Tempt Me (10 page)

Him, licking hers.

“Shit,” she breathed. What had she been thinking, agreeing to model for him? Nude?

How could she not? 

She was pretty sure Rafe had split a pill in half before slipping it under her tongue. Being that Jack was slightly more than double her weight, she’d do the same. Given how quickly the pills worked, she could take them as needed rather than keeping herself dosed at all times.

How many pills should she take from Jack’s supply? Even sharing a conference room with Rafe this morning had scrambled her thoughts, made her fight not to squirm against the conference room chair. How much time would they need to spend together? Holding up a bag, she considered. The Wyatt Cooper she remembered had very little patience, anywhere except the bedroom. They might have this thing shut down, one way or another, before Rafe’s gallery showing next month.

One month, up close and personal, with Rafe Sebastiani. She shoved a single filmy packet in her back pocket.

“Hey,” Antonia said from the doorway. “What are you doing?”

It took some effort to open a door that quietly. “Just checking some cabling,” she replied, quickly casting her thoughts to firewall architecture. Antonia could read emotions as well as her brothers could, but even succubi couldn’t see through solid wood. As she rose, Bailey palmed the desk key and nudged the desk drawer closed with her toe. “What’s up?”

“Does Cheyenne need help?”

“Nope, she and her team have it covered.” Rounding the desk, she followed Antonia into the main hallway, closing the door behind them. She’d have to put Jack’s desk key back on the picture frame later. “Back to The Bunker, then,” she said cheerily. “Want to reverse-engineer a Distributed Denial of Service attack? I’ll explain why our countermeasures worked.”

“Cool.”

She glanced into Lukas’s office as they walked by. Rafe lounged in Lukas’s leather guest chair like he didn’t have a care in the world, his blond hair lying loose and soft against his rust-colored sweater. Lukas, facing the hall, swigged directly from a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

The desk between them blocked Lukas’s view of Rafe’s clenched fists. 

Antonia waved her hand in front of her nose. “The testosterone is getting kinda thick in here. What are they arguing about now?”

“Come on,” she said, tugging Antonia by the arm. She was pretty sure she knew.

***

“S
o, let me see if I understand this.” Rafe struggled to rein in his temper. “You’re pulling me in on this op so I can—how did you so charmingly put it?—‘finally get laid?’”

“That’s not the only reason, but I thought it might be a nice little side benefit.” Lukas took another swig from the antacid bottle, wiping his mouth with his wrist. “You’ve spent the last year moping around like a love-sick teenager, and Bailey hasn’t been any better. I’m just giving you a push.”

“I think I can handle my own sex life, bro.”

Lukas snorted. “You’re not handling it very well—unless you mean ‘hand’ in a literal sense. Though come to think of it,” he said, narrowing his eyes, “your energy is better since you came back from the cabin. Did you and Bailey—”

“None of your business.”

Smiling slightly, Lukas leaned back in his oversized leather chair.

So, Bailey had been acting like a love-sick teenager, too? From their time up at the cabin, he knew Bailey wanted him physically, but...the possibility that his own fledgling feelings might be reciprocated, might have a chance to spark and grow, swam through his system like a shot of Everclear.

But...the op? He was nowhere close to the best person for this assignment. He could handle himself in a fight if he had to, but Chico Perez was lethal. Even knowing this, Lukas had allowed Rafe’s knee-jerk rejection of Chico’s offer to stand.

“Enough emo reverie,” Lukas said. “We have work to do.”

Heat flushed his face. “You started it.”

“And you can finish it, on your own time.”

Finish it? Yeah, right. He couldn’t conceive of a finish line. It would take a lifetime to cycle through his ever-growing list of fantasies, most of them so debauched that—

A lifetime? Jesus, where had
that
come from?

Lukas laughed out loud. “If you could see your face.” Folding his hands, he rested them on his flat stomach, looking supremely satisfied. “It feels really uncomfortable sometimes, but it’s not a fate worse than death.”

“What isn’t?”

“Falling in love.”

His breath caught at Lukas’s softly spoken words. Was he? Falling in love? He had no idea, but he...wanted a chance to find out. He wanted what his brother had with Scarlett, and what his father had found with Claudette—a fighting chance at it, anyway.

“But she’s not like your other women.”

“My other women?” If Lukas had any idea how long it had been since he’d been on a date, much less slept with someone...

“She’s not like the women you’ve dated in the past. She doesn’t do hit and runs.” He frowned. “I don’t think.”

Hit and runs? His brother made his sex life sound so unsavory—more unsavory than he deserved. “Lukas, every woman I’ve ever slept with has known the score.”

“Yeah.” Lukas leveled a glance at him. “You let them know right up front that you’re only interested in a mutually satisfying physical relationship.”

“And friendship,” he said defensively, shifting in his chair. “I’m good friends with almost all my former lovers.”

Lukas held up a weary hand. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I’m making a mash of this. All I’m trying to say is that any relationship with Bailey will be...complicated.”

“Tell me about it,” Rafe muttered. “Just when I think I have a piece of her figured out, she does a one-eighty on me. She made the oddest comment when we were up at the cabin.” How to describe this? “We were kissing—”

“Great start...”

“But after you interrupted us”—Rafe glared at Lukas—”there was this distinct whiff of guilt, you know?” From the expression on his face, Rafe got the impression that Lukas knew
exactly
what he was talking about. “When I asked her what was wrong, she waved it off, saying guilt was pretty much her baseline emotion.” Rafe picked a piece of lint off the forearm of his sweater. “I know about her felony conviction, and she told me she’s a preacher’s kid, but—”

“Do you know who her father is?”

Rafe shook his head.

“Come over here a sec.”

Unfolding himself from the chair, he walked around and peered over Lukas’s shoulder at the flat-screen monitors dominating his brother’s desk. With a quick clack of keys, Lukas accessed a website.

“What is this?” Rafe leaned in more closely. “‘The Way, the Truth and the Light.’”

Over the next several minutes, a very slick media presentation showed thousands of people streaming into one of the biggest, whitest buildings he’d ever seen. An attractive couple, their heads close together and gold bands conspicuously glinting, shared a beverage in a cheerful on-site coffee shop. In another picture, a dozen or so well-scrubbed children sat in a circle at the feet of a bearded man who had Bailey’s eyes. “Is this one of those mega-churches?”

“In the sense that their bigotry and hate speech is constitutionally protected? Yes.” Lukas held up an apologetic hand. “Sorry. But check out some of these videos, and you’ll see what I mean.”

Lukas clicked—and the longer they watched, the more Rafe’s jaw dropped. Bailey’s father didn’t go quite so far as to say “God Hates Fags” from his pulpit, but...close enough. He turned his head away, sick to his stomach. Bailey had come from that? Escaped from that? He sank back into his chair with a sigh.

“Her parents were MIA during her trial,” Lukas said. “They completely cut her off, told her that she’d sinned, and that her behavior reflected negatively on them and their church family.”

“So much for the virtue of forgiveness,” he grumbled. With family like that, who needed enemies? “Thankfully she had Jack.”

Lukas nodded.

“Does she have other family?”

“I know she has occasional contact with her younger sister, Melanie—email, phone calls, that kind of thing. The parents? Nothing. I don’t think she really misses them,” Lukas mused. “Jack said she’d once described her relationship with her parents like having an amputated finger. You’re aware it’s missing. There’s a gap, an occasional phantom pain, but after awhile you learn how to live quite well without it.”

“Wow.” When their mother died, he’d felt torn limb from limb, wondering why no one could see bloody streaks as he stumbled through the aftermath. He’d used his mother’s purple satin bathrobe as a blanket for months. Losing all contact with his father, with him still alive, was inconceivable. “Okay, I get it. She has some issues, sure, but—”

“Issues? The woman has enough baggage to fill a cargo ship.” Holding up his hand, Lukas ticked off on his fingers. “She’s human. A preacher’s kid. A convicted felon. A workaholic. She has intimacy issues up the wazoo.”

“So if you think a relationship between us is such a lost fricking cause, why are you shoving us together like this?”

“I didn’t say it was a lost cause. I just wanted to remind you that she’s...complicated. We both know that you’ve never had a serious romantic relationship.” Lukas glanced at the ceiling again. “It’s damn hard work.”

Annoyance spiked. Lukas made him sound like an unfeeling man-whore, and nothing could be further from the truth.

“All I’m saying is, if she’s just another lover to you, don’t even start.”

He uttered his biggest fear aloud. “Maybe she just wants me for my body.”

Instead of responding—instead of denying it, like he’d hoped—Lukas cursed at the ceiling and snagged his wastebasket with his foot.

“Scarlett still has the flu?”

“What?” Lukas swallowed heavily.

“When you left the meeting, you went upstairs to check on Scarlett, right? Is she feeling worse?”

Lukas jammed his hands into his hair. “I didn’t ask you here to talk about Scarlett.”

“Actually, you ordered me here, but I let you get away with it because it served my purposes, too. What’s wrong with Scarlett? Is she seriously ill?” Shit. The top floor was too far away for him to get a good read on her.

“She’s not sick. Not really.” Lukas took a deep breath. “She’s...pregnant.”

Rafe’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious? Congratulations!” Shooting to his feet, he walked around the desk again, yanking Lukas to his feet for a hug. “No wonder you’re acting like such a dick.” His big, brawny brother was scared shitless.

After a slight hesitation, Lukas arms tightened around him. “Scarlett is going to kill me,” he muttered. “She made me promise not to tell anyone, and it took me all of fifteen minutes to break my word.”

“You know it’s impossible to keep a secret in this family.”

Lukas rolled his eyes in agreement. “But please try,” he asked as they both sat down again. “She wants to keep the news private until—” he shrugged uncomfortably “—you know.”

Rafe nodded. Several of his friends had kept the news of their pregnancies to themselves until they were past their first trimester, when the risk of miscarriage dropped. He eyed his brother, noticing the tense lines bracketing his mouth. Risk assessment was Lukas’s forte, but left to his own devices, Lukas would torture himself with rare ‘what if’s’ throughout Scarlett’s pregnancy. “Scarlett is disgustingly healthy,” he reassured Lukas. “She’ll be fine.” She was healthy now, at any rate. A year ago, when she’d come home from a grueling tour, she’d been stressed out and frighteningly thin. He’d take a swing upstairs before he left today, and have a cozy little chat with his brother’s bondmate. He’d drop some subtle hints about Lukas’s stress level, and make sure she was eating right, taking the best possible care of herself. “Is there anything else I need to know right now? I have some work I have to catch up on.”

“Touch base with Chico. He’s coordinating physical security. You and Bailey need to make some plans that get you out in public.”

And every time they stepped out in public, they’d be followed. Creepy. “So much for romance.”

“If the team is doing their job well, you won’t even notice they’re there.”

Team? They?

The computer chimed softly. Lukas glanced at his monitor and swore. “Time for my next meeting.” Carrying the wastebasket with him, he headed for the door. “Don’t take the tracking device off your car, and get Chico over to your place sometime today. If Bailey’s going to be spending any time at your studio, we need to make sure it’s as safe as possible.”

He couldn’t argue with that sentiment, and Lukas damn well knew it.

***

W
yatt was walking along Nicollet Mall, enjoying a Subway sandwich, when two suited men suddenly flanked him. “Mr. Cooper.” The men crowded closer, grabbing him by the elbows. His meatball sub dropped to the slushy sidewalk. “Please come with us.”

Something jabbed into his ribs, hard enough to sting through layers of winter clothes. The man’s voice sounded oddly polite for someone threatening him with a gun.

He glanced around. Corporate lunch hour had come and gone, and the pedestrian mall was nearly deserted. Anyone seeing them from the skyway or their office windows would think he’d been unexpectedly joined by two old buddies.

Held up in broad daylight. So much for Minnesota Nice. “My wallet is in my back right pants pocket.”

The men didn’t respond, just kept hustling him down the slush-covered sidewalk. When they reached Eleventh Avenue, Frick opened the back passenger door of a black limousine idling at the curb. “Ten minutes of your time, Mr. Cooper.”

That was the second time they’d used his name.

Frack wrenched his arm up and behind, lifting him to his toes. One centimeter higher and his shoulder would snap like a chicken wing. “Shit, okay. Okay!” The pressure eased, just the slightest bit.

What the hell did they want? The limo was new, and freshly washed. Despite Frack’s expert moves, the men didn’t look like hired muscle. Intelligence snapped from their eyes, and they both wore winter-weight trench coats over dark business suits. They were dressed to blend—like
he
would dress if he were to accept a similar job. So, what
was
the job? Someone must want to speak to him pretty badly if they’d risk plucking him off the street in the middle of the day, in an area crawling with surveillance cameras.