hard it was going to leave bruises on her psyche. A stupid fucking hookup, apparently wrapped in a tremendous lie of her own making, and she’d sunk into it.
For the last four hours, she’d replayed her apologies in her head. Or at least the bits from last night she remembered. It had been the perfect background music to packing up the NSS booth and private conference room. Replaying Jared’s disdain. Looping his dismissal.
She tossed a wound-up network cable against the wall, where it clattered harmlessly into the box below. Yup, it was the perfect series of thoughts to keep her company.
She didn’t blame him for being furious. She would be too. It didn’t matter how much she’d tried to tell herself their opinions were inconsequential. For the first time since she’d entered the industry, she’d met people she respected, and now she’d destroyed any ties with them.
She was stuck in a job with a shitty, lying, asshole boss, who’d made it clear he wasn’t giving her references anywhere else. She’d destroyed her personal and professional lives just like that. Poof.
Maybe Payton had been right. She was awfully stupid for someone so smart.
“Do you have a minute?”
She jumped at Jared’s question, pulse screaming into overdrive, only partly because she was startled. Calm down. He probably wanted details about her hack after all. He’d want to fix his network, not their relationship. She had a feeling there was no fixing them, even on a friendship level, let alone more. She faced him, unable to think enough to know how she should look or react.
He was lounged against the door frame, watching her, expression flat and guarded. “Is now a good time?”
She might as well get whatever this was over with. She nodded.
“In private?”
She nodded again. Where the hell was her voice?
He kicked the doorstop out of the way and stepped inside before the door swung shut. “Are you flying out tonight?”
“No.” She managed to force the single word past her lips but couldn’t hide her cringe at how weak it sounded. She swallowed. “Later tomorrow. I’m part of the cleanup crew.”
He bounced on his toes, still hovering near the door. “That’s nice.”
What did he want? Was he hoping for more of an apology? Was this his way of digging in the knife? She certainly deserved it. But nothing in their short time together convinced her he was like that. “You?”
“We’re here all weekend. Probably to see more of the sights and ignore work for a few days.”
“Awesome.” She couldn’t play this game. Whatever he was up to, she wouldn’t let it devour her. It needed to be ou
t in the open. “What can I do for you?”
A tremor ran through his laugh. “That’s a loaded question.”
Was he nervous? That didn’t feel right. She shrugged, not sure how to respond.
He took a few steps but still kept his distance. “The other night you asked me about my past. You spilled your guts, I shrugged you off.”
She had no idea where he was going with a line like that, but it was better than his barely controlled disgust, so she let him talk.
“That shit people say when they talk about what I did all those years ago. The stuff I assume you learned in school. I’m not some great, genius mastermind. Don’t get me wrong—” he looked at her, the corner of his mouth tugging up for the briefest moment before the smile vanished, “—it was impressive, groundbreaking shit. I knew what I was doing.”
A tiny laugh slipped from her throat, driven by too much mounting tension, and she swallowed it back. “I don’t doubt it for a second.”
He gazed past her, at something she assumed wasn’t there, and then shook his head. The focus returned to his eyes. “I didn’t do it to get my name in textbooks, or even to impress anyone. I did it out of spite. There was a woman—Karen—who was like no one I’ve met before or since.”
Mikki’s gut clenched at the implication there was someone in the past she’d never measure up to, and she bit the inside of her cheek. Not that it should matter. She and Jared were so finished they’d never really started. The reassurance didn’t stop her heart from aching.
“She used to tell me everything I wanted to hear.” The clouded expression returned to his eyes, as if he’d stepped out of the room and into another place. “About work, and life, and all of it.”
Did he want someone like that? Mikki recoiled at the thought. Half their relationship had been about her challenging everything he said. But the idea of coddling anyone’s ego left a sour taste in her mouth. “I see.”
“It was horrible,” Jared said. “I didn’t believe so at the time, but I hated it. I didn’t have to think when she was around. Or grow, or change. I just had to be. But all I knew then was I had someone who adored and worshipped me. I was in love, and I was going to propose, and we were going to live happily ever after.”
A stone sank in her gut at the word “love.” He’d felt that for someone once. Obviously not someone he was with anymore, but the knowledge still dug deep. I adore and worship you. She swallowed the retort before it could spill out. Probably not the right thing to say.
He met her gaze, jaw clenched. “Except she didn’t mean any of it. I mean, maybe she did once upon a time, but I have a hard time believing it. She...” He drew in a shuddering breath, and then exhaled slowly. “She worked for NetSafe Systems, of all companies, who at the time was in a completely different industry than we were. About three weeks before we were set to launch a new offering I’d been lead on, they released something almost identical. Not just similar. Not as in, okay, there’s an industry need for this, and we both thought of it. Their early demos had my wording on them. They approached our clients before we did. She was operating off everything she’d taken from my computer.
“I didn’t come up with this ‘amazing revolutionary code’ because I was some genius kid looking to make his mark on the world. I did it to spite her. To prove she hadn’t beaten me, and to save my career at the same time.”
Mikki’s insides twisted in on themselves. He’d been comparing her to an ex-girlfriend in pretty much every way imaginable, and now she was guilty of a similar betrayal. Except, she wasn’t. Defiance surged inside. Even if he thought the worst of her—a concept she wasn’t happy with—she wasn’t going to be lumped into the same category as this other woman.
“I’m sorry.” She struggled to find her voice, but once she grasped the words they spilled out. “I’m sorry someone screwed you over. I’m sorry no one told you what I did, including me.” She breathed deep and let momentum carry her. “But I didn’t steal anything from you. I never set out to hurt you. It’s true, I was a little naïve and reckless about the entire situation—”
“A little?”
She glared at him. “But I never did any of it for money, or vindictively. And my attraction for you now isn’t based on what you did back then, or work. Yeah, I idolized you. But turns out, you’re not some god on a pedestal. You’re a regular, normal, sexy, intelligent...” She ducked her head at his raised brows and her voice dropped. “You know what I mean.”
“I’ve learned not to take that for granted.” His voice carried no emotion. “Trying to assume what you mean, that is. It’s one of the things I adore about you.”
She risked a glance up, eyes growing wide when she saw the intensity in his gaze.
His impassive expression yielded to a soft smile. “I know we just met a couple of days ago, but I’m struggling with how dull my life is going to seem if I never see you again.”
The words clicked in her brain, returning a syntax error. She examined them again, and a gentle warmth nudged aside the knot that had moved into her gut. “Really?”
“What makes that so hard to believe? You’re intelligent, fun, unconventional.” His gaze raked over her. “And sexy as fuck.”
The words pushed aside more of her stress, but not her reservations. “But what about what you said this morning? What about what I did?”
“We’re not okay.” Those three words hurt more than any others he’d said. “This isn’t the kind of thing that just gets shrugged off, even if you are all about living for the moment. But I know I’d be missing out if I walked away now.”
Her breath hitched at the honesty, and her pulse quickened. “I can’t argue with that.”
He crossed the remaining space between them.
He raised his hand to the side of her head and tugged the short braid she’d pulled her red streak into. “I guess my point is, I don’t want us to be over yet.”
The confession was vague, but she wasn’t about a detailed plan anyway, and the words pushed aside the tension that had haunted her all day. “Yeah, me too.”
His lips moved against the top of her head, and his voice held a raw edge. “How much of your time can I steal before you fly out tomorrow?”
All of it. Hayden could rot in hell for all she cared. But she wasn’t quite impulsive enough to stick someone else with her to-do list. Animosity toward her boss aside, no one else needed to be cleaning up her messes today. “I’m almost done here. Another couple of hours tops.”
“Will you let me make a plan this time? Buy you dinner, learn about you, pretend we’re normal people?”
“Lose the pretending-to-be-normal thing, and I guess. Just this once. Pick me up at my room at seven?”
He kissed her hard, holding her tight for a moment before releasing her. “I’ll be there.”
Chapter Eighteen
Jared’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He should have given Mikki his number. He couldn’t help his smile at the thought. Great, he was acting like a crushing teenager. Which, when he thought about it, wasn’t as much of an issue as it should have been.
He pulled up the text from Dewson, and his gut turned in on itself. We’re infected.
Maybe it wasn’t a big deal. Sometimes someone clicked something in an email, and it was always isolated immediately. It had been almost twenty-four hours since he’d asked Dewson to look into the rumors Rosen had mentioned. This couldn’t be related. He sent back a reply. How bad?
Trojan. Database array.
Shit. His mind was already whirring ahead several steps, even while he executed each thing that needed to be done now. Are we clean now?
Probably. Need a second set of eyes.
A directory of names ticked through his head. Who could check Dewson’s work? His staff was small, but they were all good at what they did. No, he’d do this one himself. Another question slammed into the forefront of his thoughts, pushing all his lists and plotting to the side.
It died at the tip of his tongue. Somethin
g told him he didn’t want to know the answer, but that was ridiculous. It wasn’t like it mattered. Still, he had to force his fingers to type it out. Do we know where it came from?
Jared had stepped aside from the flow of traffic and had all his attention focused on his phone. The seconds ticked away, and his hands twitched. How long did it take to type out a name, or a “no”?
When his phone finally vibrated, he jumped. Tension ached in his temples. You.
A bitter laugh slipped from his throat. If his promotion hadn’t already been shot, it would have been now.
More digging uncovered that the message had his name on it, and someone in IT had opened it and clicked the link, but after having Dewson forward the appropriate information along—message headers and such—he knew it hadn’t come from his computer or phone.
But it was an amazing imitation. Who knew how to do something like that? Jared pushed aside the nagging in the back of his head. It was an old scar. Resurfacing insecurities. Mikki may have been at the root of the original problem, but just finding out he didn’t know about that simple indiscretion had torn her up. Hadn’t it? There was no way she was doing something actually vindictive.
He told Dewson he’d take care of the rest—double-checking to make sure the virus was gone, figuring out what systems had been breached, and uncovering out how someone had tricked their network into believing the email was from him.
He took a deep breath and corralled the rambling bullshit to the back of his thoughts. If they were home, he’d take point on something this serious and his people would back him up. But he wasn’t trusting it to anyone except himself and his friends. Tate and Vivian could keep up under his direction, despite their different career paths. Between the three of them, they would make this right.
Within minutes, they were waiting for him in a quiet corner of the hotel lobby. He gave them the lowdown as quickly as possible.
Vivian’s brow creased with concern. “You’re okay, right?”
Besides stressed, concerned, and a little wounded that this had happened under his watch, it was all status quo. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
His Hacker (Love Games, #5) Page 14
