True Deceptions (True Lies) (21 page)

“I—uh, remember, I’d like to take it slow.”

“If anything makes you feel uncomfortable, you can tell me to stop,” he said against her neck.

Her location on his lap provided the perfect view of his desktop. She gave him an encouraging moan and glanced over every paper she could. Sales numbers and invoices and sales meeting minutes and what looked like a British phone number. She committed it to memory and continued to allow playful sounds to escape her throat to encourage him to remain in the same position.

His computer screen had a blue bouncing ball blocking her view of the program running. She shifted in his lap and bumped his mouse. The screensaver disappeared, leaving a breakdown of the drones Simon ordered. Simon must have made the call when they were at the marina. Had he seen Dane kiss her? Probably. His timing had been too perfect. He could be looking in the window from the parking lot below right now.

He probably wasn’t very happy with her right now, but that made it even more necessary that she came back with the information he wanted.

Dane’s hands started moving up her back. She placed a kiss on the top of his head and then saw exactly what she needed. A yellow Post-it on the far side of his desk with the word “NETOPS-35.” Under the SPAWAR Integrated Cyber Operations Pillar Contract, AC4S provided Network Operations—NETOPS—support to Department of Defense customers. Cassie understood their systems, especially the thirty-fifth protocol. They were one step behind the security systems she’d been working on. If this was the security system on the drones they were ordering, she could reprogram them without too much trouble. That was all she needed to know.

She leaned away from him and kissed the tip of his nose. “I need to use your bathroom.”

His breathing was heavy, and she felt his hardened attraction to her when she shifted off his lap and stood.

Ugh. She had to leave this situation before he asked for more than she cared to give.

“I have everything I need. I’ll walk you to the Ladies’ Room. We can leave from there. Why don’t we go back to your hotel so I can drop this off with Simon?”

“Simon asked for it?” She tried to sound surprised.

“He seems to have the best timing of anyone I know.”

More likely the best surveillance.

He pulled her back for a moment and whispered within an inch of her mouth, “Dinner?”

If they were making out in the daylight, they’d be in bed together at night. “I can’t. I promised Simon we’d talk about where our relationship was headed tonight.”

“I hope he’s headed to London, and you remain here.”

She brushed one of her fingers across his angled cheek. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you grew up in San Diego. You won a surfing competition at age thirteen and have only lived in London for two years.”

“Did the State Department give you that information? Or did you Google me?” He had her fictitious story down pat.

“A little bit of everything.” He had a devilish gleam in his eyes she’d never seen before.

S
imon purchased a beer and waited in the lobby for Dane and Cassie to return from their
date
. He hated
feeling so out of control with his emotions. Cassie was a liability at work, his Achilles heel. He couldn’t dampen his attachment to her, so he had to make sure she was safe. And the idea of Dane’s hands on the woman he loved was more than any man should have to bear.

Dane returned Cassie to the hotel at a quarter past two. His arm encircled her waist. They both looked too happy and comfortable together. Although Dane’s poaching of Simon’s girlfriends in the past had never bothered him, the man needed to stay away from Cassie. His kiss on her cheek had almost forced Simon to storm Sausalito like a platoon at Normandy, but Cassie had handled herself perfectly. How could she use her body as a tool after being assaulted at the prison? Was it an act? Or was she falling for Dane?

No. She cared for him, not Dane. He could feel it in her actions and words. That didn’t fade so easily, and she wasn’t the type to shift her attention. At least, he didn’t think she was.

Dammit. She has me tied up in knots
.

She took the furthest spot at the table from Simon’s chair. Dane sat between them, grinning like the winner he wasn’t.

He handed Simon a large envelope. “Here’s the information you requested. We’ll send everything to the address you provided.”

The envelope would contain a few sheets of useless paper that provided no important details of the actual transaction. Simon would send an encrypted email to him later to confirm all the details, including the shipping logistics to a transfer location in France.

“Did you kids have a nice lunch?” Simon asked, not wanting the details, but craving them anyway.

Dane placed a hand over Cassie’s. “It would have been better if we didn’t get sidetracked.”

“Business comes first.”

Cassie visibly gritted her teeth at his comment. She still had no clue how much more she mattered to him than any assignment. Right now, however, was not the time to tell her.

“For you maybe. I enjoy the occasional moment of pleasure.” Dane rubbed her hand and looked at her as though they were lovers.

She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at Dane, but she didn’t deny anything. And she shouldn’t. Dane had marked her neck like an adolescent boy with zero control—more to piss Simon off than to claim Cassie. Simon swallowed his anger. Dane never made it past her neck. That was obvious from her unruffled demeanor.

Simon couldn’t be mad at either one of them. He’d directed Cassie to find the information in Dane’s office about the security codes. This was her first chance to help in the assignment. She didn’t deserve him second-guessing her work tactics.

It still didn’t make him feel better. He had murderous intentions where Dane was concerned.

If she found something they could use, she should display Dane’s sloppy hickey as a kill mark. Right now, however, she looked as though she needed some fresh air away from both of them.

“Cassie, why don’t you go relax after the long flight and what appears to have been a
boring
morning. There’s a spa on the third floor. They’ll fix your hair, nails, and give you a massage. We have dinner reservations at seven. I’ll meet you in the suite at six thirty.”

She nodded to Simon with a half smile twisted by a bit of attitude. Her smile brightened toward Dane. “Thanks. You still owe me some time to play with those remote control airplanes.”

“Call me anytime.” When she stood to leave, Dane rose as well and moved to kiss her. She turned her head so his lips landed on her cheek.

His frown lifted Simon’s spirits. With a brief wave, she breezed out of the lobby.

Dane called the waitress over and ordered a beer. “Interesting tactic, following us. Your timing was perfect.”

“I enjoy it. Besides I needed the paperwork more than you needed to molest my girlfriend. She’s paid you back enough for your kindness. Now leave her alone. She’s confused, and she’s been through hell.”

“She’s confused, because she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings when she leaves you for me.” He smirked as though he’d already won her.

“Let me make myself clear. If you ever go near her again without my express permission, I’ll set up a Twitter account for Dane O’Brien, CIA prick, and provide detailed stories of our exploits together.” Their friendship had survived a lot of hardship, especially working for competing agencies, but it wouldn’t survive anything to do with Cassie.

“That’s the best you can do? Because I can think of at least five ways to make you suffer and none of them involve lame Internet games.”

“Try me. I’m full of ideas.”

Their friendly competition had always ended in a round of drinks at the closest bar in whatever part of the world they’d been in. Now, however, hostility boiled through Simon’s pores. Cassie was not a prize. She was his destiny.

Chapter Seventeen

S
imon needed several more days in San Francisco to determine the modifications necessary to provide the North Koreans with their requested speci
fications. Dane offered to take care of Cassie while Simon worked with the engineers on specifications that Cassie had secretly drawn up. Simon would let him watch over her again when the polar vortex reached into hell.

After a beautiful dinner overlooking the bay, they returned to the hotel suite. She seemed happier than she had since the incident in Jordan. She snuggled into his arms on the sofa. The light in her eyes shined brighter again, and even her bruises were fading. He lifted her chin and pulled at the small bandage covering her stitches.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m removing your stitches this evening.”

“You? Do you have training?”

“Sure.” He’d taken a required medic course several years ago. Nothing in depth, but he could remove stitches easily enough. “Let’s keep ourselves out of the local hospital database. Admit it, you could easily hack into it and find medical records on anyone you want.”

She shrugged. “Who would want my medical information?”

“You’d be surprised.”

She tried to pull away, but he caught her before she could stand up. “Let me go, Simon.”

“I thought you trusted me.”

“With things you have training in. Not with cutting out stitches.”

“Wait here. That’s an order, not a suggestion.”

He released her.

She crossed her arms over her chest, but remained seated. “If you hurt me—”

“It might hurt a bit. Stop being a baby.” He rummaged through his suitcase and found his first aid kit—a little more advanced than a kit found in a normal household. He pulled out small scissors in a sterile package and a pad of alcohol.

“Come over here. Sit on the bed so you’re lower.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, and he pulled a chair over to face her. Two tiny stitches held her skin together just under the curve of her chin. The wound had healed well. He gave credit to the medical personnel at the jail. If they’d just bandaged it, she would have ended up with a deep scar.

“Do you want me to distract you, or are you tough enough?”

“I’m okay. Go ahead.” She glowered at him but remained seated.

He dabbed the alcohol over the stitches, causing her to take a swift inhalation of air.

“Shit.” She hissed.

“Nice mouth.”

“I’m sorry. It burned more than I expected. Can we do this later?” She bit her bottom lip and swallowed hard. The actions focused his gaze and his hunger on her mouth.

He leaned in and kissed her. Her sigh caught him off guard. Any more kisses and he’d forget all about her chin. “Suck it up, Watson.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Like the trouper she was, she let him do it.

Then she examined his work in the bathroom mirror. “I guess you did okay,” she said with a frown.

He kissed her and then tucked her into bed.

Just minutes later she was asleep, and he was contacting his men in Europe about transporting the drones into France under the radar of any customs officers.

O
nce the order was complete, Dane invited them to the demonstration area outside the Pelican headquarters. He set up the UAV and handed Cassie the controller.

He wrapped his arms around her again, for
safety
reasons. She struggled to fly it straight, pitching it toward the wall of the building. He brought it down and let her try a different type of drone, but kept her close to him while she flew.

Simon could see Cassie’s frustration rise, but he didn’t step in. She needed to shut down Dane’s advances on her own for him to back off permanently. The machine ascended several times straight up and hovered over the parking lot.

He tried to control the machine while she worked the remote, but he underestimated her abilities. A faint smile flitted across her face. Dane, however, was unaware of this change in her confidence as he was still holding her from behind. Somehow, she managed to take it over the harbor, dive bomb a boat, and crash it into the sea, from what Cassie described later in a play-by-play account of the accident. Her view of the scene through the goggles ended when the UAV smashed into the waves.

“Enough.” Dane pulled the controller out of her hands. “Stop. You broke a twenty thousand dollar machine.” He finally lost his magically cool demeanor.

Cassie moved to Simon’s side. Her head rested on his shoulder.

“You’re the idiot that allowed her to fly an expensive model without proper training. I’d fire your ass if it was my company.” He wrapped an arm around her. He could feel the vibrations of her laughing uncontrollably into his shoulder. “It’s okay, angel. Dane is an ass.”

Dane’s phone rang, and he began apologizing to someone. The apology was cut off every few words by someone screaming in the other phone. When he hung up, his eyes narrowed on Simon. “You owe me, Dunn. If you’ll excuse me, I need to smooth the feathers of the Coast Guard commander driving over here with what’s left of the machine. I’ll be surprised if we don’t receive a fine and a citation for illegally flying over civilian airspace.”

Cassie’s face remained tucked in Simon’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Dane waved her apology off with a flick of his wrist. Game over. He wouldn’t be going after her after this performance. He liked his job and his ability to track arms deals from the comfort of a corporate expense account.

“Come on, I’ll buy you some lunch.” Simon led her back to the parking lot.

As soon as her door closed, Cassie started laughing again—a huge laugh coming from the deepest center of her lungs and reverberating throughout the car. “Oh my God, that was the most fun I’ve had since I was a kid.”

“You do understand that you’re now stuck with me. I don’t think Dane will ever want you near him again.”

“That makes it even more perfect. He gave me a hickey for your benefit, not caring what it did to my personal reputation
or
my psyche after being molested in jail. I have zero guilt.”

“Good. What did you think about the handling of that quadcopter, before you kamikazed it?”