Uncovering His SECRET (8 page)

She doesn’t hesitate
to place her hand in mine, and this—holding hands with the woman
I’ve always loved, while our son rolls his eyes at me—this really
is the definition of happy. We just stare at each other with smiles
on our face, until she gives my hand a squeeze and let’s go.

“I’m going to
change.”

“You don’t have
to.”

She looks at me in my
jeans and t-shirt and then down at her dress. “I’m a little
overdressed for games.”

“I think you look
perfect.”

“What if we play
pool, and I have to bend over?”

“I won’t look.” I
get the eyebrow again. “Okay, so I’ll totally look. But I’ll do
it in a respectful way.”

“Ugh. Come on people,
I’m still here.”

“Sorry, E,” I tell
him with a sheepish grin.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m
going to my room until you guys leave.”

We hold in our laughter
until he stomps up the stairs. “I’ve never had to worry about
that before. We should’ve handled that a little better.”

“Is there really any
good way to handle the fact that you’re going to get it on when it
comes to your kid?”

“I don’t know who
you’re planning to ‘get it on’ with tonight, but I can tell you
it’s not going to be me. We can go have some fun, and I’ll let
you hold my hand. Maybe even kiss me, but that’s it. I can’t give
you more yet.”

“I’ll take whatever
I can get. I’ll happily kiss you for hours if you’ll let me.”

“I said ‘maybe.’”

“We’re playing
pool, so we can just bet on the game.”

“What do I get if
I
win?” she asks, taking my hand.

“Whatever the fuck
you want.”

She lifts her other
hand to run her finger over my bottom lip. “I guess we’re kissing
no matter what then.”

Yes! But I have to know
something else before we go any further, before I take this leap with
her once again. “You didn’t get the kisses you wanted at the
club?”

“I wasn’t looking
for kisses. I wanted to get laid. But all I could think about was a
hipster with a sexy southern accent.”

“You grew up with my
accent, Teeg.”

“And I’ve always
thought the way you talk is sexy,
Cal
.”

She walks out the door
after tossing her shoes onto one of the couches. I follow her to the
elevator and wrap myself around her from behind as we wait. She
stiffens, but doesn’t pull away.

“All that sexual
frustration is still in there, isn’t it? I could help you get it
out.”

“I already told you
that’s not going to happen.”

“So you’re saying
that you would’ve fucked some random guy, but not me?”

“That’s exactly
what I’m saying.”

I’m the one who goes
stiff as the elevator stops. I don’t fight her as she moves out of
my arms and gets inside. There’s a challenge in her eyes when I
meet them with my own. How I react to what she just said is going to
determine more than just tonight. I know that, and so despite the
jealousy raging in me, I smile at her.

“I’m going to make
you forget other men have existed.”

“You’re certainly
welcome to try.”

We spend the next
several hours playing all kinds of games. Everything from pool to
Pac-Man. No kisses are exchanged though. We both said we wanted to
kiss, but for some reason we don’t. We hold hands, and I laugh more
than I have in the last decade. It’s the best date I’ve ever been
on, and I don’t want it to end. All good things come to an end
though, and we both can barely keep our eyes open by the time we
stagger up the stairs to our rooms.

I did manage to ask her
for another date tomorrow, so my mind is spinning with ideas as I
fall asleep. Sweet, sexy, naughty things. We’re going to do them
all, too. I’ll beg if I have to, but I’m having her tomorrow if
it’s the last thing I do.

Caleb

Holding hands with
Tegan last night was pretty damn great. Over the years, I’ve
forgotten how good just holding someone’s hand can feel. Okay, not
just someone. Holding
her
hand is what’s so awesome, and I know she appreciates me taking
things old school.

Tegan’s asked me to
meet her in her home office to talk about the threats against me. I
have to admit that someone sending people to hold me at gunpoint, and
then blowing up my lab, made me take the threats more seriously.
Tegan’s friends have people watching over my family, but I worry
for Ethan. And her. I still have no clue why someone cares this much,
though.

“Hello, ladies,” I
say as I walk into the room.

“Hi, Caleb,” Jade
says.

“Hello,” Isa tells
me. She’s a little more reserved, but something tells me not to
underestimate her.

Reina skips the
greeting and gets down to business. “Have a seat, Caleb, and we’ll
get started.”

I take the seat next to
Tegan and immediately grab her hand. It’s not even an option for me
to not hold it anymore. Just like I won’t be able to stop kissing
her once we start to do that again. Reina raises an eyebrow, but the
other two women just smile at us.

“We need to know if
you can think of anyone who might want to stop your deal from
happening, Cal. Delia’s not talking even though we’ve got her in
custody, and the gunman we captured was too low level to know
anything.”

I know I should be more
shocked that Delia was part of the group targeting me, but once I saw
Ethan, nothing else mattered to me except for him. I feel stupid for
not realizing how much she hated me, but I don’t have it in me to
care all that much. Or try and look too closely at what these
people’s motive must be.

“We’ve already been
over this. I don’t know who else could be behind this. I mean, I’m
sure the Saudis aren’t happy, and neither are the other American
oil companies, but I couldn’t tell you who’s this desperate. I
mean, my formula won’t even come close to completely replacing
traditional oil usage. At least not right away.”

“There’s no one
who’s close to you that would take a hit?” Isa asks me.

“Honestly, no one I
can think of. I’ve been immersed in my research for the past few
years. I don’t socialize much.”

“You got engaged,”
Tegan says.

“She was convenient,
Teeg, and she tried to kill me when I broke it off.”

“She was always a few
crayons short of a full box. And she was in on it before you dumped
her. That much we know at least.”

“What about your
other high school friends? You said you haven’t been socializing
much, but do you still keep in touch with them?” Reina asks me.

“We get a beer now
and then, yeah.”

“Do you talk about
your work?”

“Sometimes, but just
in basic terms. Greg and Phil aren’t really interested in science.”

“You hang out with
Greg? Really? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“He’s a good guy.”

She pulls her hand from
mine and stands so fast that her chair falls over. “I can’t do
this. I just can’t.”

“It was your choice
to be part of this mission, Tegan.”

“I’m not leaving
the mission, Rei. I’m putting a stop to this,” she says,
gesturing between the two of us.

“We have a son
together. ‘This’ isn’t going away,” I remind her, feeling the
loss of her hand—and her—more than I thought I would after all
these years.

“Ethan isn’t, but
the hand holding is. We’re going to behave as though we’re
divorced and just hanging out together for his sake. Greg, and
whoever else from school you hang out with, won’t come near him,
though. I mean it. I will put a bullet in you myself if you bring
them around.”

“So you can have your
friends, but I can’t have mine? Just because you cheated on me with
one of them doesn’t mean they’re bad guys.”

She just stares at me.
I can see she wants to say something, but she doesn’t. She just
sits back down in her chair, moving it as far away from me as she
can. Her jaw is clenched, and she’s breathing hard, yet she’s
backing down. I don’t know why, but I’m not sure I like it. I
want her to defend herself, but it’s obvious that she’s not going
to do that.

“Are you okay to
continue now, Teeg?” Reina asks her, looking as concerned as I
feel.

She closes her eyes and
nods before speaking again. “There’s been no more activity at the
ranch, Caleb. The people we have with your family say that the whole
town is talking, but no one out of the ordinary has come to the
property.”

“Thank you for
protecting them.”

“It’s our job,”
she tells me in a flat voice.

Reina wraps up the
meeting as quickly as possible, letting me know who and what they’re
looking into but not giving me too many details. She also asks me to
keep wracking my brain for anything out of the ordinary that someone
might have said to me. I promise I will.

Once the other women
leave, I pull my chair over next to Tegan. She’s got her head in
her hands now. “They’re good guys, Teeg. You wouldn’t have
slept with Greg if you didn’t think there was something good about
him. And Phil’s never done anything to you. Well, I mean, he joined
in with all of us to torment you, but you
did
cheat on me.”

“First of all,
if
sex happens, it takes two people. Punishing one, while being best
friends with the other is bullshit. Second, I need you to get the
fuck out of my office right now before I hurt you.”

I see her hands
shaking, and I know she’s in pain. I want to comfort her, or ask
her more about why she’s so angry, but I don’t doubt that she’d
hurt me at the moment. I push my chair back and walk away from her. I
took one step forward last night, but just flew back about five
hundred right now. The universe keeps telling me we shouldn’t be
together, and maybe it’s time to start listening.

* * *

Tegan

Hearing that Cal still
hangs out with Greg sometimes hit me like a freight train. I know I
didn’t handle it well, but it hurt me so badly—almost as much as
it did all those years ago—and I couldn’t stop myself from
lashing out. I’m really not sure that there’s a future for us,
other than being Ethan’s parents. And I’ve got to learn to be
okay with that.

I’ve been working for
about two hours, looking back over every piece of information we
have, when Isa’s distress call vibrates in my arm. I immediately
run from the room and down the stairs. I’m grabbing guns from the
living room safe when Ethan and Caleb walk in, wrapped in towels from
their time at the indoor beach.

“What’s wrong?”
Ethan asks me.

“Isa’s in trouble.”

“Isn’t she with
Uncle Brad today?’

“Yes,” I say as I
grab my bag and start to push past them.

Caleb grabs my arm
before I’m out the door. “
My
uncle, Brad?”

“Yes. Let me go. I
need to get to them.”

“Be careful, Tegan.
And thank you.”

“I’m not doing this
for you.”

I get down to the
garage as fast as possible and hop on my Ducati. I know it’ll be
faster than my car or truck, and right now all I can think about is
getting to the Las Vegas Literacy Project offices in time. We put
extra security in place there, too, but it obviously wasn’t enough.

As I approach the
building, which is in the middle of the Downtown Summerlin shopping
area, I see that the doors are blown open. Shit. I drive around the
back where I see Darcy already climbing the outside of the building.
Her cat burglar skills definitely come in handy in times like these.
I nod at her before activating my communications unit to let Ainsley
and her team know that I’ve arrived, and head inside through the
loading dock. The freight elevator is in front of me, and I see that
it’s been disabled. She tells me they’re working on it, but
whoever did this is good. Not as good as her, but good enough to slow
her down.

I don’t have time to
wait for her, but it’s really not a problem. Darcy may have grown
up climbing buildings, but I grew up climbing trees. The inside of
the elevator has enough places for me to hold onto, and I know I can
make it up with little effort. I do attach the harness I got from one
of my saddlebags because I’m not stupid enough to free climb in a
building filled with people who probably wouldn’t think twice about
killing me.

I climb my way to the
third floor before Ainsley says she’s got control of the elevator
again. She also tells me that everyone is on six, which is the main
floor of the Literacy offices. I have her send the elevator to me and
jump on it as it ascends to the fifth floor. Our ruse had the desired
effect, and I hear gunfire pinging below me as I climb to the floor
above. I flip to the top of the doors as she opens them remotely.

Rapid gunfire hits the
wall across from me, as I wait. Ainsley starts the elevator as the
gunman peeks inside. I swing down and wrap my legs around him,
dropping him into the elevator shaft. He gets off a few more shots as
he falls, but I manage to avoid them as I swing out into the lobby.
Two guns are pointed at me as I land, but neither person sees Darcy
behind the guy on my left until it’s too late. She takes him down,
while I dispose of his friend.

We make our way up the
spiral staircase with our guns drawn, speeding up when we hear a
scream. I burst into the room, knowing that I can’t let anything
happen to Brad, even if I get hurt myself. He was a big part of the
support system that kept me going during my darkest hours. I owe him
so much, and I won’t let anything happen to him.

The first thing I see
when I enter the room is Yasmin Griffin lying on the floor. I thought
it was her scream, but I couldn’t be sure. Isa’s with her,
pressing her shirt to a wound in Yasmin’s side, while a stunning
blonde holds a gun to Brad’s temple. There are two other women with
guns in the room, but I know Darcy can handle them.