LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance (4 page)

Lucien

I was picking at a bowl of potato salad, trying to create a bite that didn’t include the sweet pickles Jacob always forgot I didn’t like. He was droning on about the new advertising campaign for one of our lines of vitamins. It was called Belite, a vitamin that was chock full of B-vitamins to help with energy. It was a strong seller, providing nearly half our yearly revenue. But sales had started to dip, so we were trying to find a new angle that would catch the attention of consumers who were easily swayed by that sort of thing. Normally I’d be right on top of it. But my thoughts were elsewhere today.

“Father called this morning,” Jacob suddenly said, changing the subject.

“Oh?”

“He wants us to come out to the beach house tonight. He said Rachel’s coming home from school for the weekend, and he’d like the whole family to be there.”

“Is she?” I slipped my cellphone out of my pocket, pulling up the calendar. “Spring break isn’t for another couple of weeks.”

“Yeah. That’s probably why they want the whole family there.”

“You think she got kicked out?”

“Or flunked out. And you know how Elizabeth will react to something like that.”

Of course I knew. My mother panicked each time it seemed that Rachel might not be living up to expectations. And those expectations were set pretty high for the daughter of an oil baron with two overachieving sons.

“I’ll call Mother later and talk to her about it.”

Jacob nodded and seemed about to say something else when the door opened in time with the soft tap that alerted us to Jaime’s—my assistant—presence.

“Security just called up. There’s a woman at the front desk who’d like to see you, Lucien.”

Right on time.

“Who is it?” Jacob asked.

“Someone named Adrienne Garcia?”

Jacob shot me a dark look. But he kind of waved his hand even as he turned back to his own bowl of takeout potato salad.

“Tell them to let her up,” I said. “And show her in as soon as she gets here.”

“Yes, sir,” Jaime said as she slipped back out the door.

“I thought you didn’t know if you were going to see her again.”

“I didn’t say that. I just asked what you thought of her.”

“Did you invite her to come here?”

“Am I not supposed to have a personal life?”

“No.” Jacob glanced at me. “I just prefer that you keep it out of the workplace. Besides, doesn’t she have a job?”

I shrugged. “Maybe she had a day off.”

Jacob picked up his food containers and crossed to the trashcan. “You have a meeting with those people from the ad agency at four. Try not to be late.”

“Yes, Daddy,” I said with a little salute just as the door opened and Adrienne stepped through.

She was wearing a subtle blue dress that just sort of hung from her shoulders and flowed over her curves like a bedsheet might do. Her hair was pulled back into a classic ponytail, the soft waves she’d displayed in her hair the night before making the ponytail look like a collection of ocean waves. She was wearing a subtler array of makeup this afternoon that highlighted those intense blue eyes, and a dainty pair of gold earrings adorned her ears. The only flaw in the beauty of the picture was those bright silver flats.

She smiled with genuine delight as she took us in. But I’m not sure who brought that warm expression to her face, me or Jacob.

“Hi,” she said somewhat breathlessly.

“It’s lovely to see you again, Adrienne,” Jacob said as he approached her, his hand held out quite politely.

“You, too, Jacob,” she said, that smile not fading a single iota.

“Hey, don’t you look beautiful,” I said, moving up beside my brother.

She immediately let go of Jacob’s hand and moved in to me, tipping her head back to accept a kiss. I was sure she expected just a casual peck, and that was probably what it should have been. But I couldn’t resist drawing her close and taking advantage of the knowledge that she enjoyed my kiss. I pressed my lips to hers firmly as I slid a hand around her waist, urging those gorgeous, full lips apart. She sighed as she moved in to me, her body molding to mine, accepting the kiss she knew she had no choice but to endure. She seemed more receptive to it today, less stiff than she’d been in the car last night. And, I had to admit, that made me want to push to see just how far she’d allow me to go.

She was so tiny. It was a little awkward, bending so low to pull her closer to me. But it also brought out something inside of me, made me want to wrap myself around her and hide her from the world. It was a sort of caveman idea, that
mine, mine, mine
sort of mentality. And, as she was mine, I so desperately wanted to possess every inch of her.

“Don’t forget that meeting, Lucien,” Jacob said, breaking through the little cloud I’d lost my head inside of.

Adrienne broke the kiss and pressed her face against the front of my shirt. I slid my hand over the back of her head as I straightened and focused on my brother.

“I won’t. But I think I’ll show Adrienne around beforehand.”

Jacob glanced back at me. “I don’t need to remind you of the rules regarding visitors, do I?”

I groaned. “It’s my company, too. You don’t always have to treat me like I’m a child.”

Jacob actually smiled at that.

“It was nice to see you again, Adrienne,” he said before slipping through the door and pulling it closed behind him.

The moment we were alone, Adrienne pulled away.

She walked around me and started checking out my office like a nosy guest at a dinner party looking through the medicine cabinet. But the serious expression on her face and the methodical way she went about it made me feel uneasy.

“What are you…?”

She held up a finger and gestured for me to be quiet. She walked behind my desk and ran her fingers under the edges, then pulled open the top two drawers, sticking her hand inside to feel the underside of the desk top. Then she pulled something out of the dainty purse she’d been carrying over her shoulder, studying it for a moment before she waved it around the room. Then she walked, pausing here and there, before she finally sighed and slid the device back into her purse.

“Okay. It’s safe to talk here.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“We’ve had cases like yours that were as simple as someone placing a bug in the CEO’s office so they could overhear every conversation he had. But there doesn’t appear to be anything here.”

“You’re sure?”

“As positive as the latest technology can make me.”

I was kind of impressed. She was not what I’d imagined.

“My father has some of our people checking out the people on your team. We should know soon if there are any irregularities in their bank accounts that might suggest they’ve been talking to someone about your device.”

“Do you think someone might have already made some sort of payment?”

She reached up like she was going to rub her eyes, but then she stopped and dropped her hands to her side, holding them stiffly, as if she were trying to remind herself how to behave.

“It’s possible,” she said, her eyes moving around the room like she was still looking for something off.

“If that’s true, then we could be in real trouble.”

“This thing is really important, isn’t it?”

“It is. I could make life for a child with diabetes so much easier. Diabetes is a difficult condition to live with. Adding five to seven shots a day to it is a nightmare for a child who cries when the doctor wants to give them the occasional vaccination.”

Her expression softened as the scenario I’d described registered. And that flash of deep sadness that I’d noticed twice at the bar passed through those intense eyes. Again I wanted to ask her what that was about, but then she began walking around the room again.

“Tell me about you support staff,” she said.

I glanced toward the door, an almost automatic reaction whenever I thought of Jaime.

“Jaime—you met her out at the elevators—is my personal assistant. She’s been with the company since its inception. She and Colin—Jacob’s assistant—were the first two people we hired. Even before the first team of scientists.”

“You trust them.”

“Of course.”

“Would they know about the projects you’re working on here?”

“They know only what they need to know to do their jobs. We’re very careful about what we put down on paper, what we say in front of help staff. There is a protocol in place to keep secrets secret.”

She walked over to the couch set intentionally on one side of the room to present a cozy place to have meetings. She kicked off her shoes and pulled her legs up underneath her, sitting like a teenager making herself at home. I followed, taking a spot on the other side of the couch.

“We’ll have to check them out, just to make sure something hasn’t slipped through your protocol.” She scratched her head just above her brow, her eyes again moving around the room. It seemed like she always had to know what was going on around her, what threat might suddenly pop up. It must be difficult living like that, believing that there could be danger around every corner.

“What about the rest of your staff? You have, what, three floors here?”

“Four.”

“Four?”

“The labs are in the basement.”

She nodded. “Is it just you and your brother up here on this floor?”

“Jacob, me, the head of human resources, the head of research and development, and the head of accounting.”

“And the second floor?”

“Support staff. Accounting. The secretary pool. Legal.”

“You have your own in-house legal department.”

“We do. They work on patents and other legal issues that have, or may, come up with our products.”

“Does anyone in legal know about this device?”

“Shit, yeah,” I said, realizing I’d missed one person when I was thinking about the people who could have leaked information on the device. “Sharon Potter. She’s the one who worked on the patent application with me.”

“We’ll have to check her out. Do you think you could introduce her to me when you give me the tour?”

“Sure.”

“Anyone else?”

“Not that I can think of. But I’ve already given your father a list of employees. He said you’d be checking most of them out.”

“We will. But we need to know who to concentrate on the most.”

I sat forward and buried my face in my hands for a moment. All this was becoming somewhat overwhelming. I was beginning to wish I’d only been paranoid. That this was all some sort of hoax that would disappear. But I knew it wasn’t because of what I’d found in my email inbox when I got to work this morning.

“There’s something I should show you,” I said.

Adrienne was watching me, her expression unreadable except for this little spark that seemed to be alive in her eyes. I couldn’t tell what it was. The excitement of the case? Or being this close to me? Or maybe something totally unrelated to it all.

I crossed the room to my computer and pulled up the email. She moved up beside me, moving in front of me as she moved closer to read. Her ass was just right there, pushing back against me. I couldn’t help but touch it, running my hand slowly along the curve of her hip to the long line of her outer thigh.

“When did you get this?”

I almost had to ask what she was talking about.

“This morning.”

She was chewing on her lip, eating off the lipstick that had been there. She straightened up and, because we were standing so close together, pressed back against my chest. I slid my hand around her waist, helping her catch her balance. She stood there for a moment, clearly not disturbed by my touch. But then she pulled away and walked back toward the couch.

“That reads like a death threat.”

I don’t think she wanted a response from me. She pulled her cellphone out of that dainty purse, clearly annoyed with it when the phone caught on the purse’s lining. She tugged roughly at it, and I was pretty sure I heard something rip. I had to bite back a chuckle. This was a serious situation, after all.

Very serious. But it was going to be a lot of fun, too.

Adrienne

My father answered his phone on the third ring, his voice thick with sleep.

“What?” he mumbled.

“It’s me, Poppy. There’s been a development in the case.”

“What?” he repeated, but his voice was clearer, the sound of drowsiness quickly disappearing.

“Lucien Montgomery got an email this morning that reads like a death threat to me. It says he should be more careful about who he talks about. That the device has been compromised, and if he knows what’s good for him, he should just let it go.”

My father was quiet for a long moment.

“I’ll call Robert, have him trace the email back to the origin IP.”

“Okay.”

“Stay with him. It might be an idle threat, but it could be real. You need to stay with him as much as you can until we figure out just how high the risk is.”

I glanced over at the desk where I’d left Lucien. He’d moved over to the small table on the other side of the room and was gathering his abandoned lunch trash. He wasn’t looking at me, but I got the impression he was listening just the same.

I covered my mouth and the bottom half of the phone.

“I don’t know if I can do that, Poppy. You know this role playing stuff isn’t really my thing.”

“I’m aware of that. But you’ve already begun. He knows you. If we suddenly introduce someone else into the equation, the guilty party will get suspicious.”

“I know, but surely—”

“You’ll do as you’re told,
mija
.”

“Okay.” I dropped my hand back to my side. “I’ll call you later with any other developments.”

I disconnected before my father could say anything else. My cheeks were burning, and I felt like a chastised child. Which, I supposed, I was.

“Everything okay?”

I nodded without turning around. “My father’s going to have one of our people see if he can figure out where the email came from. In the meantime, he wants me to stick by your side.”

Lucien didn’t respond immediately. But when I turned, he was watching me with a small smile on his handsome face. I could imagine how that smile might make some women’s hearts twitter like birds in the spring. But not mine. He might be pretty, but he really wasn’t my type. Too tall. Too handsome. I liked my men to look more like they belonged in the world I grew up in, a place where the men proved their masculinity by fixing a carburetor on the kitchen table and sweating on the basketball court. Lucien looked like he didn’t even know what a carburetor was. Though I could imagine he might have seen a few basketball courts in his time. But it was probably in a fancy club where the pool was heated and the track had a nice, padded carpet to protect that precious instep.

“What does that mean, stick by my side?”

“That I stay here for the rest of the afternoon. And when you go home, you’ll need to take me with you.”

That smile widened just slightly. “There’s something I should probably tell you, then.”

“What’s that?”

“Jacob and I are supposed to drive out to our parents’ house tonight. If you’re supposed to stick with me, you’ll have to come along.”

“Where’s your parents’ house?”

“Not far. They have a beach house in Kemah.”

“Kemah.” I’d expected him to say River Oaks. But Kemah was a good hour’s drive from my little apartment in the second ward.

“Have you ever been to that part of Galveston Bay?”

I shook my head. “I don’t spend much time at the beach.”

“Well, you’ll need a bikini. When everyone’s home, my parents like to throw a barbecue. And my sister, Rachel, will drag you out onto the beach.”

Great.

I just nodded again because I didn’t know what else to say. What I really wanted to do was call my father and beg him again to have someone else do this. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t spend an entire weekend with this man and his family. We had absolutely nothing in common. What would we talk about? I wasn’t even sure I would know how to behave at a meal. What if it was one of those
Princess Diaries
moments with a dozen forks and knives and spoons? What if I made a fool out of myself tying to be something I wasn’t? I was a middle class girl, the daughter of a cop and a schoolteacher. I barely graduated from high school, and spent five years in the Army. That was the sum value of my experience in the world. I didn’t know anything about fancy wines and high end fashion and expensive cuts of meat. And all that on top of this little act we had going on… What was I going to do when it was time to go to bed and everyone expected me to sleep with Lucien?

I felt panic building in my chest. I really didn’t want to do this. But I knew there was no way out of it. I was committed, whether I liked it or not.

“We should go do our tour of the building, or Jacob will think we’ve gotten up to no good in here.”

Lucien laid his hands on my shoulders, and the closeness was almost too much. My skin crawled at the same time my stomach tightened. I stepped away, adjusting the stupid purse on my shoulder (I never carry a purse. I prefer pockets. In my jeans.) so that he wouldn’t think I’d pulled away specifically to get away from him. For some reason, I cared about what he thought. And that was so unlike me. He was a client. I cared that he didn’t get hurt or dead. Nothing else really mattered. Why did I care if his feelings got hurt?

Eyes were on us from the moment we stepped out of the office. Lucien slid his arm around my waist and held me close as we walked down the hall to the elevator. He introduced me to the executives who found some excuse to come out of their offices and wander near us, their curious eyes suggesting that Lucien didn’t often bring women around the office. I also got the impression that there were a few of his coworkers who would have much rather been in my place than theirs.

“You’re well liked around here, aren’t you?” I asked when we were alone on the elevator.

He touched my cheek, brushing a curl away from my eyes.

“We’re alone.”

“There are cameras,” he said without turning, without gesturing. Then he bent low and brushed his lips against mine. I had a choice. I could move away, or I could do my job and kiss him back. And that was an odd thought. When had my job become about kissing virtual strangers?

I moved in to him, pressing my hand to his side, and returned his kiss. It began as a gentle, almost friendly, kiss. But it quickly turned into something else as he tugged me closer with a hand on my hip. My body seemed to respond to him without any thought on my part, my bones melting to mold to his body, my jaw loosening to welcome him. And, hell, it felt good! Why did it have to feel so good?

I was almost relieved when the elevator door opened and he pulled away, sliding his hand into mine as we stepped out into a startlingly white corridor.

“This is the basement where the labs are.” Lucien gestured to the right. “Those are the clean rooms. We’ll go over there in a minute. But first I want to show you the chemistry labs.”

He led the way into a large room that looked almost like the lab at the high school I’d attended, but, of course, it had more state-of-the-art equipment. There were dozens of people bent to their work, mostly staring into microscopes or watching the action of other machines I couldn’t begin to describe, let alone explain what they did. Lucien pulled me along by my hand, speaking in hushed tones so as not to disturb anyone. He told me how they’d bought the patents to certain medications when they began the business so that they would have revenues before they were able to come up with unique medications of their own. Some of those were still produced in these labs. Others were produced in mass quantities at other facilities. Most of the work done in these labs was on new medications, medications that had yet to receive FDA approval.

“Over the next two years, we hope to release three new drugs. One to treat heart disease. Another to treat Parkinson’s. And a promising new drug that has shown marked improvement in people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.”

“Impressive.”

“It’s our goal to change the landscape of American medicine.”

“That’s a lofty goal.”

“It is.”

Then he led me across the small lobby to the other side of the floor. The clean rooms required us to put on paper suits and to slide covers over our shoes. Once again, he held my hand as he led the way inside. He led the way to a set of windows and stood behind me, his body pressed up against my back, his hands on my hips, as he explained what we were watching. People in suits not unlike our own were assembling what looked like miniature computers.

“Those are a new style of insulin pump we’ve designed. We already have a patent for that, and it has been undergoing human trials for almost a year. We’re expecting the FDA to allow us to go to market in six months.”

He turned me and pointed to another window. “That is the pacemaker we’ve designed. It’s already on the market, changing people’s lives every day.”

Then he shifted me again, pointing to another window. “That device can be implanted in a patient’s brain and help control the tremors associated with Parkinson’s.”

“That’s…”

I didn’t have words for all they were doing here. It was impressive, but that didn’t seem like a big enough word for all the good they were trying to do for people. I’d known what kind of business this was before I set eyes on Lucien and Jacob the night before, but it really hadn’t sunk in until I saw all of this myself.

Lucien’s arm came around my waist, and he drew me closer to him.

“Are you impressed yet?”

I nodded. There was no point in lying.

We left the clean rooms a few minutes later and re-boarded the elevator. Lucien lifted my hand and kissed my palm lightly.

“Do you understand now?” he asked, his eyes searching mine.

“We’ll do everything we can.”

He smiled. “I know,” he said as he bent and kissed me once more.

He left me in his office as he went off to some meeting down the hall. I called Theresa and sent her to my apartment to pack me a bag for the weekend. And then I settled behind Lucien’s desk and logged onto his computer. I’d worked with computers some in the Army, enough to know how to find things that most people didn’t even know they could look for. I wanted to know who’d sent that email to Lucien, wanted to know who would be greedy enough to block any life-saving device from hitting the marketplace. I knew Robert was working on it, but I might as well do something useful while I was here.

I was digging through Lucien’s files when the door opened and his personal assistant walked in.

“Oh, you shouldn’t be doing that,” she said, walking around the desk and turning off the monitor, like that would do anything to stop me.

“It’s okay. Lucien knows what I’m doing.”

“Still. You shouldn’t. There’re a lot of corporate secrets on these computers.”

“You’ve worked here a while?”

She nodded. “Since the beginning.”

“You know him well, then.”

She glanced at me, wariness in her eyes.

“If you’re going to ask me about his dating history, you probably shouldn’t. I don’t like gossip.”

“Oh, of course.” That wasn’t really where I was going, but if that’s what she wanted to think, more power to her. “I was just wondering how dangerous it was for him to be the CEO of a place like this. I can imagine people would want a piece of the potential profits of what they do here.”

“I guess they do. He and Jacob both get threats sometimes. And hate mail. But security takes care of it.”

I nodded. Security here was pretty solid. I’d already seen that firsthand when I’d tried to come upstairs without an appointment. They’d followed protocol right down to the letter, just like Lucien had said they would.

“Has anyone ever tried to bribe you to get close to them? Offered money to slip them information?”

“No. But it wouldn’t do them any good. Lucien’s careful that I never see anything sensitive.”

Again, exactly what he’d told me.

“You should probably go wait over there,” Jaime said, gesturing to the couch. “Mr. Montgomery will be back in a bit.”

“Okay.”

I did as I was told, watching Jaime straighten up Lucien’s desk and busy herself with little tasks that came off as just an attempt to look busy while she babysat me. I wondered if someone had sent her in here, or if she’d taken the task upon herself. If someone wanted to get close to Lucien, or wanted to sneak something into this office, she would be a good way to do it. But she seemed loyal. In fact, any doubt I might have had about her loyalty vanished when Lucien came into the room. Her eyes lit up, and she suddenly became less self-assured, her hands moving over her hips to smooth her simple skirt into place.

Like most of the women in this building, she had a crush on the boss. The only question was, was that a good thing? Or a bad thing?