Chapter 9

Chapter

Nine

" T ime to wake up, sleepy head." Warm lips brushed her cheek and she smiled, reveling in the light touch.

"Hmm?"

Her body moved up and down in time with the chuckle caressing her ears. "You're thirty minutes are up, Linds."

Dammit, hadn't she gone to sleep like three seconds ago?

"No."

The chuckle turned into a full laugh. "Hmm is this how you normally wake up? You weren't quite so cranky this morning."

"Fine," Lindy grumbled and blinked slowly as the outline of her coffee table took form.

Two long denim clad legs rested on the glass surface.

"Was I really asleep for thirty minutes? It felt like five."

"I set a timer."

"How come I didn't hear it?" There was nothing more annoying than the sound of an alarm waking her in the morning, but it guaranteed she got her ass out of bed.

"I had it on vibrate." Chris shifted and lifted her so that she was upright and not against his chest.

"Right. If you have it on vibrate, then how do you wake up?"

"I don't usually set an alarm. My body is so used to getting up at five a.m. that I automatically wake up at that time now."

"Even on weekends?"

"Yep."

"Well, that sucks." Lindy stood and stretched her muscles protesting at the movement. "I admit on weekends I usually wake up when my alarm should go off, but I manage to wangle my body back into sleep."

"Wangle your body huh? I'd like to see that." Chris stood and she had to stop herself from wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head back on his chest. Even though he was muscular, he was comfortable to sleep on.

"Maybe you will—one day." Lindy winked and picked up her bag from the coffee table. She pulled out her new phone. Having to change her number, reset all her contacts and apps was a pain in the butt, but at least no one would be able to use her phone. Ian should've sent out her new number to the relevant people who needed it.

"You hungry?" Chris asked, as he followed her out of the family room, up the stairs toward her office.

The house was large enough that she and her father had been able to have their own workspace, and for that she was glad.

Having to work at the desk her father used when he worked from home would be too much to bear. As it was, walking into the room was difficult. So many memories of when Lindy had sat on his knee and pretended to conduct business phone calls. The way her dad had laughed at her antics.

Life had been uncomplicated then and she missed him with every fiber of her being.

"You okay?"

She jolted from her memories, shocked to find that instead of standing in her office, she'd stopped in the doorway of her father's.

"I miss him so much. He'd know what to do about this situation. If he was still alive, I wouldn't be in this mess." Lindy wanted to scream at the world. For the hand she'd been dealt, but her hand was so much better than a lot of other people so it would be selfish of her to complain when she had a roof over her head. The ability to buy food and feed herself. Not to mention have a job she loved—on good days.

"We'll get to the bottom of this. I may not have met the man, but I'm sure he'd be proud of the way you've taken what's happened in your stride. You could've easily spent the day curled up on your bed after what you'd been through. Many others would've. But you shook yourself off and took control."

As comforting as Chris's words were, it didn't make things better. There was still the mystery of who was after her and for what.

"There has got to be a reason," Lindy muttered to herself as she looked one last time in her father's office and then made her way to her own.

What she needed to do was go back over the past few months, since her father's death, and determine if one of the decisions she'd made had been upsetting to this person—for whatever reason.

"And we'll find it." Chris's lips were pressed together in a firm line. His arms crossed over his broad chest and his eyes held a steely determination she'd never seen before.

Standing in front of her was the Delta soldier he'd been, and she was glad he was on her side.

"We?" she whispered.

"Yep, we're a team now. You and me."

"A team?" She probably sounded silly repeating his words but it seemed so unreal that he was saying these things to her.

His mouth relaxed into a smile, and he closed the gap between them.

She melted when he framed her face with his hands.

"Yes, a team."

"I like that." Lindy pushed to her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his.

His arms closed around her and she twined her fingers behind his neck, sinking further into the kiss.

Her body lit up with desire and her skin itched as though her clothes were irritating her all of her sudden.

How was it possible that she'd only met this man last night, but now she didn't want to think about the possibility that he would walk away and she'd never see him again?

He lived in the United States, for goodness' sake, no way would he just decide to live with her. There were immigration rules and regulations that needed to be followed. It wasn't like anyone could just decide to remain in a country they were visiting.

Reluctantly, Lindy pulled away and placed her hand over his heart. Beneath her fingertips the rapid beat of it assured her that his reaction was the same as hers, because if he placed a hand on her chest, he'd find out how much her heart was racing.

Stepping away from the tempting man in front of her took a lot of mental and physical strength—it was the last thing she wanted to do.

"I need to look at my emails."

"And I need to feed you. Do you want anything in particular?"

"You can cook?"

Chris shrugged. "You don't get to be my age without learning a few things. To eat, you need to know how to cook. I can hold my own in the kitchen."

Visions of him moving around her kitchen as he chopped and sautéed meat filled her mind. The fact he was shirtless as he cooked was beside the point. Lindy would still love to see him cook; he would be poetry in motion.

"The fridge is stocked, how about you surprise me? "

Chris pressed his lips against hers before pulling away, far too quickly. At least out of the two of them one person had some control.

Her whole being ached for her to yank his head down again and lose herself in another one of his kisses. Work be damned. Lindy would take their kiss to her bedroom, push him onto her bed and then strip slowly for him.

She gasped at the thought, she'd never stripped for anyone in her life, but for Chris, she would.

"What exactly are you thinking, Lindy Jones?"

She closed her eyes and shook her head. "Probably best you don't know."

Chris chuckled again, the sexy sound pushed her already heated blood from simmer to boiling.

"I think I might like to, but later, hmm. I think it's safer if I walk away now."

Lindy opened her eyes to find him in front of her, merriment shining in his dark gaze. "Yeah, maybe."

With another laugh, he headed back downstairs with the confidence of someone who'd lived there their whole life—but hadn't.

She opened her mouth to tell him where the kitchen was, but slammed it shut. The guy was a Delta, he could probably sniff it out.

She walked to her office and sat down with purpose. Time to investigate who was after her and why.

C hris raised his fist to knock on the wooden frame of Lindy's office, but paused mid-air.

Her fingers were flying over the keyboard and the tip of her tongue poked out between her lips. Concentration furrowed her brow and he hated to interrupt her, but it was close to ten in the evening—she needed sleep.

"Hey," he pitched his voice low, so as not to startle her.

Her head lifted and her fingers paused in their rapid beating of the tiny square keys. "Hey. Do you need to go?"

Was that a hint of disappointment in her voice?

Did she want him to stay?

If she asked, he would, because Chris didn't want to go at all.

"It's getting late."

Her eyes narrowed as she studied something on the screen. "Damn, I hadn't noticed how late. "

"Yeah." He crossed the threshold, wanting to be close to her.

Dinner had been fun and full of laughter.

He'd found the ingredients to whip up a stir fry and he'd had to call on all his Delta training not to leap over the table and haul Lindy upstairs when she moaned around the first mouthful of food.

After their meal, watching her head back upstairs had been difficult but he'd known that he couldn't ask her not to work to keep him company. As it was, he'd spent time on his phone watching the footage Steve had accessed over and over.

The key was with the man in the suit and dark vehicle. Unfortunately, Wilt hadn't been able to get a good visual of the guy. When he'd enhanced the footage, the image had gotten grainy and pixelated making it impossible to get anything they could use to see if Lindy recognized him.

They weren't giving up. Maybe Lindy had found something while she'd been working.

Chris dropped down into the lounge chair that was adjacent to her desk and looked out over the backyard of the house. The pool lights glistened, inviting him to test the waters. "Did you find anything?" he asked.

Lindy sat back and pinched the bridge of her nose—that wasn't good .

"Not anything concrete. There are a couple of projects I've put a hold on. Dad had concerns about them, but he hadn't voiced them to anyone but me. After his death I decided, until I understood things a little better, that it would be best to halt their progress. They were still in the planning stages, so it wasn't a big deal," she shrugged and tapped her pen on the table.

"But to some they could be a big deal?"

"Well, yeah. A couple of the board members questioned my decision. The Chairman sent me an email requesting I reconsider, but I stood firm with my decision. At the end of the day my job is to ensure the projects we take on are profitable for the shareholders, and most of those on the board hold company shares. I hold company shares too."

Chris made a mental note to see if he could find out who was on the board of the company Lindy ran. "What about the people directly involved with the day to day running of those projects? Did you have to lay anyone off?"

"No. As I said they were in planning stages so we were able to allocate them to other projects."

"These guys are good employees?"

"Yep, one of the heads of the projects, is a great guy and when I'd called Joel in to let him know that the project wasn't canceled, but on the backburner. He was totally fine and said, that he was okay with it because after reading some recent reports, he'd decided that they needed to change tack. Joel mentioned that he was planning on seeing Dad to discuss it with him."

"And the other?"

"I knew he was annoyed, but I really don't think Eli is the type to get someone to snatch my bag and then bash them for doing it."

"You never know what some people would do." After watching the video over and over, something had stuck out to Chris. "The perp handed your purse over, the guy in the suit rummaged through it, as if he was looking for something. Do you take work home with you? Like on a thumb drive or something?"

"Sure, I take work home, but everything computer related is stored in the cloud. There's no need for me to bring home a thumb drive."

"So, if all your information is in the cloud, anyone can access it?" He'd never been convinced about storing everything in a place that wasn't tangible and touchable.

"No, all of the files I work on are password protected. Well, they're protected by a password generating device."

Lindy's eyes widened— bingo .

"Do you think that's what they're after?" she breathed.

"I'd say that's a big possibility." The mystery was getting deeper and deeper. "But what good would accessing the files do?"

"They could change the information to make it look more favorable for me to be convinced the project can move forward."

Chris held up his hand, a little confused with what she was saying. "Hold up, before I ask you to explain all that again, where is this device and do you always take it home with you every night?"

She reached into a drawer and pulled out something that looked like a credit card holder. "This is it. I'd left it home yesterday, but yes, I usually carry it with me wherever I go."

"Which means whoever wants it won't stop until they get it."

Lindy's fingers tightened around the plastic rectangle and he mentally cursed for frightening her again. "What do we do?"

"I think you've just employed yourself a bodyguard, Ms. Jones."