Caged(144)

That thought brought on a smug smile. "I do feel the need to correct you, Julianne." Molly washed her hands and reached for a fresh hand towel. "Whores get paid to fuck. Sluts do it because they like sex. I fall into the latter category rather than the former." Then Molly sailed out of the bathroom with her head held high.

Screw you, Julianne Westerman. You are a horrible person and an awful mother. Deacon already washed his hands of you, and now so do I. 

Molly nearly laughed out loud. She'd literally washed her hands in front of the woman.

Deacon walked out of the private room just as she walked in.

"Hey there."

"Hey." He pulled her into an alcove in the hallway. "Where have you been?"

"Needed a change of scenery. Why? Did you miss me?"

"Yeah." He kissed her. "You sure you're all right?"

No. I hate that your mother is a sorry excuse for a human being. "Just tired. Someone got me up early." She forced a smile. "But I'll swap sex for sleep any day."

"Me too." Deacon kissed her with infinite sweetness and then nearly blistered her lips with his sudden burst of passion.

Head spinning, she clung to him as he pressed her against the wall.

"Seriously, Deacon. This is not an alley behind some low-rent nightclub. This is a country club. Stop embarrassing yourself by acting like a horny seventeen-year-old," Julianne hissed behind them.

He'd broken the kiss the instant she'd interrupted them. But he didn't acknowledge his mother in any way. He kept those hypnotic blue eyes burning into Molly's.

Julianne harrumphed, and her footsteps faded into the distance.

Before Molly said anything, her cell phone buzzed in her skirt pocket. She pulled it out and checked the caller ID. Hardwick Designs. "Hello?"

"Molly. Thank the goddess I got you," Presley said. "I know you're with Deacon in Texas, and I wouldn't call if it wasn't an absolute emergency. But we're in major crisis mode here."

"We?"

"Me and Amery."

If Amery was at the office on a Friday night, something was majorly wrong. "What's the crisis?" Presley started talking so fast Molly couldn't understand a word. "Whoa. Slow down. Give me one second." She gave Deacon an apologetic look. "Sorry. I have to take this."

"Sounds like it. Come find me when you're done."

"Pres? Hang on until I get to a place I can talk." She cut down the hallway. "Tell me the problem."

"Something is wrong with my hard drive. So no big deal, right? I figured I'd get the files off the cloud service and we'd look at them on Amery's computer because I back up every night. But we can't access anything on the cloud service."

Presley went into a detailed explanation of everything they'd done to try to access the files. When they'd called the help line, the person told them the account didn't exist.

"What project are you looking for files on?"

"Okada. And it's the new files that Maggie sent on Tuesday. I saved them to my hard drive and then uploaded them to the cloud."

"Amery doesn't have a copy of them on her computer?"

"No. She hasn't seen the specs. Since Ronin had to go to San Francisco, she thought she'd work on them tonight. She called me in a panic when she couldn't retrieve the files, and I came down to help."

That was weird. "Is there a chance your computer got a virus?"

"There's always a chance, but I run the antivirus programs for that every Friday afternoon."

"You did that today?"

"Yes. And nothing popped."

"You didn't do a hard backup copy on thumb drives or a file sharer for those files?"

"No. Okada is strict about that."

Molly had been afraid something like this would happen. "Let's start with your computer."

For the next fifteen minutes, Molly walked her through each step, backtracking, but nothing happened except additional frustration.



       
         
       
        

If the heavy breathing on the phone was any indication, Presley had reached the freak-out zone. She said, "I hate this. Why can't I figure this shit out?"

"Because if you were a computer-tech expert, you'd be working for a company that troubleshoots technical problems."

"If we did our design work on a Mac, we wouldn't have this problem," Presley snapped.

"Bullshit," Amery said in the background.

Molly held her breath, waiting for their ongoing argument to gain traction. When it didn't, she said, "It'll be fine. Just calm down."

Amery kept yakking at Presley while Molly was trying to tell her what to do next.