by Lucy Monroe
"No." Another strange look passed over Miss Richards's face. "He's going over some new information on an important account right now."
Well, the man had to eat. He could spare a half hour for lunch with his wife. Isabel placed her hand on Alex's office doorknob. "I promise not to keep him long."
* * *
Alex pulled out the spreadsheet of Hypertron's stock prices over the past six months and studied it. The stock had dipped again. Although it wasn't at the low level both Alex and St. Clair had hoped for, it was low enough to begin the takeover bid process. St. Clair would start by buying small chunks of stock, but nothing that should alert Hypertron's watchdogs or put him over SEC guidelines.
It was common enough for investors to speculate and buy stock that was slipping, particularly technology stocks, in hopes that the price would again rise quickly.
Alex planned to meet St. Clair later today to finalize details and strategy. They would discuss other issues as well, particularly the fact that Alex had no intention of letting St. Clair raid CIS for employees. Marcus wasn't going anywhere. He'd see to it.
Damn it. Alex wished he could shake this feeling of impending doom. He knew it had nothing to do with the fear of losing Marcus to St. Clair. Alex was pretty sure that the partnership he planned to offer his second-in-command would guarantee Marcus's loyalty and longevity at CIS.
The nagging feeling of doom shouldn't have anything to do with his revenge plans, either. Everything was in place. Everything except a guarantee of Isabel's reaction to the news that her father's company was going down. She was so damn caring, even toward a man who had treated her like unimportant baggage for most of her life. Isabel should be grateful to Alex if she ever did discover the part he intended to play in the downfall of Hypertron, but his gut told him that she wouldn't be.
* * *
"'Don't frown like that or your face might freeze that way,' Nanny Number Four used to say."
Alex felt as if his dark and chaotic thoughts had conjured her up. Isabel stood in his doorway, a teasing smile lighting her face.
"I told my secretary that I did not want to be disturbed." Hell. Why had he said that?
Isabel's smile faltered but did not disappear entirely. "I explained that wives have certain privileges. Disturbing their husbands is one of them."
She waggled her eyebrows, intimating all sorts of disturbances. For once, he did not respond with instant arousal to her obvious suggestion. Their future was too damn precarious now that St. Clair was prepared to make his move.
Lifting a picnic basket covered with a red-and-white checked cloth, Isabel said, "I brought lunch."
As she started to move forward, several things clicked into place in his brain. The first was that if he let her set the basket on the desk, she would see the Hypertron file. He quickly shut the file in front of him and slipped it underneath a newspaper on the side of his desk. Isabel's eyes followed his movements, but he didn't think she had focused on what she saw.
The second was that he couldn't have lunch with her. Not today, because he still had a lot of paperwork to compile before meeting with St. Clair. And because he didn't know if he could give St. Clair unbiased advice toward the destruction of her father's company after spending a romantic picnic lunch with Isabel.
"I can't. I've got an important appointment this afternoon I need to prepare for." His voice came out like a bark, but he couldn't help it. He did not want Isabel asking difficult questions right now. He tried to soften his tone. "I don't have time for lunch today, sweetheart."
She stopped a few feet from his desk, her expression chagrined but not angry. "Surely you can take half an hour out of your schedule to eat."
"I'm sorry, baby, I can't."
She waved the basket in the air and the smell of fried chicken tempted his nostrils. "Not even thirty short minutes?"
"No." The word came out sharp and cutting. He closed his eyes in frustration at his own lack of control.
Hurt registered in her eyes, but her voice came out low and even. "I'll remember to call ahead for an appointment next time."
"Isabel—"
She cut him off. "I'm sorry, Alex. I do understand about work schedules. It's just that I had something I wanted to tell you, and in my excitement I didn't take anything else into consideration. I guess I thought that if I could take the afternoon off, you could, too."
What did she want to tell him? She'd probably booked their trip and wanted to give him the details. He got up from his desk and walked toward her. He didn't want her to leave his office looking wounded.
Cupping her nape, he caressed her neck with his fingers. "We can talk about it tonight at home. All right?"
She nodded, her silky hair moving against his fingers.
He leaned down and kissed her cheek. He didn't dare take her lips. If he did, he knew he would lose the tenuous grip he had on his control. It was always like this with her. "I'll see you later, then."
"Okay." She slipped away from his touch and left the office.
Guilt hit him like a volley of arrows aimed right at his chest. Damn it. He should have taken a half hour for lunch with her. He kept saying that his revenge had nothing to do with her, so why had he allowed it to affect how he treated her? Taking a few seconds to put the file on Hypertron in his office safe, he then left his office intending to beg his wife for a second chance at that picnic basket.
He realized he wouldn't get the opportunity when he walked outside just in time to watch her car pull out of the drive.
Chapter 15
« ^ »
Isabel drove without really thinking where she was going, but wasn't surprised at all to discover herself in her father's neighborhood. She had no intention of stopping by the house. She wanted peace. She needed solitude.
Driving past her childhood home, she turned onto a street that led to a small park. Autumn leaves colored the landscape of the empty play area. Getting out of the car, she walked past the playground equipment and into a stand of trees beyond where the scent of wet bark mixed with damp earth. She had spent more hours than she could count here, by herself. The park had been a refuge from the silent loneliness of her home.
How many times had she come here when her work had fallen apart yet again? The first time she had been barely five and had gotten in awful trouble when the new nanny could not find her. The woman had made Isabel promise not to come to the park alone ever again. Isabel had kept the promise until that nanny left also. Then, she figured all bets were off.
She kicked the wet leaves and tried to make sense of what had happened in Alex's office. She hadn't been placating him when she told him that she understood schedules, but something told her that that wasn't really the reason Alex hadn't wanted to have lunch with her.
He had acted so distant. So irritated. Isabel stopped and picked up a stick, feeling the wet bark chill her fingers. Why had Alex been so upset? He hadn't even responded to her suggestive comment about interruptions. Alex's physical response to her had been the one thing she could rely on. If he had stopped wanting her, what chance did she have that he would ever fall in love with her?
In a few months, she would be as round as a beach ball. If Alex was tired of her already, how much less attractive would he find her while pregnant? A part of her realized that she was making too much out of his rejection, but that didn't stop her emotions from careening out of control as she walked the paths that had once given her solace.
Her hand dropped to her still-flat stomach as she went over Alex's reaction in her mind once again. He'd moved a file under some papers on his desk. Almost as if he hadn't wanted her to see it. Which made no sense. He would trust her to keep confidential whatever she saw. Wouldn't he?
The thought that Alex might not trust her twisted like a knife in her heart.
Then, like a camera zooming into focus, the image of the file crystallized in Isabel's mind and the knife took another twist. The file had been on Hypertron. Why would Alex have a file on her dad'
s company? More pieces of their conversation came into sharp relief. Alex had an important meeting he'd been preparing for. What did that meeting have to do with Hypertron?
She remembered her dad and even Priscilla's concern that Alex had been using Isabel to wreak vengeance. Alex had denied the accusation and she believed him. She had assumed that his denial meant he wasn't interested in any kind of retribution, telling herself that a man wouldn't marry the daughter of his sworn enemy. She had to see that file.
* * *
She parked her car next to their house, blowing out a breath of relief when she saw that Alex's Aston Martin was gone. She didn't take time to empty the picnic basket but went straight down to the office. The door was locked. That meant they were all gone: Alex, Marcus, and Miss Richards. Unaccountable irritation rose up at the thought that Alex trusted Veronica Richards with his secrets but not his own wife. She tried reminding herself that Alex wasn't about to tell her about his plans against Hypertron but it didn't help.
She jogged up to the house and snagged the extra key that Alex kept to the office out of the drawer in the kitchen. Hurrying back to the renovated barn, she unlocked the door and slipped inside. She missed on her first try at disarming the elaborate alarm system, but thankfully succeeded before the timed mechanism went off at her unlawful entry. At least Alex had trusted her enough to explain his security system.
Miss Richards's computer had not been turned off. The screen saver flashed bright geometric images. Isabel assumed the secretary expected to return. Pressing the left mouse button, Isabel brought the screen up and smiled. The perfect Miss Richards wasn't so perfect after all. She had forgotten to lock her system, leaving Isabel access to her desktop. Feeling like a cat burglar, she quickly checked the calendar program to see when the others were supposed to return.
Isabel didn't want to believe that Alex was planning anything underhanded against Hypertron, but her intuition told her to get a grip on reality. Her husband was too hard a man to allow his father's death to go unpunished. She knew Alex didn't see the events the same way that Priscilla did: he blamed her father, or at least his company, completely for Ray Trahern's death.
Alex, Marcus, and Miss Richards were meeting with some person named St. Clair. The name struck a familiar chord in Isabel's memory, but in testimony to how rattled she felt, it took her several moments to realize St. Clair was the man who had hired her to approach Marcus Danvers about employment. No end time to the meeting had been recorded and there were no other appointments that afternoon. They might have planned to be gone most of the afternoon, or they could be back any moment.
Deciding not to waste any time, Isabel went into Alex's office. His desk was clean except for a newspaper folded open to the stock section.
She spied his safe. Of course. Anything as important as revenge would be locked up in there. Alex hadn't told her the combination but she tried anyway. Their wedding date didn't open it. She wasn't surprised. She tried Alex's birthday, but it didn't work, either.
Knowing Alex, he would have chosen numbers that wouldn't be that obvious—but that would be easy for him to remember. She hit her head with the heel of her hand. Duh. Pulling the receiver from the cradle on his phone, she dialed Priscilla's number. Her mother-in-law answered on the second ring.
"Priscilla, this is Isabel."
"Hello, dear. How are you?"
Ready to shoot your son. "Fine. I've got a quick question I hope you won't mind answering."
"Certainly. Anything you need."
Isabel's chest grew tight at the warmth in Priscilla's voice so at odds with Alex's earlier irritation. Darn. She had been told that pregnancy made women more emotional, but she wasn't in the mood to deal with it. Keeping a tight rein on the feelings swirling through her, Isabel tried to think how to word her question without sounding ghoulish and finally decided that bluntness was the only answer.
"What day did Ray die?"
Priscilla rattled off a date. Holding the receiver to her ear, Isabel tried the numbers on the safe's combination. They worked. "Of course. He wouldn't use our wedding date because it's not important enough."
The fact that the safe had been installed long before their marriage didn't diminish her anger toward Alex. His dad had died only two years ago. Alex had started CIS and presumably purchased the safe well before that date.
"What? Are you all right, Isabel?" Priscilla's concerned voice barely penetrated Isabel's anger.
"All right? Yes. Why wouldn't I be?" Just because she was married to a man still living in the past.
"You sound a bit odd. Are you getting enough rest?"
"Yes." Despite the fact that Alex liked to wake her in the middle of the night to make love, she was getting plenty of rest. "Listen Priscilla, I've got to go."
"Very well. I'll see you Sunday, dear."
Maybe. Then again maybe she would be in jail for assault and battery of her stubborn, retaliation-minded husband. Pregnant women have been known to lose control. Isabel hung up the phone absentmindedly as she stared at the contents of the safe. The file wasn't there. Did that mean Alex had taken it with him? Probably. St. Clair must have something to do with Alex's plans for revenge.
Even if he had taken the file, there had to be some kind of backup. After all, Miss Richards was too organized not to have duplicate records. Where would they be? On her computer.
Isabel rushed back into the outer office and did a search for files related to Hypertron. She found an entire subdirectory full of them. Isabel clicked one open and began reading. She was still reading when the outer door to the office opened an hour and a half later.
* * *
Alex walked into his office building, and the first thing he saw was his wife sitting in Veronica's chair staring at his secretary's computer monitor. "What the hell?"
Isabel turned her head. Her usual smile of greeting was conspicuous in its absence. "Oh, hello, Alex. How did your meeting with Mr. St. Clair go? I'm assuming your plans to take apart my dad's company are right on target."
A gasp from behind him reminded Alex that Marcus and Veronica had followed him into the building. He had no intention of having this discussion with his wife in front of them. He'd hoped not to have this discussion at all.
"Let's go up to the house and talk about it."
Isabel stood up and stretched. Despite his inner turmoil, Alex's body reacted to the sight. He wanted her. He always wanted her, but first they had to talk.
After stretching, she smiled. It was more a tilting of her lips and her eyes remained cold. "Why?" She swung her hand out to indicate Marcus and Veronica. "They already know the details. Why shouldn't they hear us discussing them?"
A dangerous glitter in Isabel's eyes warned him that although she sounded like she couldn't care less about what she had discovered, she was coldly furious. They needed privacy and they needed it immediately.
He walked forward, took her arm, and then kept right on walking—gently forcing her to follow him into his office. Once inside he released her and she made a beeline for the other side of the room, getting as far away from him as possible.
Taking a tight rein on his temper, he shut the door and turned to face her. "How did you find out?" That isn't what he had meant to say, but it would do for a start.
She glared at him, her green eyes spitting all sorts of accusations at him. "I saw the file on Hypertron this afternoon when I came by for lunch."
"Why did you sneak into my office? Why didn't you just ask me about it?"
The look she gave him questioned his intelligence quotient. "Right. I was supposed to ask you about your plans to ruin my father? Get real."
He walked toward her and she backed away, circling around his desk. That's when he noticed his safe standing open. "You broke into my safe?"
Her eyes shot flames and she seemed to swell with anger. "Yes. And do you know what I discovered?"
"Nothing." He'd taken the file with him. But she had found Veronica's backup documentation on the c
omputer. He wondered how much she had been able to read before his return to the office. Whatever it had been, apparently it was enough.
"Wrong." Isabel's face was pale, with two splotches of red high on her cheekbones. "I found out that our wedding doesn't rate the same level of importance as the date of your dad's death, which you've made the combination to your safe. You're so busy living in the past and plotting for revenge, I don't know why you married me at all."
Why the hell was she so fixated on his safe's combination? Just because he used an important date from the past that was easy for him to remember didn't mean he'd been living in it. "I married you because I wanted to."
"I know you wanted to, but what I can't figure out is why." Then, her gaze filled with horrified disbelief. "Or was I part of it? You told me I didn't have anything to do with what happened to your dad, and I believed you. I was a fool, wasn't I? No man meets a woman and wants to marry her within days! Especially a man as methodical as you." Isabel's voice rose to a hysterical level. "What did you do? Convince St. Clair to call me so you'd have an excuse to come to my office and harangue me? Was marrying me your way of taking away more than Dad's company? You think that you've taken me away from him, too, but you're wrong."
She had completed her circle of the room and stood in front of the closed door. She shut her eyes for a second as if trying to block out the situation, then opened them. Her next words were spoken in a bare whisper. "Dad doesn't care about me any more than you do. You can't take away something someone has already rejected."
He reached toward her, but she jerked away.
"Calm down, Isabel. You're out of control and making wild accusations." He tried to keep his voice level and soothing.
She laughed, the sound hollow and full of pain. He wanted to take her in his arms and make it better, but he could tell that his touch was the last thing she would willingly tolerate right now. How could she believe that he didn't care? She was his wife, not some kind of pawn he would use to hurt Harrison. She had to know that.
