Deadly Seduction (Romantic Secret Agents Series Book 2) Page 5

  He realized, then, that he was really fascinated with this woman, even though he hadn't known her for that long. Knowing every other detail of her life didn’t count. He thought about their date later and almost wanted to hit himself at how he happily kept thinking of it as a date when it was probably just a 'welcome to the neighborhood' meeting, at best.

  There was proof that she was at least attracted to him, but that he'd come across the information while listening into what was supposed to have been a private conversation didn’t sit right with him. He would have rather gotten the words from her directly, though from how she'd been blushing around him, he had a feeling she was the nervous type. She wouldn’t just come out and tell him what she felt, not so soon anyway.

  Maybe she could grow to be comfortable with him…

  Stop thinking about that, he ordered himself.

  In a perfect world, there may have been a chance. But the place he was in was a rental, meant to be occupied for only a short period of time. It could be a few days or weeks, but Mickey already knew that if it took more than a month, he'd have to leave anyway. Already he was thinking a little too much about what she thought of him, so maybe he should back off emotionally from it all. It was a bit of a surprise that she could capture his interest so thoroughly in only a few hours if even that.

  This fascination wasn’t a good thing, though. It was probably the worst thing that could have happened. Not only was she a suspect in a crime that involved national security and living with the guy he was sure was responsible for it, he was only there for the sole purpose of spying on her. Once the mission was done, he would be moved, and he wouldn’t see her again.

  Also, thinking about her that way just made him start brooding on the painful breakup with his wife two years before. They'd been happy and had remained so for most of their marriage. But she couldn’t handle the demands of his career and cheated on him to 'get even.' The betrayal had grated, and he hadn't dated since. Seriously, Mickey was starting to think he just didn’t have great luck when it came to this sort of thing. With this current case, he was thinking about dating.

  Considering it again—with someone he had to manipulate as part of his job.

  Chapter 9

  "Is this seriously what living with you is going to be like? Because if it is, we're going to have problems for a while, little brother." Laurie stood with her hands fisted on her hips as she scolded her brother.

  Karl's messiness and laziness had caused another fight with his sister.

  He couldn’t understand why she couldn’t stop with the nagging. No one asked her to pick up after him, she just decided to do it. If she'd leave the stuff alone, then eventually, he would take care of it all himself. If he felt like it.

  But no. Laurie just had to be annoying, bitching and moaning about him leaving a mess when it wasn’t even that much. He didn’t understand why it was such a big deal. It was so easily taken care of because she did it all the time, didn’t she? So, there shouldn’t have been a problem.

  He told her that, but it only made her mad. And then he'd found himself here, standing opposite his sister as she talked down to him like he was five years old and not twenty-five. He could have told her he could live without the lecture, but he didn’t think that would be enough to stop her. Not this time.

  Laurie had always been the obedient goody two shoes between the two of them. Well, at least until she left home. His father had argued about that for a while, refusing to talk to her for months. She had been so much easier to manipulate back in those days, but it wasn’t the same now.

  Before, she would have done anything without question if he just told her to. Well, it was only ever absolute when it was their father telling her to do it. Sometimes, she would complain, but it hadn't been a lot. Not like it was now.

  So annoying.

  Karl was angry and pouty that Laurie was taking him to task.

  She didn’t understand why. Or maybe he just didn’t realize what he was doing wrong? It should have been impossible to miss, though. She wasn’t exactly keeping quiet about it, and she could tell that frustrated him. They'd lived in the same house, been raised by the same man. Yeah, there was a five-year difference between them, but could five years really make this big a difference?

  Although, she could understand why he thought this was the status quo. Because they didn’t have a mother, as soon as her father deemed she was old enough, she took the role of picking up after the baby. Not scolding him, but cleaning up his messes. She barely had any memories of her mother, and none after Karl joined the family. And even though their father never talked about her, getting angry whenever Laurie asked anyway, she could guess what had happened to her. It was sad, but that didn’t mean she was all okay with being something between a cross of her mother's replacement and a maid for the men of the house.

  She had never said anything about it. That was just how her family was, and for a long time, she hadn't thought there was anything wrong with it. The times she'd spoken up about how unfair it was that she did everything just because she was older, her father would give her a dressing down and she would stop complaining.

  Then she went to high school and made a few friends. Laurie had realized quickly that her friends had privileges she did not, and she had been so envious. Had she been more confident, at the time, she would have rebelled against her father herself.

  But she hadn't, Karl had. And he had ended up in her house because of it.

  Laurie felt she was being completely reasonable in her requests to her brother and knew it, and stayed mostly calm. Though he was barely listening to her, even as she reprimanded him, she was tempted to get a little impatient with his attitude.

  "You have to remember that this is my house. I am letting you stay here, and there is no way I can keep it up if you're going to be like this. I like keeping my space clean because I do most of my work here, so if you keep doing this, it's going to distract me from my work."

  But Karl wasn’t listening to her. He didn’t think he had done anything wrong, but he knew Laurie would never accept that argument. Because it was her house, it was her rules, and he was growing sick of it. He wasn’t in the mood for being rational either, and he threw a fit.

  "You could have given me all this shit when I asked to stay here! Because I don’t need all this shit right now."

  "I seriously think that you do," she refused. "You have to, with the way you're acting. I don’t think you've even thanked me once for taking you in without a second thought. Who does that? I could have sent you packing back to dad."

  "But he threw me out!" he snapped

  "But, you could have worked your problems out with each other," she countered.

  Karl curled his fists at his side and didn’t say anything. There was no way they could just 'work this out' because when his dad caught Karl poking through his computer, he had been so mad. Karl didn’t want to admit it, but it had been the first time in a long time their dad had truly intimidated him. He'd grown pretty used to the old man and his moods, but it had been particularly bad that time.

  It was why he had left home with a minimum of fuss, or their dad would have called Laurie up anyway, probably to get her to deal with him instead, so the general wouldn’t have to put up with his screw-up of a son.

  Instead, he growled, "Seriously Laurie, you're only five years older than me; you're my big sister, not my mom. So you can stop it with the stupid lecture because it's not going to work on me. Damn, you're such a nagging bitch. If I had known that, I would have thought twice about coming here and ended up on the streets somewhere."

  Laurie just tightened her lips into a line and went on picking up her brother's trash. He was just trying to get to her, but she wouldn’t let him. She was a bit angry at herself because here she was giving in instead of insisting he learned to clean up after himself, starting with some supervised practice.

  But the prima donna was just too delicate for any kind of work that classified as a house chore.
He wouldn’t lift a finger to help her, let alone that he should have been doing it all himself, and she'd given up asking him to do work and tried scolding him to see if she would get anything out of him.

  There was nothing, though. He just sat there, looking down his nose at her as she worked, as if asking why she hadn't just done it in the first place instead of picking an argument.

  She was going to have to do some serious cleaning to get out the stains he'd left behind on the floor, that meant getting a bucket of soap and water and getting on her knees. Suddenly, she was so glad she'd given up on her idea of getting a rug because Karl would surely have ruined it in his first week at her house. She wasn't sure how he'd managed to mess the place up this badly when it was still morning. She didn’t even know when he made it back home.

  "Hey, Laurie. Lend me some money."

  She glanced up to her brother, incredulous. Was he seriously asking her for money, after what he'd just said? Like hell, she'd help him after that if he wasn’t even going to pretend to be grateful for the help she was giving him.

  "No way in hell," she refused bluntly, and ordered, "If you need money so badly, go out and look for a job, and leave me alone for a while if you want to keep staying here. You could find something around here, even if you don’t have a high school diploma, and you'd have all the money you need instead of relying on me for it."

  There was no way she could just give him money, in any case. Not if he was only going to use it for more drugs. She would have to find some way to kick him of that habit, she wouldn’t encourage it.

  She turned her back to him to go and throw away the trash she'd picked up. There was still the laundry to be done, the dishes from breakfast, and he'd somehow managed to use enough for three people all on his own. At least he didn’t continue arguing with her, for once taking her seriously, and she ignored him cursing behind her as she left him.

  Hopefully, he would go back out for a few hours. He'd likely take her bike again, but she would honestly prefer that if it meant having him out of the house for a bit.

  Laurie was looking forward to coffee with Mickey that afternoon. It would be an escape from all the crap she had to deal with, at least. But for now, she needed some peace and quiet to work on her thesis project. So, she was grateful when, after a few minutes spent washing the dishes, she heard the front door slam. She rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out in the direction of the door, not caring that he wouldn’t see.

  She cleaned up quickly then went back to her room. With her brother out, she worked on her thesis project for a few hours in total peace and quiet. She had missed living on her own, and she was done dealing with her brother's bullshit. He either picked himself up, or she was going to find him someplace else cheap to stay on his own. It would be a strain on her funds, but she would take a second job if it would keep him off her back while she worked in whatever free time she had left.

  But with him out of the house, she could focus entirely on her project. And she did. It was a program designed to assist investigators in cross-referencing images of missing children, both among their photo databases and online. It was a stressful project, made worse with her brother's intrusion into her life, but she was too into it to give up on it. Besides, this wasn’t just something she was playing with for fun. It had the potential to help a lot of people, and that alone was enough to keep her on it until she was done with it.

  At one, her phone rang an alarm where it sat beside her desk. Because she usually lost herself when she worked, she did that often, setting an alarm when she wanted to stop so she wouldn’t spend too long on it. Later, she would review what she had managed so far, but she pushed away from her seat, so she could go get herself something to eat. She wasn’t sure when she had to go to Mickey's place, but she wanted to eat and make herself presentable before then.

  Of course, then Mickey had to completely ruin her plan by coming over before she could even get something to eat.

  "I thought we were meeting over at your place?" she questioned, confused when she opened answered a knock to see him standing on her doorstep.

  He smiled, sheepish. "Yeah, but I got a little impatient. Truth is, I don’t really have anything to do besides laze around at home right now, so I thought I'd just come by. I hope I'm not imposing."

  "No!" she said immediately, backing off a little with a flush when his eyebrows jumped up in surprise. "Uh, sorry. I meant I was just about to sit down for lunch. I can just make something for the both of us. Please, come in."

  She stepped aside, and Mickey gave her a heart-stopping smile before walking in. She closed the door behind them and stood facing it for a few seconds, trying to get ahold of herself. When she turned back, it was to meet him with a wide smile of her own.

  "Please, have a seat. I'll just go and prepare something real quick."

  She led him to the living room, glad she'd cleaned the place up earlier and Karl hadn't messed it up out of spite before he left. Then she moved to the kitchen to make something simple. It was lunch time, but they were supposed to meet for coffee anyway, so she put some on and made some sandwiches as she waited for it. She filled up two mugs, added creamer and sugar on a tray, with the plate of cut up sandwiches and moved to the living room.

  "It's not much, but I hope you like it," she said as she set everything up on the table.

  "I'm sure it'll be fine."

  She smiled, sure he was just trying to be polite.

  Laurie added both creamer and sugar to her own coffee, while Mickey added just a little bit of sugar. She watched him carefully as he took a sip and a bite out of his sandwich, feeling relieved at the look of pleasure that crossed his face.

  "This is delicious."

  "It isn’t anything amazing," she demurred, even as she brightened at the compliment. "I do a lot of my work at home so I figured it was either learn to make good food or live on instant meals for a while. I like to keep up with my biking on the weekends so I went with the healthier option."

  "What is it you do?"

  Laurie could feel her face light up. She loved talking about her work. But he might still be trying to be polite, so she just gave him the short overview most people wanted.

  "Basically, I work with computers. I'm a graduate student in computer science. I'm working on my thesis project right now, just before you came by, actually. It's the last thing I need to complete to graduate."

  "Can you tell me a little bit about your project? Or is it a secret."

  Laurie grinned. He'd given her the go ahead to talk about her passion. "It isn’t a secret. I'm actually hoping to have it officially published."

  So, it wouldn’t just be a grade so she could pass. If someone really got interested in it, it would be put to good use. Because he had asked, she explained a bit about her project to him, going into a little more detail, keeping the jargon to a minimum. He didn’t seem to mind, actually, he looked like he was keeping up. It only encouraged her to talk more, and before she knew it she was babbling. She couldn’t help it, though. Not a lot of people were interested in talking about this kind of thing. It wasn’t even entirely in Kizzy's field, so she didn’t get most of the details, and her supervising professor was almost always too busy for more than a quick summary and the notes she had for him the few times she even saw him.

  "… and that's where I've stopped at for now," she finished, taking a bite of her sandwich. "So, what about your job?" she asked curiously.

  He paused for a moment, then chewed slowly and swallowed. "Uh, well…" Mickey had expected her to ask the question, of course. He had a ready answer, and it was what he used to describe himself. "Well, it's not really exciting, though some people seem to think so. I'm hired to protect people, on contract. I finished my last one before moving out here. I'm actually scouting for work in the area so I'm going to be free for a while until I get something."

  "So, a professional bodyguard," she guessed.

  "Something like that." Mickey nodded, feeling a stab of guil
t about the lie. But he couldn’t exactly tell her the truth, could he?

  She watched him curiously, probably noticing his strange behavior, and he barely held back a wince that might have given him away.

  To distract her, he started flirting.

  "Of course, if you ever feel like you need my services, I'd be more than willing to do it for free." He accompanied the words with a smile. He wasn’t even kidding. "It would require us to be in constant proximity, and I could keep you company when you need me."

  Laurie took a moment to realize what he was trying to imply. She hadn't been hit on in a while by anyone she actually liked. There was the occasional creep that approached her out of nowhere when she wasn’t in the mood to interact with anyone, but this was nothing like that. She could feel her face warming up, getting a little flustered, mind working overtime for something to say. But there was nothing that came to mind.

  Mickey noticed her getting flustered, and he found it cute. Then he had a moment to be grateful she'd chosen to sit beside him on the couch. It had been torture, sitting this close to her and seeing her get so excited as she talked to him about her project. What he'd felt then was multiplied ten times when she looked up at him, almost shyly, with high points of pink still on her cheeks, her eyes a little wet. The look was seductive, and he was pretty sure she had no idea what she was doing to him just smiling at him like that.

  Their eyes met and held. Mickey couldn’t look away, and he hoped it was the same for her. Then he saw her slide a little closer, and imagined she must have felt as he did.

  He remembered this part, even though it had been a while for him. He'd stayed faithful to his wife in the time they'd been together, and looked at no one in the two years since the divorce, but Laurie Nash just captured his attention like nobody else did. They were having a moment, he could recognize that, and he found himself moving closer without thinking about it.