The Love Language of an Assassin

8

Wednesday morning Jesse entered the Haugen house with dread. She was becoming very tired of this housekeeping routine. Her mother had done this work to make a better life for her kids so they wouldn’t have to do it and here she was, doing it.

She found the list on the table and made a face as it matched the one from the first day she had been there when he’d thrown her out. She really missed being fired from the job. The truth was, she had found herself more than once thinking about the behemoth of a man and it was bugging her. He was not her type in any form. She didn’t know why she was strangely attracted to him, and she had to admit she was. Since the morning she had considered him rolling around on the floor with a woman spilling wine all over the place in a crazed lust, her mind kept replaying her stupid thoughts.

She looked up just in time to see him coming out of his gym holding a white towel around his neck and again naked from the waist up.

“Good morning, Jessamine.”

“It’s Jesse and stop baiting me.” She moved past him towards his kitchen.

He frowned at her, “that’s quite a bruise on your arm.”

She looked down and remembered after debriefing she and Cat had decided to blow off steam and spar and they ended up kicking the s**t out of each other. Cat had landed a damn hard kick to her bicep. Naomi had stopped the fight telling them they were due for a out of country op in the coming month and they couldn’t do it with broken bones. “It’s nothing. I figured I’d get one to hide the ones fading from your thumbprints.”

“It’s not nothing,” he stepped closer, cutting off her path to the kitchen. “What happened?” his blue eyes were fixated on her arm, “did someone do this to you?”

She chuckled, “yes, someone did this to me. One of my best friends actually. Stupid b***h. We spar together a lot.”

“And you hurt each other?” his eyes were incredulous as his arm reached out and gently examined her bicep

Jesse knew she had a problem with olfactory sensation. Scent was a strong trigger for her and right now, this sweaty man was smelling musky, masculine, and exuding the pheromones her libido was craving. His touch, considering his size was surprisingly soothing on her arm as he ran his fingers over the mark Cat’s foot had made. She wondered what his hands would feel like all over her naked body. The thought shook her, and she jerked her arm away. “We have blackbelts. It’s what we do. She has a bruised rib so we’re even.” She shoved past him and dropped the bin of products from her other hand onto the floor and immediately moved to the dishwasher to put the dishes away.

“Are you angry at me?” Torben followed her into the room. “You appear to be upset.”

“Dude,” she flicked a glance in his direction, her brown eyes guarded, her face taking the countenance she used for interrogation, “I have no reason to be angry at you. I’m just here to do a job for my mom and then be on my way. No need to chitchat. I have my own things to do today. Just want to get in and get out.”

He nodded once in her direction and then left, and she heard him climbing the stairs again, two at a time. The man had incredibly long legs. She contemplated the question about his stride. If he always did two stairs at a time, when in a hurry, did he switch to three stairs?

She pondered this as she finished the dishes and began scrubbing the countertops when Mya suddenly popped her head in, “hey, just running to grab coffees and pastry from the shop up the street. Would you like one?”

“No, thanks. I’ve had two already,” she hadn’t even been to bed yet considering debrief had lasted until two, she had sparred until four and she had needed to be here for six.

“Okay, I’ll be back,” the older woman gave a small smile and then left.

She hadn’t been gone two minutes and Jesse’s phone was ringing. She saw the display and shook her head, “Draxton, if you’re calling me to mock me about last night, don’t bother.”

“Nope, I need a favor. Are you cleaning toilets today?”

“Yup, here now, why?”

“Go to his office and straight to his computer but turn on the scrambler on your phone before you do. I tried to call him but he’s not answering.”

“He’s showering.” She touched the app on her phone Clara had put on all the Bellona agent phones. It interfered with listening devices and downloads.

“Did you make him all sweaty?” Clara teased her. “I know you like him because you flirted with Ben in front of him and you never flirt with Ben.”

“Shut up Draxton, he was in the gym when I got here,” she moved to the office and pushed the door open. She stood in front of the computer. “What am I doing?”

“Is it on?”

“It’s on,” she sat down in the oversized office chair, “remember the show where the little girl sits in the giant chair to read books. I feel like her,” she tried to pull the chair closer. “Seriously, you could put two of me in here.”

She put her phone on speaker and began typing on the computer and then watched as Clara took over the screen. She leaned back and watched her friend do her work for several minutes. She heard his footsteps on the stairs and wondered his reaction to her helping her boss hack his computer.

“What the hell are you doing at my computer?”

Jesse looked up and grinned at the raw fury of the man standing in her door. Angry had been her first guess. “Watching a master at work.” She pointed to her phone, “Clara’s on the phone. Also, everything in here is scrambled right now and you can speak freely.”

“Scrambled how?” he moved to stand behind her, “and I’m not sure I understand how you meet the minimum-security qualifications to be – “

Clara cut him off, “Jesse is one of mine and if you have a problem that presidents of multiple countries including the one, you’re in, don’t have, then perhaps you need services from another company.”

Jesse chuckled, “down girl. He’s simply confused I’ve gone from emptying his dishwasher to hacking his computer as part of Draxton.”

Two emails popped up on the screen, “you send these?” Clara’s voice was cryptic obviously annoyed she’d been questioned on using Jesse.

“No.” he furrowed his brow in confusion, “I’ve never seen these before.”

“Jesse, what do you see?” Clara added a third email sent the afternoon before. “Compare this to the other two.”

“The one from yesterday, the punctuation, grammar and syntax is someone who learned English as a second or third language. It’s grammatically correct and makes sense but it’s perfunctory. The two from this morning, though they bare the same signatures are different. The punctuation is not as precise, and the language is less stilted. It’s an individual who’s been writing professionally in English for years though its not lazy. Additionally, the language is attempting to sound like the person they’re mimicking. Frankly, if someone could mock Torben’s accent in an email, this would be it.” She almost laughed as he grumbled about not having an accent. “Clara time stamps on these two emails were when I was here in the house. Just Torben, myself and his PA.”

“Yup,” Clara agreed, “the emails were sent with the info and then deleted and then removed from the recycle bin. A person who knows her way around a computer. Thankfully, my program intercepted them, and they won’t reach their intended destination. I’m sure she’s getting heated calls right now from whoever was anticipating these emails this morning and she’s wondering what she did wrong.”

“You’re suggesting Mya is the one selling my company secrets?” Torben asked incredulously, “she’s been with my company for fifteen years and has seen more than the bits of information which has been passed off.”

“Blackmail,” both women said unanimously.

“What? How do you come to this conclusion?”

“Mya likes you Torben,” Jesse explained, “she respects you and she likes you. She doesn’t want to do what she’s being forced to do and therefore she’s giving them pieces of information which are unlikely to cause significant harm to your company but enough to comply with whatever is being demanded of her.”

“I’ll send in a team to do a full sweep of the house just in case she planted bugs.” Clara said bluntly, “they’ll be there in the hour. I’ll also send someone to your office.”

Jesse heard the door, “she’s back with the coffee. Play it cool Torben. You don’t know anything, and you can’t fire her. We need her to keep doing what she’s doing. Nothing will get away from Clara but until she does her background dig, you need to play along.”

“I’m not sure I know how,” he glanced frantically towards the door. “I’m pissed off, I’m not sure I can.”

“f**k,” Jesse grumbled. Clara said she was hanging up and she jumped from the chair, grabbed his head, and kissed his mouth hard. She kept his face held in her hands as she heard the footsteps of the woman coming down the hall.

What had started as a way to keep him from spilling everything, she realized as he started to return her kiss had become a fiasco. The man could kiss like a bloody rockstar, and he immediately was all in. His lips devoured hers and his tongue slipped alongside hers and his hands wound tightly around her waist pulling her tight to his body. He smelled of his soap, he tasted minty, and his hair was still damp against her fingertips and a low growl escaped his chest as her arms wound around his neck. She moaned involuntarily.

“Oh my God,” Mya’s voice broke into the room. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Jesse jumped back aware she’d let herself get lost in his kiss. “Well s**t,” Jesse looked over her shoulder and made wide eyes and then back to Torben’s puzzled ones. “Did it work? Am I fired?” she looked to Mya. “I remembered you saying he fires people for throwing themselves at him. I’m really tired of cleaning toilets for my mother.” She tapped his chest and met his eyes, her back to Mya, “you’re going to be pretty confused the rest of the day huh? Probably not even behaving like your normal self, thinking of me kissing you in your office and how you want to fire me, but you can’t cause you like my mom.”

She turned to face Mya completely and grabbed her phone off the desk, “poor guy. It’s what happens when you put ideas in a Latina’s head.” She looked back at him from the door, “am I fired? Can I go?”

“Go clean your toilets Jessamine before I call your mother and tell her you’re violating company policy,” he grunted, his face red as he moved things around his desk.

“I dare you to call her, please?” Jesse mocked him as he lifted his eyes and stared at her. Her smile faded with the realization, perhaps the man wasn’t one she should have trifled with like she just had. He suddenly was laser-focused on her direction, reminding her of Fluffy the one time he ever caught a mouse. “s**t,” she muttered and turned around looking once to Mya, “it was worth a shot. Cut the big guy some slack today, he’s going to be weird.”

She walked back to the kitchen and then heard laughter coming from her phone and looked down in dismay, before taking it off speaker and putting it to her ear, “Draxton if you tell me you’re still on the line, I’m going to quit all of my jobs and move to Siberia.

“Maybe he’ll go with you and keep you warm,” the woman chortled with glee. “I needed to ask you something else but then you got all handsy with the man. He’s definitely going to be discombobulated for the day.”

“What did you want?” she lifted her cleaning rag from the sink where she’d left it.

“Watch her, Jesse. Until I find out what is going on, just watch her,” Clara’s voice was serious and commanding. “If someone has her selling out a man she respects and admires, they have enough on her to make sure his security is compromised. He has his own security team he uses only when he feels it is necessary. He refused to call them in full time for a bit, but I’m concerned.”

“Who does he use part time? Please don’t say my brother’s future father-in-law.”

“Your brother’s father-in-law,” Clara ignored her request. “If you want to get under Cam’s wife’s skin, call her Nana. Elian did it yesterday and she exploded on him.”

“I’ll remember for next fight night,” she laughed lowly, “they found out it’s a boy on Friday. My big brother is losing his mind Portia won’t marry him, and his son won’t have his name. I’m having dinner with him tonight.”

“Must be weird he’s moved out now, huh.”

She looked up to see Torben coming into the kitchen to grab a glass of water and marking the sink she’d just cleaned. She considered holding his head under the running tap. She answered Clara instead, “It’s really weird, Clara, he lived with me for three years and now he’s gone and it’s just me and Fluffy. I love him so much and I just want the best for him, but he just keeps making stupid decisions. Trust me, I know I’m the queen of stupid decisions but man he’s dumb. I know there’s only eight months between us but sometimes I feel eons older than him. Like he just turned thirty. Shouldn’t he be smarter by now?” She wrinkled her nose at the man scowling at her as he nudged her with the door of the dishwasher to put his glass away.

“He’ll sort it out. He loves her.” Clara’s voice was muffled, “ugh, my grandfather is here. I have to go. Just keep an eye out, okay?”

“Will do, boss lady. Ciao,” she hung up the phone and glared at Torben who was staring down at her.

“You’re in love with a guy and you pulled that stunt?”