Page 33 of Hate to Crave You
When had that happened?
His musings were cut short as she lifted a chrome briefcase and laid it on the counter. “Here you go. Delivered as promised…even a bit early.”
“Thank you. I appreciate the discretion.” He laid a hand on the chrome case, glad he wasn’t receiving it in a yellow padded mailer she pulled from her purse.
She cocked a brow at him. “Thank Templeton. This was the way I received the item.”
The way I received the item…
Roman’s jaw dropped.
The way I received…
His mind raced, flashing to the padded mailer he’d received from the professional his team had hired to lift from her purse the night they went out to dinner.
The man sure ashellhadn’t taken it from a chrome briefcase.
Son of a bitch.
“It’s business, Roman,” she said softly, as if she was following his every thought.
And he suspected she was.
Meeting her eyes, he saw the acknowledgment.
“When it’s business, the gloves come off,” she added, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. Then she offered him another smile, softer, sadder. “It was fun, you know. If you ever want to hook up again, call me.”
She turned on one stiletto heel and strode out while he was still struggling to process what she’d just said.It was fun.
Business, she’d told him.
The gloves come off.
“Fuck,” he whispered, mindless of the customers milling around him. “We were had.”
Grabbing the briefcase’s handle, he spun on his heel and hurried back to the office, running once he was out of sight of the clientele. He had to call his father.
Although it had been less than fifteen minutes since they’d spoken, he was excruciatingly aware that it might be too late.
The courier’s on the way—wasn’t that what his father had told him?
He grabbed the cell phone from his desk and dialed his father’s direct number, pacing the room and eyeing the briefcase he’d left on the desk. Fury boiled inside him and he stormed over to the case just as his father came on the line.
“What is it, Roman? I’m in the middle—”
“Stop the courier,” he said, cutting his father off.
“What?” Michael demanded.
“Stop the courier!” he said firmly. He stared at the prototype in front of him, his fuck-up even clearer now than it had been. This device was larger, sleeker. More elegant, even. And clearly more advanced. He could see the echoes of the previous device in it and suspected what he’d taken had been an earlier model of this. Shit, had Templeton helped set him up?
You stole the damn thing from her purse, dumbass.
He ignored that voice as he spun away from the evidence of his mistake, speaking furiously to his father. “They switched out the prototypes, Dad. The one we took from Julianna the other night wasn’t the right one. We didn’t do tests on the current model!”
His father exploded.
It was a brief explosion, thankfully and Roman was put on hold as his father furiously made phone calls, attempting to catch the courier. When he came back on the line, Roman didn’t dare let himself breathe.
