“Who’s Junior Patrick?”
Chelsea gave Emily’s words back to her. “It’s slang, silly. Don’t you ever watch the BBC? Junior Patrick is another name for a lady’s best friend.”
“Ah. Right. Good to know I’m not the only one in an intimate relationship with that guy.”
Chelsea chuckled and stood to slip out of her favorite Dobby the House Elf slippers—she was an avid reader and collector of all things fantasy-related and nerdy—and into her kitten-heel pumps. Draining the last of her coffee, she set the empty mug on the table and sighed. “I’m off. Another day, another dollar.”
“And hopefully another chance to plant that bug in Morrison’s computer.” Emily grinned up at her, showing a set of crossed fingers and an expression of true sympathy.
Right. Roper Morrison. Otherwise known as…Spider.
The name was enough to make Chelsea’s skin crawl.
Chapter 1
“There must be a better way to get this job done.”
Dagan Zoelner noted his own thunderous expression in the mirror hanging on the wall near the front door before returning his attention to Chelsea, sullenly eyeing her when she leaned close to her reflection to apply lipstick in a shade that could only be described as take-me-big-boy pink.
When she blew a kiss at him in the mirror, a coiling awareness tightened his gut. Then she turned and gifted him with a look that would have made a lesser man instinctively reach to protect his balls.
“Lands sakes alive, Z! You’re going to whip out your misogynyeverymorning?” That husky voice of hers…itdidthings to him, and she planted her hands on her fantastically curvy hips. The woman was built like a Kardashian, no doubt about it, but the familiar stance reminded him not of Kim or Khloé, but of a pint-sized Wonder Woman.
All she’s missing are the gold cuff bracelets and the flowing black hair.
Because while Chelsea’s hair was dark and shiny, it was as short as a little boy’s. Apixiecut, he thought it was called. And that word described Chelsea Duvall perfectly.
With her smooth café-au-lait skin, her copper-colored eyes that frequently glinted with mischief, and the sprinkling of freckles like cinnamon across the bridge of her button nose, she was an ethereal creature. One he wanted to put in a gilded cage so he could keep her safe from the cruel world. And, more importantly, from the likes of Roper fuckin’ Morrison.
“It’s not misogyny. It’s a cold, hard fact. You’re not qualified for this kind of work.”
“Oh sweet Jesus!” She tossed her hands in the air. She was unaware that the movement caused her blazer to gape open, revealing a set of spectacular breasts that stretched tight the fabric of her lavender blouse. “It’s déjà poo. As in, I’ve heard this crap too many times before.”
“Frequency doesn’t make it any less true.” He ripped his eyes away from the vast landscape of her chest because…you know…he refused to bethat guy.
Even so, it didn’t escape his notice that her amazing rack was partly to blame for the position Chelsea currently found herself in…the position of pretending to be Morrison’s personal assistant when, in truth, she was waiting for an opportunity to plant a virus in one of his computers. Once she did that, the Black Knights back at headquarters in Chicago would hack into Morrison’s systems and get the information they needed to prove, once and for all, that he was the notorious Spider.
For months, they had tried to ferret out Spider’s true identity with no luck. Then, with the release of the Panama Papers, the detailed attorney-client information for more than 200,000 offshore companies and the identities of those companies’ shareholders and financial transactions, they had found the proverbial needle in the haystack. The papers had uncovered a tie between Morrison and a diamond mine in Angola. Which wasn’t all that unseemly on the surface, right? A man of Morrison’s means—estimated net worth fourteen billion dollars—who owned a media empire of a hundred newspapers and dozens of television stations in both the United States and the UK, had investments all over the world, Africa included. But it just so happened that the Black Knights and the CIA had reason to believe that thatparticulardiamond mine was owned by the shadowy Spider.
It had been a clear case of a transitive relationship as far as everyone had been concerned. If A equaled B, and B equaled C, then A equaled C. Morrison was Spider. The trouble came in trying to prove it. They hadn’t been able to hack into Morrison’s systems from the outside because, according to BKI’s hacker extraordinaire, the renowned Ethan “Ozzie” Sykes, “Morrison’s firewalls have firewalls.” So that had left them with only one option: Get someone on the inside.
Enter Chelsea Duvall.
She had volunteered for the job with one unforgettable sentence:I’ll get so close to Morrison, he won’t be able to take a piss without me giving it a shake.
Dagan had exploded. He’d told her and everyone else at the early-morning meeting, “There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell Chelsea will be the one to do this. She’s an analyst, not a fuckin’ field agent!”
But he’d been outvoted.
Apparently Chelsea was the perfect pawn to use in the chess match with Morrison because the man was known to hire and surround himself with women who possessed certain…physical attributes. Read: Ladies built like brick shithouses. And Chelsea’s backstory about wanting to quit her job with the Bureau of Land Management—that was her CIA cover—move to England, and go to work for Morrison was exceptional for two reasons. One, it was believable. And two, it happened to be one hundred percent true.
Less than two weeks after that fateful meeting at BKI headquarters, it became known that Morrison had fired his PA. Twenty-four hours later, Chelsea’s résumé had been in Morrison’s hands. Forty-eight hours afterthat—time no doubt used by Morrison’s security team to vet Chelsea top to bottom—she had been on a plane to London to sit for an interview.
Just as had been predicted, Morrison had taken one look at Chelsea—and her…uh…myriaddelightful features—and hired her on the spot. That was the good news.
The bad news? Well, on top of being an evil and lecherous old fart, Morrison was incredibly paranoid. In the four and a half weeks Chelsea had worked for him, not once had she been allowed to enter either his home office or the office he kept in downtown London to use the thumb drive she meticulously sewed into the lining of her jacket or slacks or whatever other item of clothing she happened to wear to work that day.
Morrison not onlylockedthe doors to his inner sanctums, but gaining access to the rooms required a retinal scan and voice recognition. Getting around the voice recognition part wasn’t too hard. Chelsea had already made a secret recording of Morrison saying the pass phrase. But the retinal scan? Short of offing the asshole and plucking out one of his eyeballs, they were at a loss.Something has to give.
