This job.
This fucking job.
Hectic mornings always feel like slamming back into reality from a fifty-foot drop, but this isn’t just reality now. It’s a concrete fucking floor.
I’m so livid I might burst a blood vessel.
If I could, I would fire every single person in this building.
As for Destiny—
No. Don’t think about her.
I can’t.
The second I dwell on what she’s done to me, I’m going to come unraveled, and all of Hannah’s protests that I need to keep quiet will be for nothing.
I bite my tongue and close my eyes.
Count to ten.
Resist the urge to hurl something through the massive windows, the only thing between my problems and a cold, indifferent city going about its business, blissfully detached from my shit show of a life.
Seattle looks damnably beautiful in the morning light, draped in silver and gold.
I hate it.
And Hannah Cho stands by silently.
Aside from suggesting in the strongest possible terms I should keep my yap shut, she hasn’t said a word.
I glance at her and try not to yell at the video playing on her tablet.
It’s déjà vu all over again.
The same thing we went through with Vanessa.
The same bullshit we were trying to stop.
But that was child’s play compared to this.
I never fucked Vanessa Dumas, for one.
But Destiny? That little hellcat got under my skin and made me forget the rules.
Now, I’m paying the price for my little sin trip to Eden.
I’m the only one to blame.
Seduced by another pretty face until I believed she was authentic.
All because a forty-two-year-old man with cigarette burns on his past let his cock do the thinking.
Pathetic.
The video comes to an end as the girl in the overdone makeup and cat ears or whatever the hell it is on her head sweeps a hand at the camera and tells her viewers to follow.
Who knew the harbinger of my doom would look so ridiculous?
Whatever vile shit she’s spewing for views is working.
The video already has six hundred thousand views and I know those view counts lag. Millions of followers, mostly kids who’ve probably never heard of me before logging on to watch my real-time detonation.
Pure bullshit.
I’m deathly quiet, but my anger is a wordless force that almost makes Miss Cho flinch from across the room. She closes the video and looks at me again.
Still steady. Still calm. Still worried and trying so hard not to show it.
“Sir?”
“Obviously, Destiny Lancaster is off the program. Scrap the whole goddamned thing,” I bite off. “Once I calm down, I’ll decide if this is worth a lawsuit.”
She doesn’t say anything.
Unusual.
“Also, I’m going to have words with her. It can’t be avoided. Send her up the second she steps foot anywhere on my property—if she deigns to show her face.”
Maybe she won’t. That would almost be better.
Maybe she knows I’ll have a shit fit worthy of a Greek tragedy, so she’ll stay home and reap the consequences of her newfound celebrity status there.
Hannah purses her lips.
A clear sign that she disagrees with my strategy.
I shouldn’t care, but dammit, I do.
Silence is Hannah Cho’s greatest weapon. She wields it in meetings like an assassin’s sword. Unshakable, implacable calm whenever she disagrees.
I grind my teeth together and pace the floor a few times, waiting for her to speak.
Of course, she doesn’t.
“Well?” I clip. “You obviously have something to say, so spit it out, Miss Cho.”
She flicks her gaze up to mine, her eyes dark and cool. “Mr. Foster, I don’t believe Miss Lancaster is behind this hatchet job.”
I squint at her.
“You don’t…? How the hell can you possibly think that?” I snort. “I see it now. She suggested the otter trip so she could get us alone in a remote place. How she hacked my own goddamned drone, I can’t begin to fathom, but I’m going to find out. You have to admit, it’s deviously logical after Miss Dumas kicked off open season on my reputation.”
Devious because it worked.
I fucking let it, as easily as dropping a rotisserie chicken in a piranha tank.
I let my little head dictate my destiny.
She showed enough skin and too many angelic smiles, and I came running like a scraggly coyote with a bone.
“You’re certain it was ours? There wasn’t another drone following you?” she asks.
My jaw snaps together. “Certainly not. Do you really think I’d have gone ahead with it if I thought we were being followed? Besides, we’re the only private entity with a completely silent drone. Unless Destiny is with Naval Intelligence or an undercover alphabet agency, she couldn’t have dreamed of getting access to the lab.”
“No, sir. That’s my point.” She brings up pictures of the shots in Meghan’s video and holds up her tablet. They’re probably all over the internet by now. “But did you notice how close these shots are? If there was a drone following you, I’m sure you’d have noticed.”
I frown at the pictures.
Maybe we wouldn’t have noticed while we were camping and busy as hell under the trees, but we definitely would have out on the water, where there was nothing but wide-open sea and sky and so much silence.
And Destiny, too, in that tight little wet suit.
I finally see Hannah’s point.
Any regular civilian drone would’ve been noticed quickly from its noise alone at an altitude that low—except for our proprietary ultra-silent stealth model. The same drones that are still prototypes and haven’t been released to the open market yet.
Destiny couldn’t have gotten access to the research lab.
Then who the hell did? And how?
The handful of prototypes are all armed with chips that set off security alerts if they’re removed from the lab without an override code from the executive level or a senior researcher.
If Destiny had somehow gotten access, she wouldn’t have known about the tracking chips, I’m sure.
But anyone working in product development…
Fuck.
Maybe Destiny didn’t do it.
Maybe it’s an inside job, but not her.
Again, who?
I collapse in my chair, scrubbing my hands over my face, trying to hold my head together.
There would have to be a massive payoff for anyone on payroll to stick their neck out doing something so heinous.
Vanessa Dumas bribing an insider to keep smearing me is a real possibility—she certainly hates me enough—but she’s already gotten her way by forcing our scandal into the limelight. There isn’t enough worth her resorting to corporate espionage.
I could say the same for Destiny, too.
Like a pin stabbed into a balloon, the pressure blows out of my chest. I breathe past the crushing weight that’s sat there for the past ten minutes, tighter than a boa constrictor.
It wasn’t her.
Dess didn’t fucking orchestrate this.
For now, that’s enough.
The relief melts me alive. Hannah watches me slump in my chair, suddenly rendered boneless.
I don’t understand why it matters so much, yet I can’t deny that I feel a hundred pounds lighter knowing she didn’t betray me.
She never used me.
Hell, she’s as much of a victim as I am.
The anger still blazes inside me, but the sharp sting fades.
I run a hand through my hair.
“It wasn’t Destiny,” I say crisply, letting it sink in further.
“I don’t think so, either, sir,” Hannah agrees.
Goddamn.
I nod sharply. “We need to figure out who. Are we missing a unit?”
“I’m having Carol Garcia check inventory now. She was the last one in the lab during that time, but it was during your excursion.”
I swallow a few more curses, wishing like hell something made sense.
Hannah narrows her eyes, taking in my expression. “Forgive me for saying, Mr. Foster, but you seem relieved.”
“Do I?” I’d hoped to hide that.
“I wouldn’t mention it if you didn’t…”
There’s no point in pretending. Not to my mind reader of an EA, who’s mastered the art of deciphering my every expression.
“Perceptive as always,” I say.
“May I be blunt, sir?”
“Are you ever anything less?”
“…did you sleep with Miss Lancaster?”
Fuck.
There’s no easy answer to that.
Obviously, I want to tell her I didn’t—that I would never, ever dream of doing something so monstrously stupid.
But I did more than dream.
And definitely not just once.
It was the best damn boneheaded move of my life, absolutely ravaging Destiny Lancaster for several days in paradise.
Before I can force anything coherent out of my mouth, there’s a knock at the door.
Hannah doesn’t have time to get up.
Not before Destiny sails in without waiting for an invitation, swinging the door shut behind her.
‘A sight for sore eyes’ doesn’t do this justice.
Her face is flushed, the color high and bright on her cheekbones, and she can’t meet my gaze.
She looks miserable, though.
Probably worn to the bone from tromping through the office with everyone staring at her on the walk of shame.
Something I’m not used to feeling wells up in my chest behind the usual anger.
Protectiveness.
Her lashes are damp and her eyes are red-rimmed. It looks like she’s been crying.
“Sh-Shepherd.” Her voice cracks. “I… I know how it looks, but I swear I… I didn’t—”
“I know,” I growl.
“Huh?” She looks up. “You do?”
She immediately looks a tad less wretched.
It’s clear she’s been beating herself up over how I’ll react.
And hell if she wasn’t right five minutes ago—if Hannah hadn’t intervened, I would have been the human volcano she’s imagining.
I would have forced her to pack up her shit and leave, effective immediately.
Now, the very thought physically hurts.
“I do,” I say, and I can’t help myself.
Everyone standing here already knows, so fuck it.
I walk around the desk and pull her against me.
Comforting isn’t something I have much practice with, but for her, it comes too naturally.
She turns her face into my chest and takes a deep, shaking breath.
Then another.
Slowly, she inhales me, and I let her take whatever she needs.
I hold her tighter, combing a hand gently through her hair, letting my fingers smooth the flyaway gold strands of her stress back into place.
“No one will hurt you. No one, Dess. I promise you.”
The worst of my days under Uncle Aidan flood back, before the military shaped my violent urges into something useful.
All I can think about is how much I want to strangle whoever did this with my bare hands.
My reputation has taken another hit, but that isn’t the first time.
That doesn’t matter.
No, it’s the fact that if this wasn’t what she was planning, this might be enough to ruin her entirely. And without her parents’ money as a backup, she has no safety net in place.
She can’t lose her kindhearted dreams because some mysterious prick has an axe to grind with me.
I’ve seen her passion for nature and animals firsthand. I believe she genuinely cares about making an impact on this sleazy damned world.
Her breath rattles again as she struggles to hold it together.
The fury rushing through me feels so potent, my vision goes black.
The only thing I want to do right now is find the conniving asshole responsible for this and crush their windpipe.
I’m going to destroy them.
If not physically, then I’ll take them for everything they have.
“Hey,” I say, running a hand up her back. She slowly relaxes, wrapping her hands around my waist and locking them in place. “Can you breathe for me, sweetheart?” I whisper.
“I’m… yeah. I’m just so sorry.”
“Have you had any hate messages?” Of all the questions I could ask, it’s the most pressing.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats with a hiccup. “I’ll speak to my fans. Do whatever I can to quell the rumors.”
“I know. I’m not asking about that. I never disputed it.” Caressing the back of her neck, I tilt her head back so I can look her in the face. “I’m asking if you’ve gotten hate messages? Wretched trolls or people fishing for personal information?”
The way her expression tightens tells me all I need to know.
“I have a lawyer on speed dial,” I tell her. “He’ll be here within the hour. We can get the police involved.”
“No!” she rushes out, then stops cold with her lips sealed tight. “I mean—we don’t need to do that.”
I don’t understand.
She takes a shaky breath. “I mean it, Shepherd. The worst thing we can do is feed this drama. This comes with being an influencer, and I’ve been lucky not to stumble into it until now. Just delete, block, and move on.”
“What the fuck, Destiny? You can’t ignore a threat this big—”
“They don’t have my home address,” she interrupts. “It’s not a big deal. There’s more important stuff at stake here, okay?”
I grit my teeth. “The minute you feel like it’s getting out of control, you tell me.”
“Shepherd—”
“You’re just as much a victim here.”
She sniffs hard, blinking back tears, and it’s such a sad, pitiful sound that my heart squeezes.
“I’m willing to hold off until we know more. Still, I don’t think this will just go away if we ignore it, Dess. It’s too fucking big for that,” I say, hating that every last instinct screams ‘attack, now.’
“Well, I have a platform. I can be public in a way you can’t as CEO of a huge company. There are bound to be people who believe me. I think. If I tell them, maybe they’ll help…” She trails off and glances at Hannah, who’s pointedly staring out the window. “If anyone finds out…”
That’s the million-dollar question.
“Did you ever tell anyone about our weekend plans?” I ask firmly.
“No one. Never,” she says immediately. “I mean, Lena and Sam knew I was going on an otter trek, but that’s nothing new. I’ve been doing it for years. So, nothing out of the ordinary.”
“And no one else could’ve found out?”
“No. Unless they saw the pictures I posted along the way, but we were already out there. I never tagged a location once. I went back and looked.” She falls back and stares up at me, her eyes red-rimmed and tired, but sincere. “I know because I basically live online. It’s easy to assume people will know where I am all the time, but I’m very private with my personal life. That’s how I grew up. I’m also not an idiot. I made sure all of my location sharing was off.”
Yeah, and this definitely counts as her personal life.
Our personal lives.
I glance across at Hannah with a heavy look she beams back.
It had to be someone in the company. No question.
Hannah’s knuckles go white against the corners of the tablet as she holds it against her chest. That almost hurts as much as Dess going to pieces in my arms.
Hannah is furious.
Which means she’ll tear the company apart one department at a time until she finds the source of this treachery.
Whatever it takes, she’ll ferret them out.
Good.
That’s what I want from her, relentless bloodhound mode.
Even if I can’t turn her loose to do the hunting alone.
The next look she gives me, laden with suspicion and understanding, tells me she knows what we got up to this weekend no matter how much I dodge and deny it.
With Destiny in my arms, I can’t argue it didn’t happen. It’s obvious to anyone who sees us like this.
And that’s why I can’t let anyone else see us when we’re so rough and too real.
“That’s all, Miss Cho,” I say. “You can get back to work. Send me an action proposal once you’ve pulled it together, and I’ll grant you whatever resources you need.”
“Thank you, Mr. Foster.” With a brisk nod for both of us, she marches to the door and heads out. I can almost see a trail of fire in her wake.
She’s going to be a one-woman hellraiser until she has answers.
Destiny pulls back then, like she’s just realized how close we are.
And maybe she’s remembered what we agreed before we returned to Seattle.
This is definitely not the norm, but neither is the fucking sky tearing up and raining shards of hell-drama on our heads.
It feels impossible.
We’ve already crossed lines that can never be uncrossed. We obliterated them.
Still, I let her step back, allowing her the space to think.
It’s a blustery summer day, the wind trying to clear a thin haze from wildfires further north. It makes the clear sunshine of what we shared on the Olympic Peninsula feel more distant than ever.
So does the silence settling between us.
The drone images that were posted online hit me fast and furious.
None were too incriminating, but I know how it looks to hungry bystanders with an appetite for scandal.
Me, Mr. Broken Engagement, spending intimate time alone with a new woman almost half my age.
Destiny laughing like I hung the sun in the sky.
She laughs a lot, but the way she did with me felt different. Or at least, that’s what I fooled myself into believing.
“At least Hannah seems to know what to do…” Destiny says at last.
“That’s her. Be glad she’s on our side.”
“She’s definitely efficient.”
“Terrifyingly so.” I nod at the chair in front of my desk. The same one she sat in, casual as can be, the first day she arrived.
To think there was ever a time when I despised her.
It’s unthinkable now.
I sit in my chair and we stare at each other, separated by my desk. I want to reach out and smooth the sadness from her face.
Hell, maybe kiss her again, if only so we can forget this hell for one bleeding minute.
Scratch that.
I definitely want to kiss her.
That greedy fire in my blood demands a lot more, too.
I grit my teeth, forcing the unsettled thoughts away. We agreed this was going to be the end, and it should be.
Mind over blue balls.
Remember how much trouble it’s caused already.
“Shepherd,” Destiny says, then pauses. “Mr. Foster…”
“If I can’t Miss Lancaster you, you’re not Mistering me, woman,” I growl.
Her unexpected smile feels like witnessing a miracle.
“Fine, but… what do I do now? What do we do?” Her tongue moistens her lips. I look away too quickly. “When I came up here this morning, everyone was—”
“Staring?” I interject.
“And whispering. Muttering a lot behind my back.”
“I’ll have Miss Cho put a stop to that. She’ll send an internal memo about the unfounded rumors today,” I say. “But since you’re here, you should go back to work.”
Her eyes dart up to meet mine, horrified. “In the office?”
“Where else?”
“But—”
“The worst thing we can do is acknowledge it. The second worst is pretending it’s going to stop us from moving ahead with revolutionizing wildlife tracking. Scandal or not, it doesn’t change the fact that our little outing convinced me your idea works.” My eyes search hers and I wait until she breathes. “Your presentation to the board is today, Dess. Finish prepping. Use everything we discussed and you witnessed over the weekend.”
“You think they’ll still want to hear it?”
“They’ll listen. If anyone breathes a word about unrelated hearsay, I’ll gladly stand in front of their firing squad.” By some miracle, I don’t snap at her.
There’s a chance that if I do, her entire body will shatter like blown glass.
She needs courage right now.
Destiny isn’t usually this fragile, and that worries me.
“We can’t deny we went out together,” I continue, making sure my voice is gentle. “However, if anyone wonders, the fact that you’re presenting our findings reinforces the idea that we went there to gather intel on the otters and our proprietary technology. There are a lot of good points begging for you to make them. Focus on that, and mute your phone.”
“Shepherd, I—” She takes a deep, slow breath and looks at her lap. “Okay.”
“I know it won’t be easy,” I tell her. “But if anyone says anything that tries to sidetrack you from this work, refer them to me immediately.”
She blinks at me. “Won’t that look suspicious? If you come charging down to defend me?”
“I won’t come personally unless it’s a board member,” I say. “I’ll send Hannah. One look is the only warning they’ll get before a termination notice shows up.”
A tiny smile touches Destiny’s lips. It feels like a victory.
“Okay, yeah, I can manage that,” she agrees. “I’ll pull everything together in time for the presentation.”
“Good girl.” I watch her for another long moment as she blushes, fighting the warring instincts in my blood.
Then, against my better judgment, I let the hammer fall.
“One more question. Will you come by my place tonight after the presentation? We need to talk strategy.”
