Sheltering His Desire by Allyson Lindt

away, like he would have six months ago, Jared flipped it
back.
    Mikki met Tate’s gaze for just a moment
before returning her attention to the game. “Look who we
found.”
    Tate didn’t have to look. Every time he tried
to pull his gaze from Lys, it drifted back to the heat and doubt in
her eyes.
    “I dropped by to say hi to Jared before our
recording session,” Alyssia said.
    Of course she had. Tate hid his grimace under
a wide smile. “Awesome.” His skin buzzed with memories of the night
before, every nerve ending dancing to life in anticipation just
from the way she caught her bottom lip between her teeth. That
wasn’t good. Apparently his rambling thoughts weren’t under
control.
    He took the empty seat next to Vivian, rather
than continuing to stand there and gape. Vivian was the director of
operations for Skriddie Bust Media, and Mikki’s boss. She, Jared,
and Tate had clashed when she joined the company several years ago.
However, a handful of crises that pushed them together, proved the
three clicked on a whole new level when it came to problem solving,
and they’d become solid friends. Jared was closer to her than Tate,
but Tate still had nothing but respect and admiration for her
skills. And she played a mean hand of poker.
    When V raised her brows in question, he
scrambled for the first excuse he could find that wasn’t, “ If I
sit next to Lys, I’m going to spend all of lunch with a hard
on.” “I have a question for you about St. Louis.”
    He didn’t mean the city. Before they hired
Mikki, her former employer, NSS had used her skill without her
knowledge to violate the Skriddie corporate network. Jared and
Mikki had spent several months pulling together enough information
to file a civil suit for the infraction. But the violation itself
had already done damage to Skriddie’s public image. St Louis was
their code name for the PR campaign Tate was spearheading to update
their image.
    “What’s up?” Vivian asked.
    Shit. Now he had to come up with something. A
long series of questions ran through his head in a millisecond.
“How often does operations re-certify developers?”
    “Every six months or as operating systems
update, whichever comes first.”
    Jared jerked his attention from the makeshift
sugar-football game. “Speaking of, we got a document discover
request from Vicker today about intellectual property No clue how
they found out we’d even done that.”
    Damon Vicker was the attorney defending NSS
in the civil suit Skriddie had filed against them.
    Tate was good—great even—with this line of
conversation. It was boring, it was dry, and it would keep him
distracted. “We all know there are other ears inside the company.”
It was part of the reason they called their PR project St. Louis
instead of Fuck-NSS-Over-Publicly.
    “Send me a list of what Vicker wants, and
I’ll grab you the documentation this weekend.” Technically, Tate
was balancing two jobs. He still held his senior VP of sales job at
Skriddie, but was also president of the new venture. The extra work
would be worth it, though, to get his sites off the ground.
    “If everyone’s here, are y’all ready to
order?” The waitress’s pleasant southern lilt drew Tate’s
attention. Her nametag said she was Brittany. Large blonde curls
framed her face, and her lipstick was just bright enough to draw
attention without being too gaudy. Her lips didn’t look as kissable
as Lys’s, though. And Brittany probably didn’t make the same
guttural moans—
    He shook the thoughts away. He wouldn’t
compare her to Alyssia. He’d grab her number instead, to remind
himself how much he enjoyed having the option of hooking up with a
different woman every night.
    “I’m not sure, Brittany.” He met her gaze,
never breaking eye contact, and let his own drawl slide in. A trick
he usually either saved to irritate his mother, or to give him that
boy next door sound. Even though he’d grown up in Georgia, he’d
never had