Still annoyed and not seeing how that explanation justified calling her a mascot, Evie stepped toward him, crowding him back through the doorway and out into the hall before shutting her office door behind her.
“Well, Mr. Denton, let’s hope your third impression goes better than your first two.” She didn’t give him a chance to respond, pivoting away before he could answer and heading straight into Tommy’s office.
Taking a deep breath, Evie forced herself to shove her annoyance with Aaron aside before she smiled brightly at Tommy as he stood up and came around his desk to hug her.
“Hey, Tommy!” She hugged him tightly, breathing in his familiar, expensive cologne: woody, floral, with a hint of amber underneath.
“Morning, Evie.” He smiled and gave her an extra squeeze before letting her go. “I see you’re already making friends with everyone.” His amused tone told her he’d overheard her comment to Aaron in the hall, but the fact that he didn’t lecture her about being nice suggested he knew Aaron had said something that deserved her reaction.
“You know me, Tommy.” She shrugged, trying to play off her irritation. “But I think we need to discuss how much you guys talk about me to other people.”
“No,” Tommy said lightly as he sat back down and gestured for her to pull a chair around the desk and sit beside him. “I don’t think we do. We’re proud of everything you’ve accomplished, especially considering the challenges you faced and the obstacles you overcame, and we’re going to brag about you.”
Evie’s heart melted, and she had to blink back tears. “When you put it like that, I can’t be mad about it, can I?” she mumbled as she dragged the chair around his desk and sat down.
“Nope.” He smirked and pulled up HELIX’s programming on his computer.
“And what about going behind my back and assigning Cole to follow me?” she asked as she opened her laptop, not ready to let him off the hook after everything she’d learned that morning. “Can I be mad at you for that?”
“He told you about that, huh?” Tommy ran a hand through his hair, looking more annoyed than remorseful. “I have a good reason.”
“Thorn told me about the threats, too,” Evie said, waving him off, not willing to let him dodge the question. “You can’t seriously think someone’s actually going to follow through if they see me alone.”
“Considering I never believed someone would try to kidnap and kill me and ignored Rupert’s suggestion to hire a bodyguard for years, yes. I can think that.” He gave her a pointed look, making the parallel between their situations unmistakable.
“After I was kidnapped, the police made it clear you’re much more vulnerable than I am. Thorn and I agreed we needed to keep you safe, but you wouldn’t agree to having a bodyguard, so I took what I felt were appropriate steps and assigned Cole to follow you quietly and unobtrusively.”
Tommy leaned back in his chair and regarded her seriously. “And for the record, Thorn was angry with me because he felt I wasn’t doing enough to protect you.”
He said it like Thorn’s opinion justified the entire operation, and when Evie opened her mouth to protest, he shook his head.
“Nope. I’m not discussing this. I made a decision, and I firmly believe it was the right one. Even if nothing ever happened, it made Thorn and me feel better knowing that if you did run into trouble, someone was close enough to step in.”
He gave her a warning look, daring her to argue, but since she wasn’t actually upset with him and only wanted him to understand she didn’t appreciate being followed without her knowledge, she stayed quiet.
“Besides,” Tommy continued, softening, “Cole is already almost as fond of you as we are, and Lana thinks you’re the sweetest thing ever. So really, I think it worked out in everyone’s favour.”
Chapter Thirty: Cautious Hope
By the beginning of August, Evie was starting to feel much more comfortable in her role with Sloane Consulting, relying less and less on Tommy for help when design requests came in. It had taken her a little while to get her brain back into tech design mode after spending three years immersed in AI and creating HELIX, but Tommy had been right: the basics were still locked in her brain.
In mid-August, she was having lunch with Thorn, who had just returned from a three-week Consulting job, in the Security Services lunchroom and was playfully trying to get him to explain why he had been gone for so long.
“Sometimes there are jobs that I am particularly skilled for,” he said, shrugging his broad shoulders as he opened his third bottle of water since they sat down and drank half of it in one swallow. “They require undercover work or fluency in a language I speak that the others do not, so that I may get close to the targets.”
“What about being Tommy’s bodyguard?” Evie asked before she could stop herself. She wasn’t used to him being away for so long. Even when he went on business trips with Tommy, it was never more than a week, and she had always been allowed to talk to him. He had been completely cut off from her this time, something she had struggled with. “Or running Security Services?”
“Right now, I am the last resort choice for Ops,” he reassured her, his expression soft and understanding. “ButTommy now has Nissa, who can do the double duty of protecting him and being his date, and Cole to fill in when needed. My focus is the Security Services… at least for now.”
Before she could ask about that last part, a group of six men approached, welcoming Thorn back. Out of politeness, he introduced her to them, and she caught a couple of their expressions freezing into polite smiles. After greeting them, she focused on her meal, giving them room to talk without interruption.
Evie knew the source of the cold politeness. It was a lingering mixture of everything that had happened over the last few years, and the assumptions that came with her name. Even though it had been four years since her father kidnapped Tommy, and two years since the trial and sentencing, the fallout had never entirely gone away. And when Oscar’s death in prison had been reported on the news, it was mentioned that Evie and Della had been present at the facility that day. For some people, that was enough to revive old theories that Evie had been involved in the original kidnapping, or that she had known more than she let on.
The company gossip made it worse. Most employees in the Tower did not understand that Sloane Consulting and Sloane Security Services were completely separate from Sloane Technologies. To them, everything in the building belonged to the same company because Tommy owned it all. They assumed that Consulting and Security Services were simply upper-tier internal divisions, rather than independent companies with their own contracts and hiring systems. Since Evie worked on the eighty-second floor instead of starting in a lower-level tech position like everyone else, the assumptions had been less than kind.
The rumours that Evie had some kind of hold over Tommy, that she was being protected for reasons no one understood, or that she was quietly influencing things behind the scenes had picked up traction again. The truth, that Tommy had hired her because of her brilliance, her work on HELIX, and her potential, didn’t provide the drama people seemed to want, so it was ignored for the most part.
Tommy and Thorn had both told her to ignore the rumours and report anyone stupid enough to harass her. Tommy had fired several people over it, but that only strengthened the conspiracy theories. So, Evie did her best to avoid the Sloane Technologies floors entirely, staying on the Consulting level whenever possible.
