Hardwired (The Hardwired Series) (Volume 1) (26 page)

“Blake.” I tried to conjure the anger I’d felt earlier. All I could feel was relief, gratitude, love. I fought the urge to run into his arms and let him take me away from this horrible situation.

He stepped into the house and pulled me into his arms, holding me so tight it was almost painful. I buried my face in his neck, breathing him in. My body relaxed.
 
Everything would be all right now that he was here.

“Is he here?” He cupped my face and searched my eyes.

“Who?”

“Mark.”

“Yes. Wait, how did you know?”

“Forget about that, let’s get you out of here.” He grabbed my hand and turned to leave.

“No, I can’t.” I pulled him back, keeping his hand tight in my own.

“Erica, I’m getting you away from here. We’re leaving now.”

“Wait, I just need to say goodbye. To Daniel.”

He frowned.

“He’s my father, Blake. We’re trying to get to know each other. I don’t want to throw this all away.” We’d never have anything close to a normal father-daughter connection, but I’d only just found him. I couldn’t lose him again now, so soon.

“Fine,” he relented. “Introduce us and we’ll leave.”

“Be good,” I ordered, before guiding him into the main room where the family of three waited for our return.

As soon as we entered, his gaze darted to Mark. His posture changed and the tension seemed to radiate off of him. I tightened my hold on his hand slightly, reminding him not to go postal.

“Daniel, Margo, Mark... This is Blake.” I tucked my hair nervously. How ironic that I was introducing my lover to my only living parent days after our first meeting, and I still felt an inkling of anticipation hoping Daniel would approve. He’d seemed to take pride in my achievements earlier. Certainly he’d approve of Blake.

“Blake Landon. You’re with Angelcom, correct?” Daniel rose and shook Blake’s hand.

“Correct. I believe you negotiate many of our term sheets for us.” Blake said.

“Right. It’s a small world, isn’t it?” He paused, his gaze traveling between us and then down at Blake’s fingers interlaced with mine. His face froze and he looked back to me, as if a terrible thought had gripped him in that moment.

He knew that Blake knew. I could read his face like a book. Our embarrassing little secret was spreading in circles he wasn’t anticipating.

Margo jumped up and gave Blake an air kiss on the cheek. “Blake, let me go get you a plate. Please, sit down and join us.”

“Actually, there’s a situation that came up with the deal we’ve been working on. Unfortunately, it’s imperative that I head back so we can resolve it. But thank you so much for your hospitality.”

“Oh.” Margo pouted a little. I could tell she was looking forward to getting to know Blake.

I gave Daniel, and then Margo, a quick kiss on the cheek and waved goodbye. Blake grabbed my bag on the way out.

Blake held out his hand to me and nodded to the Tesla. “Let’s go.”

I stared at him, the details of our morning returning to me. “Blake, I’m not going home with you.”

“No, you’re not. We’re going to go somewhere so we can talk, and if you still want to go home, or wherever, you can.”

“Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer.

“I’m really not in the mood to be stuck on an island with you right now, Blake.”

We were at the ferry station and Blake was begging me to not to leave. He’d locked the doors and driven us onto the big boat, and now he was doing everything in his power to keep me there.

“I promise, we can turn around and take the next ferry back if you don’t like what I have to say.”

“You’re being insane right now, you know that? This is like kidnapping.”

“Promise me you won’t get off.”

I groaned. “I promise, now let me out.”

He released the locks, and I walked up the ramp to the upper level of the ferry where we’d spend the rest of the ride to Martha’s Vineyard. If Blake thought he could romance his way out of the doghouse, he was dead wrong.

I walked through to the front of the boat, stepping out onto the deck. I picked a table for two near the end, knowing Blake was on my heels. I sat, and he joined me a second later. I finally met his stare. His eyes glittered from the setting sun reflecting against the water. God help me, he was as beautiful as he was maddening. We sat in silence for a few moments while a few of the other tables filled around us.

“Are you going to tell me how you found me? You don’t have a tracking device planted in my stuff do you?” If I was going to be subjected to this odyssey, he needed to start filling in the gaps quick.

“Sid told me you were going to visit with your father.”

“You asked, and he just told you?” I sincerely hoped Blake hadn’t horrified Sid the way he had a habit of doing with almost everyone else I came into contact with lately.

“Actually, yes. He wasn’t wild about you staying with a complete stranger either.”

“What about Mark? How did you know he’d be there?”

“I dug up every possible affiliation he had when I tracked down his identity, His step-father and employer were notable. When I found out where you were staying, I figured there was a very real chance Mark would be there too.”

Of course he would. He’d known Mark’s identity for a couple weeks now, so heaven knows what else he’d cooked up. If he’d meddled at all though, Mark didn’t seem the wiser.

“And you managed to track down his house on the Cape.”

“Erica, don’t insult me, please.” He drummed his fingers on the table.

“How did you learn how to do all this?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a hacker. It seems like a strange descriptor for someone with as much money and resources as you have, but clearly you still do it.”

“I only use my powers for good.” He flashed me a wicked smile.

“Has that always been the case?”

His smile slipped. “Listen, let’s talk about the deal with Max. I need to explain some things.”

“We’ll get there. Tell me how you became a hacker.”

“Countless hours on the computer and a propensity for math. Satisfied?”

“Listen, if you’re not going to be honest with me, I don’t need to be here.” I stood to leave.

He caught my hand. “Please, don’t leave.”

The look he gave me made my chest ache, but I was determined to hold my ground.

“Talk.” I sat back down.

He sighed. “I was a bored antisocial adolescent. I begrudged society. Hacking became a creative outlet, gave me options, made life seem a little less insignificant.”

I tried to imagine the beautiful man in front of me as angry teenager, shaking his fists at the world for whatever reason. “How had society wronged you so horribly? Weren’t your parents teachers?”

“Yes, and they were grossly underpaid. Anyway, they had nothing to do with me being that way, trust me. They tried like hell to get me out of the house, to be normal, I guess. I think I was just too...intellectual, maybe, for my own good. The news, politics, the economy. Basically everything that’s still wrong with the world today felt overwhelmingly wrong to me at that age. I had a hard time justifying living a normal, happy life and sticking my head in the sand while atrocities were happening everywhere.”

“So you thought you could save the world from your computer.”

“Not really. I don’t know…”

“How did you end up working with Max’s father?”

He blew out a slow breath. I glanced over my shoulder. They were just beginning to untie the ropes from the dock. I still had time.

“Now or never, Blake.”

“Fuck, fine.” He leaned in on the table, lowering his voice so only I could hear him. “I hooked up with a hacker group called M89. A handful of other pissed off kids like me. We came up with a plan to deplete the bank accounts of some top executives on Wall Street.”

“Why?”

“They were getting rich off some Ponzi scheme and trying to take down the whistle blowers who threatened to expose them.”

“So what happened?”

“We got caught,” he said. “I narrowly avoided jail time, and in the process somehow I caught Michael’s attention. He took me under his wing, figured out how to get through to me. I guess it took a hard-nosed capitalist to paint a view of the world that made sense.”

Wow.
Blake was so measured, so in control of every area of his life now. To think of him being so reckless frightened me. How we’d both made our way to this point in our lives could not have been more different.

“We both wanted to do something big, so I pulled all-nighters to graduate with honors and you hacked people’s bank accounts.”

“And here we are, together.” He pressed his lips to my knuckles, barely grazing them with his tongue.

My belly quickened, but I forced myself to focus on the matter at hand. “How did you avoid jail for what you did?”

He leaned back, his lips lifting mischievously.

“What?”

“Time’s up.”

I turned in my seat and saw that we were already several feet away from the dock, fully on our way.

* * *

Blake drove us across the island, out of one neighborhood into the next until we sped past a barren landscape where the houses were sparse. I gripped the seat, certain we’d be pulled over at any moment, which would be the perfect finish to this unbelievable day. Then again, the island probably only had a handful of cops, and we seemed to be getting farther away from civilization, if that were even possible.

We pulled up to a large single family home, distinguishable from any of the other cedar-shingled homes only by its sheer size and that it appeared to be the last home on this point of the island. We stepped onto the wraparound porch, and instead of taking us inside, Blake led me around and down to the beach. We passed through the dunes to where two whitewashed Adirondack chairs were perched on the sandy beach facing the soft waves of the ocean.

I kicked off my shoes and sat in one of them. After a mostly sleepless night and everything that had gone down today, I could barely hold myself up. Blake pulled out a bottle of chilled white wine from a bucket of ice nestled in the sand.

“How do you plan these things, Blake, honestly?”

He smirked. “Don’t think I’m telling you all my secrets tonight.”

“I could make you,” I threatened. I had an increasingly keen sense of his weaknesses lately.

His eyes darkened. “That’s a tempting thought,” he said, missing the glass he was pouring into.

He corrected his aim and handed me the glass. I took a welcome taste of the cool, fruity liquid.

“Don’t be so sure. I’m still angry with you. Like, super, extremely angry.”

“The proverbial doghouse?”

“The literal doghouse, and that doesn’t even begin to capture how much making up you have to do.”

“I like making up. Where shall I start?”

He settled at my feet, tracing tiny circles over my knee and up my thigh, pressing warm, soft kisses in their wake. I tried in vain to suppress the physical reaction that his touch elicited.

“You can’t fix this with sex,” I said, and damn it, I meant it.

“No? Tell me then. How can I fix this?” He kept up his feather-light touches.

“I honestly don’t know. I thought you had a plan for that when I agreed to come out here with you.” I wasn’t going to make this easy for him. I was beyond drained, but I had just enough fire left to make this point.

He slowed his caresses and settled back on his knees. “I love you, Erica.”

Shit,
I thought. He had to lead with that? I swallowed back tears. “That doesn’t change what you did to me today.”

“I know it probably doesn’t mean much, but I didn’t want to. You didn’t leave me many options.”

“Well that’s not enough of a reason,” I said, staring past him.

“Taking on investors is like getting into bed with someone, Erica. It doesn’t always work, and to be honest, you’re not really the type for this kind of partnership. I completely understand how you feel about the business. One of the reasons why I didn’t bid right away is because you’re strong-willed as hell. I knew working with you wouldn’t be easy, and you’d fight me every step of the way. I didn’t fully appreciate the consequences of you working with Max until recently, and I couldn’t bear losing you to him.”

“He doesn’t want me that way,” I insisted, only half believing it. Max, like so many others, didn’t entirely respect my personal space but he hadn’t made any overt comments leading me to believe that he wanted me sexually. Even if he did, I could hold my own.

“He does, trust me. Whether or not you want to believe it, he’d stop at nothing to have you if it meant getting back at me. After seeing what you went through with Isaac, I couldn’t take that risk again.”

I shook my head. Isaac had caught me off guard, but if Blake had given me a minute longer, I could have gotten him to back off without help.

“I can’t say exactly how or when Max would make his play, but I can promise you he would. He’d make you do things you’d never do just to keep the business, knowing how much it meant to you, knowing how much you mean to me.”

“How can you know that?”

“Jesus, Erica, I’d walk through fire to make sure you were safe. Can you just believe me, that I could see this coming, that I wouldn’t let anything happen to you?”

I closed my eyes. The waves crashed on the beach, and a soft breeze blew over us. I sensed Blake, his magnetic pull willing me closer to him. He was the only man I’d ever loved, and here he was, professing his love for me, promising to protect me from harm, almost too chivalric to be taken seriously, but when I opened my eyes and looked into his, there was no doubt about his intentions.

Everything had become too much. My eyes misted, but I refused to surrender. I wrapped my arms across my chest, holding myself together.

“You’re killing me, Blake.”

 
“Do you know how many women have pitched me in that boardroom?” he asked.

“How many?”

“One.”

The word lingered in the air, an unbelievable truth that pronounced how perilous my position in this industry could be. If that was true, coming this far was nothing short of a miracle. It also explained why their receptionist looked at me like I had three heads every time I showed up for a meeting.