Wicked Attraction (The Protector) Read online

  He was really good with the kids. Nina watched him talk to each one, listening to their projects and their progress. Offering advice or commiseration, depending on what they needed. She’d seen a little of this side of him before, at Woodhaven, when she’d first gone to work for him. It had impressed her then and still did, more than any amount of money ever could have.

  From across the room, Ewan looked up from where he’d been bent over a table, offering a solution to a problem. Their eyes met. Locked. He smiled, just a little, before returning his attention to the young man in front of him.

  “Mr. Donahue sure is hyper icy,” Betts said. Her finely shaped black eyebrows furrowed over her dark eyes, free of any cos-tech—something unusual enough for Nina to notice they were natural. “Are you his girlfriend?”

  Nina, unfamiliar with the new slang, had to think a minute to understand if Betts was giving Ewan a compliment. She decided it must be. “Um, no. I’m his bodyguard.”

  “Oh. Does he still need one?” Betts frowned.

  “He thinks so.” Nina looked at the girl. “Last night, something happened here. Do you know anything about it?”

  “No.” The answer came too quickly to be the truth.

  Nina hadn’t really been expecting the girl to know anything, but she also hadn’t anticipated that Betts would flat-out lie to her. Nina kept her tone neutral as she focused her senses, noticing the girl’s elevated heartbeat. The slight dilation of Betts’s pupils. The nervous way her eyelids fluttered.

  “The sec team said they thought it was probably just some attempted vandalism,” Nina commented.

  “Someone did paint some hyper noxious graffiti on the walls out front,” Betts said, again too quickly. “I saw it when I came in this morning.”

  Nina made a show of looking casually around the room. “Is there anything in the lab that anyone might want to steal?”

  “Sure, everything.” Betts had relaxed a tiny bit, her response not a lie or half-truth this time, at least not based on her body’s reactions. “The sugarheads would love to get their hands on any of this tech in here, sell it for credits. They’re bad around here. They sell candy in the parking lot. That should be illegal.”

  “You think?” This attitude surprised her. Candy had been introduced sometime during Nina’s childhood, and the government-approved drugs had become as prevalent and socially acceptable as cigarettes and booze had once been.

  Betts nodded. “Yeah. Candy isn’t any good for anyone, not really. It just causes problems. It’s not supposed to be addictive, but everyone knows it is.”

  “Yeah, it can be bad news.” Nina had never partaken much, preferring an adrenaline rush to a “sugar” high. She knew Ewan had been both a user and a seller briefly. It still surprised her that someone from Betts’s generation would be so against it. “I take it you don’t use sugar.”

  “No. I’d never get into it! Those guys do.” Betts frowned and jerked her head toward the two kids at the far end of the room. “But you know what? They didn’t get this week’s bonus, and I did.”

  Nina laughed. “More than a good enough reason not to sugar up.”

  Betts seemed a little relieved that the direction of the conversation had changed. She nodded, looking over at the other group. “Yeah. They’re not really much competition anyway. Jordie’s really the only one who I have to worry about. But Mr. Donahue’s really fair about the bonuses. Even if someone didn’t really deserve it for being hyper cranial about something, if they haven’t won it in a while, he ends up finding a reason to give them one. Usually he only does it online though, when we submit our weekly reports. He hasn’t been in to the lab for a long time. He meets with us on the comm.”

  “Is that Jordie?” Nina pointed toward the young man Ewan was still helping.

  Betts drew in a breath, rough. “Uh, no, he’s not here today.”

  Nina carefully didn’t make a big deal out of Betts’s reaction, although once again, the girl was clearly responding negatively. There was no way to prove Jordie’s absence had anything to do with last night’s issues, but Nina was going to guess it did. She was also going to guess that Betts knew it.

  “Is he sick?” Nina asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s not like he’s my boyfriend or something, I mean, he doesn’t tell me why he doesn’t come in. We don’t have to, you know, get a note from the doc or anything.” Betts bent back over her tablet. “I should get back to work.”

  “Sure.” Nina watched her for a minute or so, noting that the girl’s body temperature was still a little higher than what was considered normal, and her heartbeat was still racing. Betts’s fingers trembled when she tapped at the tablet screen, and although the teenager made a big show of working on something, she wasn’t actually doing anything but typing and erasing the same few strings of letters over and over again.

  Before Nina had the chance to pursue her questions further, Ewan crossed the room to her. “Ready to head out?”

  “Yeah.” She paused with a glance at Betts, who was studiously ignoring her. Nina said the girl’s name and waited until she looked up. “Nice meeting you. Hyper icy on the bonus.”

  The girl nodded, looking guilty. “Thanks.”

  “What was that about?” Ewan waited until they were outside and in the transpo before asking. “With Betts. She looked like you’d scared her.”

  “I think she knows something about what happened last night.”

  Ewan’s eyebrows rose. “You think so? Why?”

  “The way she reacted when I asked her if she knew anything about it. Sketchy. I could be wrong,” she added. “But you might want to keep it in mind.”

  “I will. Thanks.” He typed a command into the transpo controls and leaned back in the seat. “Is it okay if we don’t go home right away?”

  Her stomach had been rumbling for the past half hour or so. “I have a couple of protein bars in my bag if it gets, as the kids say, hyper noxious.”

  “We can stop for something to eat, don’t worry about that.” Ewan gestured.

  Nina chewed the inside of her cheek for a second. “Of course, then. Sure. Wherever you want to go.”

  “Great.” He settled into the seat and looked out the window, not saying much.

  She didn’t like the silence, but she also didn’t know if she wanted a conversation. She let herself study him in profile, his features highlighted with the soft glow from the transpo window. It wasn’t that he’d aged in the past few months, she thought. It was that the businesslike fortitude she’d seen in him when they first met had returned. There was a chill between them, and could she blame him? The passionate interlude was something she didn’t regret but certainly knew better than to repeat. Other than that brief time last night they’d had very little but arguments and dissatisfaction between them since he’d rehired her, and it wasn’t all Ewan’s fault. She was as much to blame.

  Maybe that was all it was ever going to be, now. Blame and guilt and anger and regret. A lifetime of joy lost before it could even be had.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ewan hadn’t planned for anything beyond the trip to the lab today, but he also didn’t want to go right home after. His estate at Woodhaven had been vast, outfitted with every entertainment option he could think of, from the media room to the large gardens. In contrast, the modest home he’d moved into, while updated with every possible convenience tech, still sometimes felt too small. He’d thought it would be cozy with Nina staying there, but he realized now he’d been trying too hard to recreate those idyllic weeks at the cabin.

  Nothing would ever bring those times back.

  It would never be the same as it had been when they’d been falling in love, even if she took him to bed a thousand times. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye without turning his face in her direction. Nina had made it clear that the sex had been solely physical. A thing that had happened, meaning nothing. Her exact words.

  He still hadn’t told her that he had the terminated contract