Chapter Fourteen

That evening Meg was invited around to Kate and Will’s place for dinner. She tended to hang out with them a couple of times a week, but an “official invite” meant that there was a guarantee of good food because Will was cooking. He was in the kitchen when she let herself into the apartment. Meg took a seat at one of the barstools, propped up her chin on her hand, and watched him. He was doing something with vegetables. Meg had no idea what. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t cook to save her life.

Could Chance? Meg scowled at that thought. She’d spent the better part of the day thinking and fretting about him. She’d promised herself that her thoughts would be Chance-free tonight.

“Is that scowl directed at me?”

Will was paused with his knife hovering over a tomato. Meg shook her head. She was very fond of Will, hardly ever scowled at him.

“Nope.”

“You look peaky,” he said.

“I feel peaky,” Meg replied, and she was fully aware that she sounded sorry for herself.

“This is what happens when you stay up all night,” Will said. “Kate spent most of yesterday napping. She’s been grumpy all day.”

“I know,” Meg said. “I spent the day with her.”

“But not the night before,” Will said. “The night where there was no Netflix binge. The night she spent plugged into the servers at KIT.”

Meg winced. “She told you?”

“She’s an awful liar,” Will said. “Always has been.”

“Not to be that guy,” Meg said. “But I did not know she was planning on staying there all night. I would have totally talked her out of it.”

“I know that,” Will said. “What I don’t know is what’s going on with this Chance character.”

“You and me both,” Meg said.

“Let’s eat,” Will suggested. “Then we talk.”

Dinner was, as usual, marvelous, and Meg ate more than her fair share. Kate ate very little. Mostly, she picked at it. Meg knew why. Kate had asked for details of the first interview at lunchtime, but Meg had told her very little. For maybe the first time in her life, Meg didn’t want to share what she had discovered with her best friend. Was it because she was embarrassed? Because Kate had clearly been right? Somehow Chance was connected to X-Tech. The most likely scenario was that they had hired him. Why, Meg did not know. What he hoped to get from the whole thing, she didn’t know, either. What she did know was that she was now in a horrible quandary.

He was a liar.

He was using her.

And she was ridiculously and worryingly attracted to him.

Attraction was not a new thing for Meg. She’d had plenty of boyfriends and lovers over the years. But she couldn’t remember feeling so strongly for someone so quickly. Throughout the day her thoughts had flipped between a burning indignation at his betrayal, and a moment later, a smoldering excitement at the way he made her feel when he was near. She imagined exactly what she was going to say when she next saw him. She tried out conversation openers in her head. She thought of saying nothing. Just waiting until the whole thing unfolded. In short, Meg had no idea what the hell she was going to do. She needed help.

“Time to start talking, Meg,” Will said, once their plates were cleared away.

“What would you like me to say?” Meg asked.

“You could start with why you’re keeping secrets from us,” Will said.

Kate looked up at that. Something flashed over her face. Meg knew what it was. Her best friend was hurt. Guilt slithered along Meg’s spine. Kate was probably the most important person in Meg’s life. Meg did not want to cause her friend any worry over what was happening. And yet, she didn’t know how she was going to avoid it. They told each other everything. Meg knew then that Chance could not be the exception to that. Seemed he was going to be in her thoughts tonight, whether she liked it or not.

“Chance is up to no good,” she eventually said.

Kate snapped her fingers. “I knew it.”

“Are you really going to sing the ‘I told you so’ song?” Meg asked.

“Well, I did,” Kate said.

Meg slumped in her seat. “I know you did. Maybe that’s why I’ve waited to tell you the full, gruesome details. I’m…” She shook her head. “Embarrassed, I guess. Confused, too. It’s only been a few days since I met him, but it feels like it’s been a whirlwind, like it’s been nonstop since that night in X-Tech.”

“Embarrassed?” Will laughed. “I saw your Wonder Woman panties the very first time we met. While you were wearing them. We passed embarrassment on day one.”

“I saw her naked the weekend we first hung out,” Kate said. “I thought she was making a move.”

“You wished I was making a move,” Meg said, and Kate finally smiled.

That was enough for Meg to launch right in. She took a deep breath and told them everything. How the first interview had gone, including the whole lemon-cake issue, his office, the chronology, and then, the most maddening part, the fact that it wasn’t even his office, that someone from X-Tech had booked it for him. No, not just someone from X-Tech, but from the CEO’s office.

“He is working for them, then,” Kate said. “I knew it!”

“It looks that way.”

“It doesn’t make sense, though,” Will said. “If X-Tech really has stolen your work, and they’re trying to cover it up, why lead you into an investigation?”

“Maybe to find out what I know?” Meg asked.

“Chance has already done that,” Will said. “You told him everything almost straight away.”

Meg shot Kate a look. Kate shrugged.

“Do you tell Will everything we discuss?” Meg demanded.

“Yes,” Kate said.

“I’m never giving you a Netflix excuse ever again.”

“She won’t need one,” Will replied. “I’m turning the spare room into her office. She can stuff it full of computers and servers and whatever it is that keeps her at KIT.”

“That’s my room!”

“You’ll have to take the couch.”

Meg glared at them both. “This is not helping.”

“Let’s talk it through,” Will said. “That will help. You met Chance for the first time in X-Tech Towers. Did he tell you how he got in there?”

“No. But then, I didn’t tell him how I got in there, either.”

“He tracks you down the very next day,” Will continued. “He has information on you and Kate. He’s a PI. That makes sense. Finding people is his specialty.” He paused. “We’ll ignore the issue I have about anyone gathering information on Kate for now.”

“Not sure why the electric-blue flowers were necessary,” Kate added as she patted Will’s hand.

“To win her over,” Will said, entwining their fingers. “It’s a classic move. He disarms her from the very beginning with the flowers.”

“The flowers did not disarm me,” Meg said. She ignored the way her heart clenched at her friends’ show of affection. She ignored, too, the longing she felt somewhere deep inside to have some of that same affection for herself.

Kate snorted. “They’re still on your desk.”

“Should have dropped them in the trash,” Meg muttered.

“But you didn’t.”

“He tells you about his investigation,” Will continued, as if they hadn’t spoken. “Doesn’t tell you who hired him, though. You try and find out. You can’t crack his site. Has that ever happened before?”

“Of course,” Meg said. “There are plenty of sites that can’t be hacked. Kate might have spent the last year honing her skills, but she’s not that good and neither am I. They’re usually the big sites, though. A generic website like Chance’s? That should have been easy.”

“He’s got good security,” Will said. “So, let’s say that means someone from the company did that for him. Why? What could possibly be on that site that they don’t want you to see?”

Kate stood up and grabbed a pitcher of juice from the kitchen. She poured them all a glass. It was cold. Abruptly, Meg remembered the coolness of the water she’d drunk in the bar. How it had contrasted with the heat that had danced across her skin. Chance made her hot. She simply could not deny that.

“I have no idea,” Kate said as she sat back down. “It’s so frustrating! The forums aren’t giving me anything, either. No one recognizes the description of Chance. No one’s heard of his company. No one knows anything about him!”

“What I can’t work out is why he’s invited you into the investigation,” Will said. “If he is working for X-Tech, he’d already have a list of people at the competition. He could have gone and interviewed them himself. And X-Tech has already blocked all your attempts to lodge a complaint. They can just keep doing that. What are you going to do about it? You won’t take the money I offered for a lawyer.”

Meg shifted uncomfortably. “I can’t take your money, Will.”

Will waved her words away. “We can talk about that another time. The point I’m trying to make is that Chance doesn’t need you.”

“Maybe he just wants her,” Kate said.

Meg started at those words. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re really pretty, Meg,” Kate said. “Maybe he’s interested in you in that way. He did bring you flowers.”

“To disarm me, you said.”

She shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t.”

“You think he likes me?” Meg demanded.

Kate sighed. “You already know that he does.”

Meg thought about the looks they’d shared, the moments of silence. She thought, too, about how her heart rate seemed to be permanently elevated since she’d met Chance, elevated enough that her mother had messaged her to ask what the hell was going on.

“Today I was wondering if it was just me,” she said slowly. “Because I’m so attracted to him. Maybe all of the heat and the tension is just something I’m feeling?” She paused. “I don’t see how it could be, though. It’s too…”

“Intense?” Kate asked.

“Exactly.”

“I remember that,” Kate said. “It’s horribly confusing.”

Meg remembered how it had been for Kate and Will. She’d spent hours and hours talking Kate through her confusion. At the time, Meg had secretly thought that Kate should just confront Will with her feelings, be honest, make it clear what she wanted and what she expected. That was how Meg had always behaved with her previous partners. She understood now why Kate hadn’t. And yet, Kate and Will had spent weeks and weeks circling each other before anything had happened between them. Meg feared it was not going to be like that with her and Chance. Not if she didn’t get some self-control!

“He’s up to no good,” Kate said after a moment. “I’m suspicious of him. Suspicious of his motives. But if you have these intense sorts of feelings for him, there’s got to be a reason for it.”

“Biology,” Meg said.

“Maybe it’s something else,” Kate suggested.

Meg almost rolled her eyes. “Like what?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said. “I’m playing devil’s advocate here more than anything else. Not because I want to, but because you need me to. You remember how it was with me and Will. He was up to no good. We were suspicious of him.”

“I was not up to no good,” Will said.

“We thought you were,” Kate replied, squeezing his hand. “Same thing. It didn’t stop what happened between us, though. I remember trusting you, though I didn’t even know why. Meg trusts Chance already.”

“I do not trust him,” Meg said.

“You do,” Kate said. “You wouldn’t have told him about the ants otherwise. You wouldn’t have agreed to team up with him on this investigation. And you definitely wouldn’t be thinking about hopping into bed with him.”

“I am so not doing that.”

“Tell it to the judge.”

“Katie—”

“She has a point,” Will said.

“And the game plays itself in weird ways,” Kate added. “What if Chance is part of your game? What if you were meant to meet him?”

“Meant to meet him?” Meg did roll her eyes, then.

“If you subscribe to the idea that all atoms already knew their path when the Big Bang happened, everything that happens was always meant to happen,” Kate said.

“I don’t subscribe to that idea,” Meg said quickly. “It takes all the fun out of life.”

She snapped her mouth closed, trying to work through her thoughts, trying to express them in a way that made some kind of fucking sense. Did she trust Chance already? But then, how could she? He had done nothing to be considered even remotely trustworthy.

“I guess I just didn’t expect to feel this intensely for someone so soon,” she eventually said. “It’s only been a few days, but the emotions are so intense it feels like it’s been a lot longer.”

“He could be the guy who balances your crazy,” Will said.

“Okay, I don’t have a crazy to balance,” Meg said, even as her damn heart started thumping once more. How could she still think of Chance in that way when she knew he was lying to her? It was ridiculous! “And I’m not even convinced that Chance would do that.”

“Why not?” Kate asked.

“Because, I think he’s a bit crazy, too.”

“In what way?” Will asked. There was a note to his voice that made Meg sigh.

“Not in any way to worry about,” she said. “It’s…just…it’s going to sound strange, and I only got to thinking about it because of a conversation that I had with him, but there’s almost something of the mathematician to him.”

Will frowned. “Explain.”

“You know how you once said that you thought Kate and I only lived in the real world about half of the time?” Meg asked.

“I’ve said that more than once, and I believe my exact words were some of the time.”

“And I said to you, ‘that’s because our real world isn’t your real world.’”

“You said the real world was the world of numbers.”

“Yes.”

Will shrugged. “I still don’t understand what you meant.”

“Of course, you don’t,” Meg replied. “And Chance shouldn’t understand what that means, either.”

“But he does?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a private investigator,” Will said slowly. “He’d have to be analytical.”

“Being analytical isn’t enough,” Meg said. “And there’s other things that he’s said, almost like…slip-ups. I don’t know that I can explain it right,” she added. “But sometimes, I get this feeling that there’s something there, something about him that I’m not picking up on. And every time it comes to me, just on the edges of my awareness, it disappears before I can grab it.”

“It will click at some point,” Kate said.

“How long?” Meg asked, but the question was for herself more than for them. “Because I’ve thought about this all day, and I don’t see how I can just walk away from what’s happening here.”

“The investigation or Chance?” Kate asked.

“Both,” Meg admitted.

“You’re going to play the game right until the end?” Kate sighed.

“What other choice do I have?” Meg asked, and once more the question was for her alone.

She looked across at her friends. Their hands were entwined again. Meg’s chest tightened. She wanted to hold Chance’s hand. The desire to do that and more was stronger than any desire Meg had ever experienced before. She knew then, knew it deep inside, that at some point she would act on that desire and any others that came with it. It was going to be impossible not to.

A roll of the dice.

A spin of the wheel.

The flip of a card.

That was what was happening between them. It was what had been happening from the very start. Random emotions. Sparks of desire. In the end, it was a game of chance. Question was, who was going to win?