I lowered my voice. “No way in hell am I letting this happen.”
chapter nineteen
when did we get this comfortable?
It turns out that Marcus Romano was a very easy man to crack.
“I’m still not happy about this,” he muttered from beside me as he drove into an open bay.
I turned to face him, eyes teasingly narrowed. “Really? I didn't pick that up the first eighty-four times you told me." He held back a laugh. Kind of love it when he did that. "And your smile is just… huge.”
Although he didnt avert his eyes from the wheel, I still caught how his smirk unravelled.
Contrary to the visions I’d had about strangling him, I actually really liked seeing this side of my shadow. Who I’d guessed he was when he sulked into his house at the end of every day, or who he was with his friends.
Oh God, were we becoming friends?
He put the car in park and sat back, a groan escaping him as he stretched, leather seats squeaking under his black hoodie. “Thanks, I’ve been practising.”
I let a smirk slip. “Suits you.”
He turned his head to me, his eyes sweeping over me in a way that made my stomach flutter. Not like it had any right to. This was still Marcus at the end of the day, the man who’d been a pain in my arse since the very second I’d met him. The man who, as we'd establised, was very, very off limits.
But I couldn’t help it; the more he was around, the more I felt myself looking forward to seeing him in the morning. The more he showed how much he was willing to help me, the softer I became with him.
As much as I tried not to think about it, our training session last weekened was a turning point. But if he'd always planned on holding me against him agaisnt my will, that was always going to be the case. There was nowhere to hide when your bodies were touching, in places where a girl and her guard should never touch.
I'm sure neither of us meant for it to be as intimate as it was, but it happened, and it was. And before I could stop myself, I was picking out the colours of his eyes and only remembering why that was such a bad idea when I reached number eight.
I shook the memories free before I zoned out and thought of nothing else for the rest of the night.
“So,” I mumbled, disturbing the silence that suited the run down street we'd found ourselves in. “Where are we on the Hunger Games assignment?”
He shrugged, eyes fixed on the gadgets he was fine tuning in his lap. “Haven’t got around to it yet.”
“Social calendar too busy?” My eyes were stuck on him, stuck on his jaw, which really was sharp, and very pretty when the low light hit it a certain way.
Was I ovulating? What the hell was wrong with me?
Distracting myself, I clutched my knees to my chest, my feet tucked beneath me on the seat.
He turned to me, eyes barely skimming. “You take up most of my time these days.” Before I could reply, he reached over, his hand wrapping around my ankle and placing my foot back down in the footwell, then doing the same with my other leg. All the while his smirk wrapped around me like a chain.
Yep. Definitely ovulating.
I dropped my eyes from his as I shrugged, then folded my arms like that would somehow hide the whole body blush that had no right to be there. “I think you’ve only got yourself to blame for that fate.” My stare found him again. “And besides, on the nights I’m not working, you’re in your house from sunset to sunrise. You're telling me you've got no time to experience one of the greatest movie series of our lifetime?”
“May I remind you that I have an entire enterprise to run? I’m not just sitting around waiting to follow your ass; I’ve got more problems than just you, you know.” I saw the regret invade his face immediately. “I didn’t mean that you’re a problem; I just meant—”
“The missing files?” His eyes asked how I knew that. “I overheard you with Meg the other day after training. Sounded intense.”
His attention left the software in his lap as he scrubbed his hands over his face, some of the guilt melting away. “It is.” His head fell back on the headrest. “All the information on Romano’s most high-profile clients has just been disappearing. Private information. Everything that could ever possibly protect them has just vanished.”
“Surely you have backups?”
“Of course I do,” his head shook. “Doesn’t change the fact that whoever is doing this was still able to get through our systems in the first place. It’s the biggest threat we could ever face.”
“Because it means someone’s potentially after your clients?”
