Lucky Charm

by Valerie Douglas

  All the financial pundits gave glowing reviews.

  Matt wasn’t certain why that bothered him but it did. Maybe it was simply the notion of having all the talking heads raving about Marathon that made him wary. It wasn’t normal for any of them to have the same opinion on anything. The last time that had happened it had been Bernie Madoff.

  Perhaps it was simply paranoia over the circumstances of Bill’s death talking.

  There was still, however, the truism that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t following you. In fact, they’d made a movie with Mel Gibson about that. At the moment, Matt wasn’t willing – yet – to chalk it up to that.

  Instead, he returned to his hotel room.

  Surprisingly, they had a good wireless Internet setup, as he’d discovered when he’d gone on line to find a nice, out-of the way hotel, but promises like that didn’t always held true. In this case it had. He e-mailed Darrin to ask him to do some checking for him. Phrasing it carefully, he tried to pique Darrin’s interest without specifically telling him what it was about Genesis that intrigued him. Darrin would be his barometer, his temperature check, as he was in so many ways. There was a reason he was the boss, he had impeccable instincts. Darrin had been a cop before he’d opened his detective agency and he hadn’t lost his edge.

  It was still frustrating. Bill’s death, the break-in afterwards, the security Marathon used, all indicated the company was up to something they shouldn’t be but the only place to find out for certain was in Marathon’s offices. Except that he couldn’t get in.

  With sunglasses to cover some of the bruising on his face, he watched the building from across the square.

  There had to be a way around the problem of getting inside those offices. A deliveryman he could impersonate or something. Some way inside.

  In the midst of the lunch crowd, something familiar caught his eye, a flash of dark gleaming hair and pale skin. Then the people stepped clear enough for him to see clearly.

  Ariel.

  So she worked in the building? That explained what she’d been doing there but not why she’d been there at that time of night. She certainly hadn’t been dressed like cleaning staff.

  Nor did it explain why she was staying in a cheap motel. Maybe she’d transferred or something but hadn’t been able to find a place yet?

  There wasn’t enough information for him to speculate. Had she said anything about what had happened, he wondered? He didn’t think so, somehow he thought she’d respect his secrets and would want to keep it to herself. Certainly after what happened that morning.

  His eyes took her in as he remembered the morning. A heated curl of desire moved deeply through him. She’d been so sweet, so responsive, giving back as much as she’d taken.

  The sun glowed on the waves of her shining black hair, casting blue highlights from it, as her brilliant eyes went to one of her companions and she smiled. It was a pretty smile, warm and friendly.

  Somehow, though, she seemed set apart from the others.

  She did catch the eye, though, with both her face and figure. She moved gracefully, hips swaying. Not a lot of women walked like that anymore. The memory of those hips, rising up to take him in, the way she responded, the feel of her, rolled through him again sending a bolt of heat deep into his groin.

  For the first time he realized he hadn’t thought of Jeannine in days, not while making love to Ariel and not since.

  Jeannine. Tall, blonde, cool and lovely Jeannine. The original ice princess.

  Matt had thought he’d loved her and he’d certainly wanted her to love him. Her distance only seemed to stoke his need, she’d always been just that little bit remote and unreachable as if she were somehow just beyond his grasp. He didn’t know what she’d seen in him – although part of him guessed, whether he admitted it to himself or not.

  To his surprise it was hard to call her face to mind and for the first time doing it didn’t cause him pain. Maybe he was finally getting past it. He’d dated since their breakup but nothing serious, nothing that gelled, as least partly because Jeannine had always been there in the back of his mind. Why couldn’t she have loved him?

  Now, for the first time, he wondered if he hadn’t been in love with the image of her.

  Coolly beautiful, with long straight ash-blonde hair falling smoothly down her back, Jeannine had been slender, her eyes a nearly a cat-like yellow. As tall as she was she’d been nearly eye-to-eye with him. For some reason, though, Matt had always felt slightly off balance with her. A part of him had been aware somehow that she was always looking at other men, always assessing. She’d always been conscious of things and rarely enthused unless he bought her an expensive gift. That was difficult with his responsibilities. Small-breasted and thin-hipped, she’d professed to like sex but never seemed to enjoy it much. At least, not with him. It just seemed to serve her purposes.

  Ariel? Her cries of pleasure, the feel of her body trembling beneath him and tightening around him still echoed through him. He had no doubt he’d pleased her. Every motion, every gasp, every twitching muscle had told him that. She’d reached out to touch him in return, had stroked and caressed him in ways Jeannine never had.

  The thought of it dug at him. Hadn’t he learned his lesson? Hadn’t Jeannine been enough? How many times did he need his heart broken, his ego savaged? And it had been. He’d been coldly, coolly rejected. It wasn’t enough. He hadn’t been enough. The not knowing why, precisely, tore at him. It had hurt. A lot. He didn’t want to hurt like that again.

  One night was nothing.

  If things had been different…maybe… But they weren’t.

  He drifted back among the crowd so Ariel wouldn’t see him.

  It was Bill he had to think about. That was the mystery he had to solve. He had to find a way into Marathon and he would.

  Ariel, though, wouldn’t be it.

  Chapter Five

  “Hey, Ariel,” Miriam said on their way back from lunch, “a bunch of us are going out tomorrow night. Since it’s your last night, you should take a chance to have a little fun while you’re here. Why don’t you come with us? There’s this little Mexican place we go to, the food is good, there’s a band and everything.”

  It had been a long time since Ariel had gone out simply to have a good time. How long had it been? She cast her mind back, thinking, and her heart twisted a little at the memory.

  Before.

  Everyone kept telling her it was time to move on, though. Maybe it was and maybe here, so far from familiar memories, it would be easier. It wouldn’t hurt as much as it might have back home.

  A chorus of enthusiastic voices from the others surprised and pleased her. Although she usually made friends with one or two people in an office, invitations like this didn’t come that often. In the past when they had, she’d turned them down.

  Maybe for a change, she’d do something different.

  She laughed. “Okay, okay, you win, I’ll come.”

  One of the guys, Steve something, wrapped an arm around her waist. She’d already pegged him as the office Lothario.

  “I get the first dance,” he declared.

  She stepped tactfully out of his grasp in a fluid motion. That much involvement wasn’t on the agenda and certainly not with someone like him. He was strictly of the one-night-stand variety. Especially since he knew she was leaving. With no possibility of any future involvement, she was a safe target. Or so he thought.

  Whatever had happened with Matthew, it hadn’t been light, thoughtless or meaningless, as it would be with someone like Steve. Matthew had been both thoughtful and caring.

  Miriam stepped between them, put as arm around Ariel and gave Steve a glare.

  “Back off, Steve. We want her to have a good time.”

  He smirked. “I guarantee she’ll have a good time.”

  “I doubt it,” Ariel said, evenly enough, then added in a whisper, “Thanks, Miriam.”

  She couldn’t afford to make enemi
es here.

  “Welcome,” Miriam whispered back. “Keep an eye on old Steve, he thinks he’s da bomb.”

  With a grin, Ariel answered, “Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.”

  Miriam snickered.

  The training session that afternoon went well, too. It would be the first night that week she actually got back to the hotel room at a decent hour. If she was going out the next night a good night’s sleep would be necessary.

  The only problem was, she had the oddest sensation of being watched. Not when she was in the office but when she was traveling to and from the hotel. It wasn’t as if she actually saw anyone, rather it was the sense that someone watched her with unfriendly eyes. Nothing she could put her finger on, no one she could point to but it was unnerving.

  As it was, though, it would be a relief to move on to the Tampa office at the end of the week.

  She’d considered going home for the weekend but there was nothing for her there, she’d only rattle around her empty apartment. As often as she was on the road, she hadn’t had the chance to make many friends. Her parents lived on the East Coast but she rarely visited them, her mother kept asking questions she didn’t want to answer. Rather than go home to nothing she’d decided she might as well stay in Florida. It would save the cost of the airplane ticket home and she could use some of the travel expense money saved to stay in a better hotel in Tampa than she had here.

  The next morning’s session went reasonably well but Miriam took one look at what she was wearing when she walked into the office and shook her head.

  “Don’t you have anything fun to wear?”

  The trim suit Ariel wore was the closest thing she had to party clothes.

  Ariel looked at her apologetically. “Sorry, Miriam, this is it. I didn’t know I was going out so I only brought business clothes.”

  Her eyes lighting up, Miriam looked at her roguishly. “Got money?”

  With amusement, Ariel nodded as she eyed Miriam warily. “Yes, I have money. A little.”

  That was all Miriam needed.

  “Ladies,” Miriam crowed to some of the others as they walked down the steps at lunchtime. Heads turned. “We’re skipping lunch and going shopping. Ariel needs something to wear for tonight.”

  Now Ariel knew another reason why so many of the employees liked Miriam.

  There was a least one whoop and assorted grins.

  “Make it something sexy,” Steve yelled, as the guys shook their heads and split off. “I’ve got first dance.”

  Miriam shouted back, “Shut up, Steve.”

  By the time they returned from lunch, Ariel had a casual dress that wouldn’t be sexy enough by Steve’s standards but was deemed acceptable by the girls and a new pair of high-heeled strappy sandals.

  It had actually been a lot of fun since she hadn’t been shopping for ages. For a little while, though, she’d understood how a Barbie doll must feel as they insisted she try on a few different dresses.

  It had been a long time since she’d actually thought about what she looked like in clothes. Most of the time she bought her business suits off the rack, choosing them more for comfort than style. There was no one she wanted to impress but she’d liked to look good.

  The dress she bought was made of real silk but it had come from the sale rack. It hugged her body but not too tightly. It looked like a sunset in patterns of rose and violet, scoop-necked with little fluttery sleeves. The skirt was definitely shorter than her suits, much shorter than she was used to. She’d liked the dress so much she’d found another one in shades of blue. The heels of the sandals were higher than she usually wore, raising her above her five foot three inch height. She’d been a little hesitant about the sandals.

  “But Ariel,” Miriam said with a conspiratorial grin, “they make your legs look great and you have great legs. Go on, live a little.”

  Rolling her eyes, she’d bought the sandals, reluctantly admitting to herself that Miriam was right. They did make her legs look great.

  Surprisingly, she found herself looking forward to the evening. It gave her afternoon training session on her last full day a lift it didn’t usually have. She’d be back in the morning just in case there were problems, but only for half a day, though, and then she’d be moving on to Tampa.

  Miriam took her home with her to her tiny apartment to change, which was very kind of her.

  That was Miriam, though, a big, hearty, merry girl with a heart to match.

  “A lot of folks from the office go to this place, it’s sort of become Marathon’s unofficial watering hole,” Miriam explained as she opened the door to the club.

  It was a cute little place with a Cuban/Latin flare and a lot of neon.

  She gestured Ariel in ahead of her.

  Around one side of the bar, everyone started clapping. Steve, predictably, wolf-whistled as Aidan from the morning session stepped out, bowed and raised his glass to her.

  “Ah, Ariel O’Donnell, our own fair Irish rose, we welcome you to our wake. Our training sessions are at last complete and though we bid you farewell as well,” he said, in a fair imitation of an Irish accent, “we’re all bloody well glad they’re done. Have a drink.”

  Laughing, Ariel and Miriam went to join them at the bar.

  There was some kind of fuss at the front of the restaurant and everyone at the table where Matt sat craned their heads to see what the commotion was about. At the name, he did, too. There couldn’t be two Ariel O’Donnells.

  With all the people standing around it was hard to see but then they parted and there she was.

  It was her, laughing, clearly a little embarrassed by the applause that greeted her. Her wavy ebony hair was clipped back neatly, her ivory skin glowed beneath the light and her blue eyes seemed luminous in the neon lighting. It seemed she was well-liked. He wondered what the occasion was? He had to admit, he liked the way she laughed and the sound of it, loose, free and bubbling.

  His heart did an odd little flip.

  What the hell was she doing here? He had a flash of memory of that last glimpse he’d had of her sitting cross-legged on the bed wearing nothing but the curtain of her hair and a wave of heat shot through him.

  She hadn’t seen him yet and he wasn’t sure whether he did or didn’t want her to. The memory of making love to her was still very fresh and had hovered in the back of his mind ever since. Between the courage she’d shown in taking on those men and her curious mix of strength and fragility, she’d made a strong impression. One he found difficult to shake. Add to it that he owed her. She’d probably saved his life and certainly saved him from a worse beating. What had happened that morning hadn’t even touched that debt in his mind.

  In fact, it had probably added to it, although he wasn’t certain how.

  “What’s going on?” he asked the others at the table.

  The chance to learn a little more about her was simply too good to pass up.

  Almost everyone in the bar was an employee of Marathon. These, though, were in sales, while those at the bar were office staff. In the corporate hierarchy, they were two entirely different social classes.

  All three of those seated at the table with him subsided into disinterest.

  “Some trainer the company hired for the new software,” Carly said dismissively. “It’s her last day.”

  It seemed that was all he was going to get. He didn’t dare ask more questions or draw too much attention to his interest in Ariel, not if he wanted to get anything out of Carly.

  Carly Madison was a sales representative for Marathon as were the other two with them.

  He’d followed some of the Marathon employees to the bar and then hung out for a while, eyeing the little group. When tall, cool, blonde Carly had looked at him with interest, he hadn’t been able to turn away the opportunity. He needed information and a way into Marathon and in her he might get both. If worst came to worst, he’d ‘borrow’ her corporate ID, then make sure it was found before she needed to use it again.

&nb
sp; The woman beside him was definitely more his type. Like Jeanine, a little remote. The resemblance didn’t bother him, his taste in women was pretty eclectic, he simply didn’t seem to have good luck with them. Especially not petite, black-haired, troubled Irish roses.

  The other three at the table returned to their previous conversation, which was the real reason Matt was here. He forced himself to concentrate.

  What he heard, though, sitting with them made him uneasy. Some of their business practices didn’t sound kosher, that was certain.

  If he couldn’t find a way in, he needed to find out how Marathon operated. What was the link with Genesis? Did anyone know about that? More, why had they killed Bill? What was it Bill had learned or found that made him so dangerous they had to kill him?

  Keep your eye on the goal Matt, he reminded himself, remember Bill and why you’re here.

  Even so, his eyes kept drifting to the bar, though, and the group there – to the slender figure in the dress that clung lightly to her curves and echoed the brilliant colors cast by the sunset glowing outside the windows.

  They all seemed to be having a good time. A much better time, it seemed, than he was. Sales people tended to get a little intense and not always in good ways.

  He wasn’t here to have a good time, though, he was here to find out why Bill had died.

  Fajitas, tacos and pitchers of margaritas made their rounds up and down the bar as the bartender finally reached Ariel. She gestured him closer and spoke softly.

  “Can you give me a virgin margarita?” she asked.