TOUCHING THE LOOSE fabric of her shirt, Tess flattened it out on her thigh. “Is there anything… you need to know?”
“You’re not doing that either,” Daire said without even giving the thought time to linger. “You are not my gal on the inside. You push too hard, he’ll be suspicious. You think about distracting him so he doesn’t think too much about what he’s saying, I’ll kill him.”
Distractions in Daire’s mind obviously equaled sex… or something related to it.
“If what I know can help you—”
“Did you forget that we’re all supposed to be on the same side?” he asked. “Harry and Garrick talk to him without me around. I don’t know what they know. They’re handling it.”
Tess would feel better knowing that Daire was involved; that he was the one handling it. He said Three had an agenda with her. If all he meant was sex, he could’ve said that. Expecting a man to try charming his way into her pants was one thing. If he had a larger agenda, she wanted to see it coming.
Daire was Olympus through and through, she just hoped that didn’t equal a blind spot where their backers, or his direct superiors, were concerned.
“I’ve watched you this week,” she said after the tension eased.
“Ditto.”
“When I can, when you’re with your guys… You’re so good at what you do. So patient and thorough.” She opened her palm over the fabric again. “I guess I already knew that about you from other areas you specialize in.”
“Please, no more sex talk,” he said, picking up his pen. “We’re alone in what was our home for weeks. And the door locks. I can only pretend for so long that I’m not thinking about stripping you naked and bending you over something.”
She smiled as he went back to work. “I miss it. Being here with you.”
“Suite your suitor’s got you in is bigger than ten Beasts.”
Not quite. Maybe. Though it was an area where no amount of size comparison would make a difference to how she felt.
“Doesn’t come with you though,” she said.
“Not being together was never gonna be easy. It’s a harder pill to swallow when I know I’d never be able to offer you what he can.”
He muttered the words like they were no big deal, but they hit Tess so hard she sprang to her feet. “Daire Canon, look at me,” she said, striding over to him. He did look up, probably because she’d never said his full name like that before. Crouching next to the dinette, she slid her hand up over his leg under the table. “I don’t give a damn about steam rooms and swimming pools. You know me better than that.” Better than she knew him. Tess had never lied about her identity… not exactly. “There’s a reason I called you my Heart and no flashy billionaire’s going to change that… Nothing will ever change that.”
A moment passed between them. They exchanged a long lingering look that reached inside her, pulling her to him. She wasn’t sure she had anything more to give. Her infatuation with him was insane. He was the closest thing to a friend, to a boyfriend, that she’d ever had. But the obsession was less about what labels she could put on him and much more about how he consumed her whenever they were close. Even when they weren’t, she thought about him, fantasized about him. Everything was him.
Daire inhaled. “You’re being sentimental and all I can think about is how close your mouth is to my cock.”
Sometimes he managed to prove that Danny wasn’t as far from their present as it seemed. Daire smiled, but she smacked his thigh and rose to slide into the dinette opposite him.
“I’m not allowed to talk about sex, but you are?”
His pen was working on the paper again. “Oral doesn’t count.”
“Wish I knew that when I walked in,” she said. “Do you know how fast I can get this bikini off?”
He barely lifted his head when he made quick eye contact. “Yeah, ‘cause I’ve taken it off you before.”
She exhaled. “We’re talking about sex again.”
“You can’t help yourself.”
Except it was him who’d brought it up that time.
Laying her hands on the table, she slid down, stretching her legs to prop her bare feet on his seat at either side of him.
“Can I talk to you about something… serious?”
This time when he looked up, his concentration was intrigued. “You can talk to me about anything.”
“In confidence?”
Daire put down the pen and curved a hand around her ankle without breaking eye contact. “Everything between us is confidential.”
After following the clues and ending up at Olympus, she’d dealt with discovering her father and that the man she’d been sleeping with for weeks wasn’t really the man she thought he was.
Since they’d stopped moving and found this bolt hole, there had been more time to consider possibilities. Even unpleasant ones.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I… I didn’t want to cause trouble, to stir things up when I don’t have any resources at my disposal.”
“I’m a resource at your disposal,” he said, skimming his hand up her shin and around to cradle her calf. “Talk to me, Little Red.”
Opening her mouth, she pulled in a breath ready to burden him with what had been bothering her for weeks. Before she uttered a syllable, the door opened.
Her feet landed on the floor as she twisted to see Harry coming inside.
As soon as her father noticed her, his frown deepened. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.
“Talking,” she said, sort of wishing she’d done up the buttons of her shirt again. It wasn’t like she was indecent, though her father may wonder why she was so uncovered in the shade of the Beast. “What are you doing here?”
“Working,” Harry said, closing the door. “Like Ares is trying to do. My men don’t have time to entertain you.”
“No,” she said, sliding out of the dinette. “I am aware of that.”
“Tess,” Daire said, reaching across the table though he didn’t actually make physical contact.
When their eyes met, she smiled. “No big deal.” She turned away from him. “I’ll leave you guys alone.”
Harry stepped aside so she could get to the door. Once outside, on her own in the garage, she stopped. The glass-paneled garage door was open. Wide open. It had been when she went inside too. At that point, she hadn’t thought much about it. For some reason, in that new moment, the possibility of freedom was tempting.
She didn’t know how long she stood there wondering if it would be possible to build a life with nothing but the clothes on her back. It couldn’t have been long because someone said her name. When she turned, Harry was coming out of the Beast.
“I’m going,” Tess said, guessing he suspected her of eavesdropping.
“No, wait,” he said, closing the trailer door.
Now it was her turn to be suspicious. “What is it? What did I do now?”
“Nothing,” he said. It wasn’t like him to be anything other than confident, so the less than stern look on his face confused her. “Blunt is what I do.”
That didn’t really help her out. “Excuse me?”
“What I do… I have to be abrupt… I’m not required to be…”
“Subtle?” Tess hazarded a guess. “Because whatever you’re doing now is even less than that.”
For a few seconds, he continued to struggle both with his expression and his words. Eventually he straightened up and set a more assured look onto his face.
“I discipline my men. I give orders. I am certain. I don’t hesitate.”
Still confused, Tess glanced left and right. “Uh huh.”
“It’s been a long time since I had to communicate with anyone who didn’t work under me. The exception would be the Six, Zeus, and Poseidon, but I can’t be anything less than assured with them. It’s a sign of weakness to be… timid.”
“I’m sure all of this is completely true, though I have no idea why you’re telling me.”
He stepped closer. “You don’t work under me and you’re not a threat poised to destroy me.”
“Not last time I checked,” she said, folding her arms.
“You’re my daughter and I haven’t… It’s easier for me to occupy roles I know. Roles I’m familiar with. I’m used to objectives and targets.”
Her head moved side to side. “Still, I don’t get why…”
“There is no objective with you, and I am not familiar…” In a sign of discomfort, he shifted his feet and cleared his throat. “I don’t know how to be a father to a daughter.”
Tess might say he didn’t know how to be a father to a son either. Sure, he’d raised Daire, but raised him as a soldier rather than just his child.
“You wish I hadn’t been born. I get it. I do. In a lot of ways, it makes sense. I understand why. But it’s not an easy truth to accept. It stings, but that’s on me.”
“I didn’t say that,” he said, meeting her eye. “At the time, yes, I considered that it wasn’t best for Carrie to have you… But the time I stayed with you, while we lived as a family, that was the happiest time of my life.”
Quickly followed by what had to be one of the worse when she was taken and imprisoned at Olympus. From then on, she and her mother were used against him. Tess understood why she wasn’t his favorite person.
“I appreciate you saying that.”
She did. Though Tess wasn’t sure it changed anything. Figuring it was on her to alleviate the awkward moment, she backed up a step. If she slipped away, he could go back to whatever he’d been doing with Daire.
“You trust Ares,” he said.
Tess stopped. “Was that a question or a statement?”
“It’s a surprise,” he said, peering at her. “He didn’t tell you the truth of who he was and then led you to me.”
“You didn’t hurt me.”
“I could have,” Harry said. “If I didn’t hesitate, I would’ve killed you. That’s why he led you there, to punish me. Why did you forgive him so easily?”
Tess smiled. “It wasn’t easy. At the time, there were limited options. There still are. Where would I run to? If he wanted me dead, he could’ve killed me there in that room in front of you or any time before or since. Sometimes it’s better the devil you know.”
“But you didn’t know him. He was pretending to be someone else.”
“Funny thing about living your life on the run,” Tess said. “I’ve spent my whole life telling people I’m someone I’m not. Spent every day not quite telling the truth, even to people I cared about. I know what it’s like to be on the other side, to be concealing something that I wish I could share. I’ve had friends and boyfriends who speak of a future I know there will never be. I’ve been a liar my whole life.”
“You forgave him because you thought it would be hypocritical not to?”
“I forgave him because…” Tess wasn’t sure she could trust her father, but the truth wasn’t meant to benefit him. She told it in hope that the man inside the Beast would reap the rewards. “Because he has never had anything that wasn’t Olympus. He doesn’t know anything but the mission and the greater purpose. Doing what he did to me was shitty, but it was what you programmed him to do. Acquire a target, track the target, eliminate the target… The fact that he didn’t follow through on that last point is a testament to the man he is on the inside… not the operative you manufactured.”
Harry came a little closer. “You pity him.”
“No,” she said, her certainty unwavering. “Actually, in a lot of ways I envy him. Like you, he’s always had purpose. He’s achieving something with Olympus every day. My only objective was to never let myself care about anyone, to stay on the move, be unremarkable. I didn’t get to have hopes and dreams. I didn’t get to pursue a career. As you said, I can’t even expect simple pleasures like home and husband and kids. This is the life I’ve always had, and they say you can’t miss what you’ve never known… But when mom died, when I stopped to look and found myself completely alone, I had something to miss. Her. My support system. My only friend. My only link to who I really was. My history. Everything I was existed in her… and when I die, there won’t be anything of our life left.” She narrowed her eyes. “You can’t know what that’s like. You’ll always exist in Olympus, both of you will. The world won’t know your names, but your history is locked up in the institution. Me?” Tess smiled though it wasn’t out of joy. “I’ll simply fade away. It’ll be like I never existed… So, I guess, in the end you will get what you always wanted. Congratulations.”
Turning around, she started toward the door into the main house.
Harry spoke before she got there. “Do you want to grab a burger?” Tess stopped to look at him over her shoulder. “Nothing flashy, somewhere quiet.”
“This is Vegas.”
He shrugged. “Okay, somewhere busy and loud… We’ll bring Ares.”
“He’s working.”
“He’ll be working there as well. I value your safety, which means he does too… he won’t pass up the chance to get out the sphere for a while.”
Tess turned. “The Olympusphere,” she said. “He’s on Omega. Is he allowed burgers?”
“I give the orders,” Harry said, returning to the trailer to open the door and bark inside. “We’re going out.”
Daire appeared in the doorway. “Where are we going?” When he spotted her, he frowned. “You should be inside.”
“I’m coming with you,” she said. “We’re going to eat fat, juicy burgers.”
Daire’s gaze trailed down her body and back up. “In public?” She nodded. “You need to put on more clothes.”
“Agreed,” Harry said.
Daire and Harry were on the same page about a lot of things when it came to Olympus. They had their disagreements. Hence how she’d ended up between them in the Olympus Beta control room. It should be nice to be something else they could agree on. More unity meant less chance of something going wrong when it mattered.
But Tess rolled her eyes and groaned as she went inside. Women wore a lot less in a lot of public areas of Vegas. Not that she minded dressing to eat with her father. They hadn’t spent much time together and this was a chance for both of them to get to know each other. Either they’d forge a bond or realize they had nothing in common. However it worked out, she’d get an answer.
Spending time with Daire, in front of her father, that was going to be a more delicate path to tread.