Rion (39 page)

D
amn it, Jordan. You lied to me.” Vivianne Blackstone, CEO of the Vesta Corporation, tapped the incriminating report against
her leg and restrained her urge to fling it at Jordan McArthur, her chief engineer. The world was in a total meltdown after
learning an ancient enemy had infiltrated Earth’s governments and major industries, and Vivianne was determined to keep her
Draco
project safe.

Head throbbing, she stared at the spaceship’s complex wiring. The
Draco
had to fly as planned. It had to work out. So much was riding on this venture to find the lost and legendary Holy Grail.
Vesta’s future. Earth’s future. Her future. Everything she’d ever wanted, everyone she’d ever loved, might be lost if this
project didn’t succeed.

When Jordan didn’t respond, she nudged his foot with her shoe. “I’m talking to you.”

Lying on the deck with his head halfway through a hatch, Jordan shifted until she could just see his intense blue eyes.

“I heard. How did I lie to you?”

She dropped the papers, but she’d already lost his attention to the ship. He’d wriggled back inside the compartment, pulling
another wire to hook into the circuits, no doubt following an electrical schematic that existed only inside his head.

He threaded a wire into a panel box of delicately networked circuits. “Hand me a screwdriver.”

Scowling at his back, she slapped the tool into his hand.

“Tell me these findings are wrong,” Vivianne demanded.

“What findings?” His profile, rugged and somber, remained utterly still, except for a tiny tick in his jaw that told her he
was unhappy she’d interrupted his work. He wouldn’t even have a job if not for her—and he would lose it, if he didn’t come
up with a satisfactory explanation for why his entire résumé had been one big fat lie.

“You’ve never attended Harvard. Never got your PhD at MIT. Never taught at Cambridge.”

“The Phillips-head.” He held out his hand again, and this time his voice was laced with impatience. “It’s the screwdriver
with an X on the tip.”

Like she didn’t know a Phillips-head when she saw one? While her specialty was communications technology, she’d designed and
built her first hydrogen rocket by age twelve. However, when it came to spaceship design, Jordan was the go-to guy.

Despite his doctored résumé, the man knew his aeronautical engineering. From hull design to antigrav wiring, no detail on
the
Draco
was too small for Jordan to reengineer and make more efficient.

One of Jordan’s engineers spoke over the ship’s intercom. “These voltage converter equations can’t be right.”

“They are,” Jordan answered evenly.

“They’re frying the circuits.” The man’s frustration was evident in his tone.

“Sean, you’ll find a way to keep them humming. You always do.”

“I’m stumped.”

“I’ll give you a hand as soon as I can.”

“Thanks, boss.”

“But I’m sure you’ll figure it out before then.”

Sean chuckled. “I’ll do my best.”

While this was a side of Jordan she hadn’t seen, his encouragement didn’t surprise her. But it wasn’t his leadership skills
that she questioned. Vivianne’s gut churned. “Jordan, we really need to talk.”

“So talk.”

Vivianne paused and considered precisely what to say. She’d already made one mistake by hiring Jordan before he’d been properly
vetted. She couldn’t afford to make another—like accusing him outright of being a spy.

“As the first hyperspace ship to carry a full crew, the
Draco
has caught the imagination and attention of the masses. Everything we do is headline news, and when the press finds out that
my chief engineer falsified his employment application—”

“Damn it, Vivianne, I know what I’m doing.”

“To the public, a liar is a liar. And if you lied to get a job, they’ll think you’ve lied about the
Draco
during our press conferences.”

“So we don’t tell anyone. Problem solved.”

Vivianne pinched the bridge of her nose to ease her headache. “But if your lies come to light, you don’t just lose your job,
you ruin my credibility. My company’s reputation. It could crash Vesta’s stock.”

Jordan threaded one of myriad wires into a nexus of circuitry. “As long as this ship doesn’t crash, your stock will be fine.”

She could handle the business end. Hell, if she put his picture on the news, the female half of the planet would fall in love
at first sight and forgive him anything. Mr. Dark, Tough, and Brilliant’s gorgeous face might just sway the general population
and perhaps her stockholders, as well.

What she couldn’t handle was a traitor.

“What other lies have you told me?” she asked.

“Whatever would get me this job.”

“Real inspiring. Why didn’t you respond to the memo I sent last week?”

“If I spent all my time reading your memos, how would I get anything done?”

“You’ve installed miles of wiring that aren’t in the specs.”

“We’re ahead of schedule, so why are you concerned?”

“I suppose you’ll say the same about the cancellation of the prototype cosmic-energy converter?”

He merely arched a brow.

She frowned. Before she’d known about his lies, she’d shrugged off his changes to necessary modifications. But could it be
more?

In a desperate attempt to suppress her frustration, Vivianne reminded herself how far she’d come. Peering at the
Draco
’s shiny metal, she had difficulty believing they’d built this ship in just over three months. Almost every system was a new
design, and while the number of things that could go wrong was literally infinite, she had high hopes for success.

“If the story of your doctored credentials leaks, our client may get cold feet,” she explained.

“Chen won’t back out.” Jordan sounded completely certain.

She didn’t bother to keep the exasperation from her voice. “Billionaires willing to buy a spaceship in order to search the
galaxy for the Holy Grail aren’t a dime a dozen.”

Jordan grunted.

“If Chen does back out, I’ll have to refund his investment. And with the way you’ve been spending, not even I have that much
credit.”

“Down to your last few billion, are you?” Jordan teased without glancing in her direction.

She clenched her fists in irritation. “That’s not the point. Maybe we can break the news, spin it in our favor.” She pictured
an advantageous story. Something like “Genius Engineer Discovered.” “Then the article could go on to praise you and some little-known
college. I’ll have my PR department put together a package.”

“Not a good idea.”

His blue eyes glittered dangerously, and his response made her uneasy. Something wasn’t right. He should be grateful that
she was willing to fix the publicity nightmare he’d created. Instead he was acting like a man with something else to hide.
But what?

“Do you always make contingencies for contingencies?” he asked.

She snorted. Orphaned at age ten, Vivianne had become a ward of the state. Control became her lifeline. She planned her days
from start to finish. She arranged her appointments, both business and personal, to the minute, and any disruption was cause
to work twice as hard to get back on schedule. She’d used her obsession to earn herself a first-class education and to build
a successful small business into a worldwide conglomerate.

The downside of running a huge company, however, was that she had to rely on others. Brilliant engineers like Jordan didn’t
give a damn about her minute-to-minute expectations. He got the job done—but he certainly didn’t do things her way.

“In your case, I haven’t planned enough.”

Jordan rubbed his ear and stood, reminding her just how tall and broad he was. But if he was attempting to use his size to
intimidate her, he’d learn she didn’t back down. He was, after all, her employee.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “You have someone else who can build the
Draco
on budget and under deadline?” He didn’t wait for her reply. They both knew the answer was no.

“Where
did
you go to school?”

Jordan shrugged. “Here and there.”

Her blood pressure shot up ten points, but she did her best to keep her temper under control. “Could you be a little more
specific?”

He shot her a nonapologetic smile that was way too charming. “I’m pretty much self-taught.”

Hell. She needed more than a damn charming smile to convince her he hadn’t been educated on another planet. That he wasn’t
a spy.

“You don’t have a PhD?”

He didn’t answer.

Vivianne reminded herself that she’d dealt with many difficult situations in the last few years. She’d funded archaeologist
Lucan Roarke’s risky mission to a moon named Pendragon to find the Holy Grail. While he hadn’t brought back the Grail, he
had found a cure for Earth’s infertility problem.

Vivianne stared at the scales on the insides of her wrists. Like one-tenth of the population, she could now shapeshift into
a dragon and fly.

Too bad the vaccine hadn’t increased her intelligence. How could Jordan have fooled her so easily? More importantly, what
was he hiding? What else hadn’t he told her?

“What about job experience?”

“Nothing verifiable.”

“I suppose you fudged the glowing recommendations, too?” Her pulse pounded, and she massaged her aching temple. “Who the hell
are you?”

“You might want to take an aspirin—”

“Thank you,
Doctor
.” Her sarcasm escaped unchecked. “Oh, excuse me, you aren’t a doctor of anything, are you?”

“I don’t need a medical degree to see that your head hurts and you’re taking it out on me.” His tone was calm, low, and husky,
and that she found it sexy irked her even more.

“So now you’re a shrink.”

He’d barely glanced at her before turning to work on his beloved circuits, but it was so like him to notice details, even
her wincing in pain.

Vivianne willed Jordan to turn around. “How did you do it? It’s as if you appeared in Barcelona six months ago. Until then,
you had no credit. You attended no schools. Even your birth records are fake. I can’t find anyone who knew you before you
walked into my office to apply for a job.”

“And you’ve never regretted it.”

“Until now.” Damn him.

“You don’t mean that.” Jordan shrugged. “You don’t regret letting me build you this ship.”

Vivianne hadn’t built up her company by allowing handsome men to sweet-talk her into trusting them or by ignoring urgent government
warnings. Both Vivianne and the Tribes were after the same goal—both wanted the Grail. So it was very possible that the reason
her chief engineer had faked his past was because he was a spy—for the Tribes.

Feeling sick to her stomach, Vivianne’s tone snapped with authority. “Jordan, put down your tools. You can’t work on the
Draco
until security clears you.”

In typical Jordan fashion, he kept right on working. “Don’t you want to see if the new engine’s going to work?”

“We’ll straighten that out later.” Her temper flared because Jordan knew just how to pique her interest. From the get-go,
the engines had been a major issue. It almost broke her heart to know that the
Draco
might never fly now that she was pulling him off the project.

“I’m about ready to test a new power source.”

“What are you talking about? What new power source?”

“The Ancient Staff.” Jordan reached to a sheath he wore on his belt and drew out an object that resembled a tree branch with
symbols carved into the bark. When he flicked his wrist, the rod telescoped and expanded with a metallic click. Extended to
five feet, the Ancient Staff gave off an otherworldly shimmer unlike anything Vivianne had ever seen.

The air around the staff glittered like heat reflecting off hot pavement. It was as if the staff folded and compressed the
space around it, the eerie effect and haze continuously rippling outward.

She peered at Jordan. The cords in his neck were tight, his broad shoulders tense as if he were bracing for her reaction.

She tried to tamp down a pinch of panic. “Don’t move.”

He turned to place the staff into position. “The Ancient Staff will supply far more power to the
Draco
’s engines than a cosmic converter.”

That staff wasn’t in the plans. It hadn’t ever been discussed. For all she knew, once he attached the strange power source
to the
Draco
, they’d all blow up. Unnerved, she reached for her handheld communicator to call security, but there was no time. It would
take only a second for him to snap the Ancient Staff into the housing.

She’d have to stop him herself. “Turn it off.”

“The staff doesn’t have an off switch.”

Vivianne jerked back a step. “Don’t attach that thing to my ship.”

“It’s meant to—”

“I said no.” Mouth dry with suspicion, she clamped her hand on his shoulder.

Before she could yank him back, Jordan snapped the rod into place. The anxiety she’d been holding back knotted in her stomach.

But controlling her fear was the least of her worries as the air around the rod shimmered, then spread up his arm.

“What type of energy is this?” she asked.

“The powerful kind.”

“The engines can deal with that kind of power?”

“I hope so.”

The energy crawled all the way up his arm and stretched toward her hand. She tried to jerk back, but her body refused to obey
her mind. Her feet wouldn’t move. Her fingers might as well have been frozen.

Panicked, she watched the glow of energy flow over his shoulder to her hand. Every hair on the back of her neck standing on
end, she braced for pain. But when the glowing energy engulfed her fingers and washed up her arm, then sluiced over her body,
the tingling sensation somehow banished her headache and expelled her fear.

The effect was instantaneous and undeniable. Her breasts tingled. Her skin flamed as if they’d spent the past fifteen minutes
engaging in foreplay rather than arguing over his nonexistent past. She’d always found Jordan attractive, but now it was as
if the staff had turned on a switch inside her.