I woke up happier than I'd been in years. Ella's body was nestled against mine, her breasts pillowed into my side, the scent of her shampoo in my nose. For the first time since we'd split up, I felt whole.

I’d thought I was determined to get her back. I hadn't known what true determination was until I lay there with the woman I loved in my arms.

There was no way I was going to lose her again. Whatever I had to do, Ella would be mine.

It was early, and I was content to lay there, my arm around her. As long as she was asleep, I could pretend everything was okay. I had a plan. Okay, I was developing a plan. I'd been honest the day before. I could do long distance.

Ella thought I didn't understand how important school was to her, but I did. I wanted her to be happy. Achieving my own dreams wouldn't mean much if they came at the cost of Ella's. I just had to figure out a way we could both get what we wanted.

Not long after I woke up, she stirred, nuzzling her cheek into my shoulder and yawning. I knew the second she remembered the night before because her body went stiff. She cleared her throat, drew in a long breath, and relaxed.

Tracing an idle circle over my abs, she asked, "Noah?"

"Yeah?"

"Just making sure I'm actually awake."

"Did you think you were dreaming?"

"For a second," she admitted.

"Good dream? Or nightmare?" I asked, only half-joking. She didn't answer right away.

"I don't know yet. Are you going to disappear on me?"

The hesitant vulnerability in her voice killed me.

"No. Never again. I promise, Ella. We’re going to figure this thing out."

"Okay." She pulled away and sat up, sadly taking the sheet with her, covering those perfect breasts. She squinted her eyes at the light coming in from the window and pressed a palm to her forehead.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I just drank too much last night. Some water and ibuprofen and I’ll be fine."

Alarm streaked through me, and I racked my brain for memories of the night before. Had she been drunk? She hadn’t seemed drunk. She hadn't even seemed tipsy. She hadn't tasted like she'd been drinking, but she'd had that tea before I kissed her. Had I been so focused on getting her into bed that I hadn't noticed that she wasn't sober enough to decide to sleep with me?

"How much did you have to drink last night?" I asked cautiously.

"Not that much," she said. "I just, you know, I don't drink a lot, so I was a little tipsy, and I forgot to have water before bed."

"How tipsy were you?"

Catching on, Ella gave a gentle shake to her head and said, “Not that tipsy, Noah. I knew what I was doing."

"And you wanted to do it?" I asked.

"Yeah. I definitely did." Ella sank back into the mattress and rolled into me, using my shoulder as a pillow.

I was grateful there was another condom stashed in my jeans. I rolled Ella to her back and rose over her, my eyes greedily absorbing the sight of her naked body. Happily ensconced in my own personal version of heaven, I lowered my mouth to take one rosy nipple inside, sucking and worrying it with my teeth until she squirmed beneath me. Lifting my head, I said, “You know what’s really good for a headache?"

Ella laughed. I caught her other nipple between two fingers and squeezed, knowing it would make her squirm again. A few minutes of that, and I wasn't surprised to find her pussy hot and slick and ready. I wanted to fuck her again. I was going to fuck her again. But there was something else I had to do first.

Working my way down the mattress, I spread her thighs wide and hooked her legs over my shoulders.

"Noah," she breathed.

I wasn't going to ask, but she'd been so tight the night before, I doubted there'd been anyone since we split up. I wished I could say the same. I wish I'd never let her get away.

I couldn't go back. We could only go forward. But if she hadn't had sex with anyone in two years, she probably hadn't had this either. Ella liked my mouth between her legs almost as much as I liked having it there. I spread her pussy open with my thumbs, the familiar salty, sweet smell of her going straight to my head, leaving me giddy.

Unable to resist diving right in, my tongue flicked out, tasting her clit. She gasped, and my cock surged beneath me. I gave her clit another long, slow lick, loving the way she squirmed. Her hips started to rock into me, and I gave her what she wanted, licking and sucking, finally fucking her with one finger, then two.

Ella never could stay still when I was eating her pussy. She came hard, gasping my name as she rode my fingers and my tongue. The tight, rhythmic pulses of her body around my fingers were enough to bring me to the edge. I could've come right then, spilling into the sheets like a teenager, but I wanted to fuck her again. I had to.

I was sliding off the bed to get the condom from my jeans when my phone rang. Shit. The ringtone belonged to my chief engineer. I couldn't ignore it. But I was going to.

"Noah?"

"Ignore it. I'll call him back later."

Propped up on one elbow, too sated to realize she was lying there naked, Ella stared at me with sleepy eyes and reached out a hand. I twined my fingers with hers and rose over her, settling between her legs. I was just about to tear open the condom when my phone rang again.

Ella's eyebrows knit together. "Noah, you should get that."

Fuck. Fucking fuck fuck.

I did not want to answer the goddamn phone. I was a breath away from being balls deep in Ella. I did not fucking care about work. The ringtone started up again.

Dave would never call me three times in a row unless something was seriously wrong.

Dropping the open condom on the sheet beside Ella, I rolled over and grabbed my phone out of my jeans. "Dave, what's up, man?"

"Have you seen your email? Twitter? Anything?"

"No," I said, dread building in my chest. Dave was not an emotional guy, yet he sounded frantic. "What's going on? Everything was fine when I went to bed last night."

"Yeah, well, sometime in the middle of the night, your old friend Philip Martin got another bug up his ass. Let me read you the first tweet and save you some time. Just learned Endicott Tech has a new product based off their stolen code. #Criminalsgofree. And then right after that Also heard Endicott's looking for investors. Hope they like lawsuits. #Highrisknoreward."

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ella get out of bed and disappear into the bathroom. How could things be so perfect one second and so utterly fucked up the next? I'd long since given up trying to figure out what Philip Martin's problem was.

My best guess went back to adolescent resentment combined with the crush he had on Ella in college. I'd never stolen a goddamn thing from anyone. Particularly not from Philip Martin, who didn't have the skills to create a program like the one I'd used to found Endicott Tech. The lawsuit had been mostly bullshit from the start.

He'd cribbed together notes from some projects we worked on in undergrad and some emails that looked incriminating taken out of context but had nothing to do with anything in reality. I hadn't settled because I was guilty. I’d settled because the lawsuit was fucking expensive and there were better things I could do with Endicott Tech’s money than spend it on lawyers.

I did not need this now.

Taking a deep breath, I said to Dave, “Is there anything else, other than the tweets?"

"Not yet, but they're being retweeted like crazy."

"Anyone sticking up for us?" I asked.

"Some," Dave said." Everyone who knows us, knows Martin, is defending us, but you know the Internet. That still leaves a lot of assholes with no fucking clue and a big platform to jump on Martin's bandwagon. I'm afraid to ask how the meeting with Winters went."

"I'm optimistic," I said. "Though this isn't going to help. Winters hates the media. If he invests with us and this kind of shit keeps going on, he runs the risk of getting dragged into it."

"Can we shut Martin down?" Dave asked.

"No. We can’t afford to buy him off. And we can’t afford to sue him. We need every penny to keep the company going until we crack the code."

"I may have good news on that front, at least," Dave said.

"Really? I could use some good news. Lay it on me."

"We think we may have figured out a way around that bug that was disabling phones too close to the transmitter. We haven't done full testing yet, but the few times we tried it before we all passed out last night, it worked."

Dave's voice vibrated with triumph and anticipation. This was huge. Our software—and the transmitter we were developing—would give property owners the ability to incapacitate a drone almost instantly, forcing it to land itself and ignore commands, either preprogrammed or delivered from its remote.

That sounded great, and we'd already been selling limited versions of it overseas. More and more, terrorists and wackos were using drones to attack. Imagine a drone, armed with a chemical weapon, programmed to land in the courtyard of a school or a stadium. The potential for devastation was terrifyingly high.

Unfortunately, the technology we used to force the drone to ignore its mission and land also interfered with local Wi-Fi signals, which was a violation of federal law. If we couldn't get the technology to work in compliance with United States law, we couldn't sell it here. We had a long list of buyers ready and waiting, from the federal government to NFL owners and schools of all levels.

We were so close to working out the last of the bugs. If Dave thought they'd isolated the Wi-Fi interference issue, we might be able to move into the final stages of testing. It wouldn't be fast enough to do without additional funds, but hell, after Dave's other news, any progress on the project was great.

"Call me as soon as you give it another roll and feel like you have a handle on where we are. I'll keep my phone with me."

“And the tweets? Do we respond?"

"No. For now, let's just ignore him. We know our code is 100% original. So does he. If the rest of the Internet wants to work themselves into a frenzy over it, let them. If Vance holds this against us, I'll have to figure something else out. But we need to keep our eyes on the ball. We’re too close to let Martin distract us."

"Got it, boss. I'll keep you posted." Dave hung up.

I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the hardwood floor between my feet. At the sound of the bathroom door opening, I looked up to meet Ella's eyes.

"What's going on?" She pulled on a worn flannel robe that was sexy as hell when wrapped around her body. I wanted to strip it off and drag her back to bed, but I had a feeling the mood was broken. "You want me to make coffee?" she asked.

"That would be great."

I jumped in the shower and got dressed in the clothes I'd worn the day before. I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to end this interlude with Ella, but it looked like my day would be all about damage control thanks to Philip fucking Martin. Ella, bless her, had a hot cup of coffee waiting for me.

"Is everything okay?" she asked. I didn't want to dump this crap on her, but it wasn't fair to try to protect her either. She should know what was going on.

"You remember Philip Martin? He tweeted out a bunch of bullshit last night, trying to get people stirred up against Endicott."

Guilt flooded her eyes, and I tensed. In an anguished voice, she said, "Noah, I'm so sorry. I meant to tell you and then . . . we got distracted. He called me last night. Philip did. When Tate and Emily were driving me home.”

"What? What did he want? What did he say to you?"

"He said he was calling to warn me that you were in town, but I really think he was trying to find out if you'd met with Vance. He knew I worked for them. He said he's had an eye on you because you’re bidding for the same jobs."

"What a load of bullshit," I spat out. "We’re not bidding for the same jobs. He works in social media development. Nothing he does is in any way related to Endicott Tech. Has he called you before?"

"Not recently," she said. "He called me once right after he sued you, but I hung up on him. It was really weird, Noah. He was acting like we were good friends, telling me he was worried about me, worried that you were going to bother me while you were here, but then he knew where I worked and started asking me questions about you and Vance. Creepy."

"I don't like this," I said. "You know he had a crush on you in college, right?"

"Philip Martin? What? I didn't even know him that well."

"We got in a fight about you once when I overheard him making comments I didn't appreciate. And after we broke up, he used to throw you in my face all the time whenever we ran into each other—which was too often because of that stupid fucking lawsuit. He must've heard a rumor that we were close to hitting the market with our new software. But how the hell did he know I was here?"

"Could someone on your team be talking? Even if it's not on purpose. You know how everyone knows each other. Maybe someone said something to a friend and the friend works with Martin. He said he's had eyes on you," Ella said.

"That could mean anything," I said. “He makes good money. He could've hired someone to watch me. I know that sounds crazy, but this is Philip Martin we’re talking about. He tried to sink my company just because he thought he could. I wouldn't put it past him to do something crazy, but he's got shit timing, as always."

"Is there anything I can do to help?” Ella asked, her gaze open and sincere. I wanted to say, Yeah, you can ask your boss to give me the money I need, or at least put in a good word for me.

I didn't do it. I didn't want Ella mixed up in my business, especially not with Philip Martin calling her. If Martin was involved, I didn't want Ella anywhere near this mess.

"Yes," I said. "You can say you’ll have dinner with me tonight. I was serious when I said I want to figure this out, Ella. I know it's complicated. We're on different sides of the country. You have to finish school. My company sucks up a lot of time, and I know that's not ideal. If we don't get this product to market soon, we’re going to be scrambling. And if we do get it to market, we’re going to be busting our asses to keep up with demand. Either way, the next year or so is going to be stressful and crazy. That's part of why I kept putting off coming back here. I want to be able to tell you that I can put you first. And in my heart, Ella, you'll always be first. But there are going to be times when the company gets in the way. I didn't handle that very well before. I know I can do better now."

"I'll have dinner with you," she said quietly. "I'll have dinner with you, and we can talk."

“I’ll pick you up here at seven?" I asked, feeling like I'd won the lottery despite the cluster fuck that had hit this morning.

"Seven," Ella agreed.

My phone beeped an alert. A text from Vance Winters. Shit.

Caught Twitter this morning. This doesn't look good, Noah. Call me.

Even Vance's ominous text couldn't dull my mood.

Putting him out of my mind temporarily, I said, “Do you need to get your car? I have to get moving, but if you get dressed, I'll drop you off."

Ella's smile, sweet and hopeful, was enough to set me up for the rest of the day.

I dropped her off at her car with the promise to see her later and headed back to the Four Seasons to change clothes and get to work. Between Endicott Tech, fucking Philip Martin, a call with Vance Winters, and the plans I had for Ella, I had a lot to do, and not a lot of time.

I knew how to crush a deadline.

Flipping open my laptop, I ordered up breakfast and got to work.