Chapter Seventeen

Nate hung up the phone and smiled. The fact that he’d been trying to spend some time alone with Mya and it never seemed to happen was about to end. He’d talked to a client and friend of his, Noah Matthews. Noah was the lead singer for the rock band Last Stand. They had done a job at his new home for him and his wife, Lexi. While Noah had his own security team, they’d been able to work together and incorporate Vault Security innovations into their existing procedures to keep him and his family safe.

Noah had already told Nate he could use the Seabrook house anytime he wanted, since they spent most of their time on the East Coast in Ipswich, Massachusetts. This was going to be perfect for them. The house sat on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. There would be no reason they would need to leave, and no one to interrupt them. They would leave Friday at noon, and come back Sunday evening. Alone, for the whole weekend. He couldn’t stop smiling.

When Mya’s text came in, he was thankful he had sent one to Karina to let her know Mya was here, but she had already discovered her in the lobby. He had time to finish up his call and get everything ready for the weekend. His door opened and the two most important women to him entered.

“I gave her the grand tour, little brother. Now she’s extremely impressed, so don’t go ruining it.”

“Ha,” he said. “Don’t you have something…important to do?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Karina winked at them. “Have fun.” She closed the door behind her.

Standing there like a fool, he couldn’t stop from staring at Mya. With her long black hair and trim body, he couldn’t wait to have her alone. Shaking his head, he tried to get back into the moment and not think about what he was going to do to her. “What do we have here?” He walked over and took the cooler from her hand. “Did you bring me lunch?”

“No,” she said. “I brought us lunch. Since we don’t get to spend as much time together as we want, I thought maybe if I came to your work we might be able to enjoy each other’s company for an hour.” She shrugged. “I mean, we both have to eat.”

“I like the way you think.” He set the cooler down and walked by her, making sure his door was locked. When he turned back around she was looking back at him over her shoulder with one eyebrow raised, and that was all it took. Without wasting a second, he reached out and pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her. How had he never noticed how perfectly she fit in his arms? There was no awkwardness or adjusting; she was the perfect height. Teasing her with his tongue, he slipped it between her lips. Time stood still as they used their hands to explore each other’s body.

He wanted to throw her down on his desk and have his way with her, worshipping her. But they had to stop. This wasn’t the place, and he certainly didn’t have enough time to show her exactly what she deserved. Ending the kiss, he rested his forehead on hers. “One of these days—one of these days soon, we are going to be able to finish this. I’m going to show you how much you really mean to me.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” she said breathlessly. “And I think it’s going to have to be soon. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Now that I’ve found you again, I miss you, more than I ever thought I could.”

“I feel the same way, but for now, we should eat.” He picked up the cooler and set it down on the coffee table by the leather couch near his windows, which faced the opposite way those in his sister’s office did. While Karina looked out over the town, Noah looked out over the forest.

Mya kneeled on the floor and laid everything out on the table, happy at Noah’s excitement over the food. When everything was ready, the leaned up against the couch and pulled the coffee table closer to them.

“I know your house isn’t fully operational yet, but how has it been working for you?”

“Pretty good. I felt strange talking to the house at first. ‘Darvis, turn the kitchen lights off. Darvis, lock the door. Darvis, turn the heat on and set the temperature to seventy-two.’ But I’ve gotten used to it, for the most part.”

Nate frowned. “What issues are you having?”

Shrugging, she played with the food on her plate. “It’s things like I’ll say turn out the kitchen lights, and all the lights in the house go out, or the wrong door will be locked. And there have been a couple of times when the temperature wasn’t set to what I wanted and I either ended up freezing to getting too warm.”

“That isn’t right. That’s too many errors, even at this stage of installation. We’ve programmed this system to be more accurate than that—along with the hours spent recording your voice so there would be no room for error in any of the voice commands. I should look at the code.”

This wasn’t good; he wanted to find out right away what was going on. He started to stand up, but her hand on his arm stopped him.

“Please, I knew there’d be bugs going into this. I’m not worried, I know you’ll get it all figured out. But right now, right this second, I want to relax and enjoy eating lunch with you.”

Smiling, he relaxed next to her. “How can I argue that?”

“You can’t. Now, tell me about Traci. I know you’ve had problems with her, and Karina had to talk to her about how she treated me when I showed up today. I’ve seen the way you run this business, the caliber of employees you hire. She doesn’t seem to fit with the others.”

“Ahhh, Traci, yeah, there’s a story there. Do you remember me talking about Herbert Fallen?”

Mya frowned. “Oh, wasn’t he the man who owned the cabin your family used to stay in?”

“Yep—he actually had a dozen rentals. He was always putting up with Karina and me running around, not to mention the twenty million questions we always seemed to have. My parents were always inviting him over for dinner, since his wife had died so many years ago and his children were grown and moved away. He almost seemed like he was another grandfather to us.”

“That’s a beautiful memory to have.”

Nate smiled and put his arm around her, pulling her close to him. “When we decided to move here and open up Vault Security, the first person I called was Herbert. Always the shrewd businessman, he immediately encouraged me and told me about this piece of property I should buy that would be perfect to build my offices on. Of course, he owned the property.” He laughed. “We bought the land before we even moved up here, and were ready to go as soon as our moving trucks arrived.”

“It sounds like he was excited to have you back here.”

“He sure was.” Sighing deeply, Nate didn’t like to think about what was coming next. “Things had changed since we’d last seen him. He wasn’t the same man as before. After his daughter and son-in-law had died in the car accident, he raised his granddaughter. She was nine at the time, and he was…well, he was in sixties at the time. By the time we moved here, she’d already been living with him for five years and had just started going through her rebellious phase, and at his age, he didn’t need to be dealing with any of that. Karina and I would go out at all hours of the night, searching for her and bringing her home. Trying to talk some sense into her. Telling her why she had to be more careful, why drugs weren’t the answer, trying to get her to look at the future.”

“I’m sure it meant a lot to him to be able to rely on the two of you.”

“More than we even knew. As she got older, she naturally started to mellow out and sober up, but by then the damage to her brain had already been done. Traci wasn’t the same, wasn’t as smart, and certainly couldn’t remember things like she used to. But she started community college and was thinking about the future for the first time in years when the rug was pulled out from under her again.”

“What happened?” Mya’s voice was a shaky whisper.

“Cancer. He’d been battling it for years; stubborn fool didn’t tell anyone. One day he comes to me and tells me that we’re going to throw a huge going away party next weekend. The whole town is invited. When I ask him who’s leaving, he says he is, and proceeds to tell me everything. He found this place in California outside of San Francisco called Last Resort that specializes in helping people make a clean break from their family and friends, letting them remember them as they were, not wasting away as the cancer eats them from the inside out and then dying in front of the people they love. He was going to leave us to die there, alone.”

“I think I heard something about Last Resort on some news story.”

“No cost to the person dying—they can go there and live out the rest of their life stress-free and able to do anything their heart desires.” Noah sighed. “It’s actually a cool concept, being surrounded by a positive environment, they’ve proven that people who have been given weeks to live can actually extend it. A few extra days on a death sentence can mean the world to someone. While it can be hard for the family they leave behind, I’ve also read what it can do to families who have to watch someone they love in pain so intense no medicine can relieve it. That stays with you for the rest of your life. I just wish we had a little more time together before he left.”

“That’s perfectly understandable, Nate. Do any of us really have enough time with the people we love?”

He squeezed her. “No, no we never do.”

“What happened to Traci after that?”

“Herbert made us promise to look out for her like she was out little sister. It was something we would have done anyway. He left her enough money to finish college—we made that stipulation, she had to do that—and then when she was done, she came to work for us. She has a small place here in town and lives a pretty sweet life.”

“You know, not everyone would have done that for her.”

“No, but we do. She’s family now. Herbert left me the cabin he lived in, and the other rentals we sold and put the money away for Traci. She doesn’t need to work for money, but she needs to have something purposeful to fill her days.”

Mya rested her head on his shoulder. “Again, you prove what an amazing man you are. I’m sure that offered Herbert peace of mind, knowing you and Karina would be there for Traci.”

“I know it did. And as much as I am enjoying this, I do really need to get back to work. I have an appointment—” He checked his watch. “—in about fifteen minutes. We’re still on for dinner, right?”

“Of course, but I think we should try something different. Either I come to your house, or we go to a restaurant. There are times I feel that when we try to spend time alone at my house, we are cursed.”

Nate laughed. “It’s all a coincidence. Life is like that—before we know it we’ll have smooth sailing and you’ll be bored with me.”

“While I can completely get behind the smooth sailing portion, you should know I’ll never get bored of you.”

“Let’s go out to dinner tonight. I’ll pick you up about six, how does that sound?”

“Great, I can’t wait!”

Standing up, he pulled her to her feet and kissed her hard and fast on the lips. “Now, leave before I lose my last ounce of willpower and have my way with you.”

“Promises, promises,” Mya said.

“And you are playing with fire.”

Smirking, she put her fingers on the top button of her shirt and started pulling on it. “It is a little warm in here…Maybe…”

“Stop, you have to go down any further,” he groaned.

Mya laughed. “Until tonight. I hope you have a…productive afternoon.”

“It’s going to be a hard afternoon.”

“Now who’s teasing?”

Nate winked at her. “We’ll have to see who comes out on top.”