Page 24 of Velvet Vaughn

Chapter Five

Leo had been alone in his condo until a little while ago, and now a woman he hadn’t seen in a while was standing in his kitchen setting up a command post, and he was struggling to remember how to breathe normally.

Anja had moved efficiently through his place. No surface had been left untouched, from the couch cushions to the undersides of his cabinets. She’d asked him questions about his building’s camera coverage and typed his answers into her phone. Despite all that, she hadn’t once made him feel like a client.

She had, however, reminded him that he was a living, breathing man with a pulse and a healthy libido, which was the opposite of what he’d been hoping for.

He’d spent approximately 150 days telling himself that his memory of her had to be wrong. She couldn’t look as beautiful as he remembered. His brain had exaggerated, and the woman who’d rocked his world for one magical night would turn out, on second viewing, to be an ordinary person.

His brain had not exaggerated.

If anything, it had undersold her.

She was on the other side of his island now, unpacking gear from a zippered case with the concentration he associated with surgeons and pit crews. A laptop came out first, slim and matte black, followed by a mesh pouch of cables and a device the size of a paperback that she set to one side without explanation. She didn’t seem to notice the strand of white-blonde hair that had fallen along her cheek. Leo’s palms itched with the ridiculous urge to tuck it behind her ear.

He shoved both hands into his pockets and studied the wall above her head instead.

Get it together, De Luca. A man is dead. Your name is on a warning. The woman is here to do a job.

“You’re staring.”

Her voice was light. She hadn’t looked up.

“I’m supervising.”

“Supervising what?”

“My thoughts. It’s a complicated operation.”

Her mouth tipped at the corner, which was probably not a smile, but he chose to interpret it as one anyway. She set a coil of cables on the island and glanced up at him. The blue of her eyes in the warm light of his pendant lamps hit him harder than it had any business doing to a grown man in his own home.

“Sit down, Leo.”

“I’m fine standing.”

“You look dead on your feet. Please sit. I’m about to put Tyler on a video link, and I need you alert, not asleep standing up.”

The stool scraped against the oak floor as he sat. She slid a bottle of water she’d grabbed from his fridge across the counter to him without comment, and he drank it because she’d put it there. The cold of it going down reminded him that he hadn’t eaten dinner.

“I can make you something to eat,” he offered. “Eggs. I have eggs.”

“Later. Work first.”

“I’m trying to be a good host.”

“You’re trying to be useful. Those aren’t the same thing tonight. Let me do my job, and I’ll let you feed me at two in the morning when we’re both running on fumes. Deal?”

“Deal.”

She pulled a stool around to the corner of the island so they’d both be visible to the laptop camera, angled the screen, and tapped through a secure client he didn’t recognize. Her fingers moved over the keys smoothly, indicating this would be the easy part of her evening. Beneath his sternum, a knot he’d been carrying since 4:47 this afternoon at Bellerive loosened a quarter-turn.

Anja was here. She was working. He wasn’t alone anymore.

He’d fall apart in private later.

Tyler’s face filled the screen on the second ring. In the background was a room that looked as technical and futuristic as the USS Enterprise, with a wall of dark monitors and the faint green pulse of rack lights behind his left shoulder. Tyler wore a yellow Henley, a knit cap pulled over his hair, and a faint squint that probably came from reading code in dim rooms since he was seven. He was holding a mug that read, I Told You the Firewall Was Fine.

“Thanks for doing this for me, Tyler. I apologize for dragging you out of bed. Ten seconds and I’ll put you on a split screen with the client.”