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Levi and I had finalized the paperwork this week—I was now officially a Betts Security employee.
She frowned as she stalked through the hallway to the conference room, with me close on her heels. “What exactly does ‘restricted duty’ mean?”
“It means I can go to meetings. It means I’m filling out paperwork and attending training sessions so I’m ready for active assignments. But I’m not actually doing anything I enjoy, like shooting bad guys.”
Her eyes flashed. “Your shooting days are over, big guy.”
I held open the door for her, admiring the way her dress showed off her legs even though she was being ridiculous. My shooting-bad-guys days were far from over. I tore my eyes away from her and cased the room; I didn’t have to be on active duty to protect her. But all I found near the conference table were the usual suspects—Lauren, Gabe, Dave, Leo, Levi, Asher, Bethany, and Ellis standing protectively near Fiona.
Lauren motioned us toward the table. “Have a seat. I’m just reviewing a couple of things before I start.”
Hannah made a beeline for Fiona, hugged her hard, then grabbed the empty seat next to Bethany. I clapped Ellis on the shoulder and found my own seat.
Bethany and Hannah chatted for a minute, eagerly catching up. Then Bethany’s sharp eyes traveled over to me, taking in my dress shirt and laptop.
“So,” she asked Hannah, keeping her voice low, “both you and Wes are completely back to work? I thought he was still doing rehab.”
“I’m back full-time, but Wes is on restricted duty. He sort of excused himself from his wheelchair.” Hannah made sure she said it pointedly, so I could hear.
“But you guys are good?” Bethany asked.
“Yeah—we’re great.”
I could hear the grin in Hannah’s voice.
“Aw, that’s wonderful.” Bethany clapped her hands together. “I’m so happy for you that you finally met the right guy. He’s got that big, protective, kick-ass thing going on—I totally get it.”
Even though I was pretending not to listen, I couldn’t help but puff my chest out.
“What’s new with you?” Hannah asked. “How’s having a bodyguard?”
“Randy’s fine. He does what I tell him.” Bethany lowered her voice. “It’s Levi who’s driving me nuts.”
“What’s going on?”
“He won’t stop checking on me. He offered to personally protect my house. He asked me to dinner.”
Hannah laughed, but when Bethany glared at her, she disguised it as a cough. “The nerve.”
Bethany arched an eyebrow. “I don’t have time for dinner, not with a thug.”
Hannah motioned across the conference table to Levi, who was checking messages on his phone and studiously not looking at Bethany. “He’s not a thug—that’s an Armani suit he’s wearing.”
“He’s pretty, I’ll give him that much.” Bethany frowned as she shot a look Levi’s way. “But you know how I feel about dating. After Tony, I’m done. Fool me once, fine. But I’ll never be fooled again.”
“Just because Tony was an ass doesn’t mean you have to be alone forever.”
Hannah had mentioned that Bethany was divorced, and that it had been nasty.
Bethany tapped her pen against the table. “I think it does. Besides, I’m too busy to date. I had fifty billable hours last week. Who has time for dinner?”
Hannah looked as if she was going to argue further, but Lauren cleared her throat. “Sorry for the delay. Let’s get started.”
She turned on her laptop and faced the room. “You all know why we’re here. We’ve decided to go after Li Na Zhao preemptively, before she attacks us again. My sister deserves credit for coming up with this campaign—she’s the brains behind this operation.”
Lauren smiled while Hannah blushed.
“This is the prototype I uploaded to Paragon’s server earlier today,” Lauren continued, turning on the projector and adjusting the image. “It’s for a sensor that tracks unusual metastasizing of cells. The potential customers are patients who are in remission from cancer who need to monitor the growth of their cells on an ongoing basis. If you look here”—she zoomed in to the center of the device, which looked like some sort of microchip—“you can see the ‘brains’ of this device. Similar to the patch, this is its sensor, which analyzes the data stream on a constant basis. This technology is different from what’s already available because it’s implanted directly into the patient and can continually monitor cell activity once it’s in place.”
