Lost and Found (Masters and Mercenaries: The Forgotten Book 2) Read online

  “Yeah, well, gay blokes don’t usually fuck a lady in the lift.” There. It was better to just shove it right out there.

  The whole room went silent and then Sasha laughed.

  “I told you,” he doubled over. “I knew it the minute he walked in the door. Pay up.”

  Dante shook his head and pulled out his wallet. “Asshole texted me a couple of minutes ago. Last time I take a bet from him without investigating myself.”

  Wankers.

  “You did what?” Ezra had stood up. He might have been more intimidating had he not been covered in dog hair. The man liked to wear black, and now his all-dark look was covered in white fur.

  “It wouldn’t have worked,” Owen started.

  “It obviously worked, if we’re talking about your dick,” Robert shot back.

  His dick had totally worked. It wanted to work again. “She was attracted to me.”

  “A lot of women are attracted to you, asshole.” Robert started pacing like a caged tiger ready to pounce. “Then they actually get to know you and they run the other fucking way.”

  “Robert,” Tucker began.

  Robert wasn’t having it. “Do you understand that you’ve fucked this whole op up? Are you so arrogant that you had to have this one? Ian had reasons for shifting this to me.”

  Before he could say a word, Robert was off again, explaining in minute detail every single way Owen had screwed up and put the team at risk. He was worked up in a froth, his face going red.

  The man was going to have a heart attack. He bet Becca could handle that. She worked with brains, but she probably knew a lot about hearts, too. She would be pretty when she did CPR. Her breasts would bounce while she did the compressions. And her sweet mouth would come down on his while she tried to breathe life into him.

  Not Robert. If Robert had a heart attack, Tucker could save him. He wasn’t letting the bastard watch Becca’s breasts bounce.

  “Have you heard a single word I’ve said?” Robert asked.

  “Of course. I’m a right bastard and I fucked everything up.” He didn’t have to listen to a ten-minute rant to know that. “But it wouldn’t have worked. If I had played things the way we talked about, she would have run the other way the minute the lift doors opened because she wanted me. She might have been friendly, but we wouldn’t have gotten her to spend time with us. She’s not a masochist and she wouldn’t have willingly spent time with a man she wanted and could never have.”

  “You think pretty highly of yourself.” Robert had his hands on his hips, challenging him.

  And Owen felt a growl start in the back of his throat. He had no idea where it was coming from. He was the quiet one, the one who sat back and didn’t give anyone hell because he was never sure of his place in the group. The alpha was challenging him, telling him to back down, and bugger all he wasn’t going to do it. “Well, I am the one who fucked the lady a few hours after I met her, so I think I might have just become the expert here.”

  “Good for Becca,” Jax was saying. “She seems really stressed.”

  “She isn’t stressed now,” Sasha said, still laughing.

  “How exactly are we going to explain my presence?” Robert asked, his eyes still steely.

  Shite. He’d taken Robert’s op. Owen took a deep breath and tried to soften his expression. “It wouldn’t have worked, mate. I’m sorry you feel like I screwed everything up, but I had to make a call and I was alone with her. Two seconds into meeting her and she was flirting with me.”

  Robert shook his head with a long sigh of frustration. “That doesn’t mean she wants you to fuck her.”

  “No, but her asking me to kiss her and clawing at my shirt to get it off sent me a real fine signal. You want to see the marks she left on my back?” Robert needed to see that the original plan wouldn’t have worked. “If I’d turned her down, she would have walked the other way the next time she saw me. She would have been embarrassed.”

  “And you think she won’t be now?” Robert asked, but his tone had changed to something close to a grudging acceptance.

  “Becca is pretty confident,” Jax said. “At least that’s how she comes off. I watched her trip over her own feet on the street and she just got up and bowed like she’d meant to do it. I also think if Owen had turned her down, she would have walked away and not looked back. I don’t know her well, but I think I have a pretty good read on her.”

  “We have a way in. Do we need to fight about it because it wasn’t the one we thought it would be?” Tucker moved in, obviously willing to play the peacemaker. “If Owen is dating her, we’ll have a lot of access. Jax and River can play the friendship role. Sasha, Dante, and I will operate from the Huisman Foundation building. This still works.”

  “All she knows is I’ve recently moved to Canada,” he explained. “I’m sure she assumes I’m a resident in the building, but I didn’t talk about my roommate. It’s a simple thing, man. Instead of you working for a bank, we both work as bodyguards. We share the place because one of us is usually working.”

  Robert seemed to think about it for a moment. “It could work. It’s a new job and we’re both single men. The job would likely require odd hours, so maybe the company put us together here for a couple of months until we figure out the lay of the city, so to speak.”

  “Or you could go with the boyfriend thing and offer to share her,” Sasha said with a smirk.

  “Over my dead body.” He hadn’t meant to say that. Certainly he hadn’t meant to sound like a crazy person.

  Sasha chuckled. “Sorry. We spent too much time in that Bliss place. Of course you wouldn’t want to share a woman you just met with a man who is your friend. It’s perfectly logical that you would already be incredibly possessive.” He stood up and stretched. “I’m going back to the house. It’s obvious you don’t need me. Dante, come along. We have a few days before we have to be back at our shitty jobs.”

  Dante started to follow him. “He means that literally. The toilets there are horrific, and I won’t even go into handling medical waste. I want to be the one who gets to fuck the girl in the lift next time.”

  “That wasn’t part of his job,” Ezra pointed out as the duo opened the door.

  Owen let the door close before turning to Ezra. “I’m not sorry.” He couldn’t apologize for it. He knew he should in order to keep the peace, but somehow he couldn’t make the words come out of his mouth. “I did what I had to do.”

  “Tell me you’re not more involved with the woman than you should be.” Ezra brushed some of the dog hair off his pants.

  He couldn’t lie but he did have an excellent distraction. He wished he’d had a chance to look at the file he’d snuck out of her bag, but he would always have turned it over. This was a job. Yes, she’d been hot as hell and he couldn’t wait to spend more time with her, but this was a job. “I wasn’t so involved I didn’t nip a file from her tote bag. And before you nag at me, that bag was overflowing, and it would have been easy for her to drop it. Unless she stopped between the subway and the apartment building and checked to make sure it was still there, she’ll have to conclude it fell out or got pinched while she was on her way home.”

  “That bag she carries seems to be an issue,” Jax acknowledged. “River said she’s helped her pick stuff up when it fell out at least twice. But I’m not sure what her medical research is going to do for us.”

  Tucker stepped up. “I’d actually like to get my hands on it. So far all I’ve done is cleanup work and getting the researchers coffee and lunch. I’m not sure why I needed to fake I’m in med school for that.”

  “Internships are more about making connections than actually learning the technology,” Ezra said. “But I would like to see what you get from her files, too.”

  What Ezra really wanted was to see how far Tucker’s medical knowledge went. He couldn’t forget the fact that Jax had discovered a Dr. Reasor had worked for McDonald. They’d looked for the man and couldn’t find a trace of him.


  But then McDonald had been good at making people disappear.

  He put his bag down on the coffee table and reached in. “I haven’t looked at the files. Being in such a tight space bothered her. She did this meditation thing and that’s when I slipped this out of her bag. I would have gone for more, but she’s not good at meditating either. It only lasted a minute or two and then she was back to talking about comic books and her favorite TV shows.”

  He pulled the folder free and opened it.

  Shite. Not medical research at all.

  “What is it?” Robert asked, stepping in.

  “It looks like financial reports.” It was a bunch of numbers and accounts. Nothing at all that would tell them about Becca’s research.

  He’d fucked up again.

  Ezra held out a hand. “Let me see it.”

  He passed the folder to his boss. “Sorry. It’s not what I hoped it was.”

  Ezra opened the folder and started to look through the paperwork.

  “I wish you hadn’t done this,” Robert said.

  “I followed my instincts.” He hated feeling this way. It was especially hard because while he’d been in that lift with Becca, he’d felt different. He’d felt like he mattered, like he belonged somewhere.

  “Your instincts are crap.” Robert shook his head and backed away. “I’m going across the street. I need a drink. I’m sure you can deal with unpacking the same way you took over the op.”

  He turned and walked out.

  Tucker grabbed his jacket. “Don’t take it hard, Owen. He’s been touchy as hell since he realized Ariel wasn’t in London. Until she flies back and he knows she’s safely at The Garden, he’s going to be a wreck and he’s going to take it out on everyone.”

  “She’s perfectly safe,” Ezra said, his eyes not leaving the pages in his hand. “And I don’t hate having her here to do some sessions after what happened in Colorado.”

  He hated sessions, hated having to talk about his feelings, going over the same things again and again and again because his life never changed.

  Except it kind of had now. Becca was in it. He would have to talk about her. It might be worth it if Ariel could give him insights on how to manage easing his way into Becca’s life.

  “I’ll work on the flat,” Owen offered. “Maybe if I get things in order, he won’t be so angry with me.”

  Jax looked up at him. “Are you sure? You usually hit a pub by this time.”

  He usually found the bottom of a bottle by seven or eight at night and then opened another. He found the idea unsatisfying tonight. “No. Go on with the others. I’ve got work to do here.”

  Jax gave him a smile that let him know that he wasn’t merely surprised, but somewhat pleased, and left.

  Or was he mistaking suspicion for surprise?

  “This is accounting for the last quarter.” Ezra moved toward the table, sitting down and starting to spread out the papers. “I wonder why she’s bothering with balancing the accounts. She has an accounting department for that.”

  “I got the idea she was a hands-on kind of manager.” She seemed fairly type A when it came to work. She would need someone to force her to relax, to enjoy her downtime. She’d needed him to take over before she’d given up and allowed herself to simply take the pleasure he was offering her.

  It struck him forcibly that she was exactly the type of woman who could use a Dom.

  “I find it interesting that she’s only looking into one account.” Ezra glanced up. “This could be nothing at all, but I’ll send a copy down to Phoebe Murdoch.”

  Owen moved to the box marked clothes. It wouldn’t be full. None of them had much to speak of. He found the plain T-shirts and jeans and hauled them out. Robert had some suits somewhere. He would hang them up before they wrinkled.

  “Are you sure you did it for the right reasons?”

  He glanced over and his boss was staring at him with intelligent eyes. He could never forget that Ezra Fain was a predator, and he often killed what he caught. “I made a call. I think it was the right one. I’m not going to lie to you. The lady is sexy as hell and I enjoyed myself, but I understand that this is a mission.”

  “That wasn’t what I was worried about. I’m worried you did it to prove yourself.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t really, but would it be so bad to prove myself? Big Tag still hates me. He’s never going to see me as anything but the man who betrayed his brother. Tell me he doesn’t think I’m the one who gave us up in Colorado.”

  “We don’t know anyone gave us up,” Ezra argued.

  “Levi Green knew our location. He knew when Jax walked into those woods and he was waiting for him and River. There’s no way that was a coincidence.”

  “Levi is a tricky one,” Ezra allowed. “Never underestimate him. And if anything, I think it was Solo who gave us up.”

  “That’s not what Big Tag thinks.” He knew exactly what Big Tag thought because he’d overheard him one day at McKay-Taggart. “Big Tag thinks it’s one of us.”

  “We disagree on that.” Ezra gathered the papers and placed them back inside the folder. “He can be paranoid and he hasn’t spent as much time with the team as I have. Owen, I don’t think you would betray us.”

  “Well, history might have something to say about that.”

  Ezra strode over and put a hand on his shoulder. “You didn’t do it for money, man. You did it for your family. You should have trusted your team more, but I can understand. It’s time to forgive yourself for something you can’t even remember doing and move on.”

  He wasn’t sure it would be that easy for him, but as he started to unpack, he thought about Becca and, for a moment, his life didn’t seem so bad.

  Chapter Six

  The next morning, Becca searched her bag for the folder again and bit back a curse. Damn bag. She was switching to one she could close up. It had to have happened on the train. The train had been full, as it usually was at that time of day, and she hadn’t gotten a seat. Right before the Spadina stop, she’d dropped the damn bag and it had spilled over everywhere. She’d had help gathering it up, but she’d lost the folder she needed.

  And she hadn’t figured it out until this morning because she’d spent the whole evening thinking about Owen Shaw. She’d dreamed about the man last night, and he’d been on her mind all morning long.

  She was not doing this. It had been a hot moment, but she wasn’t falling head over heels for the first man she’d slept with. Fucked. Fucked hard and good and well, and she hadn’t even seen him naked.

  Shouldn’t she at least see him naked?

  She grabbed her bag and walked out of her apartment. If she hurried, she could grab a coffee before she headed to the office.

  The elevator dinged and opened, but she was so not doing that. Stairs were her friends.

  Would she get in if Owen had been the man stepping into the elevator? She’d only gotten a glimpse of the tall man with brown hair entering, but he definitely wasn’t Owen. Did he even live in the building? She hadn’t asked. It seemed like a big oversight. He could have been visiting friends.

  She might never see him again, and that was a good thing because she wasn’t falling madly in love with some guy she’d met two minutes ago.

  Jogging down the steps, she felt a smile slide across her face. It really had been good.

  Maybe that had been her problem the first time. She’d equated commitment with happiness because that was what she’d grown up with. Not everyone got a happy marriage, and it seemed harder to find it when two careers came into play.

  So maybe for her, happiness would be found in good work and good friends, and the occasional hot night with a guy she liked.

  No commitment. No ties. No promises that could be broken.

  The heavenly scent of coffee hit her. She loved the city, loved the fact that she had everything she needed within walking distance.

  The new girl was standing behind the counter. It was too early for the café to be
truly busy. She walked right up when she would normally spend ten minutes in line.

  Nina smiled at her. “No fat latte?”

  She had that every single morning of her life. It was simpler to have a usual order. Sometimes she got lost in choosing and wasted tons of time.

  But the night before something had changed inside her. It had been good to break out of her shell. She wouldn’t stand here and debate calories. What sounded good?

  “What’s your favorite?”

  Nina’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, uhm, I love the caramel latte, actually. It’s got great flavor. It’s not too sweet.”

  “I’ll take that.” New things. She was going to try new things.

  “I’ll have whatever she’s having,” a deep voice said.

  A shiver of pure desire went through her because there was no mistaking that voice. He was behind her. Owen. Deep breath. This didn’t have to be awkward.

  Why should it be awkward? She wasn’t ashamed of what they’d done. She didn’t have to live by some stupid society rules that said sex had to happen one way or she turned into a slut while he was more of a man.

  She liked him. He’d been nice to her, really nice to her. She turned, giving him a warm smile. “Hey, Owen. How are you?”

  He was gorgeous. Ridiculously gorgeous. The man was so hot, every woman in the place was looking his way.

  And that was another reason to keep this light.

  He smiled down at her, his stunning eyes sparkling in the early morning light. “I slept well last night despite the fact that it was my first night in a new place. I managed to unpack a bit and went to sleep with no problem. I wonder why.”

  For the same reason she’d slept like a baby. “I’m glad I could help. So you live in the building? Somehow we didn’t cover that. I’m on seven. I suspect you took over the Holder’s place. They were nice and quiet. Everyone likes a quiet neighbor.”

  He put a hand over his heart as though making a sacred vow. “I promise to keep all my keggers on mute.”

  “See that you do. Well, you got to know the building properly then if the first thing that happened was the elevator died on you,” she replied, already feeling warm and comfy with him. He was easy to talk to. “Hopefully you don’t have the plumbing problems I have. I swear I would move, but I’m super close to the station and to work.”