Page 23 of Emma's Element

“What? You are,” she stated to her friend before taking a sip of her beer.

Marcus’s curiosity was piqued. Emma was a hacker. Was there anything this woman couldn’t do? “Hacking?” he asked.

“I focused on cryptology, code-breaking, while earning my degree.”

“No shit?”

She giggled. “No shiii-take mushrooms.”

He threw his head back and roared with laughter, loving her tendency to avoid curse words. She was too cute for words. “Is there anything you can’t do, Emma?”

“I’ve told you before . . . dance.” He smiled; there was no way he could forget that. The images that had gone through his head since she’d told him that had nearly driven him crazy. Images of her, in his arms, as they danced slowly, bodies pressed together. The fantasy had kept him company for nearly three months.

“We’ll get to that eventually,” he said suggestively, causing her to blush. He loved seeing the rush of color enter her cheeks. “So, what happened a year ago to make you want to switch jobs in the Coast Guard.” Her expression went blank, the pretty blush leeching from her face. He almost felt bad for not dropping it upon seeing her reaction. But he wanted to know everything there was to know about her. He lowered his voice, speaking softly. “Obviously, there’s a story there.”

“Why do you always change the subject when someone asks you about your friends? Obviously, there’s a storythere!” she countered.Touché.

Jolene chose that moment to leave them. “I need to go check on . . . something,” she mumbled, clearly making up an excuse to leave. Emma looked like she was about to beg her friend to stay, but Jolene slipped out before she could say anything.

When they were alone, he sighed. “I don’t talk about friends because I don’t have any to talk about,” he informed her sadly. “There have been too many . . . issues with the people I’ve let into my life in the past.”

“Wait . . . what?” she asked incredulously, her doe eyes widening. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t often let people into my life anymore.”

“How does one go through life without making any friends?” she wondered.

“Not really by choice, believe me.”

She looked at him, confusion in her dark eyes. “I don’t understand.”

He sighed again. He might as well tell her all of it. “I’d been a poor judge of character when it came to choosing friends. Eventually, I figured it wasn’t worth the bother. There have been a few who I thought were my friends. A few coworkers here and there. But they never worked out.”

“How so?”

“They just wanted to use me to further their careers. Always demanding something from me. I never stooped to their level. Never gave them what they wanted from me. Eventually, they would give up, and I wouldn’t hear from them again.”

Emma placed her hand over his on the table, and he soaked in the sensation. “I’m so sorry, Marcus. That’s just not fair.” He turned his hand over under hers and laced their fingers together, pleased when she didn’t pull away. He didn’t know for sure that his shitty behavior from their previous dinner was what had made Emma initially try to distance herself from him, but he was glad when she fell back into the Emma he’d grown to admire. The woman with the kindest heart of anyone he’d ever met. Especially since she seemed willing to excuse his piss poor attitude and insensitivity about Donna from the other night to offer him comfort. Warmth spread through his chest.

“Even when the friends I had in high school would contact me, it was always for an ulterior motive.”

“People suck!”

He smiled at her assessment. “The cream of the crop, though, the one I thought was a true friend, turned out to be the worst. I’d shared more with Jim than any of the others. He was a buddy, you know, someone to shoot the shit with. I thought we had a solid friendship. Like what you have with Jolene.” He stopped, not sure he wanted to continue. He’d been so thoroughly duped. It was humiliating.

“What happened?”

“I made the mistake of putting him in charge of several charities I’d started. He’d embezzled one point two million dollars before I noticed his duplicity.” And when he’d discovered what Jim had done, he’d been both enraged and ashamed. How could he have been such a dreadful judge of character? He’d never seen it coming. He’d been blindsided.

“What the backscratcher? Marcus, that’s horrible.” He chuckled at her use of another creative curse. She squeezed his hand, anchoring him to the here and now as memories of all the betrayals, all the hurts, flooded through him.

“Turns out he was an addict, and I never noticed. He used the money to supply his habit. Every single penny went up his nose or was injected into his veins.” The anger was still there at the surface. He’d had to use his own money to refund the charities. People had donated their hard-earned money to help support his charities, and Jim had stolen it all. It had been a betrayal of epic proportions. Not just to him, but to the people who’d benefitted from the charities. The money was just a drop in the bucket for him; he’d always matched any dollar raised anyway. But it had been an embarrassment. One he was still trying to recover from.

“What happened to him? The embezzler.”

“He got two years behind bars. Don’t know what happened to him after he was released.” And he didn’t care. “After that, I gave up on people.”

“That sounds very lonely,” Emma said sympathetically.

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