MICAH (A California Dreamy Novel Book 3) Page 10

Another sixty seconds of breathtakingly cold water and his junk was at half-mast. Need lost its staccato beat in his veins.

  He stepped out of the shower and made short business of drying himself off and pulling on a pair of thick sweat pants, a t-shirt and hoodie. He acknowledged that the revelation made him jumpy. It made him downright uncomfortable. It spooked him.

  He liked Emme. And more.

  Emme wasn’t Felicity. There were tangible differences. Emme had drive, compassion and integrity—yeah, he believed that now. Emme was in the Sierras doing exactly as she’d said—writing a book. She wasn’t smuggling company secrets for sale. Until now, he’d had no reason to suspect she was the target of threats.

  He clipped his holster to the waistband of his sweat pants and pulled his hoodie over it. Then he left the bathroom, returned to the living room where his laptop sat on the table and the gas fireplace blazed with heat. He needed to check his emails and connect with Bruno.

  He sat down on the sofa and got to work.

  “Checking in Bruno,” Micah said when his call was answered. “Anything new on your end?”

  “Nothing.” His tone was loose, almost disgusted. “No threats. No apparent leaks. Not even whispers of duplicity.”

  “You didn’t tell me about the emails Emme received,” Micah said. He kept his tone contained but didn’t mind showing the man a little angst.

  “Emails?”

  Micah heard the frown in the man’s voice, the searching quality as he sought a matching memory.

  “In the spring,” Micah prompted.

  “You mean the Trash Man?”

  “Who?”

  “That’s what we call him. You know, he emails and we have to take out the trash.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know, a chauvinist?”

  “He doesn’t like Emme’s games?”

  “He’s intimidated by strong woman, abhors violence, and believes the only one up for the job is the U.S. military.”

  “Emme wasn’t his only problem?”

  “The whole gaming world is his problem. And he emails frequently to let us know about it. Not just Emme, but several of my programmers and myself, my VP. He’s equal opportunity.”

  “How does he get your in-house email addresses?”

  “He has skills. He’s probably behind some of the more spectacular hacks we’ve heard about.”

  “You don’t seem too concerned about him.”

  “He’s an annoyance. But he’s never become more than that and I don’t think he will.”

  “Why?”

  “The man hides in the shadows.”

  And most of the time, that was exactly where people like that stayed. “Your people ever get close to him?”

  “Never. He’s good. Routes his messages through foreign satellites. Trying to trace him is like creating a map of the constellations.”

  “What does he want exactly?”

  “For us to apply our skills to games that promote God and country.”

  “He’s a fanatic?”

  “We hear from him at the launch of new games. And we’re not the only company.” He listed a few of the big names in the industry. “We trash the emails and move on. Did Emme say she was afraid of the guy?”

  “No. She mentioned the emails and chat rooms.” And was pretty blasé about it all.

  “And nothing else?”

  “There’s been no contact of any kind on my end,” Micah told him. “No reason to think she’s selling secrets or running scared.”

  “I don’t get that.” Bruno’s voice rose in frustration.

  “If Emme wanted to pursue other artistic means of expression—” he began but Bruno cut him off.

  “She couldn’t.”

  “Why is that?”

  “We own her creativity, when she was under contract anyway. And we own forevermore any kind of representation of her games.”

  “You mean, she couldn’t sculpt a marble statue of one of her heroines?”

  “Not without us owning it.”

  “But could she, say, write a novel that has nothing to do with anything she created while under contract with Cyclical?”

  “No, not while under contract with us. Or anyone else, for that matter. And that’s standard.”

  And very limiting. And for a woman like Emme, not a little bit suffocating.

  “Gamers sell their souls.”

  “We pay handsomely for it,” Bruno reminded him.

  “You’ve made a lot of money off of Emme. Seventeen million last year alone.”

  “So it is about money, then? Dammit, why didn’t she counter? Make a few demands? Why didn’t she throw out a number, something we could work with?”

  “I don’t think it’s about money,” Micah said. “It’s about artistic freedom.”

  That only increased Bruno’s angst. Freedom, for many people—Emme included—wasn’t a commodity up for sale. Bruno had little hope of wooing her back into the fold.

  Micah ended the call and returned to his laptop. He updated his notes in Emme’s file, including both his conversation with Bruno and the break-in at his place. Then he went into his email. His habit was to check it first thing in the morning, midday, and prior to turning in at night, so his cache was light. A few ads, a forwarded note from Crista, an invitation from Thomas and his new wife—unusual but it filled him with hope—and a brief message from an address he didn’t recognize:

  “A beautiful distraction” and a photo, embedded in the text and taken just that evening. Micah and Emme in the grocery store. He hadn’t seen it taken. Hadn’t felt under scrutiny. And he could see why: He stood over Emme, head lowered, eyes focused on her lips. He’d been thick in the middle of a heated sexual attraction and about to kiss Emme.

  And he had all kinds of insults to heap on his head. But bottom line: Emme was a distraction. And beautiful, certainly. But distractions killed people. After those heated moments in her bedroom that evening, he didn’t think he could do anything to dampen the attraction, although he would try to maintain his distance. And if that didn’t work, he would stick to her like lint.

  The Trash Man? Or someone else entirely?

  He spent several minutes trying to ferret that out. The email contact didn’t fit with a threat from the cyber world. There was no reason to reveal their interest in Emme. No reason to taunt Micah with their stealth.

  According to Bruno, the Trash Man had a message and it was always the same. The email hadn’t come from him.

  Then who? Who would have followed them? Taken the photo? And then exposed them? The whole thig made his skin tight but there was no denying the purpose of the email. Exposed. It made anger twist in his gut and raised the hair on his neck. He ignored his emotional response to the invasion of their privacy and stayed with the problem. Who?

  Bruno had the most to lose. But breaking and entering? He didn’t see it. Skulking around a grocery store and snapping photos that the sender clearly felt were incriminating? Bruno Gardi was a top CEO with many successes and pulling in an impressive salary. Of course, he could have hired out for the service.

  And yet the whole thing reeked of personal.

  Alan was long out of Emme’s life. Micah had checked into it. The loser had packed up and left San Diego within days of what should have been their wedding. He had resurfaced in Atlanta, Georgia where he had taken a temporary managerial job at a software engineering firm. He had stayed three months and then moved onto Tennessee where he remained.

  Micah sat back against the couch cushions and thought about the day, start to finish, but nothing stood out. No red flares of warning.

  He stood and crossed to the monitor. The alarm system he had set up at Emme’s rental had two features. In addition to recording and alerting him to approaching figures, it streamed video from the small cameras he’d secured at the perimeter of the house. But there had been no disturbances and so the video component hadn’t been triggered. Then he went through his rental looking for further
evidence of trespass and found none.

  It was almost as if the perp knew Micah had set up a system at Emme’s, but only a trained eye could pick out the sensors and cameras. Each was so small, they fit in the palm of his hand. And then he was back to who. And his list of possibilities was very short.

  Chapter Ten

  Emme pulled her hair into a pony tail as she walked through the living room, through the front door, and out onto the porch. She was running late. She’d stayed with her writing, because the juice was flowing, and gave herself less than four minutes to change into workout clothes and meet Micah in her front yard. This would be her fifth session with him but the first where they would pick up the pace of their jog and blend in crunches and other slimming, muscle-building moves along the way.

  He was waiting for her. He had strong legs, thickly corded and sleek. Emme’s opinion of modesty sunk to new levels as she began to mentally peel off his shorts and t-shirt. She marveled at her liberties even as she congratulated herself for having shed the cocoon she’d been living in. She watched him bend over at the waist and touch the grass with his fingertips. His calves flexed, his hamstrings bulged, his butt tightened. And she watched the rippling effect as muscle moved across his back. The male body was beautiful and Emme suspected she’d never fully appreciated that. Not with Alan and not with any of her boyfriends before him.

  Too bad, but she planned to make up for lost time. Even if Micah wasn’t into it. And, over the past ten days, he had shown nothing short of iron will when it came to Emme.

  She was sure she hadn’t imagined those few heated moments in her bedroom when he’d arrived unannounced and found her in a position she’d very much wanted compromised. She smiled at that thought and continued to let her eyes dwell on some of her favorite man spots—the breadth of his shoulders, the deepness of his chest. No, those moments had been real and she had fantasized about each and every one of them and had used the frustration and anticipation to power her writing.

  “Personal fitness is not a spectator sport.”

  His voice broke through her thoughts and it was decidedly disgruntled.

  Ten days and he had rebuffed every one of her advances, but he was weakening.

  Emme felt her skin heat, not with embarrassment but with remembered passion. It didn’t help that she had spent the morning creating a scene with her main characters that was hot and steamy and exactly the sexual knot she would like to find herself in with Micah.

  No mystery why she’d had trouble sleeping the night before. She’d given up at just before four am and sat down at her laptop with a cup of coffee and a bran muffin. Forty-five minutes later, she’d had the sheets burning. And then she’d pushed aside the sexual tension and let their back stories surface. Her characters began revealing who they were—and Emme was captivated by them. She liked them, even their small idiosyncrasies and irritating habits. Better, now that she understood where they’d been in life she had no trouble visualizing where they were going.

  “Sorry,” she said, not meaning it at all and smiling big enough that he knew it. She stepped off the patio and dropped her water bottle and sunglasses in the grass. “I haven’t stretched yet.” And she began to do just that, bending at the waist as he had done and adding some dips to her efforts—she’d watched a stretching DVD, after all, and knew a few good moves. As she lifted her torso she flowed into sun salutation, reaching as high as she could into the sky above her head. She felt a few vertebrae shift, a muscle or two rise to the occasion.

  “Did a little yoga last night?”

  She had spent forty-five minutes with a yogi master hoping to diffuse the want Micah had ignited in her. She’d been doing that every night and while it eased the sexual tension by skimpy degrees, she did notice that she was more flexible, and her arms and legs a smidge leaner.

  “Yep.” She dropped her arms, slipped them behind her back and locked her hands, then pushed out in a stretch she felt in her arms, shoulders and back. It opened her chest, too, a fact not lost on Micah. “You?”

  He was clearly lost in the show and Emme smiled her appreciation. Male interest sharpened his gaze and belatedly he raised an eyebrow in question. Yeah, he’d completely missed her reply.

  “Having a problem with focus this morning?” she asked. OK, taunted, but it was soft and more an invitation than a challenge.

  “What?”

  “Did you work out last night?”

  “No. I usually start my day with exercise.”

  “What did you do yesterday?”

  “Resistance and about sixty minutes on the bike. Follow me.” He walked toward her front door and took a stance on the step, balanced on his toes so his calf muscles bunched and his hamstrings rippled with corded strength.

  He made her ache. And dream. He made her want things she’d never had before. Like total freedom with the male body. He didn’t strike her as a man who allowed himself to be tied or cuffed or in any way made completely vulnerable to the attentions of a woman. And that was too bad. She would love to have her way with him without him being able to stop her and take control.

  She ignored his invitation and bent at the waist to touch her toes. Then she twisted at the waist so that she was looking horizontally at the world, her chest opened like she’d learned to do with the yogi master, and her right arm extended above her head. The muscles at the back of her legs burned. Her bottom flexed. The small of her back just about sighed with relief. Her pulse returned to a normal beat but she held the pose a moment longer, pulled in another deep breath, and then twisted in the opposite direction. And became aware of two very important things at once.

  Micah was staring at her. And he was enjoying the view.

  His feet were planted on the ground, his hands anchored on his hips. And he was hard. His erection pushed against the silky fabric of his shorts. The breath bottled in Emme’s throat. She might have made a small noise of strangulation.

  “Yeah, you can stop now,” he said. His voice was thick, his tone tangled with need and irritation.

  Emme folded up from her stretch and stared at him.

  “You’ve been flashing a lot of cheek,” he said.

  “I have not!”

  “From the very beginning,” he continued. “In fact, that was the first thing I noticed about you, up on that ladder in those short shorts.” He took a step closer and Emme felt his heat. “You like what your body does to a man, don’t you, Emme?”

  “I like what it does to you,” she admitted. “But that day on the ladder, that wasn’t on purpose.”

  “And today?”

  Denial teetered on her lips but she paused to think about it. She’d definitely had the best of intentions where his body was concerned so it wasn’t like she could claim complete innocence.

  He stepped closer, until his toes nudged hers. He bent his knee and she felt the rasp of hair as his leg nudged between hers.

  “Deliberate.” He nodded. “Is this what you want, Emme?”

  “It’s what we both want,” she corrected.

  He was close enough that when she looked down, she saw his package was just a breath from brushing against her abdomen. His shorts were tented and she couldn’t help noticing, as she had that night in her bedroom, that he was well above average in that area.

  “But it’s not going to happen. Hips and ass,” he said. “Keep both under wraps and I’ll do a better job of keeping my lust to myself.”

  “All because you’re not looking to hook up?”

  “That’s right.” She felt his hand under her chin, a soft touch as he lifted her face so he could look into her eyes. “But I’m a man, honey, and I definitely appreciate what I’m seeing.”

  “Define hook up,” she demanded. “Are you merely relationship phobic or do you mean you want no contact whatsoever with the female population?”

  “I’m not looking for a relationship—” he began.

  “Neither am I.”

  And then she made a bold move and she wanted to
remember it. Even if he rejected her. If he peeled her hand off his body and stepped back leaving her in the cold, she still wanted to remember what she was feeling and what she did with it. And it was simple really. She was hot and tight and knew it was a direct response to his ultra-male body. She wanted him. In her. Over her. Under her. She focused on her breath, which had become labored and shallow, on the heat that rose to her skin. She had no doubt her cheeks were flushed, that heat rose off her in waves. And she watched her slim hand lift from her hip and float toward him, landing on his stomach, just above the waistband of his shorts, mere inches above his erection. She felt the muscles under her hand jerk in reaction and she looked down to where her fingers curled into the waistband of his shorts. She noticed what she’d thought was an impressive erection a moment ago grow into amazement. Her sex clinched. Her throat went dry and she slipped her tongue over her lips. And that was about all he could take because she heard a knotted groan come from him.

  “You want this,” she said, her voice husky with want. “As much as I do.” She moved her hand until it cupped his junk. What she could cover of it anyway, because he was bigger than she’d encountered before. His hand fell to her hip and pulled her closer. He allowed her touch and when she moved her fingers, the silk of his shorts making it an easy endeavor, and followed his length to his jewels, she felt his breath shudder in his throat and his hand wrap around her wrist. He didn’t pull her hand away, but he stopped any further progress she had planned.

  “I’m a guy,” he said. “We always want this.”

  “But it’s nothing personal?” she asked.

  She looked up when he didn’t respond right away. His face was flushed, his eyes narrowed.

  “Nothing personal,” he agreed. “And you don’t do that, do you, Emme? You’re a good girl.”

  “You don’t know what I am,” she countered.

  But he shook his head. “Guys know. We have radar for that kind of thing.”

  She tilted her head back and swallowed past her nerves. “Then make me a bad girl, Micah. That’s what I want to be. A very bad girl.”

  His eyes and nostrils flared. The color in his cheeks darkened. She’d aroused him further. Impossibly, his cock thickened even more and she felt the pulse at the base of his shaft beat against her fingertips.