Chapter Eight
Lane had spent most of the day looking at the footage that Kadan and Zen had captured. The cameras had worked beautifully. The downloads had been successful and his team was already hard at work editing the footage to create an experience that would interface with the virtual reality glasses Lane and an engineering friend had been perfecting over the past few years.
“We’ll have at least a two minute experience for next weekend for people to sample right?” he asked tersely. With technology it was always down to the wire.
“Definitely,” Erik, one of his top software engineers said without even looking up, “and more. We talked about something users can download and use with an app and the disposable VR glasses. That was the plan.”
“Yeah, but the glasses are held up in customs. We only got a half shipment in.”
“Scarcity creates more demand.”
“Thanks sunshine and rainbows.” Lane groused.
“Don’t forget the unicorns. And you promised champagne.”
“I thought I’d pop it out when you were done working.”
“I work faster with champagne,” Erik said. “And we’re working flat-out all week.”
That was true. Always before the launch of a new game or an interface with a new product, he and the team were twenty-four seven. Luz couldn’t have picked a worse time to show up out of the blue and destroy his equilibrium. Just thinking of her had him scanning the beach.
She was standing by the shore, jeans rolled up but wet, toeing the sand. Her body drooped. He’d seen her throughout the day, sometimes with Paz but often with the three interns as well as Hollis. He’d kept his distance, but the pull was strong. So far he’d resisted, but something about the angle of her shoulders worried him.
Cursing himself and his stupidity, he pulled a bottle of champagne out of one of the coolers and hoped his many donations to the city and to the police department would create a temporary cloak of invisibility for a few minutes.
“Champagne?”
“It’s a public beach.” Luz turned from her silent study of the ocean.
“That’s right, rule girl.”
He wanted her to smile. Instead, she just looked a little more diminished. She was pale, but had dark circles under her eyes.
What the hell was wrong with her? Did she really miss Alex that much?
“Did the camera work as well as you hoped?” she asked, taking the plastic flute from him.
“You want to give it a go?” He teased, not sure why he was here, trying to engage with her when he should be debriefing with his team.
Work had been everything for him the past decade. His company and surfing, but now, watching Kadan gaze at Hollis, get lost in her, his hand splayed low across her belly and his famous poster-boy smile brighter than the sun, made Lane feel like he couldn’t get far enough away from all that glowing happiness fast enough.
“Luz, you okay?” he finally asked, trying to make eye contact.
“Yeah.” She sipped the champagne, looked away, and then looked back at him. “I feel a little.” She stopped then put her hand on his arm. “Sorry,” she said softly. “The room, I mean the beach, it’s kind of spinning.”
He plunked the bottle in the sand and held her shoulders. “Are you sick? What’s wrong?”
She looked up at him with her huge, black eyes, and he couldn’t even remember his name, but he was filled with dread. She looked unfocused. And she felt insubstantial in his arms.
“Luz, tell me.” He pulled her closer, trying to find an answer she didn’t seem willing to give him. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I think I’m just tired. I was helping Paz with some things. I was trying to.”
Each sentence was softer and took longer to get out.
He swore and slid one hand around her back and the other at the back of her knees and picked her up.
“I’m taking you to a doctor.”
“No.” She leaned closer to him and he caught a whiff of the floral scent of her hair. One finger trailed along the line of his jaw. “I don’t want to go.”
“You’re going,” he said through clenched teeth. He’d Google a clinic when they got to his Jeep.
“You can’t carry me all the way to the parking lot,” she said. “It’s a long walk. I weigh a ton.”
He didn’t say anything because if he did, he wasn’t sure he would be able to shut up, because she didn’t weigh nearly enough for her height, which filled him with an entirely new kind of fear that was bordering on terror, and that made him want to hit something. And her touching him was causing an entirely inappropriate reaction, which made him the biggest perv in town at the moment. Kadan hadn’t far off when he’d cursed Lane’s self-destructive streak around Luz. It was back.
“Aren’t you…don’t you need to…work. That’s the word,” she said more to herself.
Screw a clinic. He was taking her to the hospital.
“Lane, you look angry.”
“No. Not with you.”
Now her finger traced his lips, and it took all his willpower for him to not suck it in his mouth like he used to. Very visual memories of the things he used to do to her body, what she used to do to his body, engulfed him like a flash fire sending every nerve ablaze.
Focus. He mentally kicked himself in the balls. He’d nearly dropped her. It didn’t help that she sighed and moaned softly into his chest. It felt so familiar, like twelve years had never happened.
She dumped you. Married your asshole brother.
Even those reminders didn’t deliver the emotional roundhouse kick of a reality check that they used to. His brother wasn’t here. And fuck him anyway. Why should Kadan be the only one with a second chance at happiness? Except no way would Lane open his dumb-ass self up to that kind of hurt again.
The walk seemed way longer, not because she was heavy, which she kept apologizing for, which pissed him off more and more, but because he was really getting anxious. When he reached his Jeep, he carefully loaded her in and wrapped her shivering body in one of his fleece-lined hoodies.
“Baby.” The word slipped out before he could sensor it.
Her sculptured features twisted in pain, but she opened her eyes. They were unfocused and she closed them again.
“Baby, I need to know what’s wrong.” His hands anxiously smoothed over her body, then he cupped her jaw, let his fingers feather up to hold her face.
She was so beautiful. He’d felt so cold and empty inside for so long. Angry. But it was all gone. One night and a morning in her presence and the black hole that had sucked all his light was diminished.
“Is it drugs?” he whispered, feeling a fierce need to kill his brother. “They’re going to want to know.”
“Who?” She smiled at him. “You look so intense. Like how you used to stare at me before we made love.”
Definitely out of it.
“Baby, are you on anything?”
“No. The antibiotics made me feel ill.”
“Antibiotics? For what?” He shook her awake, felt her for fever.
She’d felt cold when he’d been carrying her up to the parking lot, but now her forehead was hot and the back of her neck was drenched in sweat.
Shit.
“What’s wrong? Antibiotics for what?” He demanded. The hospital would want to know.
“Too embarrassing.”
He stared at her. Had his brother’s cheating given Luz some sexual disease? Alex definitely needed killing. Castration first.
“You can tell me.”
No response. It was like she’d fallen asleep talking to him, and what the fuck was he doing, auditioning to play Sherlock Fucking Holmes? She could be septic. Buckling her in, he spun out of the parking lot and raced north on I5, which for once, wasn’t a parking lot.
* * *
He barely remembered the ten minute trip to the hospital. He did remember being a total jerk to the admissions worker, bypassing the emergency check-in and shouting that he couldn’t find Luz’s pulse, as he pushed through the double doors, and his lie kicked everyone into high gear, that even when they found her pulse, they didn’t stop the full-court press, which scared him.
“I need to be with her.” Lane pushed away from the counter from where he had been dragged to complete paperwork, none of which he could concentrate enough to have the answers to.
“I need her name, sir, and dial down the attitude or I’m calling in security.” The nurse, Jenna, her name tag declared, didn’t act like a Jenna at all. She was tall, blonde, and could have wrestled a zoo full of alligators into submission on her coffee break.
“I need to know she’s okay.”
“Obviously.” Jenna was unimpressed by his urgency. “Name.”
“Luz de Luna Duke.” He knew that much and he did know her birthdate. He gave his local address.
“Your name.”
“Lane Duke. Listen I—”
“Your wife?” Her fingers paused on the keyboard. “Why didn’t you say that coming in?”
His heart rate slowed, and he could actually hear himself think, and his focus narrowed.
Wife.
“I was—” He broke off because the word panicked came to mind, and that word was wrong on so many levels.
He ran a gaming empire. He went to gaming conventions in Las Vegas and New York where he was a god. He didn’t panic, but he was a passable liar.
“I was concerned,” he said. “My wife”—he had to spit the word out because it made him think of the past and Alex, which made his fists ball and his stomach sour—“had surgery, uh, last week.” He guessed. “And I was afraid she might be septic.”
“How about you leave the diagnosis to us,” she said. “What kind of surgery?”
His tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth. How the hell should he know? Something she was embarrassed by.
Jenna shook her head pityingly at him. “Really, men,” she said. “only too happy to play down there but discuss it? They all become five again.”
It took Lane a second to process what she meant. He felt like saying vagina three times really fast just to stand up for his gender, but decided Jenna would not be amused, and now that he was a “husband,” he had certain rights, one of them being access to his “wife.”
“Please, I need to be with Luz.” He gave her a look that usually melted women, but Jenna was still frosty.
“Your wife’s a little more conscious now that she’s got an IV going. How about I get all the particulars from her? I’ll come get you when she’s ready to be seen.”
“But—”
“Wait here,” Jenna said coolly and walked off.
Lane couldn’t sit. He paced.
“Where the hell’s my sister?” Paz demanded, charging into the emergency waiting area. “What have you done to her?”
Kadan and Hollis followed her as well as Zen.
“What did I do to her? She was with you all day, and you didn’t even realize she was sick! She was barely conscious when I brought her in here. I think she’s septic. What surgery did she have?” He demanded, getting in Paz’s face.
She looked like she was about to yell, but Zen lightly touched her arm.
“Paz, I know you’re worried.” Zen said.
She jerked away and rolled her eyes.
“Do you know?” Lane demanded.
“None of your business,” she said, crossing her arms. “If she wanted you to know, she’d have told you.”
“What did the doctor say?” Kadan, always calm in a crisis asked.
“Nothing yet.”
“Mr. Duke,” Jenna returned. “You can go on back to see your wife.”
Three pair of eyes glued to him. Paz looked furious.
“She’s my sister.” She gritted out to the nurse.
“Just her husband right now.”
Lane followed her, knowing he was just digging himself in deeper.
Jenna breezed down the hallway. He followed, holding Luz’s large teal purse because he thought he might need to produce her license and insurance card at some point.
“Luz.” He sat beside her bed in the chair that a nurse had eagerly provided now that he was the vetted “husband,” Jenna had approved in hushed tones.
He looked at the multicolored monitors, flashing numbers and lines. It looked like a science class. He stared a few moments trying to figure out what was what. Her blood pressure was so low he thought it must be a mistake, but her pulse was disturbingly high. It wasn’t as if she were in a spin class or anything.
“We should be able to get her stabilized soon.” A resident stood at the monitors, entering data. “I’m having to push a lot of fluids to get her pressure up. That could give her some temporary breathing problems. Does your wife have asthma?”
“No.”
Luz had always been crazy healthy. Asthma didn’t develop in adulthood, did it? But what if he were hurting her through his ignorance?
“Well, her surgeon did a great job, but sometimes infection does take hold. We’ve taken a culture, but we should know if she’s responding within an hour or so.”
Lane nodded, still feeling numb. “She said the antibiotics were difficult to take.”
“She should have contacted her surgeon immediately,” the resident said with brilliant hindsight.
What kind of surgery? Lane worried. Were she and Alex really split? Should he contact his brother? His whole body recoiled at the thought of letting Alex in such close contact with Luz when she was so vulnerable, but who the hell was he to make a decision like that?
“Luz, baby.” He brushed her dark hair off her forehead.
Her eyes fluttered open.
“Hey,” he said softly.
Her hand trembled in his. He squeezed it lightly. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding her hand. He was getting a little too good at this playacting. He went to let go, but her fingers stayed in his.
“You’re going to be fine,” he said, willing it to be so as he lightly squeezing her hands reassuringly.
Her eyes closed then opened again. “Sorry.”
“No need. What happened, Luz? What kind of surgery?” he whispered.
Her hand moved again toward her chest, then it drifted down to slip back inside his hand. Her fingers laced with his, and it reminded him of how they used to be.
His heart plummeted. “Luz, are you sick? Did you have…cancer?” He could barely get the word out through his tight throat.
She shook her head and he felt like he could breathe again.
“No. I wanted to be real again,” she whispered after a while.
Lane sat there for a long time, watching her sleep and thinking about what she must have meant, and trying to wrap his head around it.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, but eventually he stood up, feeling exhausted. Usually when he was on such a tight deadline the adrenalin sailed him through. Now, he felt like he’d crashed into a pile of rocks. He walked back out to the emergency room, thinking he’d find a fuming Paz.
Instead it was only Kadan.
“Husband?” Kadan didn’t even let him get fully through the automatic door.
“It was an easy mistake to make. I took advantage.”
“So, this is you being tight?” Kadan demanded. “This is you being in control of your emotions?”
“What did you want me to do? Leave her on the beach? Drive her here, dump her, and go back to work?”
Kadan gripped Lane’s shoulder and looked into his eyes.
“No. I just don’t think you’re admitting to yourself what you’re really doing. What you’re feeling.”
“I’m good. I just wanted to get her to a doctor.”
“You walked out of one of your biggest work projects. You’re about to launch a new product. You’ve got millions invested and on the line and it’s show time. You just disappeared.”
“What was I supposed to do? Let her pass out on the beach? Maybe have my assistant call an ambulance?”
“You rode in on your white horse. Admit it.”
“I didn’t. I’m cool. And I’m going back to work now.” He broke away from Kadan and spread his arms wide in a “whatever” motion.
“Zen took Paz to the cafeteria. Perhaps you can leave permission for Paz to see your wife, her sister.”
“Shut up,” Lane said without heat. “It’s not like you would have just dropped Hollis off and left.”
“Exactly. That’s my point exactly.” Kadan made the same “whatever” shrug and sauntered out of the room pausing only to needle him one last time. “I’m going to take my future wife home now.”
The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Lane.
* * *
The next couple of days passed in a blur. Somehow, he pretended to work and actually got a few things done, but that was mostly because his team rocked. He had a special events and launch planner, Teagan Ross, who was so organized Lane wasn’t sure she was human. Zen and Kadan were the face of the product and if Kadan ever got tired of smiling, posing for pictures, signing autographs, and answering the same dumb-ass questions from the surf and tech press and fans, he didn’t let on. Zen was just as present, but with a totally different vibe. He surfed, posted to social media sites, shot footage, and pretended like he wasn’t staring at Paz like he was starving.
Luz was being sprung today, only because he had promised to have a home healthcare nurse visit each day to take her vitals, and she was under no circumstance to stop taking the full three-week course of antibiotics. Lane had sworn that he’d jam the pills down her throat himself. The nurse had laughed. He hadn’t been joking.
Problem was, what house? She would no doubt prefer the smaller hacienda, historical house nestled close to downtown above the main beach and pier, but he hadn’t yet wired the house to handle his own tech needs, much less those of his virtual reality team.
He had a huge house in the San Clemente hills that had a lot of privacy and space and every amenity, but he didn’t do much there but sleep, and even that he often did in the apartment he kept at his corporate headquarters in Newport Beach. He could move his team in so they could make the final push over the next few days before the surf competition officially started and his virtual reality interactive game experience went live as a prototype users could demo over the competition. He could work while still watching over Luz to ensure she made a full recovery.
But bringing her to his house seemed like a statement he didn’t want to make. But what to do? Paz was living in a small, vintage trailer in a park on the beach, north of town. He could hardly send Luz there as it was barely large enough for Paz. Kadan and Hollis were living temporarily in a one-room beach house. And while all the hotels and B&Bs were sold out, Lane could probably find her something, but he wanted to ensure she was comfortable while she recovered. And close.
And if that made him in too deep, then he’d just have to suck it up. He could handle himself. Do the right thing without getting tangled in her web again. Kadan worried that Lane would fall in love. He could have told him that was impossible. He didn’t think he was capable anymore.
* * *
It took Luz more than five minutes to sit up by herself, mostly because she had to think about it. Sweat rolled down her back. Lovely. Not at all how she had anticipated arriving back in San Clemente. Not much had gone right, but she wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself. She was kicking her infection. Getting out of the hospital. She’d found a way she could connect with Paz. If she could manage to avoid Lane so she’d stop lusting over him, she could probably pull her life back together.
She felt so weak. Exhausted. She’d never felt like this before. She’d always been strong, healthy. Until a couple of weeks ago she’d worked out daily, three days a week with a personal trainer.
“Suck it up,” she muttered.
“Looks like someone is ready to leave.” A nurse breezed into her room. “Although, with your husband, I’d be eager to get back home as well.”
The nurse pretended to fan herself and smiled. Luz felt her stomach bottom out, her earlier determination to stand and walk the hallway with the physical therapist to prove she could manage on her own and be discharged, shriveled.
“Husband?” She repeated.
How had Alex found her? And why had he wanted to?
“He’s been causing quite a reaction, lucky girl.”
Luz had often been told that over the years. Alex was tall, slim, immaculately groomed, and unfailingly polite and solicitous in public. She needed to get out of here now. Before he came back. He’d be pissed about her surgery.
“Speak of the devil,” the nurse said. “Your wife and I were just talking about you.”
Luz felt a wave of dizziness sweep over her, but she fought it back, swung her legs over the bed. Immediately an alarm sounded.
“Speaking?” Lane propped himself against the door jamb, arms crossed, displaying biceps like road signs warning of devastating masculinity ahead. “My wife’s more a woman of action as you can see.”
The relief that swept through her was as bad as her dread that Alex had come for her.
“What are you doing trying to get up?” He sauntered over to the bed and looked so handsome and healthy she wanted to cry with frustration. “Misbehaving?” He crouched down next to her and it was all Luz could do to not lean into him and inhale his scent.
“Perhaps,” she answered, wondering what kind of game he was trying to play with her.
His blue eyes darkened in appreciation and Luz felt a wave of longing that he really was hers sweep through her.
“Mmmmmm.” He drew out the syllable, his mouth so close to hers she could imagine the thrum against her lips.
She lowered her gaze to his mouth, willing him to close the distance, and then she remembered. She wasn’t going to be that girl anymore who waited for permission. Did or didn’t do something because it was expected of her. Who was acted upon instead of creating her own destiny. Lane had said she was poison. And now he was pretending she was his wife.
He wasn’t the only one who could play games.
No tengo miedo.
Her lips parted and she leaned forward, drinking in his masculine tang of salt, wind, and hint of citrus.
“Husband.” She put a bite into the word, aware of the nurse watching them. “Good morning,” she whispered and closed the distance.
She kissed the corner of his mouth, her tongue traced the seam, and his lips parted, moved under hers, and she was instantly ravenous for more. Her hands crept up to his shoulders, her fingers played in the grooves of his muscles, and she sighed in appreciation.
His hands cradled her face as he kissed her back. She’d loved how he’d hold her face when he kissed her like she was a gift, precious to him. She sighed into his mouth, leaned in, and speared her fingers through his white-blonde curls, the silk of them woke up nerves up and down her arms, and when she let her fingers play along the defined muscles in his back, so easily read through his thin t-shirt, a hunger woke inside her, like a dragon uncurling from a long sleep, instantaneously hot, nosing up through her blood ready to be released.
Her nipples were so tight they stung and ached, and she wanted his hands on her now.
“Okay, she’s gone,” Lane whispered against her mouth.
“What?” Luz could barely form the word. She’d been playing a game, and gotten a little lost in it.
His hands slid from her cheeks, one thumb played along her lower lip for a moment, but when she tried to suck it into the heat of her mouth, he dropped his hands back to his sides. He took a quick step back and away from her.
“That was an amazing acting job,” he said, smiling, his tone cool and ironic and Luz felt like he’d slapped her. “I thought you’d take my head off that I let them assume the husband thing. Was definitely not expecting you to play along to that extent, not that I don’t appreciate the performance.”
She could feel her face flush. Performance? Like she was acting? Her breathing was still erratic. She was practically panting. Her dark nipples clearly peaking through her hospital gown, and he wasn’t averting his eyes. And she was liquid between her legs. Lane had always made her so slick that sometimes she’d be wet through her jeans, and he had loved it, played it out like her sexual reaction was a concert just for him.
“I’m not the only one performing,” she said, letting her voice go husky the way he used to like.
He had definitely not been as immune to the kiss as he was pretending. She looked at his very definitely erection straining against the buttons of his 501s.
“Husband?” She repeated the word softly as if it were new to her, giving it at least three syllables. “What’s up with that?”
“Seemed the most practical.”
“Practical.” She repeated. “I never thought of you as particularly practical.”
He’d dropped out of Stanford on a whim and thought she should just drop out of her masters in journalism program and follow him around to beaches around the world, working a minimum wage job while he surfed. How practical was that?
She reached out and let her fingers play along the length of his erection. He caught his breath. Swore. She pressed a little harder and then let her thumb play against the base of his cock through his jeans, while she watched his reaction. He wasn’t so casual now, she thought, feeling a little more in control of her life.
She slid her thumb slid through the space between one of his jean buttons and touched hard, silky skin. A shaft of heat speared through her. Burned her core.
“Commando.” She mouthed.
“Shit,” he hissed. His hand covered hers, but instead of pulling away, he rocked into her hand. Her fingers massaged him through the stiff fabric. It would be so easy to tug the buttons aside. He’d be free. And she could taste him again.
His breathing was as ragged as hers and, for a moment, she considered just going through with it. She’d wanted to prove something to herself as well as to him. She wasn’t totally undesirable. And she had not been acting, but neither had he, the liar. She was done with lies and pretending. And doing what she was supposed to. And, she had to admit, part of her wanted to get caught blowing her brother-in-law in hospital.
She nearly laughed, imagining the political news stories, Alex’s fury, and disbelief like he was the only one who could go down on someone else, but making love with Lane had always been beautiful and passionate and so perfect. The only memory of perfect she’d ever had in her life, and she didn’t want to soil that with manipulation or revenge.
“Your wife”—she put air quotes around the word wife—“wants to get out of here.” She licked along his hard length through the denim and he moaned. “You got me into this situation so make it happen hot shot. Now.”