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Earlier
“Noah thinks we need to go right to the source. We’re going to steal the flash drive, and we need you,” Simon said, his normally calm expression lit with excitement.
“That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”
Even though it was mediated through the computer screen, Lucille could feel her uncle’s responding glare. “Lucy, we agreed to try things Noah’s way for a while. He may be onto something, and I, for one, want to see how it goes.”
“If you want to run around breaking into hotel rooms, be my guest. I have more important things to do. Like my job.” In Lucille’s mind, their compromise was that Simon and Noah were going to try things Noah’s way and she was going to go about her own business, running the LA branch of their business the right way.
“Noah says you’re a crucial part of the plan.”
“Noah can suck it.” Not her greatest comeback, but then Noah brought out the worst in her.
“Lucille,” Simon began with a dramatic sigh, “you know I hate doing this, darling, but, well, we need you.”
“What are you saying?”
Simon took a deep breath. “If you don’t help us, I will be forced to tell everyone what happened at the Save the Lemurs charity event.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” She never should’ve told Simon about it in the first place. Simon Anton Rule of Spin Doctoring Number 27: Never tell anyone secrets they can use against you. Especially family members.
The next thing she knew, Lucille was flying to the Bay area with her black spandex bodysuit and a suitcase full of instant regret. She was beginning to suspect her relationship with her uncle was dysfunctional.
A business rival was blackmailing one of Simon and Noah’s clients. This rival had incriminating photos of the client on a flash drive and was threatening to leak the photos unless the client helped with the forceful takeover of a third company.
Lucille, if it had been her client, would, first of all, not have taken the case. The whole thing seemed to be about men being assholes and throwing around their money and power. Boring. If she had taken the case, she would allow the photos to be leaked, then spin them back onto the rival, making that guy look bad and take the fall for the whole thing.
Noah’s plan, however, was to break into the rival’s hotel room and steal the flash drive while the man was attending an important late-night after-party in the ballroom on the first floor. Which was how Lucille ended up lurking on a dimly lit roof, being scolded by Noah Harkin.
“Seriously, have you been on the phone the whole time I was gone?” Noah, a Korean American former private investigator, scowled at her. He wore his black hair in a spiky swoop, his brown eyes dark and glaring, his jaw clenched, arms crossed. Tonight, he wore all black—black jeggings, a tight-fitting black shirt, and a black jacket over it. The look accentuated his hotness in a way Lucille found utterly unnecessary.
She crossed her arms too. “Not that it’s any concern of yours, but I had some important business to take care of.”
He stalked toward her, his scowl intensifying. She hated that he was taller than her, even in her stiletto boots.
“It is my concern when you were supposed to be on lookout,” Noah accused in a loud whisper. They were, after all, still at the scene of the crime. If a crime had been committed at all. He seemed more interested in fighting with her than letting her know if he’d been successful in stealing the drive.
“Well then, excuse me, but if I wasn’t on lookout, what the fuck do you think I’m doing up here on this roof?”
“You were supposed to be in the hallway outside the room I broke into.”
Lucille had two options. The first was to admit she hadn’t been paying attention when he’d laid out the details and apologize. The second was to deny the whole thing and get inordinately pissed at him. She rarely admitted her mistakes and certainly wasn’t about to admit anything to him. “And how exactly was I supposed to know that?”
“It’s the logical place for you to be. Why would you be on the roof when I’m breaking into a room inside the hotel?”
Lucille sighed. She didn’t like this conversation and was done with it. True, being on lookout inside the hotel did make more sense. Or it would to someone who was actually invested in this case, which she wasn’t, and she didn’t know how to communicate that more clearly to her so-called coworkers. She could tell him she hadn’t intentionally ignored his plan. Or not. “You seem to be suffering under the assumption that anything about this is logical. I assume you got the drive, and no one saw you?”
Noah nodded, still glaring.
“Then let’s get out of here before we actually do get caught,” she said and set about abseiling down the back of the building to the deserted alley below.
When they reached the street, Noah retrieved the backpack he’d stashed earlier and stowed the climbing gear. Lucille led the way to what was supposed to be their rendezvous spot with Simon. Only the street where he was meant to be waiting with the surveillance SUV was completely Simon-free.
“What the fuck?” Noah stopped in the shadowed entrance of a closed office building, scanning the parked cars.
Lucille momentarily felt bad for Noah. He, unaccustomed as he was to working with the Antons, was having a rough night. “Maybe he didn’t know the plan either.”
“He knew the plan. It seems that he, like you, decided to go off script,” Noah said with a growl.
Lucille shrugged even though he wasn’t looking at her. “Probably. It’s what we do about eighty percent of the time. If that doesn’t work with your anal need to control everything, you’re welcome to quit at any time.” She was stretching the truth. Not about Simon, per se. It was accurate that he never did anything according to plan. But she did, and she liked plans and control possibly more than Noah did. She didn’t like him being in control of the plan, though.
“I see how it is,” he said, looking at her.
“How what is?”
“You’re furious Simon asked me to join the team. You want me to get fed up and quit.” He moved toward her as he spoke. It was dark in the doorway, but he came close enough that she could see his face illuminated by the streetlights. His expression was one of intensity and frustration, and dammit, he made it look so attractive. Noah was muscular, that she already knew, and the outfit he wore put those muscles on display in a way that didn’t disappoint. He was clean-shaven, and his brown skin looked smooth and soft. It was soft, Lucille knew that already. It was something she was trying to forget.
“How’d you guess?” she asked sarcastically, trying not to remember the way his mouth felt on hers. Those were things she wasn’t thinking about. Ever.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you bring it up every time you talk to Simon? Maybe because you’ve been avoiding me?”
“It’s been a month since we rescued Michel. We don’t even live in the same city. That hardly counts as avoiding.” Why was she defending herself to him? What did she care what he thought or that he noticed she wasn’t speaking to him?
“I know you don’t want me working with you and Simon,” Noah said as he moved closer, casting his face back into shadow.
Lucille kept her icy expression and tone that she was perfecting during her interactions with him. “Well, you’re right about that. But then statistically everyone is right about something once.”
Noah laughed, and it was a hollow, false sound. “You’re hilarious, you know that?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Lucille could play games all day long, but she didn’t want to play with him. She wanted to find Simon and get the hell out of there.
“You. Pretending this has nothing to do with what happened between us. With the electricity that’s still there,” Noah said, his eyes intense.
Was it a rule that everything that came out of some people’s mouths, no matter how lame, insulting, or just plain stupid it was, sounded sexy? Lucille wondered if she should get her head checked for a potential concussion. She must have hit it at some point while climbing around on the roof of the hotel and now was suffering from a delayed reaction to the cranial trauma. It was the only explanation for that kind of thinking where Noah Harkin was involved. “Oh, please. Does that line actually work?”
Noah shrugged. “Sometimes. I mean, not usually, when it’s just a line. But I’m serious here. There’s something between us. And I, for one, don’t run from a challenge.”
“And I do?” Lucille asked. She was worked up. Worked up as in she wanted to jump Noah’s bones in the street or worked up in that she wanted to punch him in the face and run away? A lot of both.
“Nah, you’d rather sit back and make up stories to help people avoid challenges.”
“That’s literally what our job is.”
“Was. That’s what our job was,” Noah said, his voice taking on a new energy, “I’m trying to offer something new, an upgraded service package, if you will.”
“You sound like you’re pimping yourself out,” Lucille said. On one hand, Noah’s ideas for the business weren’t bad. They were risky, dangerous, and threatened the future of their operation, but they weren’t bad. If it was a year ago and Lucille didn’t have friends or family, she’d probably go for Noah’s schemes. It wasn’t a year ago though, and she had things to lose. “As long as you stay away from my clients,” she said, infusing her voice with quiet authority.
“Anton. We’re supposed to be a team on this. We’re trying to keep rich people from destroying their careers, and I’m merely offering a more effective and lucrative way of doing that.”
“How many times do I have to tell you not to call me Anton?” she said, her entire body taut with the tension of holding back. She still didn’t know whether she was going to punch him or kiss him, but both were equally likely to hurt.
“Lucille.” The word rolled off his tongue like it was something he was tasting, savoring. Her name. He was tasting and savoring her name. It was heady, and her pulse sped up.
They were inches apart, and she could hear his breath, quick and shallow, like he couldn’t catch it, couldn’t recover as he looked at her.
Lucille knew she either had to step backward and avoid the contact or do this her way. Whatever Noah may taunt her with, she wasn’t one to shy from a challenge, and he was issuing exactly that. In a swift move, she pushed against his chest, walking them backward until he was pressed against the stone wall of the building. She was strong, but so was he, and she suspected he was letting her push him, letting her have her way with him. That too was heady and reminded her of that night...
Not breaking eye contact, she closed the remaining distance between them and kissed him. Her eyes closed, and she felt his mouth beneath hers, giving back all the force and desire she put into the kiss. As she gripped the sides of his jacket, she’d heard his hands slap against the wall but now felt one of them trail up the side of her body, lightly, too lightly. It was tender in a way she didn’t want him to be.
She pushed off him, breaking the contact and retreating. He leaned against the building and let out a long, audible breath.
The kiss ended not a moment too soon. A black SUV pulled up a few feet from where they stood. The tinted front window rolled down to reveal Simon, his silvery blond hair swept to one side, his eyebrows raised, and his expression one of bemusement.
When Lucille first saw the vehicle they’d be using that night, she’d been surprised and impressed. In the past few months when they’d been forced into various rescue and recon missions, Simon had seemed to favor the shitty, rented white van look. Lucille had asked him about the upgrade, and he’d confessed it had been JP’s doing. JP, like Lucille, didn’t understand why their job had to include so much running around and spying, but had said, if Simon was going to insist on doing that shit, he at least needed to not look like that was what he was doing. Thus, the shiny new SUV.
Of course, JP wasn’t going to let Simon use all the high-tech equipment his company, LT Tech, made without some idea of what Simon was using it for. And since Simon wasn’t any more used to being held accountable than Lucille was, he hadn’t told JP about their little evening outing. Which meant, on the occasions when Simon chose to ignore both his phone and the rendezvous instructions, they were forced to wait and see if he’d show.
“Simon, where have you been?” Lucille hissed, her voice more indignant than she’d have liked. She didn’t look at Noah and wasn’t going to.
“What do you mean where have I been? Where have you been?” Simon retorted. It was a classic Anton reaction—respond to accusations with more accusations.
There was a sigh off to her right, but she didn’t look over. “According to the plan, you were supposed to be waiting for us on this street,” Noah said. His voice didn’t sound at all affected by what they’d been doing.
“That is, relatively speaking what I was doing,” Simon said with a serious nod.
Lucille knew better than to say anything. She hoped Noah did, too.
After a long pause in which she sensed Noah was struggling to come up with a response to Simon’s nonsense, she said, “Instead of standing around here, let’s just go. You can argue about the details in the debriefing.”
“Which I will be leading,” Noah grumbled as he followed her into the SUV and Simon careened down the road, tires squealing.