THE DAY QUICKLY WENT from easy and relaxed to difficult and busy. Sitting in the enormous suite Hugo designated hers, equipment and people passed before her with an expectation she’d make reasoned decisions.
In the evening, Hugo tried to persuade her to stay in the suite overnight, to consider it her home. Yeah, right. Going back to the house was important, necessary. All the assurances of her needs being met wouldn’t dissuade her. His hotel couldn’t accommodate her most essential need: Daire. Not that she said that aloud to the mogul.
Asserting that she wanted to pack her own things and didn’t want others snooping around in them, she eventually won out and he took her back to his house.
That didn’t mean he left her alone. Dinner was waiting for them under silver in the atrium. How had he done that? While they’d been talking in the suite, it was clear Hugo expected to win the argument. She shouldn’t be surprised. A man with his means could make almost anything happen.
Throughout the meal, he talked about how he’d support her new venture, and how it was a guaranteed success. Some aspects of running her own boutique were exciting, but her suspicions wouldn’t silence. It was like a dream. One she’d wake up from at any moment. Typical dreams came with cruel twists. Of course they did, Daire starred in them.
No one disturbed the meal. Unfortunately. She didn’t want Daire to witness her socializing with another man but would feel better to lay eyes on him.
She went to bed troubled. The unsettled feeling didn’t go away that night or over the following couple of days.
By Wednesday, Hugo was becoming much more forceful about her moving to the hotel suite. Why didn’t he want her staying at the house? Everything was coming to a head. To avoid another back and forth about the suite, Tess snuck out early and grabbed a cab back to the house. She didn’t have cash to pay the guy but took the risk for a clean getaway.
“Wait here,” she said to the cab driver as she hopped out and ran up the driveway.
The garage door was open again, as was the Beast’s door. No one was in the trailer, but it didn’t matter. She went in there to grab Daire’s truck keys and retrieved money from the hatch between the front seats. Finding cash in the same place they’d kept it while on the road roused nostalgia. So much had changed since then. It was nice to find something the same.
She paid the cab driver and was watching him disappear down the street when Daire came out of the garage.
He opened his arms. “You want to tell me why you’re standing out here on your own? Where are the chump’s bodyguards?”
Striding up the drive, she grabbed his wrist and kept going. “I don’t know where they are.”
“You don’t think that’s important?” he asked when she pulled him into the Beast. “Out there in the open is a pretty easy shot.”
Letting him go next to the dinette, she went back to close and lock the Beast’s door, trapping them inside. “It’s okay. Olympus doesn’t want to kill me.”
“No?”
She went to stand in front of him. “Well, you’re Olympus, do you want to kill me?”
“No.”
“Know of any missions to murder me?”
“No,” he said, folding his arms. “But we’re not exactly a cohesive unit these days.”
“I didn’t come here to talk about my assassination,” she said. “I had to sneak away like I did because he’d never let me go otherwise.”
Daire’s arms fell to his sides. “He’s holding you prisoner?”
“No,” she said, shaking both hands at him before planting them on his torso. “Look, I came here because I need to speak to Danny.” He blinked in surprise. “Is that possible?”
“What you want me to do?” he asked. “Channel him like a dime-store psychic?”
“No, I—”
“Unless you mean you want me to…”
Walking up close, he used his body to turn hers and pressed her against the counter.
“No,” she said, though keeping the smile from her lips was difficult. “Remember when I went out with Patrick…” She pinned a quick glare on him. “I found out after you were following me.”
Daire wasn’t backing off. They were talking. Her hands were flat on his body… his hot, hard, amazing body, yet he stayed put.
“Mm hmm.”
“When I came back—”
“And we were talking about the dead drop?” he asked. “Yeah.”
That wasn’t a term he’d used that night.
She pushed her lips to the side for a second. “Maybe Daire would be better for this.”
“Daire has questions of his own,” he said, referring to himself in the third person. “Like why you said Three wouldn’t let you go. Where you’ve been the last few days? Why you had to rob the truck for cash?”
“I don’t have any money,” she said. “I came back because I have to talk to you. I need to talk to you. Every night this week Hugo’s been pushing me to stay in the suite at his hotel.”
“With him?”
“Not with him,” she said, then frowned. “I don’t think he means with him.”
“Okay, you’re going to erase think from that sentence or else I’ll erase it for him.”
“Hugo wants me to set up shop in his plaza,” she said, the urgency of being discovered at any moment hurried her words. “He’s got an entire fleet of people helping and says I can have a future; that I don’t need to run anymore.”
“And you like that idea?”
“Daire, I’m terrified,” she said, putting it out plain as day. “The guy has an agenda. I know it. I’ve known it from the start. I can’t figure out for the life of me what it is. Is it just my loyalty? Does he expect me to vote his way or something? Except I don’t get a vote. He doesn’t want to fuck me. Or if he does, he’s playing the long game… like the long, long game.”
“Tell him no.”
“I tried that. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. There is no good choice. If I push harder, fight with him, it could piss him off. That could cause problems for you and Harry. Maybe he’ll tell all of us to get out of his house. Guys like that are used to people pandering to their egos. If I reject his offer, if I’m assertive about it, he’ll get mad.”
Daire was frowning. “Let him. Let the fucker get mad.”
She slid a hand up his body to lay it on his cheek. “It’s easy for you. You have a whole squad of guys at your back.”
“Yeah, and I’m at your back. You have what I have, Little Red.”
She shook her head. “All of you, Olympus, you’re fighting enough wars as it is. You can’t take on another one on a different front. Think it through. If I tell him where to get off, he gets mad, then what? Harry gets mad? Will they argue? You need allies. I haven’t even seen Garrick this week.”
“He’s working on something,” Daire muttered.
“Maybe Hugo wants us to fight. Could be exactly the excuse he needs to go over to Zeus’s side. Then he invites the man in charge, the man with a serious vendetta against Olympus, back into the country. All the work you’ve done to set up the new site, you’re just outfitting it for Zeus to come swooping back in to take over. He does that and all your guys are dead. Maybe Harry and Garrick too… I’ve been going round and round in my head, trying to figure it out.” Exhaling, she let her head fall forward to tuck herself against him. “Man, I wish he’d just try to screw me.”
He scooped his hands up under her hair to cradle the back of her head. “We’re gonna work it out.”
Her head fell back, though her eyes weren’t all that open. “Except if he keeps me in the suite at the hotel, I won’t be able to see you again… I won’t be able to see Harry. I won’t—”
“We’re not gonna let that happen,” he said, his fingers moving in her hair. “I’ll talk to Harry. He’s not gonna let anyone keep you locked up.”
In Daire’s opinion, the solution was simple. He was used to getting things done. Except standing up to Hugo, opposing his wishes, could lead to bigger issues. Everyone needed to be steady and sure; drama could undo all of their progress.
“Where have you been this week?” she asked.
Though operational advice was out of her field, she still liked to acknowledge he might have troubles of his own.
“At the secondary site and out doing jobs for Harry.”
“Jobs?” she asked. “Like missions?”
“Like collecting components for Garrick’s projects and doing research. Expanding our contacts in the area. If we’re gonna be local longer term…”
Wrapping her arms around him, she let her hands slide south. “I suppose one good thing about having a store in the area would be staying close to you.”
“Have you thought about moving to Olympus? About living there?”
Was that a possibility? “Would that be allowed? How big is your bed?”
He breathed out a laugh. “Not with me. You’d have your own space. It would be the safest place for you.”
Raising her shoulders, she shook her head at the same time. “Harry’s deal was for me not to live at Olympus, wasn’t it?”
“When you were three,” he said, stroking her arms. “We’ll be under different management at the new site. I’m guessing things will change without Zeus calling the shots.”
“You don’t know that yet though, do you? We have no idea what is happening with the Six or with Zeus, as long as he’s alive…”
“I know,” he said. “And at some point, we’ll have to return to the previous site.”
“Where I met Harry?”
“Yeah.”
“For Minotaur.”
“You’ve been paying attention,” he said, gathering the length of her hair in both hands. “It’s a complex process setting up a new site… And we’ll have to demo the old one.”
“Demo would be fun.”
“I don’t know how I feel about it,” he said, somehow dipping lower as he eased her head back with his grip on her hair.
“Because you grew up there. It was your home.” He’d been born at the original site as it crumbled, which meant the beta site was the only home he knew. “You did all your training there.”
“Met you there,” he said, his mouth coming in close to hers.
Tess smiled. “I was two… and you hated me.”
“I didn’t hate you, I played with you.”
“Something you never grew out of,” she whispered, pushing higher on her toes until their mouths met.