A Slow-Burning Dance Read Online Free

after that. Because they now had
to reconfigure the walls in the corner unit, she also realized her studio
opening would be delayed by another month to six weeks.
    She
really should have walked away as soon as she’d spotted Damien in that parking
lot. She would have found another way to have her space behind the mirrors in
the original unit, and she would have avoided all this angst over something Mr.
Damien Rivera did not even remember.
    ****
    Early
that evening, while Sela was drowning her discord in a pint of berry-flavored
ice cream and a really sappy movie, the intercom buzzed. Frowning, she wondered
if it was a late delivery. She often received packages after business hours,
but couldn’t recall anything she had ordered recently.
    When
she pushed the button to ask who was downstairs, she was told she had a floral
delivery. Someone had sent her flowers? Who would do such a thing? No one she
knew sent flowers. They were horribly difficult to grow underground and
therefore ridiculously expensive.
    She
took the box, waiting until she was back upstairs to open it. Gasping, she
pulled out a large bouquet of wildflowers that she hadn’t seen since living
above ground. She recognized blue sage, California bluebells, desert marigolds,
lacey phacelia, and nasturtiums.
    They
had to be from Damien, but where in the hell had he found them? There was a
cream-colored card in the bottom of the box. Sela turned it over and read the
words, written in a surprisingly pretty script.
    Sela, I thought these might remind
you of happier times. I know I enjoy having native flowers in my apartment to
cheer me up. I’m sorry I was such an ass yesterday. I hope you’ll reconsider
attending the concert tomorrow night with me.
    He’d
written his private Internet phone number at the bottom of the card, with the
words Call anytime next to it.
    Holy shit . It wasn’t only the flowers, or
the phone number. It was what he’d written about them. They cheered him up and
reminded him of happier times. The days when they all lived above ground.
    Sela
knew what Damien and the other eleven men who called themselves the Weathermen
were trying to do. Santino oversaw not only the entire IT department at Rivera
Construction, but Damien’s two secret teams that she had no business knowing
existed, but that Santino had told her about, regardless.
    Each
of the other Weathermen had the same teams, and they all had one common
purpose. To find the bastards responsible for the Tommy Twister virus that had
sent The Madeline Project on a destructive course.
    One
team tracked user names across both company message boards, and across places
online where weather geeks and known hackers hung out. The second team took
those user names and tracked IP addresses and machine IDs.
    Santino
had even told her recently that Barclay Hampton, one of the Weathermen, had
involved his contacts in Homeland Cyber Security. Once these cabróns were found, the government could
deal with them appropriately. That is, if the public didn’t find them and kill
them first.
    What
Damien and his friends were doing was noble, and completely uncharacteristic
for the ruthless womanizers they were portrayed as by the media. Although, one
of them was married and three were now engaged, so perhaps the media had it all
wrong?
    Ace
Easton and Harper Mathews had married less than two weeks ago. Emmett Radcliffe
and Liane Peyton were getting married in six months, Dominic Greco was marrying
Angela Davidson a year from now, and Kane Bannerman and Julianne Wallis hadn’t
yet set a date, but Kane had proposed to her at Ace’s and Harper’s wedding
reception.
    Santino
hadn’t been able to attend Ace’s and Harper’s wedding, but Damien had. He’d
come back and told Santino that while the wedding had been beautiful and
elegant in its simplicity, NorthCentral city was too boring and plain for his
tastes.
    Sela
glanced at the bouquet once more, lifting it to her nose to inhale the scents
that took her