Interlocking Hearts (19 page)

Something about the way they held her during and after sex had made her feel strange, and she wasn’t sure if it was good or bad. It was different.

“Do you have some kind of pheromone that you give off as part of your upgrades?” Paisley asked Jon before he could lean in for the kiss he wasn’t going for.

“You think you wouldn’t be attracted to me without some kind of chemical assistance?” His raised brows and calm voice told her he was calling her on her bullshit.

“I don’t get attracted to people. I get horny and have sex.”

Jon looked at her for what felt like forever instead of the ten seconds it probably was.

Then he held the small of her back to help her keep balance as he walked her back into the heavy steam by the shower. The best part of hotel living was never having to worry about the hot water running out.

Paisley hadn’t thought she wanted to have sex with these guys again, but she didn’t stop Jon from untying her robe. She didn’t stop him as he slid the heavy fabric over her shoulders, and she didn’t move away as he leaned around her to pick the garment off the floor.

The door to the bathroom shut and a billow of the steam wafted around her.

“We want to help you, Paisley.” Ben’s voice carried through the steam. “But we won’t help you have sex with the magistrate. That guy is not one to mess with.”

“I’ll do what needs to be done to help keep Coral safe. Honestly, everyone else is a bonus. She’s my primary objective in this, and if it means doing the nasty with the handsy dude in charge, I’ll do what I think I have to.”

“Over my dead body.”

The words came from right next to her ear. When Paisley turned, she bumped noses with Jon. He didn’t back up. He leaned in.

“It doesn’t always have to be just sex.”

He kissed her before she could respond. Then the bathroom door opened again, and both men walked out.

“What the ever-loving fuck.” Paisley waited for them to come back. They were probably getting some kind of kitchen utensil they were going to pervert in an expertly kinky way to please her body.

Instead of drawers shuffling, Paisley heard the front door open and close.

She walked out into the hallway naked. Then into the living area. She looked into the bedroom. Nope. They really had left.

Well, she wasn’t chasing.

Paisley scrubbed her skin raw in the shower. Then her hands traveled down her ribs and up again over her nipples. Her own two hands were such a shallow substitute for the four strong ones that had held her last night.

That was the scary part. Those men didn’t just touch, they didn’t just pinch and fondle. They held her. Some of that vulnerability that she fought for so long to eradicate was creeping back inside.

Paisley wrapped her arms around herself in the shower. Thinking of the men who were on the other side of the wall she leaned against, Paisley slid one hand lower. She touched herself, but she didn’t just need to come, she also needed that arm across her when she did. She wanted to be held again. The way these guys stormed into her room… They made her feel like they cared about her, like they wanted to protect her.

As an orgasm washed over her body and her knees weakened, Paisley realized she wanted someone to care about her again. No. That wasn’t right. Darius had never
really
cared. She didn’t want someone to care about her
again
… She wanted someone to care about her for the first time.

In the shower, she lost her armor. She lost the strength and power she’d built up over the years. But once the water turned off, and once she’d dried her body and put on a pair of pajamas, she had to go to sleep alone. All the cuddles and protection in the world weren’t worth the vulnerability they caused. She wouldn’t be weak again.

Paisley packed up her things immediately. She laid out an outfit for tomorrow, and made sure she had comfortable tennis shoes in her big purse. She was checking out in the morning. She’d find a place to live after work. Even if she had to walk the city twice.

She was done depending on other people. She needed to be strong for Coral. And she would be.

Chapter Seventeen

Surprisingly, bringing suitcases full of makeup products to a secure government building turned out to be a big pain in the ass. It took Paisley thirty minutes to make it through security. They unpacked all of her bags like she was working for a bomb unit in her spare time.

As they confiscated her Oil of Olay, she told the security officer she always knew that wrinkle cream was bound to contain some kind of explosive. Maybe that was how the creams obliterated wrinkles. He didn’t find her joke about “red-hot beauty products making a big bang” all that funny.

After digging out her vibrators, the officer realized she wasn’t a threat, just a highly sexed individual. She gave the man some suggestions on which type he should buy his wife before she was packed and moving on up the elevators.

“Somebody must be working a long shift.”

Paisley nearly jumped out of her skin. Damn Quinn and his stealth training. The man was too quiet. He always snuck up on her.

“I’ve decided I wore out my welcome at the hotel. I’m employed and my final paycheck from the palace cleared last night. It’s time I used it to be a self-sufficient citizen.”

Paisley thought her argument sounded good. Quinn could smell her bullshit better than Coral could though.

“I got off the phone with your neighbors just a few minutes ago, so don’t lie. You don’t want to stay in the same building as Jon and Major Renolds.”

“You aren’t in the military any longer. You don’t have to use the title when you talk about him.”

Quinn shrugged. “He still calls me Captain on occasion. It’s a habit. But seriously. What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry, stud. I’m not coming to stay with you. I’m going to find an apartment after work.”

“You’re going to find a place…after 5:00 p.m.…that is going to let you move in today.”

Damn men and their damn logic.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Coral will make you come stay with us. Go back to the hotel. I can do some legwork for you after lunch. My schedule’s free.”

Paisley agreed to let him look for her. If he could get her any leads, it would make things easier. She asked him to look close to the City County Building. Walking to and from work would save her tons of money, and there was no way she could afford a car on her own with what the government paid her.

A stack of papers was on her desk when she got there. Appointments and applications. She sorted out and put notes on the appropriate items for Coral.

Then there was an envelope. Large manila with something inside. All that was on the front was her name in black capital letters.

She was terrified. Was this a threat? Did the caller have some kind of proof of her time with Jon? Did someone know she was on to the magistrate? Her hands started to shake as she opened the metal clasp and slid out the papers.

“Paisley.”

“Ahhh!” Paisley screamed and all the forms in the envelope went flying in the air.

Coral looked around before saying, “Why did you throw your company benefits package in the air?”

Paisley was pretty sure she was having a heart attack, but tried to breathe while the papers floated to the floor. Coral helped clean up the mess and Paisley realized the amount taken out of her check for the benefits package was reason enough for terror.

“Why do you have your bags here?”

Paisley stacked everything neatly on her desk. She sure wouldn’t need coffee for a couple hours. The adrenaline would keep her going.

“I’m looking for an apartment today.”

Quinn snuck up again. “And I’m helping.”

Coral beamed at Quinn. She and Paisley hadn’t talked about the love thing since their lunch date, but Paisley hoped by how everything looked from where she stood that Coral had finally popped her L-word cherry.

“Thank you for helping Paisley not be homeless. That would make me sad.”

Quinn pulled something from behind his back. Normally, if a guy was trying to woo his woman at work and surprise her with something, he’d bring flowers.

But this was Coral.

“Are those the new upgrade magazines? The roboexpo is not supposed to post this information for another few weeks!”

Coral grabbed the glossy pages from Quinn and he winked at Paisley. “I know a few people. I thought you’d like a sneak peek so you can earmark where you want to stop first. The day passes went on sale today. I got us the whole weekend.”

Coral hugged him. “That is fantastic. They are supposed to have a lubricant from around the world tasting at the production booth again.”

That robobabe better have told her man she loved him. He was a keeper.

“Did you want me to grab you a tonic water while I get some coffee from downstairs?” he asked.

“No, I have a lot of prep work to do. The magistrate wants all these files updated by the end of the day today. I’m not going to take a recharge break until the humans’ lunchtime. I need to work straight through. I’ve been here since four, and I’m only halfway done.”

“Thank goodness they pay you by the hour.” Quinn leaned in and kissed her again.

Coral was scanning the documents into her memory as she went back to her office.

As soon as the door clicked shut, Quinn was in Paisley’s face, and the smile he had for Coral was turned completely upside down for Paisley.

“Your residential status wasn’t the only topic I covered when talking with Ben this morning. I could tell something was up, and once they knew you’d checked out of the hotel, they told me what you found and what you’re planning to do.” He slammed his hand on the desk. “Nail this son of a bitch and get the info. If you toss my boys aside because you are scared to ask for help, you won’t be near as smart as I gave you credit for.”

In a split second, the words that had soured his expression evaporated and he painted a happy smile on his face. Paisley wondered if she had imagined what just happened.

When she looked down, a series of computer commands had replaced Quinn’s hand. She looked around to make sure no one was watching before typing them in.

The words “download record” popped up and a prompt of “Do you want to print?” was right on top of it.

Before anyone could see her, Paisley closed the prompt and quickly checked her history. Nothing about this left a trace. At least nothing she could see, being a minor layman in computer speak.

Now all she needed was a way into Ralph Winters’s office.

A shrill laugh interrupted her thoughts. There was only one person who laughed like that at everyone’s jokes. It was Tabitha. Tabitha was the magistrate’s secretary. Dressed in the best bad clothing money and horrible taste could buy, Tabitha held a stack of files as she was escorted down the hall.

And the person causing her cackle was Darius. Of course it was. The man who seemed to be all over the damn building pulled the files from Tabitha’s hands. He struggled with the items as they caught on his gaudy gold watch, and it looked like he rearranged some of them before the two continued down the hall, but Paisley couldn’t be sure. She
was
sure she had to find a way to get past Tabitha and to the Magistrate. She could either trick the woman or find a way to befriend her.

Another laugh grated Paisley’s nerves from across the room. Nope. She didn’t want to make friends. Deceit and trickery were up to bat.

Chapter Eighteen

Coral didn’t need an assistant. She needed an answering machine. With the magistrate’s urgency, he had something big going down soon. Paisley needed to get into the mainframe computer and she needed to get the information fast.

If they were gathering this much data in one place, there had to be a reason. There were a few bills that might use some of the information for verbiage, but there wasn’t a single vote on them anytime soon.

Paisley wasn’t always the smartest person in the room, but she had killer instincts. Her gut was telling her to move now.

She knew Coral was busy for the next two hours. Paisley had even brought her a bottle of her lubricating concoction, because the way Coral was busting ass, she wouldn’t even lift her eyes until a new ink cartridge was needed to print the next set of reports.

Paisley forwarded the office phone calls to her cell so she could respond to important voice mails, and she’d get in less trouble for being away from her desk.

Cell phone in hand, she went to the elevators. Just like the ones at the Main Gates Hotel, these elevators had a reflective surface, but it was a gold tone here. Paisley’s skin looked sallow and gaunt under the yellow haze.

Ignoring how ill it made her feel, Paisley undid two buttons on her blouse. The skirt she wore looked modest in the front. After a quick turn and tuck, the pleat revealed a healthy amount of thigh. The lace tops of her stockings were framed by the fabric. Paisley undid her bun and let her hair fall around her shoulders.

She didn’t bother with lipstick. Her lips were already pretty pink and with as much as she chewed on them when she was nervous, wearing even gloss made her teeth redder than her lips.

Satisfied that any man would be crazy to turn her down now, and that she had just enough skin showing to distract the magistrate, Paisley stepped off the elevator. She nodded to all the men who craned their necks to ogle her on the way to Mr. Winters’s office.

It turned out Coral wasn’t the only one working hard today.

“He’s in a meeting. You aren’t on his schedule.”

His assistant was super pleasant. And just like a lot of women, she hated Paisley for looking sexy rather than appreciating the effort. Paisley never understood the reasoning behind wanting other people to look less attractive, but she realized she might not be the only one the magistrate’s grabby hands had gotten ahold of.

“Could you please just let him know—”

Paisley stood straight up at the sound of the voices coming up behind her. Her shoulders locked and she had to force herself to keep facing the pinch-faced secretary.

The hair on the back of her neck stood on edge because she’d heard both those voices in a much more intimate setting, and she didn’t want to
actually
be aroused right now. What the hell were they doing here?

“Jon Bond and Ben Renolds to see the magistrate.”

Paisley was distracted and didn’t notice the door open. Her plan to be intense and sexy for the guy with power and sweaty palms was more
fake it
than
make it
.

“Tabitha, I’m in a meeting. I told you I wasn’t to be inter…rup…ted. Paisley. I wasn’t expecting you.”

Paisley tried to recover quickly. Her hip popped and she leaned over to give her back that sexy arch. “I was hoping we could chat more about the files you needed from Coral. I’m trying to help her gather everything, and I was wondering if you had a master list I could work with.”

“And you have a meeting with us, scheduled now,” Ben interjected. “Did you forget? Or did your assistant not tell you?”

“I assure you, I am in charge of the magistrate’s day and it says right here…” Tabitha went from cocky to apologetic in record time. “I’m sorry, there must have been a glitch in the system, sir. It appears you were double-booked for appointments today.”

The magistrate got redder and sweatier than normal, and apologized profusely to everyone inside and outside of the office. He closed the door behind him and came to the other side of his assistant’s desk.

“I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience, gentlemen, but the ball buster I have in there will not be able to reschedule without a terrible effort. Would it be possible for you to wait for fifteen minutes—maybe twenty—while I wrap this up?”

Ben took out his phone and tapped on the screen. He didn’t look up until the magistrate started shifting his weight from foot to foot. “I can move a meeting and we can stay,” he told Jon.

The magistrate exhaled. “Thank you. I’ve got to get back in there.” He noticed Paisley as he was darting off and turned quickly to face her. “Can you wait too? Because I
really
want you to wait. If you take notes for the meeting with these gentlemen, I can go over some files with you then.”

Paisley smiled sweetly. “Can’t wait.”

The door shut, and the pinch-faced woman at the desk pointed toward three chairs that were way too close together.

Of course, Jon took the one to the far left and Ben took the one to the far right. Even if Paisley ate nothing but carrots for a month, she wouldn’t be able to sit in that space without being at least a little on top of both men.

“I’ll just stand,” Paisley offered.

“No. You will not pace in front of my desk. You will sit so I’m not distracted as I figure out this computer glitch.” Tabitha pointed to the empty chair again.

The woman wasn’t even trying to be polite, but working for the man in the office behind her, Paisley couldn’t blame her. Even a slight show of weakness was probably enough for a guy like that to take advantage.

Paisley didn’t want to give Tabitha any more trouble so she shimmied into place between her two lovers.

“You were the computer glitch, weren’t you?” she whispered to Jon.

“I can make all kinds of systems go haywire.”

Paisley scowled. Everyone, including mechanics, had to be checked for electropulse devices before they entered the City County Building, but it didn’t matter when bots like Jon and Coral were good old-fashioned hackers. She could tattle on Jon’s schedule hijinks, but not without cluing the world into Coral’s abilities to remove finance charges from her credit files.

“We were going to request you sit in on the meeting to take notes, anyway,” Ben offered. “The magistrate’s interest in you doing so is to our benefit.”

“Why?” she asked.

She tried to pull her arms closer to her body, but all that did was push her boobs together. Giving up on getting away, she let her arms press against the hot wall of man and machine on either side of her.

“Do you have your notebook with you?” Jon asked, far louder than she was expecting.

“No.” Paisley was about to ask Ben if Jon was having malfunction issues, but Ben clicked his tongue as if scolding her.

“You are just going to have to use the magistrate’s computer, then.”

Those sneaky bastards. They found out what she was doing, and then planned a way to help her so she wouldn’t have to have grabby hands all over her. It rubbed her wrong that this was a much better solution, because the magistrate would be totally distracted with…whatever they had concocted.

“Please store the notes on this thumbdrive so we can access it later with the other necessary files.”

Paisley looked at the piece of metal he’d handed her. The thing looked like C3PO from
Star Wars
. She laughed. Of course the robospy had a robothumbdrive. And apparently even robotic men loved that movie. Her giggles caught in her throat as she saw what was on the back of the thing. In tiny engraved letters she made out…

Open the file marked 3. The main points we intend to bring up are already written. Use the file marked 2 to run the program.

Paisley’s back stiffened. She’d still have to annotate the magistrate’s responses, but the guys were going to go from a planned script. It would give her more than enough time to run the program.

“You’ll take the notes and print them out. A copy for the magistrate and a copy for me. Jon will take the thumbdrive to upload the meeting internally,” Ben informed her.

Tabitha looked up at their words, but decided the breach was more important than the three of them and went back to typing.

The download information Paisley needed, she’d…well, she’d have to give it up to Jon. The person annotating didn’t keep a set of notes.

Damn. They were working her out of this.

Paisley could hear the magistrate and his previous appointment sliding the heavy chair legs across the laminate floor. Then the door handle tilted and they were out of the office.

She didn’t have time to change course. They had made the plan without including her, and she’d have to go along or risk not ever getting the information Quinn and Coral needed.

Paisley redid a button on her blouse. By the way the magistrate’s eyes had zeroed in on cleavage-land, she would be the one keeping the magistrate’s attention if she didn’t dial it back a bit.

She was grateful she had; the next moment…

“Mr. Price, we’ll be in touch. Thank you for your patience.”

Paisley’s lip curled as the man she couldn’t seem to get rid of tucked a file under his arm.

Wait…was that green paper?

Darius walked quickly down the hall before she could process the information, and there wasn’t time to follow.

“Mr. Renolds. I will see you and your robot now.”

Jon rolled his wrist, and Paisley heard the gears grind and artificial bands of cartilage protest. The magistrate was following protocol as far as acknowledging Ben and letting him bring his robotic specimen with him, but he also knew that Jon was in the application process. It seemed like a deliberate prod to try and provoke a negative response. Paisley was impressed when Jon not only failed to take the bait, but stood with a smile.

Ben offered a hand to Paisley to help her up, and she took it. She was a little wobbly. Her thoughts were going in a million different directions between Darius and the magistrate. A connection existed just beyond where her brain was reaching. She needed to focus. There were so many things that could go wrong. She might be too conspicuous. She might not be able to keep up with the notes. If that happened, she’d claim mechanical error. She could have Jon zap the keyboard.

“Paisley, would you mind waiting while I have this meeting?” the magistrate said and turned to Jon with a smile. “I figured Mr. Bond could activate his recording device instead of Miss Compton taking notes. Then she can have my undivided attention after. It would expedite the process, don’t you agree?”

She opened her mouth to respond. With what, she had no idea, but she was going to start with “um” and see where it took her.

Ben had a much more eloquent reply. “While you were in the meeting with another person during the time we had been scheduled, we thought it would move things along if Paisley annotated the meeting. It will allow Jon to provide information without taking the extra RAM to record and keep notes.”

The magistrate looked Paisley up and down for more than a leer this time. With the lack of a computer, recorder—and seriously, with as tight as her outfit was—it was pretty clear Paisley wasn’t hiding even the tiniest notebook on her person.

“Um…Paisley, do you need a notebook, or datapad?” The magistrate looked a lot less excited to see her now that she would actually have to do some work for him that didn’t involve being on her knees.

“If it’s okay with you, sir, I’ll just hop on your computer, save to the thumbdrive, and give the notes to Jon later.”

The magistrate looked back toward his office and was about to go in. Most likely to close down a secure wall, or some other issues that would make her job infinitely more difficult.

Time to prove that she was going to get this job done. Even if the double-standard twins behind her didn’t want her to.

Paisley stepped up to the magistrate and put her arm on the shoulder nearest to his office. She held it there until he turned, and slipped herself between the magistrate and the doorframe. There wasn’t a whole lot of room and it made her distraction all the more effective.

Putting her body just a breath from his, she took her index finger and tapped him on the nose. “You are so sweet to let me sit in your big cushy chair. I can’t wait to settle my hips into such a powerful seat. Oops.” Paisley blew a gentle bit of air along the side of his face, and she knew she used the right angle to catch the guy’s ear. With her thumb, she feathered a touch across his cheek and stroked her hand under his jaw. “Eyelash.”

She winked and tucked into the office. Before he could get the blood back where he needed it to be, Paisley was already in his chair and plugging the USB into his computer.

When he waved Jon and Ben inside, he didn’t look happy, but thanks to the male ego, he let her use his computer rather than letting anyone see she’d worked him over.