by Lexi Blake
“I’m literally being paid to spy on the woman,” Kyle pointed out. “If you want me to figure out what she’s pitching tonight, I will let you know. You ready to head down? I’ve got to meet Jessica at the limo in a couple of minutes.”
She sighed because he didn’t look like a man who was going to be persuaded. “I’ll get my keycard.”
She glanced down and it wasn’t sitting on her desk. Where had she put it?
“Hey, baby. I brought us some dinner because I thought about it and you are going to feel better if you finish this thing.”
All thoughts of anything else fled as she looked up and Hutch walked into the room, carrying a bag emblazoned with the Top logo. Her stomach growled, reminding her she’d only eaten about half the sandwich she’d bought at the deli downstairs. A few days before she’d thought the turkey on wheat had been a serviceable lunch, but then Hutch had started making her lunches. He put honey mustard and tomatoes on it, and she loved them. The one from downstairs was now bland.
She would miss him if they drifted apart at the end of this.
“Did you bring me something?” Kyle started to poke around in the bag Hutch had set on her desk. “I don’t think I’m eating at this thing. What’s the special tonight? Mom told me Sean was working on short ribs and they’re delicious.”
Hutch slapped at his hand. “No, I did not get you anything because we’re not in a relationship, and as you have pointed out many times, you are an adult man capable of making your own lunch.”
Kyle stared down at the bag with sad puppy eyes. “Only because I didn’t know you’re actually pretty good in the kitchen. I thought it was one of those things where a dude thinks he’s good, but he pretty much sucks. Your breakfasts are solid. I missed it this morning. We need to get groceries again.”
Because they’d abandoned the ones at her place the night before. None of that mattered because Hutch was here and he was letting her stay and finish up. She moved into his arms and wrapped herself around him. He hugged her tight and she realized what she’d been missing all day. Him.
He kissed her cheek and nuzzled her ear. “Hey, I missed you. It was a long day.”
But he was still here and still willing to wait with her. “You, too. Thank you for dinner and thank you for letting me stay.”
“Okay, I lost my appetite. You got this, brother?” Kyle was already at the door.
Hutch’s lips curled up in a sexy grin as he stared down at her. “Oh, I got this. I got all of this.”
His hands moved down to cup her ass. Kyle made a gagging sound and then he was gone.
“Alone at last.” Hutch kissed her. “That is what I wanted all day.”
“Well, since you are letting me finish this up tonight, I might not have to work this weekend,” she whispered against his lips. “And then we can get a whole lot of alone time in.”
His hands moved up her back. “I would love that.”
He was such a handsome man with his blue eyes and golden brown hair, a sharp jawline that had a hint of scruff covering it. She loved the way his muscles felt under her hands. She wasn’t in his league. All of her insecurities flooded back in and she decided to simply ask. Wasn’t that what she was supposed to do? “Hutch, what happens when this case is over?”
A quizzical expression hit his face, but he didn’t let her go. “I suspect you won’t be afraid anymore.”
“I meant with us.”
“What do you want to have happen? Because I know what I want, but I have been accused of moving way too fast. You, my darling, are a skittish chick.”
She felt a smile cross her face because that was not the reply of a guy who was planning on ghosting her once this was done. “I am not.” She went on her toes and kissed him before pulling away. She was starving, and whatever was in that bag smelled like heaven. “Skittish? What a silly word. I am reasonable and responsible, and one of us has to be.”
“I am over-the-top romantic and reckless,” he replied, moving in behind her. “One of us has to be. I got you the special tonight. It’s half a roast chicken with lemon rosemary potatoes and asparagus. If you don’t like it, you can have my burger.”
The smell of the chicken hit her, and her stomach growled again. “Not on your life, although that is a lot of food.”
Hutch shrugged. “I figured I’d try yours, too.”
She couldn’t stop smiling. He made her happy. Happier than she could remember being before. She had her work and she had a guy she could trust. What more could she ask for? “I suppose I could share. How did you get up here, anyway?”
“Kyle left my name as an approved guest. I also think that after what happened in the locker room, the security guys are happy to have someone up here with you.” He kissed the nape of her neck and took a step back. “There’s a piece of chocolate cake and a slice of whatever pie they made today. I definitely thought we could share those.”
Because her man had a sweet tooth. “I think we can make that happen. Are you sure you’re okay babysitting me? You can eat and then head home and pick me up.”
He stared at her.
“Or you can be bored right here.” He was right. The last time she’d been totally alone she’d gotten choked out. The truth of the matter was it could get creepy here at night.
“Thank you,” he replied. “And I won’t be bored. I’ve got my laptop. I can catch up on work, too. I’ve got some code I need to write for the website. And Big Tag wants me to hack the new Japanese toilets Adam bought for his company. They’re super high tech, complete with wash cycles and a blow-dryer for your junk.”
“You’re going to hack a toilet?” He could also be a prankster. She would have to remember that.
“Yep. I’m going to turn the water pressure way up and the temp way down and see if we can hear Adam howl from our floor.” He was sitting at her desk, a big smile on his face. “It’s also an excellent way to figure out who actually uses them. They all say they don’t. Jesse Murdoch said it was a waste of money, but I bet he ends up using the soothing wash cycle. Well, at least once.”
Damn, she was in love with him. She couldn’t even fool herself anymore. She was in love with Hutch. “You are a moron.”
That smile didn’t dim a watt. “But I’m your moron. Come here.”
She moved into his arms. Dinner might have to wait.
He started kissing her when the door came open again and Kyle walked through, pulling at his tie.
“She is not a nice boss. And that is all I am saying,” Kyle grumbled and then proceeded to contradict himself by saying more. “She replaced me with Austin. Austin is a putz.”
“What did you do?” Hutch’s face had completely lost its humor. And his horniness.
They started to argue.
It looked like dinner was back on, and she was definitely going to have to share.
* * * *
“Are you sure it’s okay he’s in there with her?” Kyle stood in front of the window that connected the lab’s main room to one of what she’d called the experiment rooms. There was a big MRI machine along with a bunch of technical equipment. Noelle was running a test to see how much of the helium she could catch and recycle off the machine.
Something had gone wrong and she’d called Pete, who’d happened to still be in the building. The engineer was in there with her.
“He works with her every day,” Hutch pointed out. “I don’t see why it’s a problem.”
Hutch stared down at the screen in front of him and wished like hell he didn’t have to do what he was going to do. What he wanted to do was scoop Noelle up and get her the hell out of here because every instinct in his body was telling him something was wrong.
Why had Kyle suddenly gotten himself taken off the security detail he’d been talking about all week? It was pretty coincidental that he would get bumped on the very night Hutch had to get his job done.
Was Kyle here to make sure he didn’t do his job?
Kyle moved in behind him, his voice
going low. “Are you going in tonight? I thought you wanted to wait until tomorrow night when I could watch your back.”
That was what they’d discussed, which was precisely why it was so odd that Kyle was suddenly free tonight. “I’m doing some recon. I haven’t spent much time in the building. I need to get a feel for what I’m going to have to do to get in.”
“Did Ian get intel on Cara? Have you talked to Noelle about it?”
He turned to glare Kyle’s way. “Dude, someone could be listening.”
Kyle shrugged that worry off. “Nah, I check for bugs every day, and I’ve got a disruptor on me right now. It’ll blast static if anyone’s listening.”
That was interesting. A disruptor was brand-new tech. It was so new most people didn’t know about it. It wasn’t on the market to the public yet, and Hutch hadn’t been able to get his hands on one. The small device emitted a high-frequency tone that would render most listening devices useless. “That’s impressive tech. You didn’t get it from the office.”
Not that Big Tag hadn’t tried to find a way to buy a couple.
Kyle’s jaw tightened, the expression on his face going stubborn before it fell. “I got it from a friend. Okay? Look, there’s a lot about my time in the Navy I can’t talk about.”
“Because it’s classified.”
“Yeah.”
“And the friend you got the disruptor from is probably classified, too.” The friend was either some kind of intelligence agent or something far worse. The friend could be a corporate spy who looked to Kyle for help.
Kyle sighed. “The friend I got it from is dead. I don’t talk about her because…I don’t talk about her. But she’s been on my mind lately. That must be why I thought I saw her earlier. It was a woman who looked a little like her, though not really. It was more the way she moved.”
Was he talking about Julia Ennis? “A girlfriend?”
Kyle chuckled, a humorless sound. “She’s the reason I don’t believe in love. She’s the one I misread. Look, I didn’t talk to Big Tag about the disruptor because I figured he would ask me to give it to him. I need it.”
What other tech did he have? “Is that how you got through my security system last night?”
The slightest flush stained his cheeks. “How did you… Did it show up on the logs? Because I thought it wouldn’t.”
“It wouldn’t have if I hadn’t written specific protocols. It’s not a normal security system.” Not a total lie, but he wasn’t about to tell Kyle that he’d gotten caught through good old-fashioned human eyesight. That would lead to questions of why the hell Michael Malone was watching him. No, he’d found using words like protocols threw off the people who weren’t hard-core hackers.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.” Kyle sank into the chair beside him. “I need you to know that I have been in that apartment every night since we started the job. I swear I have. Last night, I just…I couldn’t sleep, and you don’t have a treadmill. Sometimes it’s the only way I get myself tired enough to fall asleep. Last night I actually managed to doze off, but I woke up at two in the morning and I couldn’t stay in bed.”
“You couldn’t stay in the house,” Hutch accused.
Kyle shook his head. “No, I couldn’t. I’m sorry. I had a shitty dream and I had to burn it off.”
That didn’t explain the phone call he’d made or why he had two phones to begin with. He wasn’t sure he could ask that question without giving up the fact that Michael had been following him. “You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Okay.” He couldn’t force the guy to trust him.
Kyle pushed off the chair. “I knew this wouldn’t work.”
“The job? No, it probably won’t work if you can’t stay in a house with a client you’re guarding.”
“Well, I figured you would take care of her. It’s not like she was alone.”
It was time for some hard truth. He knew Tag wanted to keep Kyle around until he figured out what was happening, but Hutch wasn’t going to let that secondary mission put Noelle in danger. “You’re the one who is supposed to be watching our backs. Had I gotten the heads-up that you needed a break, I would have paid more attention to security.”
Secondary mission? Now he had a third—getting the feds everything they wanted so they would leave Noelle alone. That was the deal he’d made this afternoon. He would find a way to get the financial records to prove Genedyne was a fraud and they would leave Noelle alone. Of course, he couldn’t simply tell Noelle what he was doing. He’d had to sign an agreement that all of this would be confidential.
Or his pact to keep Noelle safe would dissolve, and she could be forced to risk her career and possibly her life to keep her research safe. The feds knew exactly how to bust a man’s balls.
Kyle nodded and seemed to think something over. “That’s fair. Have you talked to Big Tag?”
He didn’t want to lie to the man, but he also wasn’t sure Kyle wouldn’t simply walk away. “I don’t want to.”
“It won’t happen again.” Kyle groaned and his head dropped back, an obviously frustrated move. “Or maybe it will. Fuck, I should never have come home.”
“Why did you?”
Kyle’s head came back up, and there was an unmistakable weariness in his gaze. “I don’t know. I guess I hoped it would make things better. I left because things didn’t make sense anymore. I came back because I hoped being home would feel safe. I was in an accident. I’d gone into grad school.”
Hutch nodded. “I remember hearing something about it.”
“It might be why I feel such an affinity for Noelle. I know I said you should be suspicious of any human being who seems as nice as Noelle, but I honestly like her. I know something of what she went through. You can’t exactly understand it.”
“I can’t? I assure you I’ve been through some shit.”
Kyle shook his head. “You’ve been through all the shit, Hutch. Like you should be a walking pile of human garbage given what you’ve been through. Tell me something. Was there ever a time you didn’t know the world was dangerous?”
His heart clenched because there was only one answer to that question. “No. I always knew.”
“Well, I remember the moment the world changed for me. I had lost my dad, but I had my mom and my brother and I got through it. It was the accident that changed things.”
Hutch remembered a bit of the story. “Your friend died, right?”
“Oh, yes, but friend isn’t the right word. He was my brother. We met in first grade and he was always there for me. Don’t get me wrong. My brother and I were close, but he’s older than me and he was always more serious. I was closest to Kenny growing up. And then because some asshole ran a light, he wasn’t there anymore. I’d dealt with death, but not in a visceral way. My dad’s death seemed almost peaceful. I know it wasn’t that way for my mom. She was careful in what she let us see. He was in an accident, too. He had surgery, but they knew he wouldn’t pull through. He lingered for a week. I remember my dad telling me everything would be okay and that he would always love me. That wasn’t how Kenny died.”
“I thought he died on impact.”
“Yeah, well, that was the story I told my mom,” Kyle admitted. “He didn’t. We’d been out to dinner with some friends. It got late, but everything was normal. Kenny had a meeting the next day, so he decided not to drink.”
“That doesn’t make it your fault.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. It was my car. I drove us out there. Neither one of us was planning on getting toasted that night, but I was talking to a woman I met and we went through a bottle and a half of wine. When the time came, Kenny took my keys and he was sitting in the driver’s seat. He took the full brunt of a car going forty-five miles an hour plowing into him. I was asleep and ended up with nothing more than a couple of scratches.” Kyle’s eyes seemed to be on something far away. “He was mad that he was dying. So fucking angry. He was mad at me.”
> “He was in pain and confused.” Hutch wanted to give him some comfort.
“I don’t know about that. Anyway, that second brush with death was unlike the first. I watched it, watched the blood pour as I tried to stop it, watched the fear as he realized there was no way out, watched the light die. I couldn’t go on with my life the way I had before, so my stepdad and a friend of his convinced me to try the Navy. I didn’t go into the Army because I didn’t want to have to live up to the Taggart name. That’s sad, right? It’s not even my name, but I feel it.”
Now he needed to play things carefully. “You didn’t want to walk in those big-ass footsteps. I get that. So what did you do when the CIA called?”
Kyle huffed. “Of course everyone knows.”
“It was a decent bet,” Hutch said with a shrug. “You went into Special Forces training. The Agency watches those recruits, and the minute your name was placed in close proximity to a Taggart…”
“Yeah, my team worked with a Mr. Brown shortly after I got the assignment. I was recruited from there. Tag knows?” Kyle asked.
“He suspects, but you have to know he checked up on you.”
“Well, I rather thought my handler would have covered it up better.” Kyle sighed. “I’ll talk to him about it. I’m not particularly proud of the work I did there. It’s why I got out. I came home and it still doesn’t make sense. It might be time for me to try something else.”
Hutch knew exactly what he should try. “Have you tried talking about it? With Kai?”
Kyle’s hands fisted at his sides. “Talking about it won’t work.”
“Have you tried it?”
“No. And I’m not going to.”
Well, that was about as far as he could push the guy. Someone had to be open to therapy for it to work, and Kyle was kind of right about him being different. By the time he’d been plucked from juvie and offered a different life, he’d been ready to try anything. Kai Ferguson had been his therapist for years, and while he probably didn’t need it anymore, he liked to go. It was good to have someone to purge to. In a lot of ways those sessions with Kai were a way to process what happened around him. He’d learned not to react emotionally but rather to allow his emotions to process and then act in a way that best represented who he wanted to be.
