LUKE: Complete Series (3 page)

He slipped into the driver’s seat and started the engine, which made the whole car hum around us.

“That sounds like a powerful engine.”

“V12,” he replied, as he pulled out of the parking space and I couldn’t believe how smooth the car drove. I had never been within a mile of a car this expensive and he expected me to drive this to pick up his dry cleaning?

As he drove through the gloomy downtown streets of Seattle, I eyed the glove compartment and wondered if he had any secret passwords in there. I imagined opening it and having a mountain of condoms tumble into my lap. I was so lost in my thoughts I didn’t notice Luke reaching across the console until he grabbed my hand. I flinched as I looked up into his eyes, the clearest aquamarine I’d ever seen on a human. He winked at me before he turned to face forward and accelerated as the streetlight turned green.

Why was he holding my hand as if we were on some kind of date? We had just fucked each other’s brains out. That’s all it was: a good, clean, positively amazing fuck. He squeezed my hand tighter as he rounded the corner and quickly turned into the underground parking structure at Maxwell Computers. He stopped just outside the elevator and a valet quickly appeared at his door. He let go of my hand and gave my knee a playful tap before he climbed out of the car.

I suddenly had a strange feeling I was the one who was being played. There was no way he could be this rich, this smart, this gorgeous,
and
this sweet. Maybe he was on to me and he was just stringing me along, playing coy until he brought down the hatchet and killed my career.

Geez, Brina, stop being so paranoid.

I could hear my brother’s gruff voice in my head and I realized how crazy this assignment was already making me, just three hours in. This was not a good sign.

He stopped outside the elevator, but he didn’t press the call button. “You can go home for the day. You start tomorrow.”

“That’s it?”

“No. I’m picking you up at your house tomorrow morning at seven and you’re coming with me to a meeting in Newport.”

“Okay, I’ll be ready.”

“And wear something casual. This,” he said, glancing at my business attire, “isn’t the image I like to project.”

“Anything else?”

“One more thing.” He stepped toward me and leaned in to whisper in my ear. “I rejected your internship three years ago because you were
over
-qualified. You’re too smart for your own good.”

He knew. He had to know.
Too smart for your own good?
He definitely knew.

My new Flame rang and I answered immediately. “He knows.”

“Relax, Brina. He doesn’t know.”

“Yes, he does! He said I was too smart for my own good.”

“You
are
too smart for your own good,” Milo’s usually soothing voice carried a slight annoyance.

He was a year younger than me and, though he never shared this with me, I was certain he had been gunning for this assignment. Instead, our boss Kip Singer had given me the assignment without considering any of our colleagues. Kip insisted I was the most qualified to manipulate a guy like Luke Maxwell who, though he was extremely private about his personal life, had a notorious weakness for gorgeous women.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Milo sighed. “Nothing. So how did the interview go? Did you get the position?”

I thought of the many positions I’d been in this morning in Luke’s boat and nearly laughed out loud. “Yes, I got the position.”

I couldn’t tell Milo about what had happened at the marina. Not only did Milo want my job, but he’d also had a not-so-secret crush on me when I began working for NeoSys. He had never asked me on a date, but he spent the first three months of our work relationship glued to my cubicle. Three months was exactly how long it took me to confess to him that I had a boyfriend. Three months after that, we were both promoted to Competitive Intelligence Analyst and working out of our home offices ever since. Since then, we had kept our interactions very business-like, except for the one time the entire CIA team went out to a teppan restaurant to celebrate the acquisition of two pages of computer code that would make us nearly $200 million. That was the night Milo and I had a few too many sake bombs and made out in the restaurant parking lot. We never spoke about it after that night.

No doubt my ability to get hired on the first interview would be cause for celebration amongst the CIA team. But I couldn’t be seen with any of them until my assignment was complete.

“Trust me. Men believe what they want to believe. Luke knows nothing about Operation Mirror and he never will, as long as you do your job and stick to the objective,” Milo said, and I found myself grateful for his ability to calm my nerves.

“I just think I got in a little too easy. He seems pretty eager to welcome me in. He said I would be using his car to run his errands.”

“The Bugatti?”

“Yes, the fucking Bugatti. Isn’t that strange? And he’s picking me up at my house tomorrow morning for a meeting in Newport.”

Milo paused on the other end of the line. Maybe I had said too much. He probably knew that this meant Luke and I had slept together.

“Brina?”

“Yeah?”

“Do what you have to do. Don’t worry about what any of us will think. Only you can know how you have to approach this.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and took a deep breath. “Thanks.”

“Now get the fucking password for that mirror network.”

4

Luke’s car pulled up to the curb of my apartment building at exactly 6:58 a.m., but I didn’t run to answer the door to wait for his knock. Instead, I went into the restroom and turned the blow dryer onto the cool setting and pointed it at my head.

I heard the faint ding of my doorbell, but I ignored it as I stared at my reflection in the mirror and watched the cool air blow my hair in all directions. I waited a couple of minutes before I switched off the blow dryer and the doorbell rang again. I opened the door and was not surprised to see Luke wearing a pristine gray suit as he gazed at the fountain in the courtyard of my apartment building.

“How much do you pay to live here?” he asked, without looking at me.

“More than I can afford. Come on in.”

“You don’t even know how much I’m paying you. How do you know you can’t afford it?”

He wiggled his eyebrows before he stepped into my apartment and I couldn’t believe how uneasy he made me.

“The agency said the position paid 60 to 80 thousand. That’s not a lot for this area,” I replied, as I closed the front door.

“Then, why do you live here?”

He took a seat on the used sofa I had bought at the local Salvation Army when I moved into this apartment six weeks ago in preparation of Operation Mirror. Kip wanted me to have a nice apartment, but he didn’t provide a stipend for furniture. He probably didn’t expect Luke to be sitting in my apartment less than twenty-four hours after my interview.

“I live here because I like to push myself. There’s no motivation to succeed better than the prospect of having your electricity cut off.”

Something about what I said affected him. His eyes dimmed before he turned away to face the sliding glass door that led out onto my tiny patio.

“I was homeless for five months when I was seventeen. A lot of people don’t know that about me.” He stared at the door as he continued. “My stepdad kicked me out for smoking weed in the garage with my geek friends. I was too proud to ask any of my friends to take me in. I slept in public restrooms mostly, but I spent my days at the library and the computer lab at the local community college where I had befriended a professor. It took Mr. Keller three months to find out about my living situation.”

I did know about Luke’s homeless days, but I couldn’t tell him that because that would open up questions as to how I had found out.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He finally turned to me. “Why are you sorry? Look at where it got me. I’m trying to make a point. I’m trying to tell you that it’s not too late for you. Maybe the $140,000 I’m offering will help you on that road.”

He rose from the sofa and made his way toward me as I stood dumbfounded by this number. That was almost double what NeoSys was paying me. He stopped in front of me and I leaned into his hand as his fingers grazed my cheek.

“Why?” I breathed, as his other hand slipped behind my neck.

“Because you’ve already been through enough.”

He kissed me and I was lost, spinning in a haze of his presence, his scent, his power… his kindness. I threw my arms around his neck and he lifted me up, carrying me to the kitchen island where the bowl of leftover milk from my breakfast cereal sat next to a block of knives. He sat me on the counter and I tossed the bowl and knives to the floor as I lay back. He pulled off my jeans and sunk down to bury his face in me.

“Oh, my God,” I whimpered, as he lifted my legs onto his shoulders and proceeded to taste every inch of me. His fingers curled inside me as he massaged both my spots. “Oh, Luke!”

“Yes?” he hummed into my lips and I shuddered with pleasure.

“I… Oh, no.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“Yes. Please stop.”

He stood up and pulled his fingers out of me, though his thumb still rested on my throbbing clit. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, as I slid off the counter, trying to ignore the intense longing pulsating between my legs as I pulled on my jeans. “I’m really sorry, but this is so wrong.”

I couldn’t tell if he looked more confused or dejected by my words. He had probably never been rejected by a woman before. At least, that was what I was counting on.

“You’re right. We should keep this professional.” He strode quickly toward the door. “Are you ready to go? We have a meeting with Imitex in two hours.”

I stared at him for a moment, feeling like a ten-ton bitch. “It only takes forty minutes to get to Newport Hills, with traffic. I’m thinking that countertop was all wrong. My bed is much more comfortable.”

We spent the next hour exploring every inch of each other like curious, untamed primates. He wanted to know exactly what I liked and I discovered a sensitive area on his lower back that made him squirm when I kissed it. By the time we got into his car, I was sure we reeked of sex, but there was no time to wash his scent off of me. And I didn’t want to, anyway.

He reached across the space between us and grabbed my hand again. I stared at our fingers woven together and thought of my first boyfriend, Jimmy Nichols. Jimmy was the first boy, beside my brother, to hold my hand. When I asked him what the point of holding hands was, he said something to me I would never forget. “Holding hands is like giving someone a mini-hug.”

Luke must have thought I was broken if he thought I needed to be hugged so often. That’s when I realized he really didn’t know why I had shown up at his office yesterday morning. He didn’t know about the $250,000 lump sum plus stock options NeoSys offered Janice to retire. Luke didn’t know that while he was trying to put me back together I was trying to demolish him.

“I’m meeting with Imitex today to discuss Blaze,” he said, pulling me out of my pit of self-loathing. “I can’t have you sit in today. I have to wait until the full results of your background check come in. You understand, right?”

My hand jerked involuntarily and I squeezed his hand as if it were a ship’s wheel in a storm. He didn’t know why I was there because he hadn’t done a full background check on me. Well, if he didn’t know before, he would know soon. This meeting with Imitex might be my last opportunity to gather intelligence. My last opportunity to show Luke that I wasn’t the broken girl he thought I was.

“You do understand, don’t you?” He repeated his question as he turned onto the off-ramp in Newport.

Then it hit me. The hurt unraveling in my chest, strangling my words. Even after what we had just done in my bedroom, he still didn’t trust me. It was stupid and irrational, especially since he had every reason
not
to give me his trust. But it still hurt. And it hurt because I cared.

This was bad. I would have to pull myself off this assignment as soon as we got back to Seattle.

“Of course, I understand,” I replied, smiling as I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.
I understand that I have just blown my chance at a promotion. I understand that my parents will have to continue to scrape by on the meager sum I send them every month. I understand that you will soon find out who I truly am and you will hate me. I totally understand.

“Good,” he said, letting go of my hand as he pulled into the parking lot at Imitex headquarters. “Because I was just testing you.”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t bring you all the way out here to wait for me in the lobby. I want you in the meeting with me. This is a huge project and you need to know everything if you’re going to be part of the team.”

He rolled the car into a parking space and killed the engine.

“So… you
did
do the background check?”

“More thorough than the background check I just did on you an hour ago, if you can believe that.”