That he might have been better off if she’d stayed unapproachable was a thought he didn’t want to dwell on.
Sam watched Ian as he crisscrossed the floor of Josh’s small, private conference room. She knew he paced when he was working hard on a problem, but she wasn’t sure what was making him so restless now.
“Maybe it’s not her,” she said, thinking he might be upset at the thought of his young intern being the traitor. Or at the confrontation that would take place at any moment.
“What?” Ian looked blank. “Oh. That. Yes, maybe it’s not. I’d hate to think it is. She’s very bright, it would be a shame.”
So that hadn’t been it, she thought.
The pacing resumed. She waited a while, then asked, “Wishing you could be back at work in your lab?”
“What?” he said again, stopping to glance over his shoulder at her. “Oh. Yes, I am anxious. I always am, when we’re this close to a solution. But I wasn’t thinking about it at the moment.”
Not that, either? Sam wondered. Then what had him walking the floor like an expectant father, if not the brainchild he hoped to hatch soon? If it wasn’t the leak in Redstone, and it wasn’t his work, what did that leave?
She had an uneasy feeling she knew. Just as she knew the unfinished personal business between them had to wait until the current situation was dealt with. They had a lot to sort out, including how much of what they felt for each other was based in reality rather than the adrenaline rush of danger, but it was going to take time to do it. And time was something she didn’t have at the moment; the last thing she wanted was to bring up the subject only to be interrupted when they got word it was time to move.
Still, she thought with a glance at the intercom on the conference table that would crackle with sound at any moment, she didn’t know if she would ever get a better opening than the one he’d just handed her. So, tentatively she asked, “What were you thinking of, then? You were in pretty deep.”
He turned to face her then. “You,” he said baldly, startling her and making her wish she’d stuck to her instincts.
She sighed. “Still pondering how much you hate me for lying to you, I suppose.”
“No. Pondering how much it matters. Under the circumstances.”
A jolt of hope stabbed through her. This was the first indication she’d had that he perhaps eventually wouldn’t despise her for the deception she’d perpetrated on him. On the heels of that jolt came an uneasiness it took her a moment to recognize.
She leaned back in her chair, her eyes unfocused as she tried to work through the revelation that had just struck her. She’d been so troubled about the idea of him hating her forever that she’d never actually thought about how she’d feel—or what would happen next—if he didn’t.
Like it matters, she thought sourly as old memories rose up to haunt her. Memories of men she’d been attracted to in the past, men she’d let get close enough to actually think there might be a future for them, men who seemed able to accept that her work was not of the garden variety. But those men turned tail and ran the moment they realized Billy was a permanent part of the picture. The two who had lasted beyond that had eventually had the nerve to discuss marriage, with the condition that she put Billy away and kept his presence in their lives to a minimum. When they realized Sam’s devotion to her brother would never change, they too had taken to the hills as fast as they could run.
Would Ian run?
Maybe not, she thought. He had enough grace not to do that. And meeting Billy hadn’t seemed to bother him at all. But meeting him was one thing…
She’d often wished she could feel something other than sisterly affection for Rand, whom Billy adored and who had a great deal of patience for the boy’s ramblings. But it wasn’t there. She’d begun to think that spark, that chemistry would never be there, with anyone.
And then Ian Gamble had been dropped into her life. Or she had been forced into his. And she had learned more about that kind of chemistry than she’d ever thought possible. As unlikely as it seemed, quiet, studious, brilliant Ian was the one who struck that spark in her. He had—
“Speaking of being in pretty deep, what are you thinking about?”
Ian’s voice snapped her back to the present. She felt her cheeks start to heat as she thought of how he would react if he really knew what she’d been thinking. At the same time she knew she couldn’t deny she’d been thinking of him, not when he’d been so bluntly honest about the same subject.
“I—”
“Now.” The word crackled from the intercom, saving her. “The lab is empty except for your target.”
St. John’s words sounded ominous even to Sam. At least, ominous when you considered that a twenty-year-old woman was the target in question.
“Let’s go,” she said, admitting only to herself how relieved she was to avoid answering Ian’s question. Ian gave her a steady look that made her wonder if he knew exactly what she was thinking. But he rose and headed for the door just as she did.
They took Josh’s private elevator down to the lab floor. The main elevator opened just opposite the main double doors and was clearly visible from inside the lab if you happened to be looking that way. From Josh’s elevator they were able to reach a side door that was out of the way and get into the lab without being seen.
It was quiet enough to make Sam wonder if St. John had somehow mistaken the woman’s presence. Impossible, she told herself. St. John simply didn’t make mistakes.
They went past the chemical storage vault and the linen room that held lab coats, towels and the like. They passed various different labs set up for various different kinds of work. Sam was curious—avidly curious in fact—about this world that was so strange to her but so familiar to Ian, but now was not the time to ask the myriad questions that popped into her mind.
At the first lab, Ian reached in and flipped off the lights. When Sam gave him a curious look, he said in a low tone, “Might make someone make noise trying to get out, if they’re hiding.”
Sam grinned at him then. “You want to join my team?”
“No, thanks,” he said, so vehemently it stung a little, and her grin faded. Ian didn’t seem to notice, just proceeded past empty lab after empty lab, turning out lights as they went.
Sam made herself focus, remembering the layout of the entire department as they approached the junction of two hallways. Ian’s office should be to the right, she thought, and quickly confirmed that with him in a whisper.
She stopped him where the halls met, and edged her head around just far enough to see the light that spilled out Ian’s office window into the hallway. She held up a hand to indicate he should stay behind her, then began to inch her way around the corner.
Too aware of Ian close behind her, she reached the edge of the window and stopped. He came up against her, and she gritted her teeth against the sensation it sent through her. Ordering herself not to even glance at him, she leaned forward and peeked through the miniblinds that were angled almost too steeply for her to see through. Because of that, it took her a moment to be sure.
Rebecca Hollings was there. Sitting at Ian’s desk. Sam watched for a moment as the young woman lounged back almost languorously in the high-backed office chair, then reached out and touched the computer mouse, stroking it almost as if it bore the soft fur of its living namesake. A sad sort of certainty welled up in Sam, and she knew if she was right, it was going to complicate things.
She backed away from the window.
“She’s there?” Ian asked, his voice barely audible even to Sam from bare inches away.
Sam nodded. She saw Ian take a deep breath, nod, and draw himself up straight as if setting himself for battle. As, in a way, she supposed he was.
He walked silently to the doorway of his office. Sam hung back, watching the woman inside, wanting to see her reaction.
“I think it’s time you told me what you’re up to, Rebecca,” Ian said, in a tone so gentle it made Sam marvel.
>
The woman gasped and spun around on the chair she sat in. Ian’s chair, Sam thought. Ian’s computer mouse.
“Ian! I mean Mr. Gamble,” Rebecca corrected, blushing furiously. “What are you doing here?”
“I should be asking you that. It is my office,” Ian pointed out.
“Oh. Yes. Well. I…uh…”
Ian let out a barely audible breath. “I really didn’t want to believe it was you. Naive of me, I’m sure, but I really didn’t want to think a bright, quick mind like yours could be lured by whatever they offered you to betray Redstone.”
The young woman drew back, staring. “What?”
“Did you really feel that ignored? Or was it that you thought it should be easy, that you shouldn’t have to earn the attention you wanted?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” For once, Sam thought, the traditional denial sounded almost genuine.
“I’m talking about selling out Redstone. And me.”
“Ian, no!” Rebecca exclaimed, apparently unaware she’d again betrayed herself with her use of his first name. “I would never, ever do that! You’ve got to believe me.”
“It’s no use,” Ian said, his voice weary. “They know.”
“Who knows what?” Rebecca asked, bewilderment in her voice now. “What’s there to know?”
Ian ran through the list of the suspicions they’d accumulated, ending with, “And they saw you, outside my house that night.”
Rebecca flushed. “But that wasn’t…anything like that, I swear it wasn’t. I was only…I was just…”
The young woman’s voice trailed away, and an expression of utter misery distorted her face.
“I didn’t. I didn’t do any of it. I swear.”
Ian seemed to have run out of steam. Sam stepped forward, through the door. Ian turned to look at her. Rebecca Hollings also looked at her and frowned. Her gaze flicked to Ian, then back to Sam. The frown deepened. Sam put a hand on Ian’s shoulder. And then she saw, finally, a look of realization dawn in the younger woman’s eyes.
“So that’s why,” Rebecca said, her eyes suddenly brimming with moisture.
Ian looked puzzled. “Why what?”
“Her. She’s why you never…”
Rebecca shook her head and turned away. Sam took another step into the room, and when she spoke, it was with a gentleness that made Ian look at her rather oddly.
“Is that what it all was, Rebecca? It wasn’t betrayal of Redstone, you were only…following your feelings?”
The young woman looked at Sam, her expression different now, not pained but hopeful. “Yes. I would never do such a thing. Mr. Redstone has been so good to me. I just…I thought…” She sighed loudly. “If I’d known he had someone like you I never would have….”
Her voice trailed away again. Sam glanced at Ian, who by now was looking utterly bewildered. Men, she thought. How oblivious could they be? Then she reached down to the cell phone clipped to her belt. She pressed two buttons in succession. Moments later Rand was there.
“Ms. Hollings has an innocent—relatively—explanation,” she told him. She turned to Rebecca. “I suggest you go with him and present it all to his satisfaction.”
“Do I have to?” Rebecca asked, a touch of a whine making her voice sound suddenly young.
“Only if you want to keep your job,” Rand said, and the young woman dejectedly followed him out of Ian’s office and out of the lab section.
When they were gone, Sam turned to Ian. He was staring after the two who had just left. After a moment he turned back to her.
“Would you mind telling me what on earth just happened here? What innocent explanation? She never said a word.”
“She didn’t have to. I already knew.”
Ian expelled a compressed breath. “Knew what?”
“Why she was doing what she was doing around you.”
Clearly exasperated, Ian said, “Would you like to enlighten me, if it’s not top secret or something? Why was she always in my office and stalking my house at midnight? What was so obvious to you?”
Sam shrugged. “She’s in love with you.”
Chapter 18
“That’s ridiculous,” Ian said as he paced the conference room they’d returned to, to await Rand’s report after he finished talking with Rebecca Hollings.
“I thought you’d be glad it wasn’t her.”
He turned to look at Samantha. “I am. I meant the idea that she’s in love with me is ridiculous.”
“Why?”
“Because…” He stopped, uncertain how to put into words what seemed so obvious to him. “I’m too old for her,” he finally said, knowing it sounded lame even as he said it.
“Hmm,” Samantha said. “Now, in this double-standard world of ours, if she was thirteen years older than you, that might matter.”
He couldn’t think of a way to say what he really thought without sounding as if he was fishing for compliments from her, so he tried another tack. “Whatever gave you this idea in the first place?”
Samantha shrugged. “It was obvious. The way she talked about you, the way she looked at you.”
He shook his head, still not quite able to believe this theory. He kept walking, unable to meet her eyes as she explained her incredible idea. He came to a halt in front of a framed photograph on the wall, of Joshua Redstone standing on the wing of the classic Hawk I, the first plane of his design ever built. He stared at the photo of the man with the reckless grin. This was the kind of man young women fell for. Not him, not a geeky lab rat with floppy hair and glasses.
“Besides,” Samantha said, interrupting his thoughts, “she’s young, very intelligent and passionate about this work. Put her in with a sexy, charming guy who’s even smarter than she is, it was inevitable.”
He wanted to spin around and gape at her. At the same time he didn’t dare. Sexy? Charming? Him?
“Yes, you.”
Samantha’s voice as she answered the questions he hadn’t even voiced, came from close behind, making him start. With an effort he steadied himself.
“‘Smart’ I’ll give you,” he said, fighting to keep his tone even. “But ‘charming’? Hardly.” He wasn’t even going to touch “sexy,” he thought.
“I beg to differ. You charmed me, and that’s not easy.”
He turned then. He had to. Had to see her face, look into her eyes. He had to know if she meant it, or if she was just trying to convince him, for whatever reason.
She was looking at him steadily, those eyes of hers making him feel as if she could see every one of his doubts.
“Or is it the ‘sexy’ you don’t believe?” she asked softly.
He felt heat tinge his cheeks.
“Because if it is,” Samantha said, moving even closer, until he could feel the heat of her, until his pulse began to hammer and tightness began to gather low and deep, “I can personally attest that it applies.”
“Samantha,” he began, but his throat was so tight he couldn’t get out another word.
“To me,” she said, lifting a hand to place it on his chest, directly over his pounding heart, “you’re the best kind of sexy. The subtle kind, the kind that grows on you, the kind that swamps you before you realize what’s happening.”
“Lord,” he muttered, closing his eyes against the intensity of it. Against the stunning shock of a woman like Samantha standing there, saying things like this to him and meaning it. Because he couldn’t doubt that she meant every word; it was clear on her face and in her eyes. And he wondered how he had ever missed the tiny edge of unease that he now realized had been there all the time when she’d been acting out her deception.
He opened his eyes again. It wasn’t there now. Her eyes were clear and open…and hot. Need surged through him. It was a familiar sensation by now, but for the first time it wasn’t accompanied by the thought that he should grab what he could get, because his time with Samantha would end soon. For the first time, emboldened by the way she looked at
him in this moment, he dared to wonder if maybe, just maybe—
The door behind them opened. Instinctively, they jumped apart just as Rand strode in. If he realized what he’d interrupted, he had the class not to show it.
“I believe Rebecca,” was all he said.
“So do I,” Sam agreed.
Rand looked at Ian. “She said she’s had a crush on you for months. And that she didn’t think there was anyone in your life, so she kept trying to get you to notice she was alive.”
Still dumbfounded, Ian shook his head slowly. How could he have missed this? Was he that blind? Or was he so unused to being thought of in that way that he didn’t recognize it when he did see it?
Lately, of course, he hadn’t been able to really see any woman but Samantha. But that didn’t explain the months before, when he’d looked upon Rebecca as merely an energetic nuisance he often wished would simply go away. He felt a pang of guilt. He might not be the most perceptive about people, but he tried to avoid hurting feelings.
His father, he thought, would have known how to rebuff the girl so gently she’d walk away charmed and happy; he himself had just been oblivious and had ended up making the girl miserable.
And don’t forget suspecting her of industrial espionage and worse, he reminded himself.
“So we’re back to square one,” Rand said, rattling him out of his bewildered reverie.
“Square one?” he said, pulling his mind back to the situation.
“In other words,” Samantha said, “if the leak isn’t Hollings, then who is it?”
God, he felt like such a slug. That ramification of Rebecca’s innocence hadn’t even hit him yet. But it was true; if it wasn’t her, then it had to be somebody else.
“Any other ideas, Ian?” Rand asked.
“No,” he said.
“Think about it,” Samantha said. “I know it’s not what you usually put your mind to, but it’s a puzzle, like any other project you work on. How do you usually go about it?”
He hadn’t thought of it like that. “I usually start by testing each facet of an idea, I guess.”
One of These Nights Page 20
