Little Secrets--The Baby Merger

by Yvonne Lindsay

  Discovering more details about Kirk’s father’s past went a long way toward explaining why his mother had been so determined to leave the area and make a new life for herself and her son in California. Sally could understand why Kirk was so driven, why he had a plan that he lived and worked by. His youth must have been so unsettled.

  Her time was running out on the computer, so she quickly collated her printed pages and shoved them in her tote to read further at home. She knew her father had provided financial help to the Tanner family, including the fund that had seen Kirk through college. But was there more? Had Kirk somehow believed he had a rightful place at HIT? Had it been him who approached her father about merging their two companies? Had he possibly engineered a risk of potential takeover of her father’s company to create an opening for himself where he felt he should have been all along?

  Sally called her father that night and asked if she could come and visit with him over the weekend. When she arrived, he was still a little reserved with her, but as they sat together in front of the fireplace in his library, she decided to go at this situation head-on.

  “Dad, do you really believe I’m responsible for the leaks at HTT?”

  He looked at her as if he was shocked she would ask him such a thing. “I’d like to think not, honey. After all, why would you do such a thing? But Marilyn said you were frustrated at work, even though I never saw any evidence to support that. I always thought you’d bring any problems to me if you had them. It leaves me asking myself what you would hope to gain from such a thing.”

  Sally was a little taken aback. Marilyn had been telling her dad she wasn’t happy at work? Sure, she’d often told the PA that she wanted to climb further up the corporate ladder, that it had been her goal to support her father in any way that she could. But she’d never expressed dissatisfaction to the extent that anyone could say she wasn’t happy.

  “Obviously I have nothing to gain,” she said. “It wasn’t me. I want you to believe that.”

  “And I want to believe it, too. However, what I think isn’t the key here. We have to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it isn’t you, don’t we?”

  She was heartened by his use of the term we, rather than the singular you.

  “Tell me about the early days, Dad. About when you and Frank Tanner set HIT up. They must have been exciting times, yes?”

  A gentle smile curved her father’s lips. “They were very exciting times. The beginning of the boom times in information technology, and we were full of ideas and passion. Those were good years—challenging and exciting, difficult at times, but good nonetheless.”

  He fell silent and she knew he was thinking about his business partner’s death.

  “I learned a bit more about Frank Tanner’s addiction, Dad. Why do you think he fell victim to it?”

  Her father knotted his hands together and sighed heavily. “I don’t really know. In college he was always the party guy, but he was so brilliant that it didn’t hold him back. He never struggled to keep his grades up and always skated through exams without needing to crack open a reference book. I envied that about him. Everything I did, I did through sheer hard work.”

  Sally nodded. She was much the same.

  Her father continued, “I guess he always put more pressure on himself to be more and do more than any other person. It was as if he was constantly trying to prove himself. Constantly striving for more and better than he’d done before. Money was tight for all of us when we started up, and we worked long hours. Frank even more than me. I guess he started depending on the drugs to keep himself sharp through the all-nighters. I could never figure out how he did it, but when I stop and look back, I realize he had to have been using something to boost himself.

  “Anyway, by the time I realized he was dangerously hooked on drugs, it was too late. Not long after that, he was dead. As his friend I should have seen it, should have questioned him more closely. I should have recognized that he needed help, especially when things at home weren’t so good between him and his wife.”

  “She always dropped the abuse charges, didn’t she? Maybe, deep down, she still loved him and still hoped that he could change.”

  Orson looked at her. “I might have known you’d find that horrible history out.”

  “What can I say? I’m methodical, like my dad.”

  He gave her a smile, and he looked at her warmly. She’d missed this expression in his eyes since Kirk’s accusations.

  “What happened to Frank wasn’t your fault, Dad,” she said with deep conviction. “He was on a road to self-destruction long before you guys set up in business together. Even if you’d have noticed back then, do you honestly think you could have made a big difference? He had to want to change. If he couldn’t do that for his family, he wouldn’t have done it for you.”

  Her words were blunt, but they had the weight of truth behind them. She hoped her father would see that.

  “I guess I know that deep down, but I still feel the loss of his friendship. When he died I had to help Sandy. She was a wreck, though she tried to hold it together for Kirk’s sake. He was twelve when his dad died, a difficult age for a boy even without the additional test of having an addicted parent. I discussed it with your mother, who agreed we had to do whatever we could to help Sandy and Kirk start fresh. So we did.”

  Sally looked at her father. Going over the past like this obviously caused him pain, but she wasn’t sorry she’d asked. She needed to understand the whole situation. She’d also hoped that perhaps learning more about the history of HIT might give her more insight into who was trying to hurt the company now. It distressed her that her father may still consider that she might be responsible for the leaks from HTT. Until she could remove every element of doubt, there would always be a question in his eyes whenever he looked at her. She couldn’t live with that for the rest of her life.

  “Dad, when did you begin to suspect there was a problem with information security at work?”

  Orson looked a little uncomfortable and shifted in his chair. “It’s been happening for about a year,” he finally admitted.

  Sally looked up in shock. About a year? That coincided with her appointment as head of her department.

  Her father continued. “I did what I could but kept hitting blank walls when it came to trying to figure out who was behind it. That’s when I turned to Kirk.”

  “Why him?” Why not share your worries with me? The silent plea echoed in her mind.

  “I guess you’re upset I never mentioned anything about him to you before,” Orson commented with his usual acuity.

  “Of course I am. I won’t lie to you, Dad. It really hurt to discover him behind your desk the morning after your heart attack, especially after you’d presented me with the done deal at dinner the night before with no warning or prior notice.”

  “Well, in my defense, I did plan to be there with him. I didn’t plan for my ticker to act up the way it did.”

  Sally got up from her chair and walked over to the fire, putting her hands out in front of her and letting the heat of the flames warm her skin.

  “Why did you never tell me about your involvement with Kirk and his mom?”

  “It wasn’t something you needed to know,” he said bluntly.

  She thought about it awhile and was forced to concede he was probably right, except for one small fact—that he’d decided to bring Kirk in as his equal the moment the firm had been weakened. She decided to take a different tack with her questioning.

  “Why do you think that someone has been sharing our details?”

  Her father’s response was heated. “Why does anyone do it? For money, of course. Why else would anyone betray the firm they work for? Someone has put their personal greed ahead of the needs of the company. Corporate espionage is a dreadful thing, and it creates weaknesses that allow othe
rs to gain leverage when it comes to hostile takeovers.”

  “Is that what was happening to us?”

  Orson looked nonplussed for a moment, as if he’d let out more than he ought to have. Eventually he nodded.

  “So there’s been a threat of takeover,” Sally mused out loud. “How do you know it wasn’t Kirk behind it all along? Maybe he set it all up so he could come in as a white knight and suggest a merger.”

  “Kirk?” Her father sounded incredulous. “No. He’d never stoop that low. He’s the kind of man who would come at a thing head-on. No subterfuge about that guy.”

  Wasn’t there? Hadn’t he withheld his identity from her the night they’d first met? It hurt and angered Sally, too, to realize that while her father refused to consider Kirk a suspect, he’d had no trouble believing it could be her.

  “Besides, it was me that approached him from the get-go. I’ve kept an eye on him and his achievements ever since he and his mother left Seattle. I may have put him through college, but it’s because of his own abilities that he’s been able to really do something with his life. From the outset it was clear that he had his father’s brilliance, but beyond that he had the sense to apply it where it would do him the most good. He had all of his father’s best attributes, and none of the bad.

  “To be totally honest with you, Sally, HIT needed Tanner Enterprises far more than the other way around. I was up front with him from the start. It was a risky move for Kirk to agree to the merger, but I needed him.”

  Sally could hear the honesty in her father’s words, but that didn’t stop the emptiness that echoed behind her breastbone that told her that no matter how bold she thought she could be, she would never be the kind of person who had the drive and hunger for success that Kirk so obviously had. If she had, wouldn’t she have found a way to push past her phobia instead of hiding behind it?

  She couldn’t hold herself back any longer. She had to prove her innocence of the accusations leveled against her. And soon.

  Eleven

  Over the next couple of days, Sally spent hours trying to figure out who could be responsible for the leak. She covered her dining table with sheet after sheet of paper, many of them taped together with lines drawn between names and dates and points of data. On another sheet she wrote the lists of names and what people might stand to gain by such a thing.

  After all her years at HIT, from intern to paid employee, she had gotten to know a great many of the staff within the various departments. She knew that because of the positive working environment and the benefits offered by the firm, staff retention was very high. She could understand the idea of a disgruntled employee wanting to punish their employer, but how could that apply here? Despite all the time she spent poring over everything, she still couldn’t reach a solid conclusion.

  Her days began to stretch out before her with boring regularity, and even a visit to her ob-gyn couldn’t give her the lift she needed. Kirk had accompanied her, and the atmosphere between them had been strained. His presence at the appointment was just another confirmation of her links to a man who neither trusted her nor could be trusted. And yet, every time she thought of him, she still felt that tingle of desire ripple through her body.

  A week after Thanksgiving, which she’d spent with her dad and Marilyn, she was struggling with a knitting pattern she’d decided to teach herself when the intercom from downstairs buzzed. She looked up in surprise, dropping yet another darn stitch from the apparently easy baby blanket she was attempting, at the sound. She certainly hadn’t been expecting anyone, and when she heard Kirk’s voice on the speaker she was unable to stop the rush of heat that flooded her body. Flustered and certainly not dressed for any kind of company, an imp of perversity wanted her to tell him to leave without hearing what he had to say, but she sucked in a deep breath and told him to come on up.

  In the seconds she had to spare before he arrived, she dashed into the bathroom and quickly brushed her hair, tied it back into a ponytail and smoothed a little tinted moisturizer onto her face.

  “There, that’s better than a moment ago,” she told her reflection. “Shame you don’t have time to do anything about the clothes.”

  Still, what was she worried about? This couldn’t be a social call. A dread sense of foreboding in the pit of her stomach told her that this had to relate to her suspension.

  Despite the fact she was expecting him, his sharp knock at her door made her jump.

  “Just breathe,” she admonished herself as she went to let him in.

  She hadn’t been prepared for the visceral shock of actually seeing him again. Dressed in sartorial corporate elegance, he filled the doorway with his presence, making her all too aware of the yoga pants, sweatshirt and slippers that had virtually become her uniform over the past couple of weeks. But it wasn’t so much the way he was dressed that struck her—it was the hungry expression in his eyes as they roamed her from head to foot before coming back to settle on her face again.

  “Hello,” she said, annoyed to hear her voice break on the simple two-syllable word.

  “You’re looking well,” Kirk replied. “May I come in?”

  “Oh, of course,” she answered, stepping aside to let him in the apartment.

  As he moved past her, she tried to hold her breath. Tried not to inhale the scent that was so fundamentally his. Tried and failed miserably. Whatever cologne it was that he wore, it had to be heavily laden with pheromones, she decided as she closed the door and fought to bring herself under some semblance of control. Either that or she was simply helplessly, hopelessly, under his spell.

  Maybe it was the latter, she pondered glumly as she offered him something to drink. Wouldn’t that be just her luck.

  “Coffee would be great, thanks.”

  “Take a seat. I’ll only be a minute.”

  He sat down on the sofa where she’d been attempting to knit just a few minutes ago, and she saw him lean forward to pick up the printed pattern for the baby blanket.

  “Nesting?” he commented, sounding amused as he picked up her knitting and tried to make sense of the jumble of yarn, comparing it to the picture in his other hand.

  “Something like that. I needed to do something to keep me busy,” she said a little defensively. “It’s my first attempt.”

  It wasn’t, in truth her first attempt at this blanket. In fact it was about her twelfth, but the project was very much her first foray into the craft of knitting, and as she ripped her successive attempts out yet again and rewound the yarn, she found herself missing her mother more and more. Her mom had loved to knit.

  “You’re braver than me,” he said simply as he put everything back on the coffee table.

  Sally made herself a cup of herbal tea and brought it through to the living room with Kirk’s coffee. She put the mug down on a coaster in front of him then took a seat opposite, not trusting herself to sit too near. Maybe with a little distance between them she could ignore the way her body reacted to his presence and maybe her nostrils could take a break from wanting to drown in that scent that was so specifically him.

  “Why are you here?” she asked bluntly, cupping her mug between her hands.

  “I wanted to deliver you the news myself,” Kirk said, giving her a penetrating look.

  “News?”

  “You’ve been exonerated of any wrongdoing.”

  Even though she knew all along that she was innocent, Sally couldn’t hold back the tidal wave of relief that now threatened to swamp her. Her hands shook and hot tea spilled over her fingers as she leaned forward to put her mug on the table. Kirk jumped straight to his feet, a pristine white handkerchief in his hand, and he moved swiftly to mop her fingers dry.

  She thrilled to his touch but fought back the sensation that unfurled through her as his strong, warm hands cupped hers. She tugged her hands free and swiftl
y stood, walking away to create some distance between them.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised,” she said, fighting to make her voice sound firm when she was feeling anything but. “I told you it wasn’t me.”

  “Your father told me the same thing,” he said smoothly.

  Sally briefly savored the evidence that her father had supported her in this after all. “But you still felt there was room for doubt?”

  Kirk ignored her question. “The forensic investigation of your devices showed that a false trail had been set up to look as though the data had been sent from your computer. At this stage, they still haven’t been able to ascertain exactly who created that path. Obviously it was someone with a very strong knowledge of computer technology.”

  “Which, considering we’re an information technology company, narrows it down to maybe ninety percent of the workforce at HTT,” she said in a withering tone. “Do you plan to suspend everyone until you’ve figured out who it is?”

  “That would be counterproductive,” Kirk responded with a wry grin. “As I’m sure you know.”

  She looked at him, wishing that seeing him again didn’t make her feel this way. Wishing even harder that none of this awfulness of suspicion and doubt lay between them and they could actually explore what it would be like to be a couple without any of the stigma that the investigation had left hanging like a dark cloud around her.

  “I’m free to return to my work?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow, if that’s what you want.”

  “Of course that’s what I want. I have a lot to catch up on.”

  “I thought you might say that.” He reached into the laptop bag he’d brought and fished out her computer, her tablet and her smartphone. “Here, you’ll need these.”

  She all but dived in to take them from him. She flicked on her phone and groaned out loud at the number of missed calls and the notification that her voice mail was full. It was going to take her hours to sift through everything. Still, at least she had her devices back.