Bold Beautiful Love -- A Temptation Court Contemporary Romance: Temptation Court: Passion in New York (13 page)

“The
laptop
.”

“Cimarron?” The demand feels justified, as he looks up with a probing glare. “You feeling all right?”

“No.” His retort is immediate but distant.

“Because of the laptop?”

“That sat on the damn table in the sitting room yesterday,” he fills in. “While Brooke and Mishella ‘chatted’ on the chaise, and you and I ‘escaped’ out to the terrace…”

“Meaning the thing wasn’t attended or watched for a good twenty minutes,” I fill in.

“Meaning Fortin and Selyna had plenty of time to jab in a few memory sticks of their own.”

I frown. There’s logic to his thinking…but not. “But that was before I met with them…even brought up the new agreement. Why would they think—”

“That a man who built a worldwide engineering empire in under five years would not eventually discover their connection to Kavill?” He starts to pound out that circle in the floor again, only to stop and cock a questioning look back. “How
did
you put it all together so swiftly?” When my first response must resemble something between conflict and fury, he presses, “What? You could tell me but then you would have to kill me?”

I try to laugh, even bitterly. “You need a firm yes or no on that?”

Three seconds, maybe four, pass for him to process that—before my words act like beats in a fucking Bond movie, and the second door to the room opens. Striding through the portal are two figures, so elegantly suited-out I don’t recognize them at first.

Once I do, I want to fall back into my chair.

Or pick the damn thing up and use it on them.

Yeah.
Both
of them.

“What the fucking hell are you doing here?”

Slam of a briefcase. Hint of a grim smile. “Nice to see you again too, little brother.”

I narrow a glare. “Why did you suck face with a tarantula?”

“What?”

“Then let it camp out on top of your head?”

Damon whacks the side of my head. “If I had, you’d still thank me for it, douche bag.” He gloats for a second, observing I’m too shocked to fight back physically
or
verbally. “In case you can’t tell, I’m in disguise.”

“Oh, I can tell.” I jerk the top of my head toward the camera. “But now they can too.”

“No they can’t.” Doyle, also sporting extra “tarantula” on his face and a wig only slightly better than Damon’s, adds, “Only the video works on those things.”

Samsyn nods. “The audio has been out for years.” Then grunts my direction. “We were planning on letting Court Enterprises bid on upgrades.”

It comes as a bigger relief than I expected—only because I hate that they’re both here. At least now I can find out why.

“So…what? Are you supposed to be my ‘lawyers’ or something?”

Doyle slides his briefcase next to Damon’s and pops the latches. “They call them
juristes
here, but yeah. And while we’re at it, you’re welcome. I’m going to get that out of the way right now.”

“That so?” I fold my arms, focusing on keeping the chaos in my brain from blowing the top of my skull off. This really is feeling more and more like a Bond movie—only it’s one of the strange ones with the weirder-than-weird plot twists, instead of a Daniel Craig classic. “And I’m thanking you for…what, exactly?”

Doyle chucks an irked glare. Shrugs like I’ve just asked if my nose is still in the middle of my face. “Breaking you out of here.”

Now I do laugh. And really wonder if I
am
in a movie—in which this pair, with testicles big enough for Shaquille O’Neal’s autograph, have really declared their intention to bust me out of Censhyr Prison with the island’s security forces leader standing five feet away.

Especially when I glance to Samsyn, brows raised in a clear plea for commiseration, and he answers with a neutral, nearly scary, nod. “Anything I can do to help?”

I go ahead and fall into my chair. “You three have shitty timing for this, you know.”

“Our timing’s perfect.” Damon’s tightened cheek displays the scar from when I backhanded him with a Megatron figure at my eleventh birthday party. “The guards switch shifts in ten minutes, so they won’t be paying as much attention.”

“Fuckhead,” I mutter. “I mean this episode of one of those prank-the-putz TV shows. That’s what this is, right?” I throw another stare at Syn. “You didn’t really just ask them if you could
help
with this insanity, right?”

The guy scowls. “What is a ‘putz’?”

Doyle snickers.

“Dammit,” I mutter.

“You want out of here or not?” Damon demands.

“And yes, I will help,” Samsyn reiterates—while warning me off with a pointed finger. “Look. I had nothing to do with what those two
kimfuks
pulled this morning, or all the bullshit that has happened since. Only two things are stopping me from opening this place’s front gate and pushing you out myself.”

I narrow my glare. “Make a joke about your balls and I’ll spill about what Brooke likes calling you in bed.”

The big guy almost looks ready to deck me for that, but bypasses it to continue, “One, your country is owed our respect, despite stomping into my sandbox without permission this morning. Two, not I would rather not have to face a mountain of crap from my woman
and
my king.” His stare turns to ice once more. “But if this is how the CIA usually plays—”

“It isn’t.” Damon steps forward, squaring shoulders in respect to Syn. “Not usually, at least.” He exhales hard. “But if they’re shitting over so much of your sandbox, it means they’re being pressured—big time—to get this bad guy notched on the bedpost. And,”—as he looks my way, his gaze perceptibly darkens—“they’ve got enough evidence to do it.”

I continue looking back at him through sheer force of will, stuffing away every last thing I’m really feeling. Thank fuck I’ve logged so many years of doing this with corporate adversaries, it’s almost natural. Damon is far from an adversary—but no way in hell is he friend either. Not yet.

Perhaps not ever again.

Samsyn firms his stance once more. Cocks his head. “And you know all of this about the CIA…why?”

I curl a knowing sneer. “Prince Samsyn, meet my brother Damon Court, aka Bourne Jackson with the United States Central Intelligence Agency.”

Syn gives us a good three seconds to view his jacked eyebrows. “Bourne…Jackson? As in Jason and Samuel? Clever—and kick-ass.”

Damon’s grin is ear-to-ear. “I like him.”

“Are we getting to a point here?” I look at Samsyn but stab my head toward Damon. “We know all of this because he’s one of those fuckers.”

Damon’s smile is still eerily lazy.

“
Was
one of them.”

And
that
would be the reason.

Which doesn’t feel as vindicating as it should.

“Ah.
That’s
why you tongued out the tarantula.”

That
is vindicating.

Until he turns, glaring. Wearing an expression I haven’t seen since I relentlessly ribbed him about locking braces with Cynthia Sabala in sixth grade. “To get in here and save
your
sorry ass, you mean?”

And like then, I also hear the hurt beneath his wrath.

Unlike then, I’m not too full of myself to reach out and clamp his shoulder.

Also unlike then, I vow not to take a second of being with him for granted. I may still be pissed and confused about why he helped the CIA fake his own death then hide it from Mom and me for over ten years, but I’m not so stupid to think he won’t disappear again. But hearing that he’s dropped the assholes is already a giant salve on that wound. Or have
they
dropped
him
? And does it really matter?

“All right.” It’s also my version of
I’m sorry
. I only hope he still gets me enough to know that. “What happened?”

He takes half a second to acknowledge my contrition with a jab of his jaw—thank fuck—before growling, “I took all the information to the office.
Not
the New York branch. I flew it all straight down to headquarters, in Langley—”

“All the shit from the bulletin boards?”
A lot
of information I’d never been meant to see, thanks to a streak of jealousy about Mishella Santelle I wouldn’t—and won’t ever—apologize for. It had led to me tracking her down at the hotel where she and Damon had been working together for almost two weeks, tracking down precise details linking Rune Kavill’s phony engineering and architectural firms to at least two-thirds of my Arcadian infrastructure contractor list.

Translation: Anyone with their hands on that list could easily infer I’d known all about it first.

A fact that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The only reason
I’d
learned of it was because of barging in on him and Ella—literally—in that suite at the Marquis, where those bulletin boards dominated the room like a damn murder investigation, carefully tracking down the
wheres, whys,
and
hows
of Kavill’s massive deception.

The seeds of his plans to ruin Arcadia, one disaster at a time.

“Yeah.” Damon’s response to my surmise is clipped—but hedges at more.
A lot
more. “But by the time I got into the office, the international witch hunt had started.” He glances pointedly at Samsyn. “The Arcadians are the new darlings of the international business world. Everyone looks at this place as their new little pet, ready to be dressed up and played with—”

“We are no one’s
little
anything. Nor do we play fucking dress-up.”

“Heard and acknowledged.” Damon nods. “Loud and clear. But you’re talking about the CIA, Your Highness—and in the case of a high-profile manhunt like this, they’ll ‘ask’ for your cooperation only for the sake of protocol.” His face discernibly tightens. “Believe me, they already assume they have it.”

I toss in a reluctant nod. “He’s right, Syn. And you’re not in a place to turn them down, even politely.”

A violent rumble emanates from the prince’s gut. I don’t want to be gratified by Syn’s struggle, but—

Who the fuck am I kidding? It feels
great
.

“Welcome to international politics, Highness.” Doyle adds it with that “special” certainty of his, hinting at a past he’s never told me about—or likely will. “When the world’s largest secret spy agency offers to jump in ‘help,’ the only correct answer is ‘thank you, and what do you need from us?’”

Samsyn’s thick brows practically collide above his nose. “Like my boot up their ass, per se?”

Diffusion has become a necessity.

If the table was an oak oval and a view of Manhattan stretched at my feet instead of a concrete slab, I’d order Syn to take a coffee break and come back. Not a choice here. I go for option two. Lift my gaze to my brother and query, “So what finally happened? At the agency?”

Damon’s face hardens.
Here’s
an expression I’ve never viewed on him before—and goddammit, it’s daunting. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I spread my arms. “Well, D, clearly it was
something
.” I haven’t dragged myself to the Arcadian version of the tundra for the sake of curiosity.

He grimaces. “Shit. Mom’s let you turn into a cheeky little tyke, hasn’t she?”

“News flash. I haven’t been a ‘tyke’ since the day you died.”

“Huh?” Syn injects.

“
There’s
a meme waiting to happen,” Doyle murmurs.

My glare yanks Damon back to the summary. “I meant nothing happened that they’d let
me
see.”

“But it was your investigation.”

“Sure as hell seemed that way, didn’t it?” He jams both hands into his pockets. “Until it suddenly…wasn’t. His lips press tighter. “Those fuckers just took everything I had, thanked me for my service, and told me to go home until I was called up for my next assignment.”

“Fuckers,” Samsyn mutters.

“About what I said,” Damon returns. “But officially, they own everything down to the Calvins on your cock from the moment you walk through their big shiny doors.”

Samsyn rises up. Writhes through a movement strangely close to a shudder. “What are ‘Calvins’?”

Doyle snorts. “Too little fabric for too much money.”

I credit him for the humor with a matching sound and little else. Doesn’t seem right when my brother still looks prepared for a tornado to hit the room. “They came for my satchel,” he relays. “And I almost didn’t give it to them. Something didn’t feel right.”

“But you
did
give it to them.”

Samsyn’s tone is dark but oddly non-accusing. Damon, bracing both hands to the table, looks up like a guy directly in the path of his dreaded twister. “I had no choice.”

“No,” Syn replies. “You did not.” He responds as a fellow warrior, a man who understands the bonds that form with people who have kept one’s secrets. He doesn’t know even the half of that depth between my brother and the CIA.

Which makes the desolation on Damon’s face rip into me even harder.

And the fury in his voice like a goddamn razor on the air.

“I almost knew, then and there, what they were going to do with all of it.” He drops his gaze to me. “That every word I said about your innocence was just noise to them. That somehow,
you
were going to end up being the Bin Laden for that bridge disaster.”

“Though nothing could be farther from the truth.” Doyle’s accusation is an equally savage gash. “All Cassian’s wanted to do was help this fucking place.” He finishes with an apologetic shrug to Samsyn. Syn shrugs back. Two peas of similar temper recognize their mutual pod.

But my bury-it-until-it-kills-me brother drops his head into his hands.

“Shit.” He digs hands into his hair, drags them backward, then clutches them together in back. I stare at his twisted fingers, wondering why my mind can’t connect them…to
him.
Why, in so many ways, the man he’s become seems a different person than the boy I grew up with.

Perhaps because…he is. Maybe it’s really just that simple.

And painful.

“I knew what they were going to do,” he finally utters. “I knew it, in my gut, before everything else confirmed it. Just sensed they’d somehow gotten additional evidence and were going to use it to fuck you like this.” He lifts his face, aged ten years in the last five minutes—
not
helped by the fuzzy fake hair—and gores me with a nearly black gaze. “I knew it, Cas, and it made me sick to my stomach. You have to believe me.”