Page 101 of Coming Home (The Surrender Trilogy 3)
trouble of changing her information.
“You have mail,” Lucian said as she walked into the living room one hot afternoon.
“I do?”
“Yep.” He held out the envelope.
Her hands slowly took the paper and stared dumbly at it. She’d never had mail before. Her finger
slid under the lip of the envelope and she unfolded the paper. There were the details of her account
with a bunch of other stuff written on the statement. She smiled.
“I should really give this back to you if I’m not using it for my education.”
Lucian was busy doing something on his laptop. His glasses perched at the end of his nose,
reflections from the computer screen showing on the lenses. He didn’t look at her. “Knock it off.”
She stuck out her tongue. “You’re grumpy today.”
“I’m losing a deal.”
She stilled. “The green deal? The big one?” She knew the deal was being threatened, but she never
suspected he might actually lose it. It was Lucian. He didn’t lose.
“It’s always a big deal when you put over a year into something that never comes to fruition.”
“I’m sorry. Is there anything you can do to fix it?”
“I’ve tried. I don’t know who I’m up against, and it’s pissing me off to no end. Somewhere in the
past few months another company fell into the mix and they’ve taken arbitrage to a certain form of
espionage. I’ll get over the loss, but I want to find out who’s screwing with my interests.”
“What’s the name of the company again?”
“We’re procuring the rights to a company called Labex. They build windmills all over the country
and deal in cleaner energy.”
He was not in any sort of joking mood, and she wasn’t sure anything she could say would be
welcome or helpful. Giving him his privacy, she grabbed a muffin off a tray and disappeared into the
other room.
She turned on the television and nibbled her breakfast. There was something very unsatisfying
about not being able to solve problems for Lucian. As she ate her muffin she watched Gilligan’s
Island and tried to think of ways to put him in a better mood. Her mind ran over various images and she stilled when she thought about what he’d said, actually considered his words.
Cleaner energy. She wasn’t exactly sure what that was, but she knew what windmills were. There
weren’t any in Folsom and being that she’d never left Folsom except to visit the estate, she wasn’t
sure how she knew what they were.
She frowned as her mind kept returning to the same images of a man in a hard hat standing next to
an enormous white tower surrounded by nothing but blue sky. There was another image floating
around in her head of an enormous turbine in a warehouse.
Where had she seen that? On television? In a book? She sat up straight and her eyes suddenly went
wide. “Parker.”
Tossing her muffin in the trash, she went to the bathroom and made quick work of getting ready. As
she stared in the mirror, fixing her hair, she remembered images of the multiple books stacked
throughout Parker’s apartment. The majority were worn-out paperbacks and novels, but there were
some that caught her attention because they were nothing like what he usually read.
Several had pictures promoting eco-friendly trends, showing vibrant pictures of a greener earth.
There were ones about solar energy and definitely some about windmills. She’d only flipped through
them once, barely able to comprehend what she had seen, but that was where she’d seen the pictures.
Anger had her breathing heavily as she threw on shorts and a T-shirt. She needed to get past Lucian.
Hopefully he was still distracted enough that she could make up some lame excuse and get away for
an hour. So help her, if it was Parker—
“Are you going somewhere?”
She jumped and turned to find Lucian standing in the closet door. “I, uh, left a book at the
apartment. I figured since you were working I’d go get it and do some studying.” Guilt burned through
her as the lie passed her lips.
“Oh, okay. Isadora called. She wanted to know if we felt like coming by for dinner. She’s leaving
for Italy soon and I’d like us to spend some time with her.”
“Sure.”
He stretched and pulled his glasses off his face. “I’m going to shower and get back to work. I’m
getting a headache. You going to study?”
“Yes.” Well, research was more like it, but same difference.
He kissed her and disappeared into the bathroom. As soon as she heard the water turn on, she
grabbed her sneakers and left. On her way past Lucian’s desk she stilled. His cell sat on top of his
closed laptop. She glanced back at the door and, on impulse, grabbed the phone and set it to silent. She was on the elevator rushing to the ground three seconds later, her heart racing.
As the doors to the lobby parted, she finished tying her shoes. There were ways to be sneaky that
reeked of guilt and knowingly doing something wrong, and then there were ways that were so in-your-
