Chapter 2
NADIA
Thomas was waiting outside when she arrived at his mid-century, split-level home that overlooked the ranches and vineyards of the Santa Lucia Mountains in Carmel Valley.
She parked on the paver stone driveway beside his Tesla and gathered up her phone, keys, and her wits.
The entire two-hour drive had been an internal debate about whether she should have come.
While the prospect of seeing Thomas for the first time in four years fed into her guilt about the past, as a former client, she had a professional obligation to meet with him and consider the job offer. At least that was what she was telling herself.
Thomas approached the car, his head tilted and eyes squinted against the late morning glare and she turned off the engine. He held the door open as she got out.
“Hey, Tom.” She smoothed the creases in her pant legs, his gaze tracking the movement, lingering a beat too long before he stepped back, giving her space.
“Hi, Nadia,” he said cautiously—probably because he was shocked she actually showed—and shut the door. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too.”
He didn’t move to embrace her, which she appreciated.
She flipped her auburn hair over her shoulder and gripped her keys so she didn’t rattle them against her thigh as the familiar ache settled in her chest whenever she saw him.
She’d gotten good at ignoring it over the years, boxing the sensation away with everything else she couldn’t afford to feel.
Not when Aimee would see her interest in Thomas as the ultimate betrayal, and especially not when he still looked at her like she was someone to protect rather than someone to want.
So she met him with cool confidence like she did with every other client.
She lifted her chin with a subtle, composed smile.
“You look good.” Healthier. That pleased her.
For a while there, she’d worried about him.
The six years he’d spent coordinating James’s disappearance and reemergence into society, facing Phil’s imprisonment and early release, appeasing his mother, and cooperating with the FBI, DEA and whatever other agency had raided Donato Enterprises, leading to the eventual arrest of the leader of the Hidalgo Cartel, had taken its toll on him.
Thomas had gone gray in his thirties. He was forty-two now, and the silver coloring and its carefree styling suited him.
He’d regained the muscle mass he lost from a lifestyle of chain-smoking cigars, washing his meals down with whiskey, and carrying ungodly loads of stress.
He was about six feet in height, Nadia recalled, the top of her head reaching the underside of his nose when she wasn’t in heels, and from the look of things, he still filled out his white linen shirt and dark wash jeans nicely.
Then she looked at his feet. House loafers.
The corner of her mouth twitched. That was unexpected.
She couldn’t remember when she last saw him dressed so casually.
It sent an unexpected flutter through her chest which she immediately tamped down, focusing on the juniper-scented breeze rather than the way the sunlight caught the silver at his temples.
“Thanks. I’m trying.” He flashed an unassuming smile and she was reminded of the boy she used to spend hours facing across a Monopoly game board.
They had both been competitive. Nobody liked playing against them, and it seemed every game ended in an argument.
But it had always been good fun. Those were some of the best summer afternoons she’d spent when she needed to escape from her house.
She loved her parents but they argued nonstop before finally divorcing.
They watched one another, the air between them taut. She noticed his chest rising slightly further, as if he too felt whatever current hummed between their polite distance.
“Thanks for coming,” he said after a moment.
“Of course.”
His hands went into his pockets. “Want to see the house?”
“I do.”
She’d been here twice before to measure and take pictures before drafting her plans to convert the kitchen and family room into an open-concept living space.
His housekeeper had met her on both occasions to let her into the house.
This was her first visit with him here and she was curious how her plans had turned out and what other work he had done.
She was also curious about where he spent his time. What did his safe space look like?
He led her through a massive iron pivot door into an open-air atrium with a custom water feature.
“Are you hungry? I had lunch delivered,” he tossed back to her, entering the house through another pivot door, this one glass framed in wrought iron and wood.
“I am, but…” She deliberately looked at the time on her phone. “I can’t stay long. I have plans tonight and want to beat traffic.”
“Noted.” The glimmer in his eyes she noticed upon her arrival faded a degree. She’d just set the tone. This was business.
Thomas closed the door behind them and Nadia stopped to just look.
Take it all in. The wood plank ceiling and recessed lighting.
The polished wood flooring and modern mid-century furniture in shades of blue and beige with drops of burgundy.
The walls of glass. Everywhere there were floor to ceiling windows that looked out to the kidney-bean-shaped pool and brushed concrete patio framed in juniper bushes and low-lying cypress trees, all immaculately pruned to showcase the valley below.
Everywhere there was light. Bright open space for the energy to freely flow.
This house was his sanctuary.
Thomas watched her curiously as if waiting for her to say something.
She smiled pleasantly. “Your home is beautiful.”
“Thank you. Means a lot coming from you.”
“I’m dying to see my kitchen.”
“It is your kitchen.” He smirked, tilting his head. “This way.”
He took her down a wide hall that felt like a breezeway with the windows cracked and into the open-concept kitchen/great room combination she’d designed.
The stone fireplace was bookended with more floor to ceiling windows that opened to breathtaking views and an outdoor seating and dining area.
Nadia wondered if Thomas ever entertained guests.
She knew nothing of his social life or whether he kept in touch with friends.
His house was remote from the Bay Area and at least a twenty-minute drive to the nearest shopping center.
Aside from the beauty surrounding them, the thing she noticed most was how relaxed she felt in this space. She could breathe without the usual tightness in her chest.
“The energy here is amazing,” she said offhandedly.
Thomas smiled easily. “That was my intention.” He stood beside the grand kitchen island. Leaning against the counter, he watched her explore his space with a quiet possessiveness she realized with a start. Not of the kitchen, but of this moment. She was here, in his sanctuary.
“Kitchen turned out great,” Nadia remarked, refocusing her attention on the custom Euro-style maple cabinets. “Kudos to your designer.” She winked, gliding her hand over the island’s black marble surface.
His fingers drummed against the stone mere inches from hers before he pulled back and shoved his hand into his pocket with a hesitant laugh under his breath.
“Happy to refer her, but I have the feeling you know her better than I do. I haven’t seen her in a while.
I’d love to catch up with her if she’s willing. ”
This was weird, talking about her in the third person.
But she should have anticipated this. He always spoke boldly around her.
He was also a big flirt, though he’d never admit to being one, and had never made a move on her.
Except for that one kiss. The memory of it flashed between them like lightning.
There and gone, leaving the air crackling in its wake.
She wagged a finger at him and walked over to the windows. She couldn’t get over the view.
“How’ve you been?” Thomas asked.
A part of her would love to catch up with him too. But a bigger part of her was beginning to feel traitorous to Aimee again.
She crossed her arms and whirled around to face him. “All right, why am I here?”
“Why did you come?”
“Uh-uh. We’re not doing that. Don’t waste my time. I’m not here to play games.”
He sighed. “Come with me.”
They walked through another wide hall lined in glass into the primary suite, which also had a wall of floor to ceiling windows. He crossed the room and slid open a barn-style maple-stained door to an empty windowless room.
Nadia immediately pictured a toy room where Thomas could exercise his kinks.
“Please don’t have me design something that makes us both uncomfortable.” A warmth crept up beneath her collarbone as she said this and she felt a traitorous skip of her heart. Was Thomas even into that kind of foreplay? What would it feel like to be at his mercy? Or for him to be at hers?
He frowned, momentarily confused. “I want you to design and oversee the build-out of a panic room.”
“A… what?” Her attention snapped back to him and the empty room behind him.
“Panic room. Have you done one before?”
“Yes, several.” Silicon Valley tech moguls tended toward paranoia.
They were practicing doomsdayers who preferred to be overly prepared.
If they weren’t buying property in New Zealand, they were building bunkers that could sustain a family of four for over a year.
Her gaze darted between his eyes in an attempt to read him. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes, why?” he answered, his tone flat.
“Nothing, it’s just when someone wants a panic room they either have more money than they know what to do with or there’s a reason they need one.” Like a viable threat to their life.
When they were last in touch, Thomas’s company, Donato Enterprises, had been on the brink of bankruptcy and the Donato name had been in the news, and not for the right reasons.
Phil had laundered cartel money through the company.
Donato Enterprises’ reputation suffered and Thomas had been trying to hold on to their clients who were canceling their contracts faster than Apple pushed out iPhone updates when the board of directors, which included his mother as majority shareholder, voted him out.
The company changed its name and Nadia stopped following what was happening after that.
She stopped wondering about the Donato family, and for the most part, stopped thinking about Thomas.
Or she tried to stop thinking about him. But memories and desires tend to surface the more they’re ignored, until they’re unavoidable.
She’d been under the impression all that was behind him.
“I want to be prepared. You never know when the next extinction level event will hit us.”
Nadia pursed her lips. She didn’t buy that excuse.
“Zombie apocalypse?”
“Tom.”
He sighed and his gaze subtly shifted to the stark wall behind her. “I just want to be prepared,” he droned, the flatness in his words reflecting his weariness.
Nadia took a closer look at him. This wasn’t the hard-edged man who once managed a billion-dollar corporation while falsifying his brother’s death and orchestrating a plan worthy of a bingeable thriller to keep him hidden.
This also wasn’t the man who lived off cigars and whiskey, working endless days and sleepless nights trying to salvage a company his older half-brother-slash-cousin had nearly destroyed.
Standing before her was an emotionally drained individual trying to rebuild his life and himself.
“What are you doing here?” she asked gently.
“I live here.”
“I mean why are you way out here. It’s just you in this big house. Don’t you want to be near your family?” James and his boys lived on Kauai. She assumed his mother, Claire, split her time between California and the Islands. She didn’t know where Phil was living and could care less.
Something raw slid across his features. Without thinking, she took a half-step toward him before catching herself.
“We aren’t speaking,” he said. Her mouth parted, but he stopped her from prying further. “It is what it is. I just want to live a quiet life knowing James and his family are safe.”
“What about you?” Was he safe? He had to be lonely.
He forced air out his nose in an irritated huff and shifted his weight. “Panic room. Can you get it done?”
Before Nadia could answer, the giant window behind Thomas exploded. Glass shards propelled toward them at high velocity. Something sharp and hot sliced her cheek and whizzed past her ear with a high-pitched crack as it punctured the drywall behind her.
Thomas threw himself at her. They both went down hard, him landing on her, knocking the wind from her. Her head slammed into the hardwood floor and stars clouded her vision.
Disoriented, Nadia registered two things before her world went dark.
The alarmed, frenzied shout of her name and that someone had just shot her.