“You’re ridiculous,” she murmured, wrapping a strand of her sister’s hair around her finger. “Mia, I can’t get involved with Adam.”
“Because you might have to use him when you make your move to take down his father?” Mia asked, her expression ridiculously coy.
“Franklin Thornton is not Adam’s father.” Tess surprised herself at the visceral reaction Mia’s words triggered in her gut. And her rapier tone shocked her sister as well, if the raised eyebrow and gaping mouth were any indication.
“Wow. Protective much?”
And that was exactly what she was feeling: protective. Protective of a man who’d had very little of that in his life but who offered it to so many people around him. His employees. His best friend. His long-lost siblings.
She was neck-deep in background files because he needed to protect Redhawk/Ling from an unknown enemy. He had stood toe-to-toe with Franklin, demanding an apology for Estelle, and had put his body between her and the man, physically trying to shield her from his words. Adam had come into her life because he needed to find his brother and sister, determined to ensure that they were okay.
Adam had a hero complex. In only the best way.
It wasn’t the first time she wondered who protected Adam Redhawk. If he ever let anyone close enough to take care of him.
As far as she could tell, the answer to that question was a decided no.
“Yeah, I guess I am a little protective of him.” Tess remembered the moment this afternoon in his office and the jolt of connection that had leaped between them and seared her skin and down deeper in a place she didn’t want to acknowledge. “Franklin came into Redhawk/Ling today and Adam physically stepped in between the two of us. He actually used his body to shield me from the venom of Franklin Thornton.” She paused, remembering the shiver-induced goose bumps that ran up and down her spine during the moments when they’d been so close and she’d had all of his focus on her. “It was intense.”
“That’s good. I’m glad. I think it’s been a while since somebody looked out for you,” Mia murmured, her voice low and tentative, as if she didn’t want to scare Tess away from this conversation. “You must mean a lot to him.”
Tess shook her head, confused about a lot of things but pretty clear on this situation. “Mia, he takes care of everybody. It’s what he does. It’s why his employees stick it out even if the risks they take at Redhawk/Ling aren’t guaranteed. It’s why he had me look for his brother and sister after so long. It was killing him not to know where they were or how they were doing. He is so confident in his ability to change the world that he couldn’t imagine a world where he didn’t find them and guarantee that they would never want for anything.”
“And today he stood up for you.”
“He did.”
And he’d called her baby.
What would he call her when he learned about her deception? Not that she didn’t have the best reason to walk that line between lie and truth. Franklin had irrevocably destroyed her family and she had to make him pay. Had to avenge her dad and restore his good name and reputation.
As much as Adam carried the burden of restoring his own family, he would understand why she had to do what she was doing.
They were really two sides of the same coin. Doing what they had to do to make things right for the people in their lives who mattered most.
At least that’s what she’d tell herself every time Adam called her “baby.”
Five
Adam was going to ignore the light on in Tess’s office.
It was late at Redhawk/Ling. Not night-before-an-app-release late but there weren’t many people in the building on this Tuesday night. All the ones who had lives had left long ago and Adam didn’t want to dwell too long on what that meant about him and Tess. They’d been working from Robin Roberts to Conan O’Brian time with very little off-duty opportunity to do much but grab a run and hit the sheets. Alone.
Not that he hadn’t thought about being in his king-size bed with somebody—somebody who looked a lot like Tess—but sleep deprivation and long hours hadn’t diminished his belief that getting involved with the sexy redhead would be a very bad idea.
Tess was reading a file, taking notes on her laptop as she flipped between the pages. Her hair was piled on top of her head, curls sneaking loose and tumbling around her shoulders like a titian waterfall. Emerald green reading glasses were perched on her nose, the old-fashioned chain that helped her keep track of them looped around her neck. Dressed today in a black pinstriped double-breasted suit with high heels, she looked like his bossy librarian wet dream fantasy suddenly live and in person.
And it was ridiculously cliché and predictable but he barely resisted the compulsion to cover the distance between them and bend her over the desk—glasses intact—and explore every inch of her until this inconvenient and all-consuming need for her was nothing but embers and ash. Tess was driving him crazy, and in his sleep-deprived state he knew that being alone with her was a really bad life choice. What he wouldn’t give to have just an iota of the poker-faced talent that Justin used at the card tables right now. Because he knew that nothing about his desire and need for Tess Lynch was hidden from anyone who was looking.
And Tess was looking. Whenever they were in each other’s orbit it was as if their bodies and minds synced into perfect rhythm. They completed each other’s sentences, reached for the same files at the same time, and jumped to the same conclusions. Justin said it was creepy but to Adam it was mesmerizing and enticing; for a man who’d been uprooted so early and had never found his balance it was the closest thing to equilibrium he had ever experienced. And Adam knew that it was dangerous in the best and worst ways as only the most visceral of need fulfillment could be.
He should leave; turn on his heels, walk down to his bike, go home and work out this insanity in the gym or in the bed of a woman who didn’t make him want things he wouldn’t do justice to.
But he knocked on Tess’s door anyway.
“I order you to go home and do whatever it is you do when you’re not working,” he said, trying for an I-don’t-really-care-what-you-do-when-you-go-home tone only to be undone when Tess lifted her head and smiled at him with a hazy focus that whispered of slow and easy mornings in bed. She was sexy as hell and his body thrummed in response, his dick getting hard under the well-worn denim of his jeans. Adam shifted slightly to try and hide his reaction.
Tess laughed, shaking her head as she leaned back in her chair and gave him the once-over. “I know you know me better than that. You don’t really think that I’d allow anyone to ‘order’ me to do anything.” She flashed him a grin and a raised eyebrow that said she had his number. “Even though I hear that you’re really good at it.”