24. Luna

24

My happy buzz lasted until Wednesday morning.

That was when I tiptoed out of the bedroom wearing cute underwear to surprise Ryder with a kiss, only to realise two things.

One, it wasn't possible to sneak up on a Navy SEAL.

Two, all men were assholes.

He slammed the lid of his laptop down fast and leapt from his seat at the dining room table, but he wasn't quick enough to hide what I'd seen.

Boobs.

Big, perky boobs.

"You rat!"

I grabbed the nearest object, which happened to be a fruit bowl, and threw it at him. Apples and oranges bounced off his solid chest and rolled across the apartment with Rocky yipping and chasing after them. Good thing Ryder hadn't let me keep the gun he'd shown me how to shoot on Monday, or he'd have lost a testicle. Possibly. I mean, I wasn't great at hitting the target, but sometimes I got lucky.

"Moon, I can explain."

"Oh, really?"

"It's not what it looks like."

"You mean those weren't a woman's breasts? And your guilty conscience didn't try to hide the evidence?" My own chest heaved as I sucked in air, and then reason kicked in, overriding instinct. I slumped onto the couch. "I'm not enough, am I?"

"Huh?"

"I'm not enough, so you were watching porn. You could at least have waited until I was asleep."

Or out, the way I had done the other day. But I'd been watching for purely educational purposes, and Ryder needed no help in that department. Every appendage of his was magic. But was I being a hypocrite? With Rocky as my witness, I was never googling "blow job" again.

"I thought you were asleep, and I'm not watching porn."

"You're not?"

A sob burst out of me because that was worse. If Boob Woman wasn't Busty Becky from some dubious website, then who was she?

"I'm working."

"Working? Which part of bodyguarding involves looking at naked women?" Then I realised. Ryder had guarded my body, and he'd definitely seen me naked. "Ohmigosh. She's another client?"

Laughter wasn't the reaction I'd expected.

"She's definitely not a client, and I'm not a bodyguard. Not ordinarily, anyway."

Offence, not defence, that's what he'd once told me. He'd only taken the contract with me because all the regular bodyguards were fully booked. But that still didn't explain the naked woman. I folded my arms.

"Explain."

"Her name is Elene. At least, that's what she's calling herself this month. And she's the person who has your stolen money."

Okay, so I hadn't spent much time with my ex-accountant, but I would have remembered if he had boobs.

"No, Ron took my money. I know cosmetic surgeons can work magic these days, but no way is that him."

"Ron took your money to start with, but then Elene reeled him in and stole it again. We've been tracking it for weeks. That's why I was in Georgia."

"That…that's ridiculous."

"Yeah, but it's also true." Ryder knelt in front of me and cupped my cheek with his hand. "If you don't believe me, ask Marcel. I'm trying to get to know Elene well enough that she reveals her location, and he's helping out with the subterfuge. Hell, ask Ron."

"Ron? You know where he is?"

"He's in Georgia. One of my colleagues is keeping him as a sort of pet."

"A pet?"

"He cooks and cleans in return for her not tying him to a railway track."

"This is crazy. And if it is true, I don't understand why you wouldn't tell me about it."

"Because I didn't want to get your hopes up. If you knew what we were trying to do and then we failed, I figured that would be worse than not knowing at all." He ran a thumb across my bottom lip. "I gave a lot of consideration to whether I should spill the details, but in the end, I was hoping to surprise you."

I nodded toward the laptop. "You certainly did that. What else aren't you telling me?"

"Other than classified work shit, that's it, I swear."

Did I believe him? I wanted to, and I still had that niggle of guilt over the blow job porn. Another realisation hit me—Ryder said he'd been looking for my money for weeks, which meant that he'd tried to help me even when I refused to speak with him. That he'd cared even when I pushed him away.

"Prove to me that you're not lying."

"Okay." He rocked back on his heels. "Okay."

He opened a bunch of files on his laptop and handed me the mouse. Elene was pretty in a fake kind of way. She wore too much make-up, and I'd bet fifty bucks her hair had extensions.

"Those boobs are fake," I told Ryder. "They basically defy gravity."

"I figured they were."

She'd sent him a picture of herself taken in a bathroom, quite a nice bathroom, and anger fizzed inside me when I realised that my money had probably paid for it. Was it better or worse that she'd stolen the money from a thief?

"Here's the project file," Ryder said, and the pictures disappeared. "You want coffee?"

"No, I feel sick."

Sick and inadequate because not only were my boobs half the size of Elene's, I was also the world's slowest reader. It took me over an hour to scan through the logs and the background notes. But by the time I got to the end, I knew how hard Ryder was trying to make things right for me, and I did understand why he'd kept me in the dark. Because now I was feeling nervous and a tiny bit impatient. Would they catch Elene? And if they did, how much of my money would be left?

"Tripp? Your name is Tripp?"

"Hey, it wasn't my idea."

I quickly grew serious. "What do you think the chances of success are? Honestly?"

He considered for a moment. "Right now, I'd say around eighty percent. Ninety percent that we find her, seventy percent that we get the money back. Yesterday, I was on seventy-five, but if she's feeling comfortable enough to send me nudes, the chances just got better."

"Tell me you don't have to reciprocate?"

"If I do, the cyber team will mock up a picture. But it's likely I'll have to go back to Georgia at some point."

"I hate that."

"I hate it too, moon."

There was nothing unusual about having half a dozen reporters standing outside Cromer Place when I left for the Nile Palace after lunch. Ryder had snuck out the back way, switched vehicles, and parked by the front door to wait for me.

But what was unusual was the bunch of flowers Danny Wells held out as I passed.

"Ugh, no thanks. What did you do, hide a camera in a tulip?"

"Ms. Maara, we're very sorry if we've disturbed you these past few weeks."

Huh?

"What are you talking about?"

"We understand now that we invaded your privacy." There were murmurs of agreement from the men with him. Why did one of them have a black eye? "Please accept our apologies, and it won't happen again."

"You've been invading my privacy for years, not weeks."

"And we deeply regret that, ma'am."

Ma'am? Had I fallen into a parallel universe? He offered the flowers again, and I shook my head.

"Keep them."

I scooted around the group and hurried to the car with Ryder striding ahead to open the rear door. This whole day was freaking weird. I glanced behind me in case I'd imagined the entire conversation, but Danny Wells was watching me in silence, no camera in sight.

"What the heck was that about?" I asked as Ryder pulled into traffic. "Did he really just apologise?"

"I guess that answers the question of whether Romeo Serafini still has connections in low places."

"What? You think Romeo did that?"

"Do you have a better explanation?"

No. No, I didn't.

And I wasn't sure whether that left me thrilled or terrified.