Chapter Seven
Being a good girl sucked.
Cassie had never, ever, thought she’d consider that statement to be true, but when a girl just wanted to hear one slightly off-color comment or be on the receiving end of one self-contained but utterly steamy look, despite the unspoken rules she herself had signed up for…something had to give.
She’d considered ignoring her instincts and kissing him again in hopes of pulling a reaction from Drew, who appeared to be perfectly content with their current “professional only” system. Another reason to ignore her urges was the fact that she’d found more irregularities in their systems recently. Footprints that pointed to someone trying to follow Data Minds’ work. Did they have a corporate mole?
She didn’t want to believe it, but she’d started to keep a record of her findings, to see if a pattern emerged. Could be as simple as bad code, though what she’d stumbled on appeared slicker than that. At the same time, she’d paid more attention to her coworkers during office hours.
She couldn’t bring herself to point the finger at Drew. He wasn’t the only new employee in the office, after all, even if he was the newest. Then again, every so often, questions he asked—or cross-examined her with, more like—rang with an ulterior motive. Of course, that could be her overactive imagination, something she’d never credited herself with before. Seeing suspicious signs that weren’t there was not her usual bag of weird.
In the meantime, if she didn’t do something about her growing need to kiss the man soon—a phenomena that had to do with his mind as much as his body—she might spontaneously combust in her cube. That would just be messy.
“Cassandra.” Her mother’s exasperated tones pulled her out of her head. “That’s the third time I’ve called your name. Where’s your head today?”
She glanced around her parents’ large, airy kitchen to find her mother staring at her. She’d come home for the weekend, needing to escape from her apartment that felt like it wanted to close in on her. She cleared her throat. “Sorry, just trying to solve a work problem.” She stood up from where she’d been seated on one of the island stools, lounging around in her pajamas. “Can I help?”
Her mother pointed to a carton of eggs and a large bowl. Cassie took the hint, washed up, and got to work breaking and scrambling enough for a small battalion.
Two of her brothers, along with their families, were coming over soon for brunch. Growing up with four siblings had meant she was used to a rowdy household, but these days, between spouses and kids, their family of seven was now a family of seventeen with kiddos ranging in age from ten years to two months.
50 percent madhouse, 50 percent funhouse, 100 percent guaranteed to drive her totally and certifiably out of her mind. And she loved it.
Best part…Cassie didn’t have a family of her own to watch after, which meant she got to be “Cool Aunt Cassie” and spend most of her time playing with the kids. Worst part…Cassie didn’t have a family of her own, which meant she got hounded about her love life, and entertaining the munchkins was taken for granted.
“If I didn’t know better, I would suspect you’re pining over someone.”
Cassie took a leaf out of Drew’s notebook and neither looked up, nor responded. Her father’s Sunday paper rustled as he lowered it to listen. Cassie beat the eggs with fervent vigor, refusing to lift her eyes. Heat from an uncontrollable blush crept up her chest and neck into her face.
“Is Mom right? Do you have a fella?” he asked.
Cassie rolled her eyes at the old-fashioned term. What she had was a headache.
“Who is he, Cassandra?” her mother asked. “Not a client, I hope.”
“No, not a client.” Much worse than that.
After a minute, her dad shook his head, then took his paper and left the room. After all these years, he could sense a mother-daughter clash coming, and tended to make himself scarce.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Cassie couldn’t pretend to misunderstand. At the same time, her mom had asked. Not prodded. Not demanded. She’d asked. Maybe, for once, Cassie might receive some sympathy, or heaven forbid, some advice.
From her mother. The world had officially flipped upside down.
She worried at her lower lip as she debated opening up. Sympathy was not her mother’s strong suit, and her advice usually didn’t align with Cassie’s needs.
Maybe if she kept things general, rather than specific. “There’s a guy at work—”
Immediately her mother tsked. “Workplace romances are never a smart idea. What if it doesn’t end well, Cassandra?”
Cassie ground her teeth. She couldn’t even get through one sentence. “Which is why we haven’t pursued it.”
“Good.”
That was it? The extent of all the motherly love, sympathy, and advice? Susan Howard might be a top-notch, award-winning psychologist, but she had a thing or ten to learn about helping her family.
“But you want to pursue it?”
Cassie glanced up from the stove. “I don’t know.” How did you tell your uptight mother in not-so-many-words that a man turned you into a pre-orgasmic puddle of goo with every awkward, geeky word he uttered?
“Are you thinking about John?”
Her slap-brain boyfriend in college who happened to take her thesis idea and propose it as his own before she had a chance? “That’s part of it. I worked hard to get where I am, and this guy does the same type of work as I do.”
“Which means you work closely together all day?”
“Yes.”
“If you think he’d take credit for your work, I’m surprised you’re even considering an affair.”
Cassie’d already pondered that issue long and hard for weeks. “No,” she said slowly. “If anything, he thinks he’s way too smart to have to steal someone else’s work.” Their “discussions” were becoming the stuff of legend in the office.
She hadn’t considered it in those terms, but now the words were out, they rang true. No way would Drew sabotage her for his own ends. He’d get where he was going on his own merit.
“Even so, is one of you having to walk away from your job if things don’t work out worth the risk? You know working together closely like you say you do will be awkward at best and a battleground at worst if the relationship ends. Especially if it ends badly.”
“I know, mother.” Cassie blew a strand of hair out of her eyes, her hands occupied with the eggs. “I was sort of hoping you’d have a different answer,” she muttered.
“Looking for a different answer when you already know it is just wishful thinking, Cassandra.” Her mother took the pancake-piled plate to the table and set it down. “I expect more from you.”
“I’m well aware of your expectations.”
Her mother pinned her with “the look,” her lips flat. “You wanted my advice, and I gave it. I think you know what I’d do, were I you,” she said.
Walk away and turn off the emotions like an automaton. Smart, sensible, logical—Cassie once believed she was exactly like her mother in that regard. When John had hijacked her thesis idea, she’d been mad as hell and furious with herself that she’d trusted him, but she hadn’t been all that upset about their relationship ending.
Who knew an awkward-as-all-get-out know-it-all could have this kind of effect on her?
The question was, what, if anything, did she do about it? Even after her “heart-to-heart” with her mom, she still wasn’t sure.
…
Drew took another swig of his beer and pretended to watch the baseball game on the TV over the bar. Max had dragged him to their favorite Irish pub—all mahogany wood, a hundred beers on tap, and sports on every TV—for a few hours on a Saturday night. He’d insisted Drew needed to get out of his head before he went out of his mind.
He’d been working flat out trying to find something, anything, to close this damn case and escape his own personal hell. Being around Cassie without allowing himself to stare, or tease, or touch, was damn near killing him. If this went on much longer, the FBI would find his cold, lifeless body in his apartment, and the coroner’s report would cite an excessive buildup of sexual tension in the cells as the cause of death.
She, in the meantime, didn’t seem the least bothered by their status quo.
“What’s your problem, Kerrigan?” Max drawled, neatly stacking the coasters, flipping one over so that the same side was facing up on all of them.
Drew raised a single eyebrow. His friend’s OCD was showing.
“Shut up.”
“Didn’t say anything,” Drew replied.
Max wasn’t to be sidetracked from his earlier question, though. “You’ve been about as fun as a sandy towel at the beach. I’m used to you not speaking much, but if I didn’t know you better, I’d say you’re in need of some mind-blowing sex.”
Drew’s dick agreed as a crystal-clear image of sliding in and out of Cassie’s gorgeous body assailed him. Unfortunately, banging his head on the bar in an attempt to rid himself of said images would only make Max more suspicious. “I’m not,” the words came out as a growl.
“No?” Max challenged.
Unwilling to argue, Drew shrugged and swung his gaze back to the game. Not that he’d paid enough attention to even know the score, but what the hell.
“I told you getting close to your assignment was a bad idea.”
Damn Max and the computer he carried around instead of a brain. He was almost as bad as Cassie in the hit-the-head-on-the-nail analysis of others. “I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
“When my buddy starts acting like a bug crawled up his ass, I have to step in. It’s just the kind of guy I am.” Max slapped him on the back just as he was taking a swig of beer, and Drew came up spluttering.
In retaliation, Drew scoured his brain for a diversion and landed on a topic guaranteed to distract. “Has your mom found you a wife yet?”
Max’s expression snapped from grinning to pissed in less time than it took him to trace laundered money to the source. “Low blow, man. Why’d you have to take it there?”
Max’s mama was as Italian as they came, and, in her opinion, a man wasn’t happy until he had a wife. She and the rest of his family—the female side at least, all the aunts, sisters, and cousins in his extensive lineage—were constantly hounding Max to find someone and settle down, and frequently attempting to set him up.
Drew tipped back his beer, then shrugged. “I figured while we were getting all personal…”
“So, this Cassie woman is personal now? I thought you were keeping things friendly.”
Damn. Give the man a bone to pick, and he’d obsessively gnaw at it. “Things are friendly.” Too damn friendly, and not remotely close to friendly enough.
They’d kept things focused on work, and no more spontaneous kissing had occurred, other than in the X-rated fantasies that woke him every night with a raging hard-on. Beyond the regular squabbles over methods and analysis—moments he lived for because he loved how her mind worked, how they complemented and bounced off each other—they’d kept their interactions above board and ship shape. Hell, their ship was in such pristine shape, you could practically lick your dinner off the deck.
Lick.
Drew held back a groan and slammed his eyes shut as images of licking his way up Cassie’s body teased him with possibility. He may have done his best to stop tossing out phrases which made her pause, but he still thought them, and his mind had been storing them up and filing them away. These days, practically every word spoken held some connotation for him that was on the wrong end of the spectrum.
Meanwhile his op was going fucking nowhere. Between this thing with Cassie and the lack of progress, no way was he going to be allowed undercover again—
“Things going well with the investigation?”
When did Max become clairvoyant? “I’m not getting any further than before I went undercover.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t find anything in their financials that could help.”
Drew shrugged. He hadn’t expected much, but he’d wanted to be thorough. He fiddled with the damp bar napkin. “I know something is off there.”
He was also becoming more and more convinced Cassie was not his perp. He just had to prove it.
“I think she’s innocent,” he blurted.
Max pulled his gaze from the game. “Cassie?”
Drew nodded.
Max took a long drought of his beer while considering the situation. “Let me ask you this. Do you like this girl?”
Drew cleared his throat. “I like her.” Maybe more than like, but he couldn’t let himself explore that possibility.
“As in, you got too close.”
Not close enough. “Yeah.”
“Then I’d say you’re fucked, my friend. Classic conflict of interest, and it will skew your investigation. My advice is to remove yourself from the case, and don’t contact her again until it’s over, assuming she’s proven innocent at that point.”
Drew had already considered that option. “I can’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“If they assign someone else the case, I can’t trust them to look past the initial evidence we collected.”
“Can you look past your attraction?”
“I’ll have to.”
Max raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“I’ll make sure my team checks every conclusion. If they disagree, then I’ll go with their conclusions. But if she is innocent, I need to prove that.”
Finally, Max nodded. “If I’d trust anyone to do the right thing, it’s you.”
Which only made Drew feel worse. Why’d he bring this up anyway? Max had only told him everything he’d already told himself.
Right. Drew caught the bartender’s eye and signaled for the check.
Max scowled. “Where’re you going?”
“Home.”
“The game’s not over.” He waved at the screen.
“Text me the score. I’m not in the mood.”
He tossed a couple bills on the bar, stuffed his wallet in the back pocket of his jeans, and headed for the door without a good-bye. Max was used to him. No need to smile and respond with an old friend.
“You know you’re a real thrill to be around lately, Kerrigan,” Max called after him. “Get your shit together.”
He intended to. But first he had a case to solve.