It wasn’t all that difficult to find Leah, once Jack set his mind to it.  Since the beginning of time, when she’d been troubled, she’d been drawn to two things.

Him.

And the ocean.

She hadn’t come to him.  That was new.  There’d been a time when she’d have come to him no matter what was troubling her.

Except, of course, at the moment he was the source of her trouble, even though it was of her own making.  The last time that had been the case, she’d left Lucky Harbor.

But he knew she couldn’t leave now.  She was here for her grandma, and though Leah had plenty of faults, her grandma meant too much to her.  Unlike himself…  He tried not to resent that, but there was no getting around the fact – he did resent it.  He was pissed off that she had no idea what she meant to him, back then.

Or now.

His heart squeezed a little, making room for a few other emotions besides his temper.  Empathy.  Maybe even reluctant affection.  He could’ve gotten into the water with her, but it was after midnight and Christ, he was tired.

Nothing good ever happens after midnight.

His mom had always said so, and in this case, he was willing to bet it was true.  So he sat on the sand, positioned halfway between her car and the water, giving her no easy escape.  And waited.

And brooded. Because he was having lots of odd and unexpected urges as it pertained to Leah, and he didn’t know what to do about them.  Once upon a time, she’d been the only highlight in his day, the only one to make him smile.  She was still that person, but there was something new between them, and he wasn’t sure if it was good.  In fact, he was pretty sure he should be running like hell.

Finally, she swam in, and then she was standing up in the water, and he nearly swallowed his tongue.  It’d been a damn long time since he’d seen her in a bathing suit.  Maybe since high school, when she’d been a head taller than all the other girls and skinny as hell.

She was still tall but she’d filled out in all the right places and then some.  She wore a black bikini, nothing but a few straps low on her hips and two triangles over her breasts, and as a wave knocked her around a little, everything jiggled enticingly.

And suddenly he went from slightly chilled to very overheated.  Good Christ, she was … beautiful.  It should’ve assuaged his simmering temper just looking at her, but instead it stoked it, making him tense as hell.

Leah, on the other hand, was looking pretty carefree as she lifted her arms and shoved back her hair.

At the sight, his brain utterly clicked off.

She saw him then.  He could tell because, from one blink of an eye to the next, she froze every single muscle.  It’d have been fascinating to watch, except for the fact that she was freezing up over him.  She’d never reacted this way before.  He didn’t like it.  And besides, he was the wronged party here.  He was the one who got to be pissy.

“You’re still here,” she said flatly. “You scared me.”

“You need to be more aware of your surroundings.”

Dripping water everywhere, she crossed her arms over herself.  “It’s Lucky Harbor.”

He rose to his feet.  “Bad shit can happen anywhere.”

She met his gaze for one brief beat and then looked away.  “What are you doing here, Jack?”

“I figured as your ‘almost fiancé,’ I should see how you’re doing.”

She winced but didn’t respond.

“What the hell is this all about, Leah?”

“You know it’s about your mom’s cancer,” she said, hugging herself a little tighter.

She always got defensive when she screwed up, and since she’d screwed up a lot, she had a lot of practice.

“My mom has enough going on,” he said.  “She doesn’t need to be lied to.”

“Maybe not.  But she does need to be happy to heal.  And this made her happy.  All week she’s been glowing.”

He knew it was true, and a stab of guilt hit him that he hadn’t been able to make her happy without help.

Leah didn’t say anything more but she didn’t have to.  Yeah, she’d gotten them into this mess, but he knew damn well it’d been out of the goodness of her heart.  Jack knew that she thought she owed him for all those years ago, when he’d done his best to protect her, the chivalry having been deeply ingrained by his dad.

But they were even.

In the dark, Leah shivered, and that chivalry had him torn between enjoying the sight of her cold and wanting to wrap her up in his arms.  “Where’s your towel?”

“In the car.”

He pulled off his sweatshirt and tugged it over her head.

“I’ll get it wet,” she said.

“It’ll dry.”

“I’m—”

“Just wear the damn sweatshirt, Leah.”

There was an awkward silence while they stared at each other as behind her the water pounded the shore.

“I realize that this is really hard for you,” she finally said, pulling on his sweatshirt.  “Having everyone think you like me that way.  You’ll just have to pretend.”

He narrowed his eyes.  Had that been sarcasm?  Or…

Hurt?  “There was a time when I wouldn’t have had to pretend anything,” he said.  “But you flaked out, remember?  You pretended, and then you left.”

She grimaced, swallowed hard, and looked away.  “We were just kids.”

Was that how it played in her head?  Seriously?  “Does it make you feel better?” he asked quietly.  “To downplay what we were to each other?”

She closed her eyes.  “We were friends, Jack.  Friends who’d made a quick, knee-jerk, stupid decision to become naked friends and sleep together.”

“Yeah.  And then one of the friends didn’t show,” he said, much more mildly than he felt.

“It was a bad idea.  I was leaving.”

“Which you forgot to mention.”

She dropped her head back and stared up at the sky.  “I couldn’t stay, Jack.”

He took in her expression, filled with memories, and nodded.  “I know.  But you should have told me you were going.”

“You had another girl in your bed by the following weekend.”

Had he?  Hell, probably.  But she wouldn’t have meant anything to him.  Not like Leah had.  His chest tightened at the memory of the hole she’d left in his life.  He didn’t want to go through that again.  “I missed you.”

She said nothing, and he shook his head.  Fuck it.  He started to walk away, and then she spoke.

“Brandi Metcalf.”

He stopped.  “What?”

“Brandi Metcalf was the one in your bed by the next weekend.”  She turned her head and glared at him.  “Pretty blonde Brandi with the perfect boobs.”  She emphasized this by cupping her hands out in front of her own breasts.  “So don’t even try to tell me you missed me.”

He shook his head.  Apparently he wasn’t the only pissed-off one tonight.  “Okay,” he said.  “Let’s have it.”

“Let’s have what?”
“Well, I know why I’m pissed.  Why the hell are you pissed?”

“It’s not like it’s going to be a walk in the park for me either,” she said, giving him a little shot to the chest.  “Pretending to like you.”

“Me?” he asked, flabbergasted.  “What the hell is there not to like about me?”

The sound she made assured him that she had volumes on the subject.  “Don’t get me started.”

“I want to know,” he said.

“Fine.  You watch that stupid ice fishing show like it’s a religion, you’re a horrible backseat driver, you drink out of the milk carton – and fyi, so does Ben – you don’t put the cap on your toothpaste, or put the lid down on the toilet, and you shush me when you’re watching sports.”

He stared at her.  “That’s quite a list of shortcomings,” he eventually said.  “Is that all?”

“No.”  She shoved her wet hair from her face, though she managed to keep her regal stance, nose firmly in the air at nose-bleed heights.  “I held back because I didn’t want to be overly rude.”

He laughed softly.  “Don’t hold back, Leah.  Let’s hear all of it.”

“Well, your truck has more sporting goods than a store, you never say you’re sorry, and your girlfriends look like super models.  I mean what is that?  There’s nothing wrong with real boobs, you know!”

He took it all in and had to admit that he couldn’t say she was wrong, about any of it.  “And yet you call me The Picker.”

She ignored this.  “And your mom told me that you need knee surgery again.  You’re just too stubborn to get it done.  So you can add ornery to the list.”

He blew out a slow breath.  “It’s not ice fishing,” he said.  “It’s crabbing.  And sometimes I lose the cap on the toothpaste, or my dog eats it.  And I don’t need knee surgery, I’m fine.”

Leah snorted.  “You’re always ‘fine’.  Your knee could be falling off and you’d say you were fine.”

“I fail to see the problem.”

She snorted again, and he was starting to feel greatly insulted.  “You’re not exactly a walk in the park, Leah.”

“No?”

“No.  You’re flighty, you live for your every whim, you downplay any real emotion you feel.”

She hugged herself tight.  “Good thing this is all pretend then, isn’t it,” she said softly.

“Yeah.”

She was freezing.  And hauntingly gorgeous, so damn gorgeous standing there wet and silvery by the moon’s glow, like a goddess.  It’s Leah, he had to keep reminding himself.  Leah, who’d once beaten him in a marshmallow eating contest only to puke all over him.  Leah, whose dark green eyes had a way of telling the world to bite her.  Leah, who’d run off on him and left him heartbroken.  He took a step into her – for what exactly, he had no idea– and she poked a finger into his chest.

“God,” she said.  “You’re so …”  Words apparently failed her, but she let out a sound that managed to perfectly convey how annoying he was.

“Ditto,” he said, and then grabbed the finger drilling a hole between his pecs and tugged her hard enough that she lost her balance and fell against him.

He wrapped an arm around her waist, entangling a hand in her wet hair.

She went still as stone and stared into his eyes.  And then lowered her gaze to his mouth.

Yeah, they were in sync there.  Suddenly he couldn’t breathe.  Hers caught audibly in her throat, a good sign he decided.  Maybe she wouldn’t knee him in the balls.  Testing the waters, he grazed her jawline with his teeth.

She shivered.

Then he slid his mouth to the very corner of hers and was rewarded by the clutch of her hands on his shirt.  Having her hold on to him like this, like he was her only anchor, sent a bolt of lust straight through him.  “Leah,” he murmured, hearing the surprise in his own voice, feeling the heat course through him as he finally, God finally, covered her mouth with his.

Her lips parted for him eagerly, and he groaned, drowning in the erotic collision of her hot tongue and chilled, wet body.

Serious trouble.  He was in serious trouble.

Because he had a taste of her now, a damn good taste, and it was better than he could have imagined, making him want the rest of her.  With his fingers still in her hair, he pulled her in tighter, slanting his mouth across hers for more.  She moved with him, into him, making the connection all the sweeter.

No.  Sweet wasn’t the right word.

Hot.  She was so hot she was turning him inside out.  And then she made another of those soft, surrendering sighs deep in her throat, the sound slaying him.  She still had a death grip on his shirt and had managed to catch a few chest hairs while she was at it.  He didn’t care.  Sliding a hand beneath his sweatshirt, he cupped her ass over her wet bikini bottoms, rocking into her.

She had to feel what this was doing to him.  And given that she was breathing like she was running out of air, and still holding onto him tight enough to bruise, she also had to know where this was going.

Jack kissed Leah some more, sinking deeper into her taste, her softness, her scent, all while wondering how the hell she could drive him crazy and made him ache at the same time.  It was a feat that totally wrecked his equilibrium.  Maybe it was just the kiss.  Because holy shit, the kiss.  He still had a handful of her sweet ass, and he squeezed, wanting more.  But they were outside and the night’s temp was quickly dropping.  She was wet, trembling with the chill, and there was absolutely nowhere to go with this.  Not here, not now.  He’d had no business kissing her like he had an end game, and knowing it, he regretfully pulled back.

She blinked as if waking up from a dream.  “What—”  She cleared her throat.  “What was that?”

“Insanity.  It’s going around.”

From Chapter 1.7 – The House Checks and Raises

Steyer’s temper had been worsening as the clock ticked. It was only a few hours to the 6:00 p.m. ultimatum, and he had no idea what might happen next. He had been told by Hussaini, Henderson, and every subject matter expert he trusted that the board made the correct decision not to negotiate, that Ben and Jerry would inevitably break down with no other alternatives. As soon as they showed weakness, the FBI would pounce. Of course all that was before Balthazer had made the location public, welcoming the media circus that arrived on cue.

Steyer was in his understated but refined garden office suite at SugarSpring Ventures, two blocks off University Avenue in Palo Alto, about half an hour from EnvisionInk’s offices in Santa Clara. Most of the Silicon Valley Investor Class made camp in a renowned axis of low rise clusters along Sand Hill Road in adjacent Menlo Park, but Steyer always wanted SugarSpring to be a little different, physically annexed to Stanford’s academia, a less traceable place for entrepreneurs to be seen coming and going with their endless pitches. Sitting across his new world composite desk when the Balthazer advisory notice came from Hussaini was Atom Heart Entertainment CEO Sol Seidelmeyer. Steyer had not planned on Seidelmeyer’s visit, he just happened to drop by a few minutes after the studio’s Falcon 2000 landed in San Jose and a town car delivered him unannounced to SugarSpring’s beveled glass door. Steyer knew that to turn him away upon his unscheduled visit would not have made for a more productive dialogue—full service private jets these days, with operating costs above $5,000 per hour, had to be justified, even by CEOs—but he needed to consider what lines he might be crossing having Seidelmeyer on his sofa when the call came from Hussaini.

“We share this mishegas, put him on speakerphone,” said Seidelmeyer, gazing around Steyer’s unadorned working space, likely looking for anything that might be useful. “I promise to stay quiet.”

Steyer looked past his own bruises at Seidelmeyer’s primal, piercing eyes. What else could he do? He took the call with Hussaini live, but did not announce Seidelmeyer’s presence.

“So a fully masked worker bee blurts out the location on internet radio, just like that?” continued Steyer into the polycom. “Aren’t there laws that stop that sort of thing?”

“You know the internet as well as I do, Mr. Steyer,” said the special agent, his tone of displeasure professionally ambiguous. “You’re aware we can’t enforce laws if people are anonymous. That caller is long gone from Best Buy, which is as far as we could trace the IP.”

“What about the moron host, Balthazer, where was he?” asked Steyer.

“As far as we can tell, at a McDonald’s in Stockton,” answered Hussaini. “We haven’t completely tied down that piece, but we’re working on it. We do know he was fired from his last radio job in Fresno over a month ago. He burned his landlord for the rent, has a hearing pending with the FCC, and drives an Infiniti M. But he hasn’t really broken any law, certainly no federal statute that would let us bring him in. According to our lawyers, he’s safely within his First Amendment rights, particularly as a journalist.”

“A journalist, are you kidding me, where’d he study, the WikiLeaks School of Ethics?” blurted Steyer.

“Talk show hosts have the same halo,” qualified Hussaini. “As long as he doesn’t incite violent action, he is within legal bounds.”

“Outstanding,” proclaimed Steyer. “When they bring out Choy and Finkelman sideways on a stretcher, you can tell their moms all about the First Amendment. What happens now?”

“It’s their move, they set the deadline. If we don’t hear from them by 6:00 p.m., the Director should give us the order to move in. We are readying for position on that. We have a well-trained team on the ground and will do what we can to keep civilian impact at a minimum, including your guys. My crew is tight and will be ready to do what they’re good at. If we go in, it will be quick. Hopefully Ben and Jerry will negotiate and we’ll talk them out, but that’s their call. If they want to negotiate, they’ll let someone know.”

“Keep us apprised,” said Steyer as he clicked off the polycom. He probably had not noticed that he had said “us” instead of “me,” but then, Hussaini likely presumed others were listening in, though not corporate competitors bound by SEC regulations. Steyer shook his head in derision after another unneeded jolt, looking to the sun-worn Seidelmeyer for anything encouraging.

“You got a tough situation on your hands,” offered Seidelmeyer. “I’m not sure what I would do if I were you.”

“After this deal, you are me,” said Steyer. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“We don’t have a deal,” replied Seidelmeyer. “Last I looked we were about $6 billion apart, which I know in your world is not big money. Heck, you got almost half that on the lift this morning. My offer is still above market. The stock’s adjusted to a price the Street can swallow. I’m doing better than that, the deal should be easy for you. If you want to tell me the gap is closed, we can talk about what happens next.”

“Sol, don’t try to use this string of events to tell me you’re not paying the expected premium. That’s unbecoming, even for you.”

“I’m a showman, what do I know about asking for the wrong thing?” quipped Seidelmeyer. “You have a point of view and I have a point of view. The difference is, you have a problem and I really don’t.”

“Sol, you do have a problem. You’re old, and your company is old. Without EnvisionInk, you have no growth story. Your board tosses you out, sells to someone else and blames you for blowing the deal. Your legacy will be that of a failed Neanderthal. No one will remember what you did to put that company on the map, all those movie openings, all those shows and networks, all those dividends. All they will remember is that you were brushed aside, bitter and dusty, because you missed the shift to digital. No one remembers obsolete.”

“You’re a putz,” said Seidelmeyer. “You may have more money in the steel vault than me, but you haven’t created anything lasting. Dollars come, dollars go, who remembers, who cares? My company touches lives and we make a fine profit.”

“Sol, we can agree to disagree, or we can piss on each other, which isn’t going to win you another Academy Award. You want an Act Three, we’re your Act Three. You become chairman of a goliath industrial, my partners get liquidity and I go away, everyone’s happy. You want to retire as a goat, walk out the door and leave me to figure this out on my own. Right now I can’t even think about price. If I don’t get those kids back alive, we have nothing.”

“Funny, the Street doesn’t see it that way,” said Seidelmeyer, regaining an even tone. “The kids are tied to a bomb, you leaked our deal, and the Street is sending up balloons.”

“That’s because they’re confident we will get them back, and get a deal. That’s what we hinted. For big institutional holders to dump volume with Choy and Finkelman an unknown, and a clear path to a combination viable, that leaves money on the table, so arbitrage is indulging us. But we only have a few hours.”

“Those bumpkin punks are bluffing,” said Seidelmeyer. “The special agent has a mirror on the crown moldings behind their cards. They don’t even know what game they’re playing. This is ours to lose. You hold tight, they’ll cave. I’ve played at this table before.”

“You’ve had top executives kidnapped?” asked Steyer.

“I’ve been held hostage by the likes of you, not a lot different. We just have to figure how to get out.”