ESCANTA: A James Thomas Novel (The James Thomas Series Book 1) (25 page)

Mak’s eyes widened. “What kind of games do you have?”

“We’ve got a pool table, arcade machines, Ping-Pong—”

“You’ve got Ping-Pong?”

James beamed a grin. “We do. I take it you like the game?”

“We had one growing up and I loved it. I should warn you, though, I’m very good.” Mak nodded her head up and down, slowly and arrogantly.

“We’ll see how good you are against the master,” James said, smirking.

Mak scoffed. “I think you’re overly confident.”

James enjoyed her playfulness, and he enjoyed a competitive partner. He grabbed her as she stood up to leave. “You’re going to lose,” he whispered in her ear but she pushed him away.

“We’ll see,” she said, smiling at him over her shoulder.

James watched her leave and then walked down the hallway to his bathroom. He took a quick shower, and then shaved before getting dressed. He went back out to the kitchen and checked his email as he waited for either Cami or Mak to emerge. Cami appeared first.

She entered without knocking, as she always did, and carrying a tray of coffees.

“Mornin’,” she said, handing him the to-go cup. “Do you realize we have everything imaginable in this building but a decent coffee machine?”

“Well, we technically have one,” James said with raised eyebrows.

“Yes, good ol’ Deacon,” Cami said.

Deacon had broken the coffee machine, knocking it off the counter while engaging in a testosterone-fueled play fight with one of their staff, so out of spite James refused to buy another one with company money. They broke enough things unintentionally; he didn’t need careless staff to add to the damages bill—especially a co-owner as it set a bad example. Conveniently, Deacon rarely drank coffee, so he was in no hurry to go out and purchase a replacement. The rest of Thomas Security staff were getting very grumpy, though.

“I was looking at the expense report a few days ago. Do you know he’s broken three cell phones this month?”

Cami held up her empty palms. “I still can’t work out how that guy is so coordinated and yet manages to break so many things. Can you imagine what he was like as a child? He would’ve been destructive as fuck.”

James laughed. He could imagine a little Deacon tearing up the house every time his parents turned their backs.

He heard a knock at his door and went to open it. Mak was dressed in ripped skinny jeans and a loose, black, sleeveless T-shirt that revealed just a slither of her toned abdomen. She looked good—very good. He placed a quick kiss on her cheek before he led her into the kitchen.

“Good morning,” Mak said, greeting Cami with a sly grin.

Cami laughed. “I came with your favorite,” she said, gesturing toward the lone coffee on the island bench.

Mak walked past James, without touching him, and took a seat beside Cami.

“What’s the plan for today?” Cami asked.

“I’m going to beat James at Ping-Pong. Do you want to come and watch him lose?” Mak said with the widest smile James had ever seen on her face.

Cami threw her head back, laughing. And then she looked at James with dancing eyes. “Oh, Thomas, you’ve met your match,” she said.

James chuckled. “You’ve yet to see my prowess, Mak.”

“Just don’t be a sore loser, James, no one likes them,” Mak said smugly.

Cami laughed loudly again and James laughed too, despite the joke being on him.

“I do actually want to see this, but if you two are staying in, I’m going to take the day off. I need to catch up on some things while I can,” Cami said.

While I can
. Cami meant nothing by the words, he could tell by the tone of her voice, but something about that phrase filled him with apprehension. It made no sense whatsoever, but it added to the lingering fear that he couldn’t shake.

James knew he should take the opportunity to show Mak the apartment today, but that innate sense that something was wrong was stopping him. He didn’t want her to move out—she was safer here than anywhere.

“Take the day off, Cami, but don’t go too far,” James said, ruling out the chance of any apartment-viewing.
Don’t go too far
was code for
don’t leave this building
. She could do whatever she needed in her apartment, but he still wanted her close by.

“All right,” she said, standing up. She drank the last of her coffee and put the cup in the kitchen trash. “Goodbye. And good luck today, Mak. I hope you crush him.”

James glared at Cami but she just laughed as she let herself out.

James took a seat next to Mak and she cupped his face in her small hands. Her smooth skin felt good against his freshly shaven face.

“Shall we eat? I’m hungry. But then I’m always hungry.”

“Are you going to cook?”

“Yes. Eggs, pancakes, or oatmeal?”

She turned the decision over in her mind for a second. “Pancakes,” she said, sealing her decision with a kiss.

James moaned, deepening what had started as an innocent kiss. His hand found the exposed skin of her waist. “I like this,” he said with a gravelly voice.

“My top?” Mak said between kisses.

“Mm.” His fingers brushed over her skin and her stomach contracted in response. “Pancake time,” he said, forcing himself to pull away.

Mak watched him with heady eyes as he went to the refrigerator and pulled out the ingredients he needed.

“Second cooking lesson in two days. So far so good,” James said.

But Mak’s attention for the cooking class quickly dissipated as her phone lit up on the bench. She ran her hand through her hair as she read the text. “I’ve have to respond to a few messages from yesterday. And I still have to call my parents back.”

James nodded. “Do it now while I cook,” he said, letting her out of the cooking lesson—learning to cook pancakes wasn’t really a survival skill.

She brought the phone to her ear as she walked out of the kitchen. He listened to her conversation as he cooked. Mak Ashwood put on a brave face, but he knew she was disappointed in the trial. Two out of three was not good enough for her.

She came back into the kitchen as he was flipping the last pancake.

“You haven’t brought up the trial,” he said casually, gauging her resistance to the conversation.

“What more is there to say?”

He fastened her hands behind his back. “That you won. That he will go to prison for the rest of his life. That you should be very proud. I know that you think you failed on some level, but you’re very wrong.”

“I know I should feel all of those things, but right now I am one of those sore losers no one likes,” she said, cracking a joke.

“I like them,” James said, hugging her tight. He loved how she felt in his arms.

She didn’t respond, but she didn’t let go either. He let the pancake cook longer than it should have but he didn’t want to let her go.

“I can’t cook but I know that’s going to burn,” she said with a small smile.

James grinned. “I know.” He turned the gas cooktop off and served the slightly over-browned pancake onto his plate.

They sat at the table and ate. James couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat at the table, or if he ever had. They usually ate in Samuel’s office.

“Is this how life will be?” Mak asked, cutting her pancake stack.

“What do you mean, exactly?”

“Will we spend most of our time hanging out together here?” Mak clarified.

“Not all of our time. Yes, I prefer to be here, because I don’t have to look over my shoulder every second of the day. But we’re also staying in today because right now you have an additional security threat that is not yet resolved. Once it is settled, we’ll be able to do all of the normal things couples do—the only difference is there will be security following us. But that is what these guys are trained to do, Mak, and they’re not actually watching us—they’re watching everything around us. We’re not a threat to ourselves, the threat is in the sideways peeks of a stranger on the street, or an unusual movement in a window. That’s what they’re looking for.”

“Do you always have security following you?” Mak asked.

“No, rarely, but if I’m going into a dangerous situation I would take someone like Deacon or Cami with me. I don’t need additional security because I’m trained to watch everything around me and protect myself. It’s a skill that develops over years, and now it’s just ingrained in my psyche. I’m always watching everything—I can’t help it anymore.”

“Isn’t that exhausting?”

“One would think so, but when you’ve done it most of your life, it’s second nature.”

Seemingly satisfied with his answers, Mak ate quietly for a minute.

“Oh, my gosh,” she said, surprised. “I don’t even know your age. How old are you?”

Her alarmed reaction was cute. “I’m thirty-eight,” James said.

It was a lie he had to speak because he didn’t know the answer to her question. The orphanage he’d grown up in didn’t have a copy of his birth certificate, given that he’d been dumped on their doorstep as a small child, and Samuel hadn’t been able to find one online either. James didn’t know his parents’ names, or the hospital he’d been born at, so he couldn’t even try and find any medical records. With nothing else to go on, he’d done some biological testing. The precision of such tests had improved over the years, but the latest test still had an estimation accuracy give or take a couple of years. So based on all the facts he could piece together, thirty-eight years old was his best guess.

“I thought you were a few years younger,” she said with a smile.

“It’s my charming face,” he joked.

Mak gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Perhaps it’s your enlarged ego.”

James chuckled.

Mak pushed the plate away, indicating she was full. It was empty, and James was pleased to see she ate quite a bit for a woman her size. And if she agreed to his requirements and started training with Cami, she would need to eat every few hours to make sure she didn’t lose any weight.

“So…I’ve been thinking about your requirements,” Mak said, folding her hands onto the dining table like she was in a business meeting, “and I’ve come up with a few requirements of my own.

“I’m not yet agreeing to your travel requirements, but if I did, we would need to go on at least one vacation per year. And if my family plans a trip together, which they love to do, I will be going regardless of the location and hotel, and you will have to come and deal with it. And believe me, you will regret it because, with six children, and their partners, it is absolute bedlam.”

James smiled. He knew her family was unlikely to book a trip to Russia any time soon, so he could probably agree.

“Next,” Mak continued, “you have to tell me more about your past. It doesn’t have to be work-related things, but, for example, things like your age, which you just told me—there must be similar things about you that I can surely know without it being a security risk.”

It shouldn’t have been a problem, not even for a guy who had worked in the positions he had, but he was unique in that he barely knew who he was. His family life was as blank as a brand new notebook.

“Okay,” James said, wondering how quickly he would run out of things to tell her.

“And I’m going to make it quantitative, so that you have less wiggle room. Say, one new thing each week.”

He was fast going to run out of things to tell her.

“Also, every weekend I would get a certain time period, say…five hours, where the cameras are off in my apartment and I can have my friends and family over and not be watched.”

“Not five hours,” James said immediately. Five hours was way too long.

“I would be making a lot of compromises and you would have to, too,” she said, leaning back into her chair.

“Four hours, max. And the cameras outside stay on,” James said.

“Three.”

“Three and a half.”

Mak stared at him. “Agreed. Three and a half.”

“Three and a half but if I’m out of town for work, the cameras stay on—no exceptions,” James clarified.

“Understood,” Mak said with a grin.

“Anything else?” James said.

“That’s it…for now. But I’m still thinking this over, and even if I did agree, I would still reserve the right to renegotiate at any time.”

James pushed his chair back and motioned for her to come over. She walked around the table and climbed onto his lap.

“Of course you could renegotiate at any time,” James said, holding her waist. “You could change your mind at any time. You could walk away at any time. If you were to decide that this is not what you want, then we would part ways nicely and say goodbye. And I would fully understand.”

She placed her hands on his chest and looked into his eyes.

He brought his mouth to hers and Mak kissed him with the hunger he felt inside. He wanted her, more than he’d ever wanted another woman, but she still wasn’t his—not yet.

He pulled back just as his phone vibrated in his pocked. He knew it was bad news before he even looked at the caller ID.

“Samuel,” James said.

“You need to come downstairs now,” Samuel said.

“Right now?”

“Right now, James.”

James took a deep breath—he didn’t want to leave, he didn’t want to hear Samuel’s bad news.

He put the phone down on the table. “Mak, I have to go and have a look at something urgent. And this is another thing we’re going to have to contend with because my company sometimes deals with life-and-death situations. I don’t know what is going on, but when I receive a call like that I have to drop everything. I need to go now, but I promise you I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Um, okay,” she said, climbing off his lap.

“Stay here and help yourself to anything. You can watch television in my bedroom if you want,” he said on his way out.

James took the stairs so quickly he felt like he was flying, but when he marched into Samuel’s office he stopped dead in his tracks. He looked at the image on the screen and he felt like he’d been shot in the chest with two bullets.

It was Dasha. Both her hands had been cut off and her eyes gouged out. But it wasn’t the sight of her mutilated body but rather the piece of cloth nailed to her throat that made his heart stop. It was a piece of military uniform with a name tape.