Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It

by Lucy Monroe

  Hehad forgiven her and assured her that he had no intention of taking legal action against her.

  It was too bad she couldn't forgive herself.

  She hadn't had the courage to ask how Marcus had taken her defection and had never called again.

  However, knowing she didn't have the threat of prosecution against her, she had been able to bring her family home to thePacific Northwest when Jenny got a clean bill of health from her French doctors.

  They hadn't moved back toPortland . That would be pushing Alex's understanding too far, she had thought.Seattle had been the next best alternative. Only now it looked like it wasn't far away enough and Marcus wasn't nearly as forgiving as Alex.

  Memory of the chilling disgust in his eyes when he had looked at her earlier that day settled in her heart like a lodestone. Her entire new life hung by a thread and she had a horrible feeling he would enjoy snipping it.

  * * *

  Marcus parked his black Jaguar outside the restaurant Ronnie had suggested. Scanning the lot for signs of her, he realized it was an exercise in futility. He had no way of knowing whether she still drove the decade-old Volvo she had owned when working at CIS. Hell, why would she? With the money she'd gotten fromJohn Harrison for selling out, she could afford a new car to go along with her new life.

  So, why was she working as an admin at Kline Tech? Surely her big payoff hadn't run out already. And where had she been for the past eighteen months? Kline said she'd only started working for his company six months ago. That left a year of time unaccounted for.

  Had she developed a taste for corporate espionage? Had she been moving from one unsuspecting company to another, selling their secrets for cold, hard cash?

  The scenario didn't ring true for the woman he had known her to be, but then neither had her betrayal. He swore under his breath, using a word he saved for times of utter frustration.

  He had worked with Ronnie for three years before they became lovers. She had been honest and loyal that entire time. He would have staked his life on it.

  And he would have been dead by now if he had, he reminded himself.

  That bone-deep sense of integrity he could have sworn she possessed had been a sham and nothing more. Who knew how many tidbits of information she had sold over the years before making her big deal withHarrison .

  Unfolding his legs from the Jag's driver's seat, he climbed out to stand next to the car and noticed a dark blue compact enter the lot. It was an older domestic model, a car with a reputation for being cheap but reliable. It took him a few seconds to recognize the driver. What in blazes was she doing driving that tin can? It was older than the Volvo.

  She pulled into a spot near his and climbed out of the car.

  She'd changed out of her business clothes into a pair of snug-fitting, sand-colored jeans and a loose, buttoned-up top the color of caramel. Her hair swung around her face as she turned after locking her car. It flirted with the pale skin of her cheek and he wanted to reach out and brush the silky strands back into place.

  He controlled the urge with a self-derisive reminder that he was there to do a job.

  "Don't tell me you went through all the moneyHarrison paid you already."

  Her head snapped up and the rain clouds in her irises mirrored confusion. "Excuse me?"

  "Harrisonmight be a damn savvy businessman, but you can't tell me that he didn't pay you enough to replace the Volvo with something nicer than this." He indicated her car with a scornful flick of his wrist.

  Her expression closed. "I like it. It's reliable."

  "So's a Mercedes. So why don't you have one of those?"

  Her shoulders stiffened, but she didn't answer. Instead, she asked, "Are you ready for dinner?"

  She wasn't avoiding his question that easily.

  He snaked his hand out and grabbed her arm. "Tell me why you're driving that rattletrap, honey."

  The endearment slipped out and he could have bitten his own tongue. She wasn't his honey, not anymore.

  She wasn't even his friend.

  She sucked in a quick breath, her face paling.

  Damn, he was getting sick of her acting like a wounded doe every time he talked to her or touched her. If he didn't know better, he'd think he was the one who did the betraying and deserting, not the other way around. But he did know better and he wasn't buying it.

  "Answer me," he demanded.

  "I don't have a choice. I was very lucky to get a car with such a reliable engine for the money 1 had to spend." She spoke defensively, as if his attitude about her car offended her.

  He tried to read her expression, but she'd closed up tighter than a clam just dug out of the sand. "What did you do, gamble away the money?"

  He'd meant the question sarcastically. Ronnie didn't gamble. He'd discovered that when he'd taken her to one of the Reservation Casinos on theOregon coast for a weekend. He felt sucker punched when she nodded.

  "Yes, you could definitely say I gambled with it."

  "And you lost." He didn't need her confirmation. Her current mode of transportation was evidence enough of her lack of luck as a gambler.

  Is that why she was selling secrets again? Did she need another stake?

  She pulled away from him. "It all depends on how you look at it. I'd prefer not to hold this conversation in a parking lot. Can we go inside?"

  Her soft voice washed over him like a breeze in the desert. Man, he'd missed it. He'd missed her.

  The internal admission shouldn't have stunned him, not when he'd gone without the horizontal mambo for over eighteen months because of her.

  He'd tried to tell himself it was just some downtime. Everyone needed it, but his body was shout ing that it was a whole lot more. It was the traitorous woman standing there looking wounded, which made him a world-class fool.

  He stepped away from her with two long strides and turned to lead her into the restaurant. 'Yeah. Let's go eat. I've got questions that are a lot more interesting to me than what you've done with your ill-gotten gains."

  Like why she'd done it.

  But he wasn't the one who started the questioning once they were seated in the chowder house.

  She laid her menu down on the table. "Why didn't you tell Mr. Kline about what happened at CIS?"

  Damn good question. He'd told himself it was because he hadn't wanted Kline jumping to conclusions and putting himself in a state of false ease.

  "Let's just say I decided to talk to you first."

  Behind the black rims of her glasses, her gray eyes mirrored wary hope.

  Good. His job would be that much easier if she trusted him. She had to trust him at least a little if she was already hoping he wouldn't spill the beanson her. Or did she think she could manipulate him into staying silent? Either way, he would work it to his advantage and a speedy resolution to his case at Kline Technology.

  "Wh-what did you want to talk about?"

  His eyes narrowed at her uncharacteristic stumbling over her words. "I wanted to ask you why you did what you did, but I realize now that it doesn't matter."

  She flinched, drawing her hands from the table and into her lap. "It doesn't?"

  "No. Besides I think I can figure it out for myself."

  "You can?" She didn't look like she believed him.

  That irritated him because her motives were so blatantly obvious, "The money. You did it for the money, not that it did you any good."

  "You're wrong, Marcus. It did me a great deal of good."

  "You liked living the high life for a while? Too bad it couldn't last." Not that she wasn't already taking measures to increase her cash flow again.

  And why in Hades was he baiting her? He needed her compliance, her trusting cooperation to find answers to his questions. He wasn't going to get it by pissing her off. And she was angry. Royally so.

  Her gray eyes looked like a hurricane was swirling through them. "You know nothing about it, but that's no surprise. You were never interested in getting to know the real me."
/>
  Were they back to that again? The bitterness in her voice surprised him. Why was she so convinced he didn't know the real woman?

  "You're wrong. I got to know you very well."

  He let his gaze slide down her body and watched with interest as her skin flushed.

  She glared at him, her face taut with strain. "That's not what I mean. You learned a lot about my body, but nothing about my heart."

  She blushed as she said the wordbody , reminding him that she'd been a twenty-three-year-old virgin when they met. How many men had there been since then? How many others had tasted the passion that simmered under her cool exterior? The questions gnawed at him, making him harsher than he intended.

  "What's the matter, Ronnie? You think I should have tried harder to see into your cold little heart and searched out your greedy desires for money and the high lifestyle it could provide?"

  The chair scraped against the floor as she shoved it back and shot to her feet. 'Youbastard . I had reasons for doing what I did, not that you could ever understand them—not in a million years, not with your no-ties and no-commitment rules. I'm damn well not going to sit here meekly while you rip me to shreds with your tongue. It's a game I don't enjoy."

  She spun on her heel and marched out of the restaurant.

  The waiter, who had been approaching their table, made an about-face and walked back into :he kitchen.

  Marcus sat in stunned silence for several seconds. He had known Veronica Richards for three and a half years before she disappeared from his life, and in all that time, he had never once heard her swear, had never seen her lose her cool like she had just done.

  Something about this scenario didn't fit and he was going to find out what it was.

  Chapter Three

  Veronica's hand shook as she inserted the key into her car lock.Darn. Darn. Darn . Why had she lost it like that? She needed to find out if Marcus planned to tell Mr. Kline about her past. Losing her cool and storming out of the restaurant, not to mention calling him a name, wasn't going to predispose him to mercy. Not that she believed he intended to be all that kind anyway.

  A brisk spring wind whipped at her hair and chilled her through the thin fabric of her blouse. She shivered as she tried to turn the key in the lock.

  She didn't owe Marcus any explanations. She'd only betrayed him by association. It had been Alex's deal that got soured when she sold the information toHarrison . Alex had forgiven her, but Marcus never would.

  The key would not turn. The lock was stuck. Again. She'd meant to get it fixed, but she couldn't afford to make unnecessary expenditures, not when Jenny would be starting college soon and Aaron was growing out of his clothes faster than Veronica could buy them.

  Cursing at the stubborn lock, she yanked her key out of it and rounded the car to unlock it on the passenger side.

  "Don't tell me your door locks don't work."

  No. Why couldn't he have just stayed in the restaurant?

  Jamming the key into the hole, she twisted violently and was relieved to hear the muted click that signaled an unlocked door. Ignoring Marcus, who had almost reached her car, she yanked it open. Climbing inside, she crawled over the gearshift to get into the driver's seat. She had just inserted the key in the ignition when the passenger door opened again and six feet, two inches of devastating male folded himself into her small compact.

  She turned to glare at him. "Get out of my car."

  "We aren't done talking."

  She laughed, the sound harsh and grating to her ears. "Yes, we are. We weredone eighteen months ago."

  Darn it.

  Why couldn't she be more reasonable? She had to stop letting her emotions have the upper hand. This was so unlike her, but then Marcus had always been able to spark unexpected and mostly uncontrollable responses on her part.

  "You walked out on me, so I suppose you see it that way, but you'll have to excuse me if I have a slightly different perspective." He sounded amused and that infuriated her all the more.

  And it hurt. Too much.

  He found their breakup a cause for humor, while her heart was still bleeding from leaving behind the only man she had ever given her body to, would ever let into her heart.

  "Get. Out. Of. My. Car."

  So much for regaining her vaunted self-control.

  He didn't react to the fury in her voice, or the fact that she'd practically shouted the order at him.

  His mouth curved in a tiny smile, that darn sexy mouth that had once whispered raw words of sexual need in her ear. "I'm still hungry and you promised me dinner."

  She wanted to scream but was afraid if she started she wouldn't be able to stop. Her sanity felt on the brink of extinction and she didn't know if she cared anymore if it went over.

  She'd done what she had to do eighteen months ago, but it had lacerated her heart and her pride.

  She'd been strong for Jenny while her sister faced death and the horrible side effects of the treatment for her illness. She'd managed to survive a pregnancy plagued with morning sickness, continual bladder pressure and the sensation of a bowling ball pressing down on her pelvis for the last three months, but she didn't think she could stand this.

  She could not handle his amusement in the face of her pain. If he wasn't going to get out of the car, then she would.

  Popping the lock up from the inside of the driver's door was no problem and that's exactly what she did before scrambling from the car. Then she started walking. She didn't care where she went, just as long as it was away from his mocking eyes.

  He was the father of the son whom she adored and he hated her guts. She might deserve it, but that didn't make it any easier for her to deal with.

  Her emotions had hit the breaking point and she hadn't even known she was close. She thought she'd been doing so well, staying strong for her sister and her son, when in reality she had been breaking apart into little pieces inside, and now she was about to shatter.

  She wasn't going to stick around and let Marcus see it happen because she had the awful feeling he would laugh. He definitely thought she deserved whatever bad luck came her way. He would probably get a real kick out of watching her fall apart.

  The bastard.

  She didn't see the crack in the sidewalk, but she felt it—right before pitching forward. She tried to break her fall with her hands, but the impact was too strong and her elbows buckled. She landed facedown on the pavement.

  The air whooshed from her lungs and she lay there in stunned pain.

  She couldn't see the sidewalk any better close up than she had while walking. For one thing, it was getting dark. For another, her eyes were too bleary with tears to see anything. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the traitorous moisture. She hated crying. It didn't do any good.

  Crying hadn't brought her parents back.

  It hadn't made one iota of difference in getting Jenny treatment.

  It hadn't lessened the pain of leaving Marcus.

  It hadn't diminished the terror of giving birth alone in the same hospital that housed her sister's still-fragile body.

  And it wouldn't help now, but Heaven above, she couldn't seem to stop. A sob welled up in her throat and broke free before she could muster She had to regain control.

  She had to stop crying.

  It was a litany in her head as she lay, strangely paralyzed, on the hard concrete.

  "Are you all right, Ronnie? Speak to me, damn it!" She hadn't fallen that hard, but she was crying and hadn't gotten up.

  What was wrong with her? Had she broken something? He didn't know what had happened in the restaurant. He'd set out to talk to her, to learn what he could about the possibility that she was selling corporate secrets again, and had ended up accusing her instead.

  She'd gone ballistic in a way he hadn't expected. Neither her reaction nor his actions were going to help him solve his case. He cursed inwardly as he examined her in the fading light for signs of injury.

  Her blouse had ridden up to expose th
e delectable curve of her behind in her jeans.

  "Say something, Ronnie."

  She didn't answer him but tried to push herself up.

  He pressed gently but firmly against her shoul-ders, refusing to allow her to move. "Don't squirm, baby. You might have seriously hurt yourself."

  She shook her head and pushed more insistently against his hands.

  He didn't relent. "You shouldn't risk moving."