CHAPTER THREE
Stepping through the doors of the club, Asher paused to take a deep breath, grimacing as the heat assaulted him. The oppressive humidity had blanketed the city for more than a week now, and with thunderstorms in the forecast, he didn’t think it would ease anytime soon.
“Do you live around here?”
Cameron tugged at his collar. “No, I live in Mission Grove.”
He’d heard of it, but he’d never had a reason to visit the town. “And Nico?”
“We’ve both lived there all our lives,” Cameron confirmed, his lips twitching. “He pretends to hate it.”
“Then why not move?”
His lips finally stretched into a smile. “I said he pretends to hate it.”
Unsure of how to respond to that, Asher let the subject drop. “So, do you work here in the city?”
It had been a while since he’d had to engage in small talk and pretend to be interested in something other than mutual orgasms. Funny enough, he found with Cameron he didn’t have to pretend.
He genuinely wanted to know more about the guy, even all the little boring things, like how he made his living and what he did in his spare time .
“I do.” His hand came up to rub the back of his neck, and he glanced at Asher as if trying to determine how much he should share. “Stone Digital Solutions,” he added after a long pause. “It’s located in one of the office buildings over on Alpha Road.”
“Alpha Road.” Asher flipped through the map in his head. “That’s on the north side of the city, right?”
“Northwest to be precise. I didn’t plan it that way, but it worked out well. It’s only about a fifteen-minute drive from my place when traffic isn’t bad.”
Asher bobbed his head, computing the information to memory, though he couldn’t really say why. “Family business?”
“Nope. All mine.” His eyes shined with pride, and he held his head a little higher, his back a little straighter.
“It was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever attempted, but also the most rewarding.
I enjoy the work, and we’ve built a solid client list that pays the bills. I can’t really ask for more than that.”
Asher admired that kind of passion and dedication, but as they turned the corner at the end of the block, he couldn’t help but tease. “Tell me, Mr. Stone, exactly what kind of solutions do you provide?”
Pulling at his collar again, Cameron chuckled. Asher noticed he did that a lot when he was nervous. This time, however, he thought it might be from the heat .
“We provide forensic analysis services mostly. Accounting, security, recovery, tracing, that sort of thing.”
Asher couldn’t hold back his laughter if he tried. “Luke asked if you were an accountant when you walked into the club,” he tried to explain when Cameron frowned at him. “Sorry, but you do have the look.”
Cameron shrugged, seemingly unbothered by the description. “I guess, but I’m not an accountant.” He winked. Actually freaking winked. “I’m a forensic computer analyst.”
“No idea what that is.” It sounded sexy—in a hot nerd kind of way. “You what? Dig through people’s personal files?”
“Not exactly, but you’re not far off the mark.
Mostly, I keep businesses safe from hackers.
If one of my clients experience a security breach, it’s my job to find out how it happened, then trace it back to the source.
” He bobbed his head a few times, his gaze locked on the pavement.
“But, yes, I am sometimes hired by a company to sort through corrupted data, retrieve deleted files, or find hidden information.”
“That’s really fucking impressive.” He’d seen that kind of stuff on television, but he’d never met anyone in real life who did things like that.
Cameron shrugged again, and his cheeks flushed. “I guess. I mean, I’m pretty good at it, and I won’t downplay the importance of what I do, but it’s more of a practiced skill than anything. Nothing like what you do.”
“I make up shit for a living.” He mirrored Cameron’s shrug. “I’m just lucky that some of it is entertaining.” He meant that from the bottom of his heart, too. Some of his success had come from hard work and a desire to be the best. A bigger part of it had been timing and luck.
“I don’t think you give yourself enough credit,” Cameron murmured, holding open the door to the coffeehouse and waving Asher ahead of him. “I couldn’t do it. A lot of people can’t.”
They fell into a comfortable silence while they waited for their turn to order, and Asher couldn’t stop himself from eyeing the woman in front of them.
Curvy, with a neon blue mohawk and a tattoo sleeve filled with macabre images of death, she certainly stood out, but it wasn’t her appearance that drew his attention.
The top of her spiked hair barely reached his sternum, and though she hadn’t spoken a word, she held a commanding presence he couldn’t ignore.
She stared straight ahead, her shoulders back, and every inch of her emanated a calm confidence he’d often tried to imitate but had never quite mastered.
The mask he projected to the world was one of arrogance and indifference.
He knew, because he’d spent a lot of years constructing and perfecting it.
What would it be like to actually feel as confident as he pretended to be ?
When the woman reached the counter, she didn’t speak harshly, or even loudly, but the barista nodded quickly and nearly tripped over himself to fill her order.
Black coffee. Nothing fancy, and yet, the kid behind the counter presented the paper cup to her as if he’d just poured her sixteen ounces of twenty-four karat, liquid gold.
When she walked away, Asher watched her go until Cameron’s voice pulled him back.
“One iced caramel macchiato, and…” Cameron trailed off, looking up at him expectantly.
“Iced vanilla latte,” he said, picking the first thing he saw on the chalkboard menu behind the counter.
Cameron shrugged, his eyes glinting with humor. “I figured you for a black coffee kind of guy, to be honest.”
“The writing thing?” he asked, being purposely vague.
“The writing thing.”
Asher shook his head, exhaling with a quiet huff. “You watch too much television. It’s not like I stay up all night, hunched over my computer in nothing but a robe, frantically writing to meet a deadline while pounding back insane amounts of caffeine.”
“You sure about that?” Those icy blue eyes sparked a little brighter, and Cameron’s mouth curved on one side. “Because, I have to say, that’s an oddly specific description.”
“Description is kind of my job. ”
And yes, maybe he’d painted an accurate picture of what he looked like at the end of every book. Well, sometimes he wrote in his underwear instead of a robe, but he didn’t think the rest of the coffee shop needed to know that.
Placing a hand over his abdomen, Cameron laughed, a sound rich and vibrant that echoed through Asher and shifted something inside of him. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to picture it.”
“Picture what exactly?” He liked this, liked the teasing. Who’d have guessed?
“You. Hair messy, unshaven, bags under your eyes, cursing at your imaginary friend while you try to hammer out an intense fight scene with only a pot of coffee and CSI reruns to keep you company.”
“Umm.” Eyes wide, stunned speechless, Asher just stared.
“Don’t worry,” Cameron assured him. “I’m not stalking you.”
“Of course not,” he recovered, offering an easy smile. “If you were, you’d know that I have a Keurig and prefer sixties sitcoms.”
The barista called Cameron’s name, and as he walked toward the counter to get their drinks, Asher swore he heard him mumble, “Why am I not surprised?”
Well, that made one of them. Asher was surprised as hell that he hadn’t run screaming from the café yet.
He’d already revealed more to Cameron than anyone else knew about him, apart from Luke.
Luke was safe, though. Cameron…he hadn’t quite decided what Cameron Stone was, but it scared the hell out of him.
Talking to him was too easy. It felt too right, too natural, to share parts of himself with the guy.
As long as they floated along the surface, he didn’t see any harm in it, but what else could Cameron make him reveal?
What other secrets would the unassuming man pry from him with nothing more than a smile and a kind word?
Asher wasn’t a sharing-is-caring kind of guy.
He was selfish, self-absorbed, self-centered, and probably a lot of other “self” words he couldn’t think of at the moment.
He wasn’t a cold-hearted bastard or anything, but truthfully, he didn’t really care about other people’s lives.
As long as it didn’t affect him, he figured live and let live—and under no circumstances did he need to hear about it.
With Cameron, he wanted to know all those little details. What he liked, what he disliked. What pushed his buttons, what made him tick.
“Hey, you okay?”
Crap, he’d totally checked out again. “I’m good.” He took his coffee and followed Cameron to a two-top table near the front windows. “I zone out sometimes. Occupational hazard.”
Cameron nodded as if that was a perfectly reasonable excuse for his pseudo-zombie act.
“No need to explain. I get it. My sister, Natalie, has always been the creative one in the family. She gets lost in her own head all the time.” Leaning back in his chair, he wrapped both hands around his cup and chuckled. “It used to drive my parents crazy.”
At the mention of family, Asher’s palm turned damp, and his stomach did a slow roll that had him clenching his teeth.
Better to steer the conversation toward less revealing topics.
Otherwise, he’d probably end up spilling is guts, and then he’d have to disappear on the most intriguing person he’d met in what felt like forever.
“You said you were a fan,” he blurted, then took a long sip of his— what the fuck had he ordered?— drink to steady his nerves. “I’m assuming you have questions.”