Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It

by Lucy Monroe

  He bit back a curse at the look of hurt on Ronnie's face. He hadn't meant to say that last part, or for it to sound the way it had, like he was rubbing her nose in her own lack of loyalty.

  "I didn't mean it the way it sounded."

  She picked up her fork, obviously hurt, her gaze averted from him. "Maybe we should just eat our dinner."

  He felt like a heel. "Sure."

  They ate in silence for several minutes before he reminded himself that as interesting as his personal relationship with Ronnie was to him, he had a job to do. He was supposed to find Kline Technology's corporate spy.

  "You said this afternoon that you liked your job," he said, by way of opening up a neutral topic.

  She nodded, finishing her salad and pushing the plate away. "It's challenging and I like Kline Tech."

  "Does Jack come on to you a lot?"

  Where the hell had that question come from? Certainly not from his neutral list, but then maybe nothing could be neutral between the two of them.

  She shrugged. "He's asked me out a few times. I never feel pressured to say yes and I haven't."

  "Would you if you felt pressured?"

  She took a sip of her water before answering, he set the water glass down and fixed him with a penetrating stare, like she was looking into his very soul.

  "Are you trying to figure out if your attempt at blackmail is going to be successful?"

  When you didn't know what to say to an oppo-nent's question, you asked one of your own. 'Why don't you tell me? Am I?"

  "It doesn't matter. I'm not going to answer you, regardless of what your motivation was for asking."

  She spoke quietly, in a tone he'd learned long ago meant she was digging her stubborn little heels into the dirt and wouldn't be moved.

  "Let's go back to Kline Tech. It's a good company. What do you think of Kline's idea to expand?"

  She shifted in her chair. "I'm not sure expansion is the smart road to take in the current economic climate. Mr. Kline has a product that consumers want; his long-term marketing forecasts are good. If he tries expansion and it fails, his currently solid company would be put at risk."

  "It's a solid company all right, but there have been a few setbacks these past few months. Competitors coming to market with similar products just before Kline Technology, the press getting wind of problems in design before they can be fixed—"

  The sound of her glass hitting the salad plate cut him off. Water poured over the plate and onto the table.

  She whipped her napkin from her lap and blotted at the rapidly spreading liquid. "That was so clumsy of me."

  He signaled for their waiter and when the kid came asked for a towel to clean up the mess.

  His stomach tightened as she darted a glance at him, her eyes wary, her face set. "You were saying?"

  "It's just that with everything that's happened over the last six months, I can see where Kline might want to expand into something different to prove to stockholders that they still have the edge."

  She nodded. "Yes. I see your point."

  The stiltedness of her words undermined her attempt to put on a natural front.

  Damn it. He hadn't wanted her to be guilty. The sick feeling in his gut made him acknowledge that fact, but did he need anything more than her reaction to his pretty innocuous question to convince him she was in up to her eyeballs again in corporate espionage?

  George Kline reclined on Allison's sofa and let his worries about a corporate spy at Kline Technologies take a back seat to what he was feeling, which was contentment. Allison was a very restful person.

  She'd invited him over for dinner after work and he hadn't even considered turning her down. Hell, if he had a choice, they'd spend every evening together and every night. But they both had grown children and commitments they had to keep outside of their relationship. But time with her gave him peace he didn't get anywhere else.

  He didn't know what he would do if he didn't have Allison to decompress with.

  The stress of running a multi-million-dollar company didn't control him when he was with her.

  She made him feel good.

  "Hey, darlin', why don't you come on over here and set a spell?" His southern roots came out when he was with her, but the rest of the time no one at all would have known he spent his first fifteen years inTexas .

  She laughed, a soft, melodious sound. "You get thatTexas drawl going when you want to make love and I know just what will happen if I come over there."

  "I'll kiss you stupid and touch you until you moan."

  Her breath hitched and she fumbled with the CD she'd been about to put in the player, almost dropping it. She managed to get it in the stereo and the play button pushed before turning around to face him, her eyes filled with sensual promise.

  "Will you really?"

  He put his hand out. "Come here."

  She came and he pulled her down into his lap with more force than he'd intended, but she didn't complain.

  Her body was open to him in a way no other woman's had ever been. Allison was a generous lover. And passionate.

  Everything he could want and more. He tipped her head back and kissed her, his hand coming up to cup her breast with possessiveness he made no attempt to hide when they were alone together.

  She started unbuttoning buttons and they kissed, touched and teased each other with the sound of George Strait singing in the background.

  When they were both naked and she'd touched him until he thought he'd go crazy from the pleasure of it, he stood up and carried her into the bedroom.

  He laid her on the bed and grabbed a condom out of the bedside drawer. "You make me feel like a teenager, Allison. I get so hot when I'm with you, I don't want to wait to put on protection."

  She spread her legs in blatant invitation. "I don't want to wait either."

  His hands trembled as he put the condom on and then he came over her, going inside her with the same feeling of rebirth their lovemaking always gave him.

  It was almost mystical how he felt when he was with her.

  Later, they lay together under the covers, their bodies entwined, her soft breathing indicating she was asleep even though it was still relatively early. It felt so right. Maybe he'd have to do something to regularize their situation afterDanvers found the culprit who was giving his company the shaft.

  Until then, he'd settle for nights like this that reminded him Kline Technologies wasn't the only thing in his life worth living for.

  "I'll follow you home and then we'll go for a drive."

  Veronica nodded in reply to Marcus's words. "All right." It made sense. They needed privacy to talk.

  A half hour later, ensconced in the plush leather passenger seat of his Jaguar, Veronica silently waited for him to speak. She had expected demands for a complete explanation of her past actions as soon as Marcus had her alone, but he now seemed preoccupied.

  She hesitated to bring up the topic because how could she explain her decision to sell secrets toJohn Harrison without telling Marcus about everything that had driven her to do so? She hadn't been just gambling on her sister's life; she'd had her own pregnancy to consider as well.

  Perhaps she should begin with how it had all started.

  "My dad was in construction. It's a pretty decent way to make a living, but self-employment is always risky and Dad wasn't very good at planning for the future."

  Marcus's head snapped round and he focused on her for a second of startled silence before returning his attention to the road. "What happened?"

  "He and Mom died in a boating accident the summer I turned twenty. I had just started working part-time for CIS. You were dating that blond bombshell at the time. I think her name was Cynthia."

  Where had that come from? Did she really want him to know just how pathetic she'd always been? That she could name each and every one of his girlfriends over the three-plus years they had worked together?

  He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "I don't remember who I
was going out with." His grip on the steering wheel tightened. "I also don't remember you mentioning your parents' deaths."

  She looked out the window, the lights reflecting off the water of the sound as they crossed the bridge back into westSeattle .

  "I didn't. I told Alex I had a family emergency and took the time off necessary to plan the funeral, but I'd gone into shock, I think. I was only twenty and suddenly I had responsibility for closing my father's business and taking care of my sister, and my grief somehow just got all bottled up inside. I had to keep doing normal things, like coming to work and going to my classes at the university, or I thought I would break apart."

  Marcus exited from the bridge and drove upHarbor Avenue . The road winding along the cliff led to a lookout parking area, where he stopped the car.

  "Do you want to get out?"

  She answered by opening the door and stepping onto the pavement. Walking over to the lookout, she soaked in the sights ofSeattle at night. She'd come to love this cosmopolitan city on the water. She had felt safe here, amid the amalgamation of different cultures and crush of humanity.

  Hugging her sweater close to her body, she felt the spring wind against her face. It brought the scents of the ocean with it and helped to clear her mind.

  Marcus came to stand beside her. He had slipped a well-worn leather jacket on over his Hawaiian shirt, the brown suede looking soft enough to touch in the evening light. "You said your dad wasn't good at planning for the future."

  She dragged her thoughts away from the temptation of touching him.

  "No. He didn't have life insurance and we'd gone without medical insurance for as long as I can remember. Still, with the house and selling dad's equipment, we did all right. I had enough money to continue college and I figured I could work to put Jenny through after I graduated and got a decent-paying job."

  He put his hand on her arm, and even through the knitted acrylic protecting her from the spring chill, the heat of his fingers burned her. "It didn't work that way," he said softly.

  "No."

  "Jenny got sick."

  She'd never thought of Marcus as a dumb man and he wasn't.

  "Yes. I made it through a year, a hellish year, but

  I made it and I thought everything was going to be fine. Alex offered me full-time employment and I took it, shifting my class schedule to work around my job. Jenny was in school and involved in sports, so she didn't need me home every night because she wasn't there. I tried to make it to her games when I could, but that wasn't often."

  Marcus made a noise of disbelief. "You tried to do too damn much."

  Not that it had done her, or Jenny, a bit of good.

  "Maybe. It doesn't matter now. When Jenny got sick everything happened so quickly. Before I knew it, the hospital bills were piling up faster than I could hope to pay them, I had to sell the house and everything else of value. We moved to a small apartment and I tried to get on the Oregon Health Plan, but I made too much money to be eligible."

  Marcus swore under his breath. A truly vicious word.

  "It didn't matter anyway. Her illness wouldn't have been covered because it was a preexisting condition."

  "What did you do?"

  She hadn't been able to doanything . "I watched my sister get sicker and sicker. The doctors kept promising a miracle cure, a treatment that the FDA was supposed to approve for testing in the U,S, any day. It didn't happen."

  "Damn it. You never said anything, not when your parents died, not when Jenny got sick. Why?"

  She twisted away from him, needing more than the night's protection from his probing gaze.

  "I told you; I couldn't. Talking about everything would have just made it more real, made the pain too overwhelming to bear. I was always a private person to some extent, but something inside me changed when my parents died. The grieving, I guess, but I didn't want to share it with anyone. After the accident, I started acting like an automaton and that's how you and Alex treated me—like the robot secretary. I didn't mind. It helped me to separate my grief from my work. I had to keep that job to support Jenny. I couldn't afford to break down crying all the time, so I just didn't let myself feel at all.

  "Later, when Jenny got sick, I was so used to handling things alone, I didn't even consider asking for help. Besides, Alex had changed since hiring me. He'd gotten tunnel vision about his revenge. 1 thought marrying Isabel would soften him, but he kept his plans to destroy her dad on track. I realized I couldn't go to him for help. He had no reason to care if my sister lived or died. I was just his robot secretary."

  Marcus made a noise of dissent. "It wasn't like that. Alex would have helped."

  She gave a harsh laugh at his words. "It was just like that, I was there. Besides what could myboss have done? Given me a raise?"

  "What about me? Why didn't you come to me? I was your lover."

  His words were like a slap in the face and she felt bitter resentment swirl up.

  "Right. Face it, Marcus, you were no more my over then than you are now. I was a temporary bed partner for you, nothing more. You'd made your feelings on ties or commitments of any kind very clear. But I had commitments, in the biggest way. My sister was dying and I couldn't stop it."

  She spun away from him, away from the view of lights across water. 'They were having a lot of success with treatment of her disease inEurope . The FDA was scheduled to approve test programs of the drug in theU.S. , but the approval date kept getting pushed back. Jenny spent her sixteenth birthday in the hospital inFrance , hooked up to monitors. No sweet-sixteen party. No boyfriend. No new car. I couldn't afford new shoelaces at that point, much less a new car for her birthday. Not that she could have driven. I would have done anything to stop my sister from dying."

  He grabbed her shoulders, pulling her back against the heat of his body. "Including selling company secrets." His voice sounded strangely charged.

  She couldn't afford to relax against him, couldn't let herself show that kind of weakness, but she wanted to. So much. So very much.

  "Yes."

  'Tell me about it," he demanded, not Setting her go when she tried to pull from his grasp.

  "I stayed up all night that night, trying to come up with a way to get Jenny treatment. I could only think of one alternative." And that fact still haunted her. "I went to see Mr. Harrison the day after Jenny's birthday. He was very interested in the information I had to offer. When I told him about Jenny, he offered me more money than I expected. It was enough for both of us to live inFrance during her treatment, to pay the doctors and to come home."

  "You toldHarrison , but you didn't tell me?" Marcus's body stiffened with outrage and his grip tightened almost painfully on her arms.

  "You weren't interested in my personal life," she reminded him.

  He could cut the outrage act and at least deal with reality.

  He spun her around to face him. "I was sleeping with you. How much more personal could we have gotten?"

  She sucked in a breath, memories of that personal relationship tormenting her. "Do you remember the first time we had sex?"

  She was careful not to call it making love. She didn't allow self-delusion anymore.

  His hands moved caressingly up her arms while his eyes locked with hers. "How could I forget?"

  "You told me then not to expect a future, not to expect a commitment. You said it was just sex, would be great sex, but it wasn't love. You don't believe in love."

  "You took that to mean I didn't want to know anything about you except what you were like in bed?" He sounded incredulous.

  "What else was I supposed to think?" But hope as insidious as ants at a picnic climbed up her insides.

  He released her and pivoted toward the lookout, his big body taut with nameless tension. "I don't know, Ronnie. I was sleeping with you, touching you in ways no other man had ever done; you tell me."

  "But not ways you'd never touched another woman." Women much more beautiful than she was, much more fun by Marcus's stan
dards.

  His hands curled into fists, but he didn't say anything.

  She couldn't leave it at that. "You never said I was different. You didn't tell me you wanted more."

  His hand moved in a dismissive gesture. "It doesn't matter now, does it?"

  She found herself reaching out to him, her own hand extended in supplication, but she didn't touch him. She let her arm fall to her side.

  "Probably not, but for what it is worth, I loved you."

  The words couldn't mean anything now. Too much had happened. She'd made choices he still didn't know about, but she had to say them. To speak the truth 01 her feelings just once.