Early the next morning, Cenobia could hear Glori and a night guard murmuring downstairs as she stood dressed for work in her bedroom doorway with a cold bottle of water and a guava in her hands. She stared down the hall at the closed door of her home gym and listened to the creak and crash of the Nautilus machine like it was delivering Morse code. When a few seconds of silence from the gym turned into ten and then thirty, she rolled out the tension in her shoulders and was glad for the coolness of the bottle in her sweaty palms.
With a final calming breath, she crossed the hallway in her heels. And timed it perfectly. It looked like she’d just arrived and hadn’t been stalking Roman when he opened the door.
“We’ll be leaving for the factory in half an hour,” she announced as he took a step back, startled.
Cenobia forget what she’d planned to say next.
Roman Sheppard was wearing the shortest shorts she’d ever seen. They were olive green and they overlapped at the sides, giving room for his thigh muscles—his thick, bulging, delineated thigh muscles—to flex and move. His sculpted legs had little hair this high up and his skin, sleek over muscle and paler than hers, showed a maroon flush that disappeared beneath the nylon fabric. She wondered how far up that flush traveled.
“Cenobia?”
“Hmm?” Just the lightest swath of shiny cloth separated her from...
“Cenobia!”
“¿Mande?” she jumped, her eyes skirting up him. His black t-shirt was sweat soaked and showed off the mounds of his chest. He had a night’s worth of shadowy scruff. His hair was spikey and dark with sweat. It made his green eyes brilliant.
Warrior prince Roman Sheppard had slept in her home and this is what he looked like after rolling out of bed and working out.
He gave one fierce breath out of his nose, as hot as a fire-breathing dragon. “I asked if you needed anything else.” He looked annoyed and amused and maybe, just maybe, a little aroused.
She was ogling him in her hallway.
“Sorry,” she said quietly, holding out the bottle and fruit. “I wanted to catch you before things got weird.”
She surprised a huff out of him. “Nice job,” he murmured.
They could hear their employees talking downstairs. But he took the guava and water, leaned against the doorjamb, and opened the bottle, taking a long drink while watching her. In the morning sunlight, his eyes looked as cool as the flesh of a lime.
She simmered. She let him stare at her in her starched white blouse buttoned to the neck, a charcoal-flannel skirt with a peplum-kick, a bedazzled zebra pin and killer silver heels. It was only fair. She’d been measuring all men against Roman Sheppard since he’d rescued her.
She was a mathematician and engineer, so the equation made sense. Take a handsome twenty-six-year-old war hero and have him rescue an eighteen-year-old girl, have him treat her with respect, admiration, and care during the worst of circumstances, and, yes, a painful crush will result.
But then...turn him into a lost Spanish prince. A prince who asks for help for a family he’s known for a few weeks. Add that he’s the kind of man who saves a trailer full of women smuggled into Dubai and a human rights activist kidnapped in Colombia. Then multiply all of that with ten years of notes that prove him to be funny and conscientious and empathetic and willing to learn and desperate to take care of his family and his community.
What does that painful crush become then?
“Did you sleep okay?” she asked. He was in her home. She wanted him to like it.
“Yeah,” he rumbled. But his eyes, warming, said something different. “You?”
“I slept fine.” Once she’d slung off the pillow she’d buried her face in so he wouldn’t hear her, she’d slept the limp, sexually gratified sleep of the dead.
Those plush, perfect lips that fit itself to the guava had turned her nickname into pornography. Those strong, white teeth that bit into the green rind had branded sex into her body in spots she’d never imagined were erogenous.
I can’t, Cen. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to.
What did the math equal when your painful crush perhaps had a bit of a crush, too?
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said softly, with all the honesty in her.
“Me, too,” he said, voice deep and low like it was a secret they shared as he wiped his soft, shining lips with his wrist.
“Pues, bueno.”
She’d served him breakfast and, hopefully, circumvented his retreat. She wanted him. Madre de dios, she wanted him with a hunger and clarity that ached. But she empathized with how complicated the wanting could be in these circumstances, surrounded by employees and orbited by danger.
More urgently than desiring him, she wanted to get to know him.
“Be ready to leave in half an hour.”
She turned, but she didn’t have to see his face to hear the smile-not-smile in his voice.
“Sí, señorita,” he said, slow and gruff.
Last night, he’d called her baby girl.
She imagined a relationship that could include both was a great place to start.
Later that morning when Cenobia handed out the safety goggles just outside the swinging doors of the assembly floor where La Primera was being manufactured, she planned on going straight to the plant’s general manager to discover what was going on with the cobots, the machines necessary to ensure manufacturing could meet demand. But when Roman slipped on his goggles and said, “Lookin’ forward to finally seeing this car I heard about thirteen years ago,” she figured they could take the long route to the manager’s office.
Last night’s interviews of the catering staff and surveillance tapes of the ballroom hadn’t revealed more about the threatened attack. Glori and the team were talking circumspectly to those on those guest list today. They were also building a plan to monitor Rodriguez’s movements and communications.
Roman was by her side and she fervently believed everyone in her home last night was doing everything they could to protect her. She was even beginning to doubt her fears that someone close to her was working against her—Sheppard Security had yet to find proof of a leak.
So she could lose herself in the moment as she explained how the interaction of an electric motor, gasoline engine, and a braking system captured energy and used less gas to a gorgeous, dark-haired man who watched her with absolute focus in a fitted navy-blue suit with a chest-defining waistcoat and a chocolate paisley tie.
As she went into regenerative braking systems, he looked around. Even her perfect warrior prince had a breaking point.
He pointed up into the air with his burned hand. “I thought it was going to be loud.”
It was a better compliment than the one about her eyes.
“We built a plant that is people focused; it’s quiet, light filled, and easily altered,” she said at a normal volume. There was noise—the buzz of drills, the whish and whizz of air compression, chatter—but it wasn’t the ear-splitting roar of automation one usually encountered in car manufacturing. The ceiling of the assembly floor was high and ringed with windows that filled the factory with natural light, giving an expansive feel different than cramped and halogen-flooded factories. “Rather than relying on fixed lines and technology bolted in place, we have cobots that work alongside our people and can be moved, added, or stored, depending on car demand.”
Cars in various stages of production moved on individual, motorized dollies in an S-line along the floor. Absent were rolling belts and huge robotic arms. “Because there are no hoses or electric cables, cobots can be wheeled wherever they’re needed. Our lines can be effortlessly lengthened or shortened, depending on demand, and when we add a new car to our hybrid collection, we can change the line in a weekend. In other plants, that effort takes months and millions.”
The furrow on his brow, the lines of his concentration around his eyes, were nearly as pleasurable as his kisses. “I always thought total automation was faster and cheaper.”
Cenobia smiled. “Not when you’re trying to appeal to customers whose car-buying tastes change as quick as the flavor of the month.” She paused behind a plexiglass wall to watch cobots hold parts to the chassis while workers welded. Sparks flew and she saw Roman’s hand stutter out before he pulled it back.
She tilted her head and glanced at him from under her lashes. I saw that.
He hooked his thumbs into his pockets and shrugged.
She nodded to a quiet corner of the factory just beyond where they were standing. “Want a closer look?”
“Try and stop me,” he said.
Behind a series of guardrails sat several rows of unassuming cars. Soon, the cars would be transported to a holding garage where they would wait to be disseminated throughout Mexico and the world after their big reveal at the Frankfurt Auto Show.
The three guards stayed beside the guardrails as Cenobia and Roman walked toward a shiny red model.
“Mexicans like small cars that don’t feel small,” she said as her fingers petted over the subcompact sedan. Hola, niña. “So, we made sure La Primera had a roomy backseat and a large trunk.”
She patted the trunk lid, proud of the car’s proportions. The four-door looked like a good-sized sedan that had been shrunk by a third.
She came around to open the front passenger door and nodded at Roman. He opened the driver-side door and leaned down to look inside. “We packed the car full of budget-plush amenities like faux leather, driver-assist warnings...” she went on, pointing out all the details. Then she straightened and relaxed her hands on the roof. Roman did the same. “But what’s truly revolutionary is what we packed under the hood: our 2.0-liter engine will provide class-leading fuel economy of fifty-two miles per gallon while delivering one hundred fifty horsepower. No one else has been able to offer than kind of conservation and power at the price we offer it.”
His concentration had her going into pound-feet of torque and kilowatts of lithium battery power before she realized it. She stopped herself because he wasn’t going to.
In the quiet, he kept staring. She was swept back to last night, when he held her face in his hands and mesmerized her with a look of naked desire.
“Most people don’t actually do the country-saving at thirty-one that they dreamed of doing when they were eighteen,” he finally said, his words low enough to vibrate over the hood of her car.
It was a lovely thing to say. But Roman had lost track of the company he kept. “You and your brother saved the Monte del Vino Real before you were thirty,” she said, folding her hands together. “Your sister reinvigorated it before thirty as well. And you received the Medal of Honor when you were just twenty-six.”
His brother had planted a new vine to improve the fortunes of their winegrowing kingdom, and he and Roman had wrested control of the kingdom from their greedy, do-nothing father. Their sister Sofia had launched a winery that revolutionized the kingdom’s tired winemaking techniques and opened the door for a host of new wineries that brought tourists, jobs, and a much-needed vitality to the once-sleepy village.
While a squad leader in Iraq, Roman had singlehandedly saved his squad when they were ambushed. Not one of his men had been injured and they’d been able to extract the valuable target who’d been the goal of their mission and whose information had helped to thwart other attacks.
But instead of agreeing with her, Roman looked away and twisted that thick gold ring on his finger. Had he been in contact with his family since he’d been here? She again felt the pang of pulling him away.
“I’m sorry you’re here when you have so much going on in the Monte. I hope they’re managing okay without—”
“They’re fine,” he said, still focused on the other end of the assembly floor. “I’m just the muscle.”
Was he kidding?
Her thoughts were interrupted when she saw Edgar Tena, the plant’s general manager, come around the guardrail. Cenobia introduced them, then Edgar led them all to a group of huge crates stacked in an empty spot of the factory. Cenobia quickly explained to Roman that these were the cobots they’d been planning to add to the line to manage the deluge in orders they expected in a month. Initial projections had them selling three hundred thousand cars in the first year.
Beside one opened crate was a machine that looked like a bent arm with a tray for a hand.
“We were uncrating and going through the initial tests for shipping integrity when we saw a wire sticking out,” Edgar said. Tall and skinny in round glasses, Edgar believed in hybrid technology more fervently than she did. “It took us a while to trace what it was, but we found it.”
He picked up a nearby laptop and hit some buttons. The cobot that would lift heavy manifolds and give them to the workers began to move. Then he leaned over and hit a large red button on the side of the machine.
Nothing happened.
Feeling a slow burble of dread in her stomach, Cenobia crossed her arms and chewed on her bottom lip.
“What’s wrong?” Roman asked.
“This a kill switch,” Edgar explained. “It allows the worker to shut the machine down quickly if it misbehaves. Without it, a glitchy machine could hurt someone.”
“Those buttons don’t come standard,” Cenobia said, doing a quick calculation of the number of machines they’d gotten in the most recent shipment. “We pay extra for them in case our network gets hacked. Invading our system would be the easiest way to sabotage the line.”
Sabotage. There. She’d said it out loud.
She saw Roman check their surroundings, then shoot a look at the guards, who’d heard Cenobia. They stepped away and started relaying information over their earpieces as Roman stepped closer to her.
“How many machines have been compromised?” she asked, dreading the answer.
“We don’t have a full count, yet,” Edgar said. “But at least a third of what we’ve tested so far.”
Cenobia sucked in a breath.
“How bad is that?” Roman asked.
Even in this, now, he was beautifully soothing to look at. “We need to add these machines to the line in order to meet the demand we’re anticipating,” she said. “Without them...”
Her words dropped off as she met Edgar’s eyes. This was really bad.
With the launch of La Primera, they were trying to do more than add an affordable hybrid car to the marketplace. They were also trying to prove that Mexico and its people were as capable of designing, engineering, and producing a quality car as any foreign company. As brown, Spanish-speaking mestizos who were always underestimated, this launch had to be more perfect than perfect. Delays in production and shipping would only feed the stereotypes that already existed. If Cenobia failed, the legend of La Primera—the first car for Mexicans, by Mexicans—would become another bad gringo joke and would give one more excuse for Wall Street to undervalue Mexican companies and megabanks to continue withholding access to affordable credit.
The personal threats to her safety were widening to include attacks against her company and country.
Close to her side, Roman asked, “Have you contacted the distributor? And gone over the shipping manifest? When could these have been tampered with?”
“It would have been in Mexico,” Edgar said.
“Then, for the time being, we’ll arrange to have our own couriers meeting shipments at the border and traveling with them.”
Roman looked to Cenobia for affirmation, and she gave it with a quick nod.
Don’t waste your brain power on this, he’d told her repeatedly. Now, she truly understood the value of that advice. And the value of the man standing beside her. It was going to be an Olympian task getting these machines fixed in time. Roman—his team, his efforts, his presence—allowed her to focus fully.
“Edgar, continuing testing and make a list of the damaged machines in terms of priority,” she said. “The manufacturer can send us blueprints or we’ll fly in a couple of their engineers, I don’t care which, just contact them to...”
She ticked off marching orders as she led Edgar, Roman, and the trio of guards back to the plant management offices.
Cenobia worked late into the night securing the top roboticists from Trujillo Industries, the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, and the cobots’ German manufacturer to find and fix the damaged machines. Checking for further sabotage and repairing the damage was going to be slow and intricate work, and she needed the very best starting the task immediately if the cobots were going to be up and running in time to take the flood of orders expected after the Frankfurt Auto Show.
She refused to panic. The German manufacturer, a young robotics firm that had planned to piggyback its initial public offering on La Primera’s success, was so horrified by the sabotage that two of their engineers were already on their way to Mexico.
Through the day and into the night, she was soothed by the quiet murmur of Roman’s gravelly voice. He was working from the couch in her assistant’s office to tighten factory security, develop a new strategy for investigation, and discover who messed with her machines.
It was past midnight by the time they entered her kitchen from the garage, Roman with his snow-white shirtsleeves rolled up as he held his jacket and Cenobia carrying her black heels. Roman had grumbled about how she should keep flats or slippers in her office as she’d walked barefoot down to her car, and Cenobia had smirked at his use of “flats.” She slumped on a bar stool at her grey-granite kitchen island as Roman briefly spoke to the third-shift guards, then went to her fridge, pulled out the catering containers neatly stacked in there, and frowned as he opened each one. He found the two that were apparently the least objectionable and stuck them in her microwave.
When he turned toward her, Cenobia had pulled the band out of her high ponytail and was running her fingers through her hair. Her hair was too long and heavy to wear down, and she was too busy to bother with a cut that needed daily styling. She began to plait it over one shoulder.
He turned back to the cabinets.
She enjoyed watching him, unobserved, as he got a glass, filled it with water, and drank deeply. The muscles in his forearms, exposed by his rolled-up sleeves, flexed, and the large luxury watch and leather cord around his wrist showed off his arm’s thickness.
Every time this perfectly put-together man rolled up his sleeves, it stirred something primal in her. That she was seeing him this way in her home, in the middle of the night, while he made himself comfortable in her kitchen and warmed them food, was better than her fantasies.
The microwave trilled that the food was ready. Roman clicked his glass down on the granite. “We need to have a conversation about getting you someplace safe,” he said abruptly.
Cenobia’s hands slowed as she tied the band around the end of her braid. “I am someplace safe.”
He opened the microwave and pulled out the cartons. “Safer.”
As he opened cabinets until he found plates, emptied the cartons, fussed in the silverware drawer, she realized he was purposely keeping his back to her.
“What are you saying, Roman?”
He rested his fists, curled around the silverware, on the countertop. The position pulled the white shirt tight at his shoulders and highlighted the inverted pyramid of his torso. With the shirt tucked in and the camel leather belt grasping his slim hips, his navy pants perfectly defined his hard, round...
“I’m saying we should get you hidden and keep you there until we figure out who’s responsible.”
Cenobia breathed through the concrete “no” that instantly filled her. “You said yesterday that wasn’t the mission.”
“The mission has changed, Cenobia.”
“Why?”
He turned around with the plates and she wondered how he could look so glorious—white shirt and tired eyes and short hair mussed on top—when he was saying what he was saying. “Why?” he said low, practically growling it, like he was holding on to patience as he put her plate in front of her. He put his plate down and sat on the bar stool next to hers, one shoe on the floor and one on the rung. “Because we’re playing whack-a-mole right now.”
Roman and Glori had had a brief meeting with Cenobia that evening. They were still gathering intel, but the team had assessed quickly that the sophistication and subtlety of the sabotage was totally outside of Las Luces Oscuras’ regular MO. Which left them with the uncomfortable possibility that there might be more than one bad guy in play.
“Maybe there’s a leak and maybe there’s not,” he said, looking at her intently. “Maybe they had inside information to know exactly which shipment to hit or maybe they didn’t. Maybe a motherfucking drug cartel wants to stop you from launching your car, or maybe it’s the Mexican government.”
The knob of his volume went up slowly as he spoke.
“There are too many maybes and I’m...” He licked his bottom lip. “I’m worried about you.”
When Roman looked at a person like that, he didn’t need a gun to be lethal.
Suddenly, she was aware of how late it was. She was aware that if she slipped off her stool, she could lean on him and soothe his worry. She was aware that she didn’t care who saw them.
“If I was another client,” she asked softly, “...would you make me hide?”
“Yes,” he said immediately. He pursed his mouth. “Maybe.” That mouth. “Fuck,” he said. “I don’t know.”
His eyes were heavy lidded with honesty. “It’s hard to think clearly with you, Cenobia.”
She heard what he wasn’t saying.
Cen.
The thing growing between them was beginning to have shape and density. It was more incredible, more unbelievable, than anything she could have fantasized.
It was more terrifying than anything she could have imagined.
Her rescuer, CEO and warrior prince Roman Sheppard, was black text under an email subject head or a strong, hasty scrawl on a card or an image she pinned on a secret Pinterest board titled The Prince’s Dirty Mouth.
That was a secret she would take to her grave.
But Roman, the man, was flesh-and-blood sitting in her home, seeming to want her and not want her with the same equal pull because of the ferocity of his honor.
She had something she had to show him.
He needed to know. More importantly, centering herself because she had to, she needed to know how he would react.
“I can’t leave,” she said definitively, using the shadows under the island to slip her hand into his. He instantly gripped her fingers. Why had no one told her about the glory of handholding? “There’s too much to do. We need to get the cobots back online, Vasquez is still agitating to push back the launch, the team is still putting together the details... If I left now, you might as well shoot me.”
His hand squeezed hers tighter. “Don’t say that.”
“Then keep me safe,” she murmured. “I trust you.”
She slipped her hand from his then turned to pick up her fork, jabbing it into the pasta he’d warmed. He watched her for a moment more before he turned and picked up his fork as well.
She did trust him. When she had an opportunity to show him what he needed to see, she would know whether she could trust him absolutely.