Sean: A Stepbrother Romance (Coded for Love 3)

It was Sean’s fault.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but all it did was allow images to invade her mind, image of places her body wanted to go, things she wanted to do. Between her legs she was hot and damp, pulsating with need.

She sat up on the edge of the bed and looked at the wedge of light coming under the door from the landing—longing for a shadow to pass through it, longing for the door handle to turn and his presence to invade hers.

But he didn’t. He respected the boundaries she’d set up.

“More’s the pity,” she muttered and groaned with frustration.

Chapter Seventeen

Sean was keenly aware of Rowan’s presence upstairs, and the hankering need to make peace with her, even while he tried to concentrate on the discussion at hand. It was late, and he was still in the kitchen together with Rory and Draco, discussing the hack over a beer.

“There’s a possible way around this,” Draco said.

Sean groaned and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes, frustrated. “I’m not having you getting involved, not one of you.”

“Hear me out, Sean.”

Rory sighed. “At least listen to what Draco’s got to say, Sean, consider it.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“I work with a specialist team of security guys now. Basically, they let me in on the inside once I proved I could dig out a mole before they could.”

Sean lifted his hands. “And?”

“They know the guys at Kerridge’s Banking Group, where the hack is. One of them suggested a sting operation. But it would be a big risk to you, and you alone.”

Sean eyeballed Draco. Draco was attempting to convince him they wouldn’t be involved, but Sean didn’t believe it.

“You’d be doing it alone, really. You’d have to trust my contacts to set it up and call the police just at the right moment to save your skin. Personally, I think it’s a big risk, but the offer is there.”

Sean mulled it over. “It might be worth thinking about. The risk is there either way.”

Rory leaned in. “If you want to stick to your plan to go straight—”

“Which I do,” Sean interrupted.

“Then it’s better than doing the hack for this Delahane guy. Like you said at the beginning, he’s never going to let you go if you can pull off a gig like this.”

Sean swiped his hand over the stubble on his jaw, scratching at it while he thought it through from every angle. “How would it work?”

“If security at Kerridge’s are alerted to a potential hack by colleagues in the banking district they can build a secondary security alert system. So once Delahane’s inside man shuts down the firewall, they’re aware via the secondary security system. You go in to do the hack, keeping the gopher and his cronies close at hand. Kerridge’s security alert the police. They spring you.”

Rory nodded. “So Delahane’s men would think their insider didn’t cut the security wall properly. Sean knew nothing about it.”

Sean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right.”

“At worst they’d assume you’d traded them in for police protection.” Draco shrugged. “Either way, you get arrested, for sure…and there’d be some getting you out of it, but I can guarantee the security people will be behind you.”

“How can you guarantee that?”

“Because the owner of the company I work for is going to be my future father-in-law.”

“Seriously?” Rory grinned. “He’s a canny man,” Rory added, directly to Sean. “I met him.”

“Jesus,” Sean responded, “What the hell have you two been up to this past year? You were supposed to be keeping your heads down.”