Chapter Twenty-Eight

Meg knew the exact moment that Chance walked into KIT, and not least because it was not first thing in the morning. It was late afternoon. She was making her way down the stairs, surrounded by the members of her Python class. They’d spent the last hour going over the basics again, and they were all in good spirits. Meg was not. She’d been alternatively angry, annoyed, and hurt ever since she’d woken up. Chance turning up so late in the day only made those emotions stronger.

She came to a halt at the bottom of the stairs and watched as he walked into the store. He wore jeans and his stupid gray sweater. He looked ridiculously attractive. Meg narrowed her eyes on him. Curled up in Kate’s spare room last night, she’d wondered if, now that she knew who he was, her attraction to him would diminish.

It hadn’t.

Dammit.

He made his way across the store, smiling at the women as they passed. Meg was in no way surprised that they smiled back. He halted at Meg’s desk, eyes right on her, the smile changing slightly into something that Meg could only describe as hopeful. A multitude of emotions shot through Meg. Chief among them was a burning kind of anger and a burning kind of desire. It was a horrible combination. Meg was not a fan.

“Hey, Blue.”

That stupid nickname! Why had she ever thought it was appealing? She was going to change her hair the moment she got a minute to think. She’d go silver. It had been forever and a day since she’d rocked that color.

“Jack.”

His smile slipped into a frown. He moved forward. Meg stalked across the store to meet him. They halted in front of each other. The tension…it was there. Meg knew it would be. The fact that Chance was Jack Richards had not changed that, not for either of them.

“How are you?” Chance asked.

“Since you saw me yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m just peachy,” Meg said. “What about you, Jack? I have to say you don’t look great.”

He shrugged. “I had a late night.”

She ran her gaze over him. His hair was starting to grow out of the close cut. She could see the curls starting to unfurl. What would Chance look like with Jack Richards’s hair? Meg was extremely annoyed to realize that she wanted to find out. “Playing with ERQ?”

“Fixing ERQ.”

Abruptly, Meg remembered offering him a lesson in computer coding. Yep, she’d offered to teach Jack Richards how to make a virtual robot wave his hand. She winced as she crossed her arms. Chance looked down at the action. He visibly swallowed. A new emotion joined the others burning inside Meg. It felt something like triumph. There was a reason that she’d worn a tight, belly-skimming top today. Of course, she’d expected Chance to be waiting outside KIT when she’d arrived for work, not wandering in late in the afternoon!

“Blue…” he began

“I’m assuming you’ve come to talk to me about my work,” she snapped.

He did not take his eyes off her crossed arms. “That’s not the only thing I want to talk to you about.”

“What else could there possibly be?” Meg asked.

“I want to talk about us.”

“Us?”

Meg shot him a glare even as a traitorous thrill ran through her. It didn’t seem to matter to her body that this was Jack Richards and not Chance. It wanted him regardless. She let out a shaky breath as the memory of what it felt like to be held in his arms practically leaped into her mind.

He’d lied to her.

He’d stolen her work.

He was up to all sorts of things that she didn’t know about. And he was Jack Richards! She shouldn’t still want him in this way…but she did. How the hell was she supposed to handle the situation when it was so clouded by her emotions? But then, it had been that way from the very beginning, hadn’t it?

“You’ve got nerve,” she eventually said, mostly because she did not know what else to say.

“Blue—”

“Are you planning to talk about ‘us’ as Jack Richards or Jack Chance?”

He shrugged at that. “They’re one and the same.”

“They’re not even close.”

She pushed past him and stalked over to her desk. The electric-blue flowers were no more. Meg had thrown them in the trash this morning and replaced them with a huge box of cookies that she and Kate had been steadily working their way through all morning.

“Cookies?” Chance nudged the box, because, of course, he’d followed her over. Meg could feel him next to her. “You know what you really need?”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“Lemon cake.”

Her chest tightened. Meg clenched her fists. “I hate lemon cake.”

“You do not.”

“I absolutely do.”

“I’ll take a lemon cake.”

Kate’s voice emerged from behind a row of monitors. She stood up, flicking her honey hair behind her, and pushing her glasses up her nose. She had a tentative smile on her face. Meg shot her a warning look. Kate ignored it. She made her way around the monitors and over to Meg’s desk. Chance took full advantage of the situation.

“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” he said, holding out a hand. “I’m Jack.”

“I know who you are,” Kate said, her smile widening. “This is so embarrassing. I’m totally fan-girling, but you’re Jack Richards, and it sounds like you’re a total jerk, but you’re Jack Richards.”

A pained sort of look flashed over Chance’s face. Meg watched it with a reluctant fascination.

“You get this a lot?” she asked.

He shrugged again. “Less than I used to.”

“The beard?”

“The guns, too.”

Meg rolled her eyes.

“I never started a gaming department,” Chance said. “Didn’t want to create my own games. I’d solve the puzzle before I played them. Where’s the fun in that? But,” he added, “I hear that you’ve created something interesting. Maybe X-Tech should take a look at it?”

“At my work?” Kate breathed.

“Yeah.”

“That would be awesome…”

“Kate!”

Kate shot Meg a guilty look. Meg sighed. She understood why Kate was fan-girling, she did, but Chance was totally taking advantage of it.

“He left out the part where he knows about your game because he stalked us,” Meg said.

“In fairness, we stalked him, too,” Kate said.

“We couldn’t get into his site!”

“When he was Jack Richards, I mean,” Kate said. She shot Chance another tentative smile. “Meg used to follow you around the forums when we were younger. She had alerts set up on all your posts.”

“Kate!”

“Well, you did.”

Meg actually felt herself turn red. She mouthed something evil at Kate even as Chance laughed.

“We should talk about that.”

“We’re not going to talk about anything!” Meg snapped. Why was she the one on the defensive here? Why was Kate siding with him? Why did she feel so…so…scratchy!

“We can talk now, or we can talk tomorrow,” Chance said. “Or the day after that or after that. I’ll come back every afternoon until we do.”

“But will you bring lemon cake?” Kate asked.

Meg threw up her hands. She realized exactly what Kate was doing. Her best friend had turned into a ridiculous romantic ever since she’d met Will. The crazy woman was actually trying to wring a happy ever after out of this!

“Fine,” Meg said, and it was through gritted teeth. “We’ll talk now.”

Chance gestured to the door. Meg shot Kate a look as they passed by. Kate gave her a double thumbs-up. Meg did not return the gesture.

It was chilly out. Meg regretted the tiny top when the wind whipped across her skin. She crossed her arms over her body. Chance noticed her do it. He shrugged his sweater off.

“Take this.”

It smelled of him. The very same smell that Meg had been surrounded by all weekend. Part of her felt like she shouldn’t put it on, that by doing so she’d be well on the path to forgiving his deceitful ways. But the other part of her, the one that had slept curled up next to him, wanted the fabric around her. She was an idiot.

“Only because it’s cold,” she said.

He smiled. “My car’s over here.”

“Where are we going?”

“I already brought the lemon cake,” he said.

“Where is it?”

“At my place.”

Meg looked across at him. The wind whipped his thin tee. She could see the outline of those muscles he’d worked so hard to build. Why had he done that? What was it about Jack Richards that he’d tried to run from? She had to find out.

She got into the car. Chance’s smile remained as he started the car and music started. She looked down, a small cube, an MP3 player—self built by the looks of it—was attached to the grille. Meg recognized the song immediately. It was one of her favorite bands. She sighed. He was not making this easy.

It took them maybe ten minutes to drive to his apartment. It was in a nondescript building in the very affluent part of the city. Meg followed behind him in silence as he keyed in the building code and one in the elevator. It took them right to the top.

What did she expect from his apartment? That it would be all Jack Chance or all Jack Richards? Meg didn’t know. The moment she stepped inside, though, her question was answered. It was both of them.

“This looks like a cross between a monk’s cell and a supervillain’s paradise,” she said as she touched one of the light sabers hanging on the gray wall.

Chance watched as she wandered around the space. “Not a superhero?”

Meg eyed the neatly stacked collection of Star Trek and Dr. Who books. Damn him. “You’re a long way from being a superhero right now.”

“You said you wanted to be the villain.”

“I was wrong, wasn’t I?” Meg said.

Chance gestured for her to follow him through one of the doors branching off from the main room. She followed him into an office. He clicked his fingers. The tech, so much tech, came alive. Meg’s mouth dropped open slightly. This was where Jack Richards lived.

“I’ve wanted to bring you here since the day I met you,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you about your work, talk to you about mine, swap ideas, share interests…” He gestured around them. “Now you’re here.” He shook his head. “But I don’t know what to say to you, Blue.”

One of the screens was running a real-time feed from the X-Tech data center. Chance had programmed it to highlight key words. X-Tech…that place was so wrapped up in him, so wrapped up in them. How could Meg even begin to pull them apart?

“You don’t have a plan?” she eventually asked.

Chance visibly winced. “The last one didn’t work out so well.”

“I guess that depends what you were hoping to get from it.”

“I never imagined I would get you.”

Meg inhaled sharply. If she accepted that Chance was Jack, then she wouldn’t need to separate them, just accept them, but could she do that? After everything that had happened, could she get past it?

“Chance…”

“I would have given up my entire company to date you when I was younger,” he whispered. “And then some.”

Meg shivered. “Would you give it up now?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“Chance…”

“I’m serious,” he said. “I know we have a million things to discuss. I know you need answers. I know you deserve them. But right now, the most important thing I have to say to you is this: will you date me, Blue?”