Page 20 of Royal Hacker

The next thing I knew, my phone pinged. It was a text message from Sam:Do you want to be my girlfriend yes or no?

I replied:Hell yes.

Sam’s deep voice chuckled on the other end of the phone. “That response wasn’t an option. I think you voided the text message, and we aren’t able to see each other anymore.”

“Not funny. You already sent it, and you can’t back out now.” It was one of the best text messages I’d ever received. I couldn’t wait to tell Bridget and Sophie that Sam had asked me to be his girlfriend. It almost made me feel like I was in high school again.

“What time are you getting to the airport tomorrow?” I wanted to pick Sam up from the airport.Maybe I could jump him in the car. He’s made me wait so long, I’m a fiend for him.

There was a long pause on the other end, and my heart dropped. He’d promised he was coming home. If he changed his mind, I was ready to jump on my jet and fly out there.

“Sorry, I was trying to pull up the email Mia sent. Looks like I’ll be getting in around three o’clock. Brock’s gonna pick me up from the airport. I’m going to run into the office for a quick debriefing with the team. I’ll be at your work around five o’clock to pick you up.”

“You don’t want me to pick you up from the airport?”

“I would love to see you first thing tomorrow, but I know if you pick me up, I would want to go straight back to my place. I need to debrief the team and find out how our other cases are going. Also, since tomorrow is Friday, why don’t you pack and stay with me all weekend?”

“I would love to stay with you all weekend, but I have Lemon. I don’t like putting her in daycare, and Jessica has so much going on that I don’t want to bother her.” I loved my Lemon, but sometimes, she made things kind of hard.

“I have already bought a dog bed and the same food you buy for Lemon at the house. She’s all set. We can pick her up, or I can send Brock over to the house to grab her. I can send Brock now, so she’s there when we get home.”

Sam thinking about Lemon in advance made my heart melt. It was too early to say for sure, but I thought I was falling in love.I take that back—IknowI’m in love with him. I hope over time, he feels the same way.

“You don’t mind having Lemon come over for the weekend? It would mean the world to me.”

“Nope. She’s coming over, and I’ve also stocked Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and hot cocoa. You will have no excuse to leave my house this weekend.”

We’d been talking for a couple of hours when I started to get tired. Sam asked me to send him a couple risqué pics before I went to bed, so he could relieve his stress. We said our goodbyes, and I couldn’t wait to see him.

I was working on stripping down to my bra and boy shorts when someone came barreling into my bedroom.

“Holy shit! Why are you almost naked?” my sister and Bridget screamed at the same time.

Lemon took off barking.She could have barked to let me know someone was in the house.As I was trying to find my shirt, my phone buzzed.What the hell?

“What do you mean, why am I almost naked? It’s my bedroom in my house. You guys don’t believe in knocking on a door or calling to let someone know you’re coming?”

“Are you taking naked pics? You of all people know people can hack iCloud accounts and phone accounts and that stuff gets leaked.”

I’d already been working on an app that removed the photos I sent to Sam. We had an encrypted tunnel between us so people couldn’t steal the data. He would get the pictures for two hours, then they were automatically deleted from the drives.

I explained to Bridget and Jessica that Sam had been helping me test the app. They both thought an app that allowed them to send encrypted messages was fascinating and wanted to try it out. Bridget said she always wanted to send Alex pics while they were both at work. But I didn’t want to hear about my boss getting naked in her office to send her husband pictures.

“Well, since you guys are here, you want to help me take a few pictures?”

Jessica shrugged. “I guess since we’re twins, it’s not like I haven’t seen you before.”

It took us about fifteen minutes to get the right picture. I had around ten texts from Sam, complaining that he hadn’t gotten anything through the app and that he thought it was broken.

“Since I’ve seen my employee naked, let me go wash out my eyes. Let’s meet in the living room to have ice cream and talk about your date tomorrow,” Bridget said over her shoulder while heading out of my bedroom.

I was excited that Bridget and Jessica had come over and was happy to see CJ and Sophie were sitting on the couch. A couple pizza boxes were sitting on the coffee table. Sophie was typing away on my laptop. She was more than likely messing with my settings. I needed to grab my laptop before she caused me a week’s worth of work on my system.

“So do you need any tips for the club tomorrow night?” CJ asked.

“Sam doesn’t want to spend our first night in the club. He wanted it to be special and spend it up at his place.” I suspected my face had turned as red as a tomato.

“Are you going to change your hair color before he gets in tomorrow?” Bridget asked.

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