His mouth was just an inch from hers when Jake tossed his stuffed animal and then howled in frustration. The baby’s shout broke the spell growing between Charlie and Vance and she could only be grateful for it.
Infatuation was one thing. Allowing herself to make a fool of herself over a man she would never be able to have was something else entirely.
Quickly, she picked up the stuffed dog, handed it back to Jake and told Vance, “We should get Jake home.”
“I suppose it is getting late,” Vance murmured.
She flashed him a glance, then looked away quickly. It was already too late, Charlie thought. Her heart was involved whether she wanted to admit it or not.
* * *
A week later, Vance was wound too tight and seriously on edge. The only one he hadn’t lost his temper with was Charlie. Which was ironic, considering that she was the one who had his insides tied into knots that only got tighter with every passing second.
The woman was getting to him and that had not been in the plan. Every damn day around her, his blood ran hotter, his mind clouded a little further and the idea of having her dug claws of need ever deeper into him.
Add to that the fact that he knew damn well she was lying to him about something. They’d spent nearly every night together. Oh, not in bed. More’s the pity, he told himself. But at dinner, taking Jake for walks or just sitting around her small, tidy apartment in Queens.
Hell, he was going to Queens for her. What was next? Brooklyn? At the thought, he jumped up from his desk chair and stared down onto the tree-lined street below Waverly’s.
Charlie was antsy. Nervous. And getting worse every day. She checked through the daily mail as if afraid of what she might find. She jumped when he entered a room and just yesterday, one of the security guards reported that Charlie had been in the records room, where all the old files and reports were kept. Why the hell would she be down there? And why hadn’t she told him? What was she hiding?
His gut told him something was off with Charlie. Another part of his anatomy told him he shouldn’t care. His mind was stuck somewhere in the middle.
When the office intercom buzzed, he stabbed at the button, focusing all his frustration on it. “What is it?”
“Jeez,” Charlie said. “Bite my head off.”
He rubbed one hand across his face and shook his head even as he smiled to himself. It hadn’t taken long for Charlie to feel at ease in the boss-assistant relationship. “Sorry. A lot on my mind. What is it?”
“Security’s on line 2 for you,” she said a little breathlessly.
“Right.” He didn’t think about the fact that she sounded nervous. Instead, he punched a button on his phone and said, “Waverly.”
“Mr. Waverly, this is Carl in Security. You asked us to let you know if anything out of the ordinary happened.”
“Yeah?” Hell, he’d had the whole place on alert for the past couple of weeks in hopes that they might catch whoever might be trying to sell them out to Rothschild’s. Now that they had something, though, Vance wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to hear what was coming.
Carl said, “We had the IT department keeping a tight lockdown on sensitive areas—in general, setting up their version of alarms. They alerted us to the fact that someone in your office was trying to access secure files this morning. And it wasn’t from your computer.”
This morning, when Vance had been at a meeting with a potential client. When Charlie was alone in the office.
“What files?” He shot a look at the closed door separating him from Charlie. Was she worried, knowing that he was talking to Security?
“Apparently,” Carl told him, “they were older records on minor auctions. According to the IT guys, this person didn’t get to anything important. A new firewall’s going up as we speak so everything’s secure.” Carl paused and asked, “Is there anything you’d like us to handle?”
“No.” His brain was racing and anger was beginning to churn inside. He needed to take care of this himself. He needed to look Charlie in the eye when he confronted her, because only then would he know for sure if she was being honest. Her face gave away everything she was thinking, feeling; he’d already learned that much about her. And hell, for all he knew, it hadn’t been her. She might have been in another part of the building and someone else had slipped in to use her computer just to incriminate her.
He wasn’t going to assume she was guilty of anything. Not yet, anyway. But he didn’t like it. He didn’t like the notion that Charlie was a traitor.
“I’ll take care of it,” he told Carl and hung up a second later. All he had to do now was figure out how.
Seven
Charlie hated this. Hated feeling on edge all the time. Hated the sense of guilt that seemed to cling to the edges of her mind constantly these days.
Vance was being so nice. And she was lying to him. Every time she spoke to him, she lied. Her grandmother had always insisted, It’s a lie, Charlie, if you know something and you don’t say so. Same as if you were spinning tales yourself. And Gran had been right. Charlie knew something dangerous and she wasn’t saying anything about it because of her need to protect herself. And her son.
Which made her a liar.
And now Vance was talking to Security. Was it about her? Had someone seen something? Was she being watched by someone besides her blackmailer? Oh, God.
Charlie opened up her email program and clicked Reply on the latest threat she’d received only that morning. When that threat had come in, she’d actually tried to open up the older record files this morning, but she hadn’t gotten far before she had shut everything down. She couldn’t do it. Not to Waverly’s. Not to Vance.
Now she typed in a quick note to whoever was threatening her, asking for more time. Even as she hit Send, she knew it wasn’t going to help. This wasn’t going to go away until she either betrayed Vance and Waverly’s or took Jake and ran.
But where would she run? She had no family now. No one. The only people she knew in the world were here, in the city. She had a little savings, but not enough to set herself and Jake up anywhere else. She sat back in her chair, letting her fears rise up until they nearly choked her. When the light on line 2 went out, she shivered. Vance had finished speaking to Security. What was next? Would she be arrested? Fired?
“Gran, I really wish you were still here. I’d run home so fast…”
And just whispering those words made her ashamed. Running away wasn’t the answer and she knew it. She had to face this. Tell Vance the truth and hope to heaven he believed her when she swore she would never sell out Waverly’s.
Oh, God.
Fear still jumped in the pit of her stomach, but somehow, it was easier knowing that at least she’d made a decision. She knew what she had to do. All she needed was the courage to get it done. Because she knew that once she told him about her past, about where she’d come from, he wouldn’t want anything more to do with her. And oh, she would miss him. But first—
She buzzed his office and waited for his gruff reply. “Yes?”
“Vance, I’m taking a break. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
“Sure. Fine.”
He sounded as stern and unyielding as he ever had and she wondered again how a man as ruthless as he was in business could be so different when it was just the two of them. She headed out of the office for the elevator. Before she spoke to Vance, she needed a few minutes with her son.
W
hen she got to the fourth floor, Jake was sleeping.
Charlie slipped into the nap room, walked up to the only occupied crib and stared down at her son. Curled up on his side, Jake had one fist pressed to his mouth and the other curled into his soft, brown hair. His sock-clad feet were drawn up tight and his tiny sighs arrowed straight into her heart.
Scooping him up, Charlie cradled him against her and patted his back until he settled again. She sat in one of the rocking chairs in the shadowy half light and looked down at him through tear-filled eyes. She and her baby boy were alone in the darkened room and his warmth eased some of the chill snaking through her. Smoothing one hand over his hair, Charlie bent close enough to kiss his forehead.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she whispered. “I tried, really. I wanted to give you so much and now I don’t know what to do.”
The baby slept on and Charlie relished the solid, warm weight of him close to her heart. No matter what else was wrong with her life, she had Jake. And she wouldn’t let him down. She would give him a safe, warm world to grow up in.
“I’ll fix it somehow, baby boy. Everything is going to be all right.” Was she trying to soothe her son or reassure herself? She didn’t know and wasn’t sure it mattered.
Tears rolled down her cheeks and she let them fall. Here in the dark, who would see?
“Why’re you crying?”
She stopped rocking, lifted her gaze to the doorway and met Vance Waverly’s steady stare. He was tall, gorgeous and, right now, she could see that his eyes, even in the shadows, were glinting with carefully banked fury.
“It’s nothing,” she said, because what else could she possibly say?
“You’re sitting by yourself, holding your sleeping son in the dark and crying. That’s not nothing.” He pushed away from the doorjamb and locked his gaze on her. Even in the shadows, she felt the power of that cool stare. “I have to know something. Are you a spy, Charlie?”
“I’m not a spy,” she said, patting her son’s behind gently, keeping her voice as quiet as she could. Her tears still rained down her face and as Vance entered the room, she tried wiping them away.
Here it was then. She wasn’t going to get the opportunity to confess. To go to him and tell him everything. Instead, he’d found her out and now he was looking at her as if he didn’t know her at all. But then, she thought sadly, he really didn’t.
He squatted down in front of her and locked his gaze with hers. “What’s going on, Charlie? What is it you’re trying so hard not to tell me?”
“Believe it or not, I was going to tell you,” she said softly as Jake murmured in his sleep. “I just needed to see my son first. Sort of center myself, then I was coming to you.”
Vance nodded. “I do believe you. But I’m here now. So talk to me.”
Still meeting his angry eyes, she shook her head. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“How about you put Jake back in his bed and you and I take a walk?”
She took a breath and let it out on a heavy sigh. The time for stalling was over. And oddly, the heavy ball in the pit of her stomach that had been her constant companion for almost two weeks was already dissolving. Living with lies wasn’t easy. Telling the truth wouldn’t be easy, either. But at least she’d be able to breathe again.
Charlie stood up, settled Jake back down again, then turned to look up at Vance. Lifting her chin, she whispered, “It’s a long story.”
* * *
He took her to the park. Central Park on a bright summer day was filled with locals and tourists and was far enough away from Waverly’s that whatever they said would stay between them. They stayed clear of the lakes and the swimming pool, skirted the carousel and the zoo. He bought them each a bottle of water from a waffle vendor, then steered her toward a wooden bench beside a walking path through the trees.
Vance sat down beside her on the bench beneath an ancient willow. The tree’s branches hung low, its feathery leaves grudgingly waving in the desultory breeze. The scent of flowers and burned coffee from a nearby food cart filled the air as they sat in the dappled shade.
Of course, Vance had followed her when she’d left her desk to take that “break.” Angry and suspicious, he’d felt like a third-rate private detective, slinking along in her wake as she made her way through Waverly’s. He’d had no idea what he might discover, but he certainly hadn’t expected to find her crying over her sleeping son. As her boss, he was wary, suspicious. As the man who…cared for her, he was worried.
“Start talking,” he said, when she made no move to say anything. “I want it all, Charlie.”
She laughed shortly, broke the seal on her water bottle and took a long drink. When she had neatly screwed the cap back on, she lifted her gaze and looked out over the park. Two women pushing strollers laughed and chatted. A young man threw a Frisbee for a golden retriever and somewhere in the distance, a siren sounded.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” she admitted, crossing her legs demurely.
“Then start with this.” He waited until she looked at him. “Were you the one trying to access Waverly records this morning?”
Her pale blue eyes went wide in shock. “Oh, God.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he muttered darkly and took a drink of his own water. “Security told me that the IT department had found someone hacking into the records. I really hoped it wasn’t you.”
Dammit. He would have been willing to bet money that she was innocent. He didn’t like feeling as though he’d been played. Was she that good an actress? Could she really pretend to be an innocent and pull it off so completely? His gaze fixed on her, he tried to balance this new information with the woman he had come to know the past couple of weeks and couldn’t do it. Who was the real Charlie?
But even as he thought that, he remembered her alone in the dark with her son and the tears coursing down her face. She hadn’t known he was there. Hadn’t known she’d been caught. So the tears were real. Now all he had to do was find out what else was.
“I couldn’t do it,” she said after a long moment of silence. “I tried. Went to the records file, but I closed it again right away. I couldn’t steal from Waverly’s. From you.”
“Glad to hear it,” Vance said and meant it. His suspicions were dissolving. A real thief wouldn’t have changed her mind. She would have scoped out all the information she could glean and then disappear. But the frustration chewing at him was still fierce. He believed she hadn’t wanted to steal from him. But she’d come close.
“Now how about you tell me why you tried it in the first place?” He heard the tightly leashed anger in his voice and didn’t bother to disguise it. “What’s got you so jumpy? So worried that you were thinking about stealing, even though you didn’t want to?”
She started talking then and the words rushed over themselves as if they’d been banked up too long and couldn’t wait to get out into the light of day. Vance listened without interrupting, though it cost him to keep his growing fury trapped inside. His grip on the water bottle tightened to the point where he half expected to crush the plastic container and be doused in icy water. And maybe that would have been a good thing. It might have gone a ways toward cooling off the fire of the rage pumping through his body.
When she finally finished talking, Vance couldn’t sit still a second longer. He jumped to his feet, paced off a step or two, and turned back to look at her. The hot wind teased the ends of her hair and sent leaf-painted shad
ows dancing across her face.
She stared up at him. “You’re angry.”
“Good call,” he said tightly. He tossed his nearly full bottle of water into a nearby trash can with such force it was like the crash of a gong.
It didn’t help any. Frustrated and furious, he shoved both hands through his hair. “Dammit, Charlie.”
“I wasn’t going to do it,” she said firmly, and stood up, grabbing his arm to force him to look at her. “You have to know that. I wasn’t going to sell Waverly’s out. To anyone. I wouldn’t do that to the house. Or to you.”
He snorted in disgust. “You think that’s why I’m mad?”
“Isn’t it?”
Vance looked down at her misery-filled eyes, and got mad all over again. “God, you must think I’m a real bastard.”
“No, I don’t,” she argued.
“Then why didn’t you tell me you were in trouble?” His demand was short, sharp and to the point. He couldn’t believe this. Any of it. He’d been suspecting her of betrayal when all the time— “You’ve been threatened by some creep and you didn’t say anything? Why the hell not?”
The wounded expression on her face faded and was replaced by grim resolution. “Because it was my problem.”
“That’s not an answer, Charlie,” he said, voice thick with the fury nearly choking him. “You’ve been scared for two weeks and never said a damn word.”
“What was I supposed to say?” she argued. “If I had told you that I was being blackmailed, what could you have done? You’d have assumed that I was going to betray you.”
One short, sharp bark of laughter shot from his throat. “That’s great, thanks. Good to know the high opinion you have of me.”
Stunned, she tilted her head and looked at him. “You’re saying you would have believed me?”
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