Joseph looked over his shoulder suddenly, as though he’d heard her. Which would be impossible since he was across the room. But the invisible thread that had once made them so in tune with each other—a bond they’d nurtured on and off for a huge chunk of her life—was still there. It unnerved the hell out of her. How was it possible that a three-year absence and total emotional devastation hadn’t quite destroyed it?

  “That smells amazing,” he said, pushing up from the desk chair. He shrugged out of his suit jacket and undid the red tie at his neck, his strong fingers moving over the gleaming silk with a sureness that settled like a stone in the pit of her stomach.

  “It’s nothing fancy.” She ladled the soup into a bowl and carried it to the coffee table. They used to have a small dining table in the apartment, but that extra space was now taken up by her desk. Which meant dinners were usually eaten on the couch. “What did you find?”

  He folded himself into one corner of the couch, his long legs extending past the coffee table where he rested his crossed ankles. The hem of his suit pants pulled up to reveal blue-and-red-striped socks. Company colors, she would guess. That was Joseph’s MO. Even the smallest details had significance.

  “Would you sit down?” he said. “I’m not going to bite.”

  Annie’s stomach twisted at the words, but she forced herself not to show any reaction. The couch was small, made for two people, so there was no way to get distance from him. She squished herself into the opposite corner, trying to make herself as small as possible in a desperate attempt to avoid any accidental brushing of limbs.

  “There’s a system-monitoring program accessing your webcam,” he said, reaching for his dinner. “I’ve removed it from your computer, but I would say that whoever installed it would know by now that you’ve figured out someone was watching.”

  “Because I covered the camera up?”

  “Yeah.”

  She bobbed her head. “I’m guessing they’re the same people who sent me the picture. Surely they would be expecting a reaction.”

  “I would say so.”

  She frowned. “Why wouldn’t my antivirus software pick the program up?”

  “Antivirus usually picks up spyware, but not always. Since the monitoring program isn’t doing anything malicious to the computer, they were able to make it act like a regular background process.” He spooned some of the soup into his mouth. “But that wasn’t all.”

  Annie shut her eyes for a moment. “There’s more?”

  “They weren’t only monitoring your webcam.” He looked over at her. It was shocking how those light, icy eyes still made her heart flutter. “They were looking through your computer. Probably got your IP address, and that’s how they narrowed your street address down to this building.”

  “Right.” She slowly bobbed her head.

  “Do you have any idea why someone might be doing this?” His brows creased, and he set his half-empty bowl on the coffee table. It was harder to look at him now, because the concern poured out of him like a pheromone, and it wasn’t his job to be concerned about her.

  “I have some idea.” She swallowed past the tightness in her throat.

  Silence stretched between them, and eventually the sound of traffic and life outside trickled in.

  “Care to share?” he asked.

  His intense gaze made her feel hot and cold at the same time. Joseph had always liked to feast with his eyes, so she’d often stripped for him slowly and steadily, letting his insatiable desire churn like a storm until he couldn’t take the anticipation anymore.

  “No,” she replied. “Just tell me what I need to do.”

  “Take it to a repair place and have a professional do a proper sweep.”

  “You are a professional.”

  He cocked his head. “I’m a CIO, Annie. My head’s been in strategy and spreadsheets the last three years. That kind of technology moves fast, and I haven’t been keeping up to date.”

  He’d moved on. And his dream to open a white-hat hacking business must have fallen by the wayside along with their relationship. It was comforting not to be the only casualty of his ruthless ambition.

  “And if I can’t take it to a repair place?”

  “Wipe it.” He leveled her with a stare. “Many of these programs are built to regenerate and reinstall themselves. You can kill it off, and then it grows back like a weed. The safest thing to do would be to back up your files and do a factory reset.”

  “Is that something you can do?”

  Joseph leaned back against the couch, one arm coming to rest along the back. The pose was relaxed, as though he was totally at ease in this situation. In her space. His crisp white shirt was now unbuttoned at the base of his neck, and his waist was highlighted by a slim, tan belt. It matched his shoes to perfection. Annie had always been a sucker for a well-dressed guy. It’d attracted her back then—he’d been the only well-dressed guy in the whole frat house when everyone else had been wearing cheesy fedora hats and other assorted fashion atrocities of the mid-2000s. Not that it had stopped her from teasing him about his slacks and shirt, just for the excuse to talk to him.

  “I can wipe it for you, but it’ll take a while. A few hours at least.”

  “Why did you agree to help me?” she asked suddenly. The question was like a grenade lobbed into the air by accident. “Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t care.”

  “I know things ended…badly.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re a regular freaking Sherlock, aren’t you?”

  “But that doesn’t erase what we shared,” he finished. “If you ask for my help, I will always provide it.”

  She didn’t want to hear that. She didn’t want the god-awful position of being stuck between a rock and a hard place, forced to lean on him out of sheer necessity and preservation. It made her sick to her stomach.

  “But it’s not a ‘no questions asked’ kind of deal?” She picked at the hem of her skirt, fixated with a small dangling thread. She dragged her nail over it, worrying the imperfection until the thread started to pull.

  Annie jumped when a warm hand closed over hers. The touch was simultaneously too wrong and too right. Comforting and jarring in equal measure. She yanked her hand back.

  “This is serious, Annie. You’re smart, and you know how to protect yourself online. I taught you everything I could. Which means that for someone to have gotten this kind of software onto your computer, there’s been some social engineering.” He dropped both hands into his lap. “This kind of stuff doesn’t happen by accident.”

  “Social engineering?”

  “Psychological manipulation. Hackers use confidence tricks and other methods to convince people to do what they want—usually divulging confidential information or granting some kind of system access. Or it could have been a phishing exercise. They convince you to click on a seemingly innocent link or open an attachment that installs the spyware.”

  “And you think I got tricked?” She stood suddenly, unsure what to do with her hands so she reached for his half-eaten soup and took it to the kitchen to wash up.

  “I don’t want to frighten you, but I also don’t want you to think that me wiping your computer is going to solve whatever problem led you to this point.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. Every part of her body ached for the comfort only he could provide. Joseph was the one man who’d always calmed her anxious personality. She was that high-strung kid, the type A high achiever who always fussed over every little detail. But around him, she’d turned into this carefree, confident woman. A flower blossoming under the perfect amount of sunshine.

  “I can stay and do the wipe now if your backups are up to date,” he said.

  “It’s late,” she said, glancing at the clock hanging on the wall. “If you start now, you won’t finish ’til the middle of the night.”

  “I’d rather know you weren’t in this place alone.” His tone was stiff.

  “I can’t have you sleep over.”

  God, she wouldn’t be able to handle it. Knowing he was in the other room while she was feeling at her most exposed. Every part of her was soft now. Raw and vulnerable and all those other words that made her skin scrawl.

  “I don’t think I could sleep a wink anyway,” he replied. “I’ll be gone before you get up.”

  Annie considered her options. Truth be told, she was frightened of being alone at the moment. And she’d already planned to spend the weekend at her parents’ place, just to get out of the apartment. If Joseph was here tonight, then she could put off dealing with the situation for a few more days. That might give her enough time to figure out how to deal with this threat. How to protect herself and Bad Bachelors.

  “Okay,” she said with a sharp nod. “Thank you.”

  Chapter 6

  “Bad Bachelors helped me to realize something: nobody is perfect. In fact, most of us are fundamentally flawed.”

  —JustAGirl

  Annie lay awake in her bed, staring up at the ceiling and unable to sleep for the second night in a row. The apartment was silent. Whatever Joseph was doing in the other room, he managed to operate with the stealth of a ninja.

  Had he found Bad Bachelors yet? Would he judge her? Assume that she was so broken by him that she’d started it in some misplaced general revenge against men?

  Didn’t you?

  He’d been the spark, certainly. Or rather, the photo of him with his brand-new fiancée. Then Darcy had been cheated on. Remi had arrived from Australia by that point too, fleeing the carnage of a relationship that’d ended her career, at least temporarily. All three of them were strong, independent women who were good at their jobs, generous with their spirits. Women that any man would be lucky to date.

  Yet they were all ruined in their own ways by relationship failures. Darcy had turned in on herself, her introvert tendencies guiding her away from dating. Remi had turned to casual dating and no-strings sex, happy to have the physical connection but not the emotional. And Annie had taken action in secret, building Bad Bachelors in the hope that other women might be able to avoid the pain she and her friends were currently experiencing. She wanted to help women. Give them a tool with which to protect themselves.

  It was never supposed to go viral.

  Annie turned onto her side, unable to get comfortable. Knowing Joseph was in the next room, separated by only a wall, had her on edge. And not because she didn’t want him to be there. Because she was trying her hardest not to get out of bed and go to him.

  She turned again, burying her face in her pillow. But it didn’t help. Sure, she felt safe knowing he was there. Physically, anyway. But every other emotion battled for supremacy inside her. Want, need, and desire drew swords against fear, anger, and doubt. Huffing, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The floorboards were cool beneath her bare feet. Soothing, even.

  She wandered to the huge window and opened the blinds so she could look out at the city. Resting her cheek against the glass, she tried to concentrate on the feeling of coolness instead of the vicious churn of thoughts in her head.

  Why did he have to ruin what they had?

  He wasn’t the only one who ruined things.

  She’d been trying to be everything to everyone—a loving partner and supporter of his career ambitions, as well as a doting and devoted daughter to her parents. But those two things had been at odds. They’d drawn her in opposite directions, pulling so hard that she’d been ready to break apart.

  Annie padded over to her door and pressed her ear to it. Silence. Maybe he’d left already? But she hadn’t heard the front door latch, and it was right next to her room. Ignoring the screeching Do not proceed in her head, she pushed the door open. As quietly as gravity would allow, she tiptoed out into the entryway, which opened directly into the living room.

  In the far corner of the room, Joseph sat at her computer desk. All the overhead lights were off, and an eerie bluish glow created a fuzzy halo, silhouetting his broad shoulders. It must have been after 2:00 a.m. Possibly later.

  But it wasn’t the time or the darkness that made the breath stick in the back of Annie’s throat. It was the image on the laptop screen in front of Joseph. A photo was the source of the bluish light, her once favorite photo. They’d gone to the Greek islands for a vacation, and a friend had captured them frolicking in the ocean. Joseph had Annie on his shoulders, with her almost toppling off from laughter and his face radiating a pure, uninhibited joyfulness that he rarely showed the outside world. It was the week before she’d found out that her mother had breast cancer.

  Before everything crumbled.

  Annie stepped back. She wasn’t ready to face Joseph like this, and she should have stayed in her room until he left. But she backed up too quickly and bumped into the side table, the corner of it jabbing into her lower back so that she had to stifle a yelp. In the silent apartment, the sound might as well have been a gunshot.

  Joseph quickly closed the laptop and whirled around. “What are you doing up?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” She could barely force the words out. Suddenly, everything tumbled down on her like an avalanche. Joseph’s return, the creepy photo, the spyware on her computer, the weight of so many angry emails and threats. The dissolution of her friendship with Remi. Tears filled her eyes to the brim, but she blinked furiously, chasing them away with gritted teeth and balled fists, praying he couldn’t see her weakness.

  He strode toward her. They were enveloped by shadows, with only the twinkle of city lights keeping the room from being pitch-black. Annie curled her hands around the edge of the table behind her, needing something to keep her upright. Each step he took was like a knife twisting in her gut, because at her base level she still craved him like he’d never been away. Her body hadn’t gotten the memo that Joseph Preston was not on the menu, because her hands tingled and that sweet spot between her legs pulsed like she was about to get some.

  You’re not about to get some.

  “Were you able to fix it?” she asked. Her voice was barely above a whisper, because anything louder would feel like too much and she wanted to dwell in this limbo between dreaming and the real world.

  “It’s good as new. All your files are back on there, and there’s a backup on the USB hard drive.” He was close, but not too close. Not as close as her body wanted. “You shouldn’t be staying here alone.”

  “I’m crashing at Mom and Dad’s over the weekend.”

  His pale eyes were ethereal in the shadows. “Do they know what’s going on?”

  She shook her head. “They would freak.”

  “Rightly so,” he said. “I want you to call me if you see anything at all suspicious. If you hear a bump in the night, if you get something weird in your mailbox, just…call me.”

  “No questions asked?”

  “I’m always going to ask questions.”

  She let out a sharp laugh. Of course he would. Joseph never held back on poking and prodding, even if she asked him to back off. That was always the bone of contention between them, because it was the one area where he was happy to dish it out but reluctant to take it in return.

  “You haven’t changed,” she whispered.

  “Haven’t I?” He took a step closer. “I certainly feel changed. But I’m not about to stay quiet when I think your safety is at stake.”

  “I’m not your concern. This issue isn’t your concern.” That was a steaming pile of bullshit, and she knew it. She’d brought him here; she’d involved him.

  “Will you promise to call me if something seems off?” His tone was hard now, jagged. “I don’t care if I’m the last resort after you’ve called everyone else you know. I’m telling you, if you need me, I will be here.”

  “This time.” She couldn’t stop the bitter little words from popping out, her nerves frayed and brittle. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “Yeah, you should have.”

  They stood in the dark, the air so thick between them that Annie wondered if he might need to swim the last few steps toward her. Beneath the oversize flannel shirt she’d worn to bed, her body was wound tighter than a spring.

  “I don’t want to get into this now.” She bunched the ends of her nightshirt in her hands, trying so hard to remember why she hated him.

  He left you when you needed him most. He has no regard for your family or your feelings. He was going to marry someone else with the ring meant for you.

  But those thoughts had cycled in her head so many times that they’d lost color and meaning. Instead of growing like a bonfire, they’d become dull and soft.

  “Annie.” He came closer, the sound of her name like a plea and a prayer. “I don’t… Fuck.”

  Yeah, fuck was the right word, all right. What the hell were they doing, whispering in the dark and talking about how he wanted her to lean on him? The familiarity of it gripped her with relentless hands, forcing her to believe for a heartbeat that maybe she’d wound the clock back. Or that maybe she’d imagined the last three years, and they were still together. Still in love.

  Joseph reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, neatly tucking it behind her ear. The action—so simple and so tender—unlatched something deep down. She stepped forward, closing the last foot between them and placing her hands on his chest. God, he felt good. Hard and honed, covered in a cotton shirt so soft it made her sigh.

  He drove his hands into her hair, his fingers curving around her nape. A shudder rippled through her, and before she had time to think about the consequences, his lips were on hers. The kiss was almost feral—with too much teeth and too much pulling and too much pent-up anger. From both sides.

  Annie stepped back, her hips hitting the table behind her, but she didn’t care. She yanked him toward her by his shirt, and he growled in that brief moment their mouths were separated.

 

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