The video ended.
Alarmed, heart rate higher than normal, Ariel opened the Whitesville Fishing account. She blinked at the amount of money being transferred out. The account didn’t have that much—
It had overdraft protection.Roark’s app had transferred everything in the account and then started drawing on its credit line. The amounts being returned to victims were miniscule in comparison to what had been stolen—but the crooks were out of business.
It was Saturday night. No one at the bank would notice.
Hastily, she cleared all traces of her computer from their files and cleaned out all her drives as well. Roark could do a better job when he returned.
Tentatively, she poked around his family’s social media again, but no one was posting. She wiped out any trace of those searches and in a moment of creativity, checked power and internet outages in the vicinity of Whitesville.
The whole county was down.
He’d shut down theinternet?
She tried to go back to her normal routine but kept playing Reuben’s video, reassuring herself that all was well and Roark had won.
He could go home now, right? If the police arrested his father, at least. She didn’t know how to hack police reports the way Reuben and Roark did.
She fretted until Roark finally returned.
Her security camera showed Jax’s motorcycle dropping him off at 20:20. She hadn’t eaten any supper. Had he? Should she go in the kitchen and prepare something?
She tried to focus on the work on her screen but listened for him to come inside instead.
Respecting her space, he entered through the kitchen.
She couldn’t take it any longer. All the thoughts buzzing inside her head made her want to crawl under the desk. But she wasn’t a child anymore. Roark was safe. Her routine was already shattered. She could leave her work for a few minutes.
She slid back the pocket door. He was nuking the leftover pizza he’d made yesterday. At her entrance, his whole harsh face lit up from beneath his riotous black curls.
“We won, bébé! We cleaned them out!” Without warning, he grabbed her waist and swung her in a circle.
She had to clutch his shoulders to steady herself.
In that second, he kissed her. A real, heart-stopping, mind-numbing exchange of germs that silenced all the noise in her head—for about thirty seconds.
When she realized her breasts were crushed against his chest, her brain short-circuited and she pushed away.
He took her hand and spun her in another circle. “Bébé, do that again, and I’ll die of happiness.”
“People wouldn’t like it if you died,” she said by rote, instinctively tugging free of his grip. She had to concentrate on physical action to keep from collapsing on the floor.
He released her but daringly leaned over to kiss her cheek. “You smell of heaven.”
“Heaven doesn’t exist and has no smell.” Unable to think with all the fizziness buzzing in her head, she backed away to take the pizza out of the microwave. Her knees shook so badly she could barely tear off a slice before collapsing on a chair. Only because she had become accustomed to Roark looming over her kitchen did she keep from sliding under the table and banging her head on the legs.
Business. If she could stick to business—
He poured wine into glasses she didn’t own. How had he smuggled the bottle in here? The wine effervesced in the glass, and Ariel watched in fascination.
“Larraine sent over the bubbly. She couldn’t publicly endorse what we did, but Reuben told her about it. Everyone went home with a bottle.” He handed her a glass.
Ariel sniffed it suspiciously before sipping. She wrinkled her nose as the bubbles hit. “A mayor endorses theft?”
“Not a mayor yet. Not theft to return what was stolen.” He bit off a large chunk of pizza while she nibbled hers.
She tried to process everything, only the bubbly drink and the hot pizza and the hot man practically fizzing like his drink had her paralyzed.