by Lucy Monroe
He knew she was angry. He realized that she had some crazy ideas about why he'd made love to her, but the words still stung a raw path through his insides. She had the power to hurt him like no one else in his life, not even his mother.
And because of that, because his emotions were raw, he retreated. "Maybe we should go back to the original topic, Kline Tech's corporate spy. We can talk about our relationship when you're feeling more rational."
"We don't have a relationship to discuss."
He let that slide. What else could he do? If he pushed it and she remained adamant, he didn't think he could handle the pain that would result.
It felt way too much like the fear he'd experienced once before when he was eleven years old. And that time the fear had been justified.
He'd been at the park in his hometown when he realized his dad was in the crowd watching a baseball game.
By then he'd known he wasn't his father's legitimate son. He'd learned to live with the fact that his dad was never seen in public with him and his mom. Or he thought he had, but that summer day he had wanted to sit with his dad watching the ball game. So, he had summoned up his courage and climbed onto the bleachers, squeezing into a spot next to him.
Marcus knew his dad would be angered by his actions, but he'd decided he could face his dad's wrath. What he hadn't realized was that he'd exposed himself to something far worse. His dad had sat next to him through the remaining six innings and pretended not to know who he was. An eleven-year-old kid had sat there biting back tears and dying inside.
When his dad showed up the next night to visit him and his mom, Marcus had made sure he was out. His dad had told his mom what had happened.
She'd come to Marcus and tried to explain about a prominent man in the community not being able to risk public censure. About how divorce wasn't an option for his dad because of his religious beliefs. Stuff she'd said before. Stuff he'd believed and listened to, but Marcus had stopped believing. He never acknowledged his dad again.
Not the next time Mark came to visit and not two years later when his mom and Mark got married. He'd lived in Mark's house for five years, but he had remained distant from the family his mother and father had created with their marriage. He didn't belong and he never forgot that fact.
Marcus pushed the painful thoughts away. "I'll need to check your e-mail regularly to try to catch another one of those messages, but I'll be honest—I'm not holding out much hope."
"Why not?" She seemed a little surprised by his return to the investigation.
Had she wanted him to argue with her about their relationship? He wasn't going to play that kind of guessing game with himself. Seventeen years ago he'd tried to convince himself that his dad would be glad to sit with him. He'd been wrong.
"I'm assuming the fact you download the team's e-mail is not a big secret, so we have to go on the belief that your getting that particular message was a fluke."
She sat in silence for several seconds, unwrapping her taco and taking a bite in what appeared to be an automatic reaction to having food in front of her.
She finished chewing. "So you think our spy doesn't regularly communicate via e-mail?"
"Or he has a set time for sending messages, like in the middle of the night, when you wouldn't be likely to make a check on the team's e-mail. Our spy could be picking up his messages via remote access from home, or he could get into the office before you in the morning. You're a creature of habit and all he'd have to do is pick up his e-mail by seven-thirty to be certain you wouldn't see the message once it was cleaned up off the server."
He'd been musing out loud, trying to work out the logistics in his mind as he spoke, but it made sense.
Ronnie seemed to think so too because she nodded as she took another bite of the unwanted taco. He carefully controlled his urge to smile triumphantly. She did not need to miss any meals, in his opinion.
"So why bother checking my e-mail?"
'The spy screwed up once; he could always do it again."
"I guess. Marcus?"
He'd taken a bite of his own food. The spicy beef burned in a way he liked.
He swallowed. "Yeah?"
"You seem pretty convinced of my innocence, now."
"Yeah."
They ate in silence for several minutes.
"Why?" she asked, as she carefully folded the paper wrapper from her taco into a small square.
He wasn't sure. He had wanted her to be innocent all along. It had taken all his dedication to professionalism to keep her in the dark about his role as an investigator and not compromise his job at Kline Tech. He wasn't going to tell her that, though. She'd probably accuse him of lying. She was feeling pretty feisty right now.
Better to stick to the prosaic, then drift into the realm of emotion again. "You wouldn't have taken that e-mail to Kline if you were guilty."
"Maybe I just wanted to throw suspicion off of me."
And maybe her next job would be dancing naked on tabletops.
Even thinking about such a thing made him frown. "Not likely."
"Why not? It would make sense. I know you know my past. Maybe I was sure you wouldn't tell Mr. Kline about it if you thought I was innocent."
He didn't know why she was talking like this, but he had every intention of setting her straight. "First, you didn't know I was the corporate investigator. You would have had no reason to believe that Kline would share the information with me once you'd told him. Second, if you had been the spy, why try throwing the scent now? No one knows about the investigation but Kline, Warren and now Allison."
"And me."
"Yeah, you know, too. But, the point is, you didn't."
"Are you sure about that?"
He glared at her. "Yes, I'm sure. Why are you trying to convince me you're guilty?"
Her complexion went pasty. "I'm not. Damn. I just can't seem to keep my mouth shut, can I?"
She sounded really rattled and she'd sworn.
He reached out and grabbed her hand and squeezed it. He wanted to do more. He wanted to hold her, but he didn't think she was ready for that yet. Her gaze flew to his and he saw the vulnerability she'd tried to hide earlier.
"Don't worry, baby. I know you're innocent and you aren't going to convince me otherwise with a whole bunch of nonsense."
She shook her head as if to clear it and pulled her hand away from his. "You came to that conclusion five days too late."
Once again, he didn't like the sound of her words. "What do you mean? I know you're innocent now and that's all that matters."
She stood up. "You're wrong. You used my desire for you to gain my trust. You made love to me believing I was the spy you'd been hired to find. I'll never forget that. I can't. And I can't forgive it either."
Chapter Sixteen
Ronnie's personnel file open in front of him, Marcus sat at his desk two hours later, wondering where the hell the spitfire masquerading as an office automaton got off talking about forgiveness.
Eighteen months ago she'd betrayed his trust and deserted him without a backward glance.And she'd done it carrying his child .
A son.
His hands clenched so tightly that the muscles in his forearms ached in protest.
According to the file, their son was ten months old. The same age as Isabel and Alex's daughter. Gut-wrenching pain tugged at his insides. Ronnie had given birth to Aaron Marcus Richards in a French hospital without so much as a phone call telling him of his son's existence.
She'd dismissed Marcus from her life as easily as his father had dismissed his existence between visits.
Tidal wave in its proportions, the most over-powering sensation of rage he'd ever felt washed over him. Ronnie hadn't just dismissed him from her life; she'd excluded him from his son's life as well. His son had cut his first tooth without Marcus knowing a damn thing about it. He'd learned to roll over. He'd learned to crawl.
Marcus thought of all the things Alex's baby girl had done over the past ten months a
nd alien moisture burned his eyes as he was forced to accept the fact that he'd lost all that with his own son. He'd seen his little adopted niece smile for the first time with a tooth. He'd seen her crawl across the floor to pounce on a stuffed red bear he'd bought her at Christmas. He'd watched her try to take her first step and fall flat on her diapered bottom.
He'd scooped her off the floor and offered comfort before Isabel could stop laughing long enough to leave her chair.
Had Aaron tried to walk yet? Did he cry when he was tired, or just fall asleep? Did he like applesauce, or did he spit it out like little Hope?
Marcus's eyes burned with moisture that just would not go away, no matter how many times he blinked.He didn't even know what his son looked like .
Ronnie had said she loved him on Friday night.
A bitter crack of laughter erupted from his throat and he wanted to slam his fist right through the fabric-covered cubicle wall.Love . Right.
Ronnie felt something for him, but he wouldn't call it love. Love encompassed trust. She had assumed he'd taken her to bed to earn hers. She had said so, not two hours ago. He bit back another laugh.As if . As if he was ever in danger of doing that.
She hadn't trusted him eighteen months ago, not enough to tell him about her desperation for Jenny, not enough to tell him about the child they'd created together, and she didn't trust him worth a damn now, either. She'd withheld her worries over the e-mail she had accidentally downloaded. She'd hidden knowledge of their son from him.
Shewanted him. He gave her body pleasure. He'd awakened her to a new experience. Sex. She'd said it hadn't been anything special. He had wanted to think she was lying because she had been angry at the time, but now he knew the truth.
Lust. Nowthere was a word that fit her supposed feelings for him. Anchored in the physical, unrelated to the deeper emotions, lust was the beginning and the ending of what she felt. She had wanted to dress it up, pretend it was something more, something her prudish little mind could deal with, but if it had been he wouldn't be sitting in a borrowed office cubicle discovering the existence of his son for the first time from a personnel file.
He jumped upright, propelling his chair backward several feet. He slammed her file closed and shoved it in the locking cabinet above his computer monitor along with the files of the other Kline Technology employees who were no longer suspects. Grabbing the remaining four files, he tore out of his office.
He had to get away. He couldn't stand being able to hear the soft tones of her voice over the cubicle walls. He couldn't stand knowing she was only a few feet away not feeling the way he did. He didn't trust himself in the same building with her. He couldn't.
She'd hurt him, but that wasn't the worst of it.
She'd hurt their son.
She had condemned Aaron to a childhood without a father who belonged to him—just as Marcus's own parents had done—and he couldn't stand it.
Bile rose in his throat and he picked up his pace until he was practically sprinting from the building.
Veronica's doorbell rang at six o'clock that evening. She put down the small plastic plane she'd been using to entertain Aaron. Standing up, she smoothed the oversized cotton shirt over her black denim leggings. She and her son were alone in the apartment, Jenny had gone to the library as planned. Veronica hadn't wanted to tell her sister about the day's events at Kline Tech. She hadn't wanted to upset the younger woman.
Nor had she wanted to share a pain that felt too personal even for a sisterly confidence.
She had been dreaming of futures and forever with Marcus when all he'd been doing was cementing his investigation, following up on a lead. Her.
Looking out through the peephole, she saw a bright blue Hawaiian shirt and her hand froze on its way to the doorknob. Her gaze skittered back to her son playing happily on the carpet and, then, against her volition, she fixed her eye on the peephole again.
She couldn't see his face. He was standing too close, but she had no doubt whatsoever who stood on the other side of the door. Marcus.
His fist pounded on the door. "Open up, Ronnie. I know you're home. Your car's in the lot."
Why was he here? Her thoughts flew erratically from one option to another.
She could pretend not to have heard him, but then he'd keep pounding on the door and most likely disturb a neighbor. She could whisk Aaron into the bedroom and try to get rid of Marcus before he realized a baby was in the apartment. She could pretend to be baby-sitting for a friend.
Or she could tell him the truth.
No matter what the present condition of her personal relationship with Marcus, she could not in all conscience continue to hide their child from him. She had planned to tell him tonight. Now fate had forced her hand and in one sense she wasn't sorry. She had never felt good about hiding the truth.
He pounded again, his voice booming through the door loudly enough to arrest Aaron in his play. "Open the damn door, Ronnie?'
Wiping her sweating palms down the front of her jeans, she did so before a concerned neighbor called the police to report a domestic disturbance. As she pulled the door toward her, she beheld Marcus as she had never seen him.
Other than the signature Hawaiian shirt, he could have been a different man. His hair stuck straight up, like he'd been running his hands through it, and his ready smile was conspicuously absent. In fact, his mobile mouth was set in the grimmest line she'd ever seen.
His eyes were bloodshot, as if he'd been out on an all-night drinking binge. Since she'd seen him only five hours earlier, she knew that wasn't the case. It almost looked as if he'd been crying, but the idea of Marcus giving in to such maudlin emotion was so unreal she dismissed it.
No way would their argument earlier have affected him so deeply. It just wasn't possible.
"I want to see my son." Gravelly with unmistakable pain, his voice arrested her.
Lightning fast, his words penetrated her thoughts.
Heknew .
And the knowledge was tearing him apart. Guilt warred with sorrow as mute, she slowly stepped back to allow Marcus entrance into the apartment.
His gaze zeroed in on Aaron immediately and unnatural stillness overcame his tall frame. "He's got blond hair."
The words sounded choked and she studied his face with fearful intensity. He looked savaged.
"Yes. He looks a lot like you," she practically whispered, for lack of anything better to say. "How did you find out?"
Had someone at Kline Tech said something? Sandy, maybe.
The look he gave her froze the marrow in her bones. "Certainly not from you. I read your personnel file."
"You did what?" She didn't mean it as an accusation. She simply didn't understand. When had he read her file? If he'd done so before, when he thought she was guilty, he wouldn't just now be showing up at her apartment.
Why would he read it now?
He turned his attention momentarily from Aaron to fix it on her and she wished he hadn't.
She'd never seen true hatred in Marcus's eyes before, not even when he'd first come to Seattle. She realized the emotion she'd seen then had been a pale reflection of the feelings seething in him now.
"I read your file. I had files on all the suspects, but I didn't want to read yours. I didn't want you to be the culprit, so I tried to focus my investigation in other places." The words sounded disjointed, as if Marcus's normally agile brain wasn't working at its full capacity.
His gaze slipped back to Aaron and settled there.
Their son sat on the carpet, gnawing on the end of a toy caboose, oblivious to his parents' intense emotions.
The import of what Marcus said penetrated. He hadn't wanted her to be guilty? He'd tried to find a more likely suspect?
"But you read it."
Why had he read the file if he trusted in her innocence?
Pain mixed with the loathing in his brilliant blue eyes as his attention reverted to her once again. "You said you couldn't forgive me today. You insisted I take yo
u back to the office. I didn't know when you'd let me be close to you again. It was like some kind of compulsion. I read it as a way of being with you. Isn't that pathetic?"
The self-derision in his voice lacerated her. He sounded like he truly cared, like she'd really hurt him with her rejection at lunch. Just as she'd been hurt.
"N-no, not pathetic…" Her voice just trailed off because she didn't know what else to say.
He wasn't listening anyway.
