by Lucy Monroe
He shook his head, the blond strands glistening in the artificial lights from the street behind them. "You didn't trust me. You sold out CIS. You left me and you betrayed your own honor rather than come to me for help."
She couldn't tell if pain or condemnation darkened his voice. Could she have misunderstood eighteen months ago? Had he started caring for her? Would he have helped her? Would he have wanted the baby, been willing to share the burden of Jenny's illness?
The questions were pointless because whatever he had been willing to do eighteen months ago, this was now.
Tears pricked her eyes, but she didn't let them fall. She knew if she started crying, she wouldn't be able to stop.
It just didn't matter anymore. Nothing could undo what she had done. If he had cared once, he didn't care any longer. He'd said it. She had betrayed him and her own honor rather than trust him enough to ask for help.
Even now she wondered what exactly he could have done if she'd gone to him. She had needed more than a shoulder to cry on to save her sister's life. Not that he appeared to appreciate that.
Bile rose in her throat when she thought about how he would react to the knowledge that he had a son she hadn't bothered to tell him existed.
Chapter Seven
Marcus slanted a glance at Ronnie's silent silhouette.
She had said very little since making her revelations about what had prompted her actions eighteen months before and nothing at all since getting into the car for the return trip to her apartment. It was as if she'd answered his questions and now she had nothing else to say to him.
Didn't she realize that her answers had only prompted a whole host of other questions?
To be fair, he hadn't said much either. Finding out about her parents' deaths and her sister's illness had completely gutted him.
Why hadn't she told him ?
She hadn't trusted him worth a damn. Okay, so he'd made it clear that he wasn't a commitment-centered man, but did that mean she had to hideeverything from him? Hadn't she realized that every man had his Armageddon? The spinsterish little automaton that used to be CIS's secretary had been his.
She had touched him in a way no other woman ever had, but she didn't realize that.
His desire for her had never abated, not over the brief months of their affair, not during the long months since. He'd been thinking in terms of a future and she had been thinking about how to save her sister's life—without his help.
Where did that leave them now? And what about the corporate espionage happening at Kline Technology?
"You told me before that your sister was okay now. Is that the truth?"
His voice seemed to echo in the silent car, but she eventually answered. "She's fine, physically."
"What does that mean?"
Ronnie's head turned to look out the window at the black-shadowed landscape. "It means her body is healthy again, but she has a lot of catching up to do. She spent her sophomore year in and out of hospitals and her junior year undergoing radical chemotherapy. She's home-schooled since finishing the treatment in order to catch up with her peers and let her hair grow again. She wants to attend her senior year at a regular high school and go on to college after that."
He heard frustration in Ronnie's voice.
"Is that a bad plan?"
Maybe she resented her sister going to college when she'd had to drop out of school herself. He remembered wondering why she'd done it and now he knew. Even Ronnie's formidable will could not maintain a full-time class load with her sister in and out of the hospital.
Her attention swung back to him and he could feel frustration and bitterness rolling off her in waves.
"It's a great plan. It's a wonderful plan, but it's also an impossible plan. She wants to go to high school with her old friends back inPortland . My job is here. She wants to go to a university, but I don't even know how I can afford community college tuition. And she's so darn understanding about it all. She doesn't complain when I can't buy her designer clothes like the other kids her age are wearing. She's…"
Her voice trailed off and he thought he heard a suspicious sniff.
"Are you crying?" Stupid question.
"Why would I be crying?" She sounded defiant, like he'd offended her by asking.
Hell. He probably had.
He reached out and laid his hand on her thigh, offering the only sort of comfort he knew how to give. "I'm sorry, baby."
The words were inadequate, but he didn't know what else to say. He was still a little stunned that she'd shared so much of herself with himnow when before she had hidden her whole life from him. He suspected she would bitterly regret her candor tomorrow. From what she had said, she'd become almost fanatically private since her parents' deaths.
She'd also said that she had loved him.
Hell.
He didn't know about love, but he had been thinking about commitment eighteen months ago. He'd even toyed with the idea of asking her to move in with him. She was right. He hadn't said anything. Somehow, he'd thought she'd known. His need for her had been obvious enough, but apparently she'd attributed that to lust and nothing more.
She'd said it had been more for her, but had it? If she hadloved him, wouldn't she have trusted him with her secrets? Wouldn't she have come to him for help rather than abandon him and destroy their relationship?
She let out a pent-up breath. "Thanks, but don't worry about me. I'll figure it out. I always do."
Did figuring it out include selling corporate secrets to Kline's competitors?
Right now, with her scent filling his car's small space and her body so close he could reach out and touch it, Marcus couldn't make himself care. All through dinner and then later, when she'd made her explanations, his body had buzzed with an ever-present desire. He wasn't proud of it, but he couldn't deny its existence either.
He should be elated. His investigation looked close to being over, but at the moment, all he could do was feel. Her pain. Her frustration. And his desire.
It pulsed through him like an African drumbeat. He pulled the Jag into a parking space connected to her apartment complex. Switching off the engine, he turned to her. He didn't say anything because there wasn't anything to say. He wanted her so bad it was as if the last eighteen months had never happened. He needed to touch her and feel her responding beneath him.
She unclipped her seat belt but didn't open her car door right away. Did she feel the desire shimmering between them? Could she sense how much he needed to taste her again?
"Are you going to tell Mr. Kline about what happened at CIS?" Her words lashed against him and the tumble of his own emotions.
Damn it. He didn't want to deal with that right now. He didn't want to think about his investigation, or the responsibility to his client. He'd work something out, something that would protect Ronnie and still allow him to fulfill his obligation to Kline. He didn't know what, but he'd think of something.
"Don't worry about that."
Her head snapped around to face him. "How can you say that? By now, you must know how important my job is to me. I can't afford to be let go."
"You aren't alone this time."
He couldn't promise her that she'd keep her job. He didn't see how that would be possible if she'd been up to her old tricks, but he would help her. He wouldn't let her face the future alone again.
She laughed. "Yeah. Right. Just tell me what you're going to do about my past."
He shook his head. He couldn't think about Kline Technology, not when his mind and senses were filled with her. He laid his hand on her thigh again, feeling the tension of her muscles through the fabric of her skirt. He brushed his hand down her leg, gently caressing until it settled on her knee, clad only in the silky fabric of her stockings.
Oh, man. Did she still wear stockings? He re-membered the first time he'd seen her prissy little white garter belt. It wasn't fromVictoria 's Secret, that's for sure, but it had turned him on and inside out.
"Marcus."
He heard the sharp tone of her voice but ignored it. He had to taste her. Right now.
Not giving her a chance to argue, he bent his head and swiftly took her mouth. She'd opened it mid-rant and her Darted lips felt like a desert oasis to his thirsty soul. She tried to turn her head away, but he followed her lips, seeking the response that used to keep him awake long after she'd left his bed to go home.
Her hands fisted in his shirt. Maybe to push him away, but she ended up pulling him closer and he let her. Grabbing her hip with one hand and a fistful of her silky brown hair with another, he deepened the kiss until their tongues were mating with more than teasing intensity.
She moaned low in her throat, just like she used to do, and he was lost. If he didn't touch her, feel the incredible silken smoothness of her skin within the next thirty seconds his body would explode from the frustration. He yanked at her sweater, shoving it aside with adolescent enthusiasm, and he couldn't make himself slow down. Gone were his usual seduction techniques, his ability to take things slow.
His incredible lack of finesse was worth it when his fingers encountered the naked skin of her torso. His entire body shuddered at the impact of having his hands on her again after eighteen months of wanting.
She stilled and he felt like he had that first time, like she was waiting in both agony and anticipation to see how he would touch her. Just like then, he did not want to disappoint her.
Letting his fingertips gently trail across her rib cage, he also changed the tone of their kiss. Where he'd been starving for a taste of her, he now melded his lips to hers with the intent to soothe.
He wanted her to want him as much as he wanted her. He didn't want her to fear their intimacy and he meant to be intimate with her—very intimate.
He pulled his mouth a centimeter from hers. "Touch me, baby, please touch me."
Her eyes flew open and he read panic in them. He almost swore but bit back the word in time. He didn't want to spook her. He wanted to love her. He kissed her again, letting his lips communicate silently with hers. She tried to pull back into the seat, to withdraw from him, but he wouldn't let her. Didn't she realize he couldn't let her?
He flicked his tongue along the seam of her lips, teasing her, coaxing her to open her sweet and tender mouth to more of his kisses. She groaned and her lips parted slightly. It was enough.
He entered her mouth with the intention of crashing the last of her defenses and allowed his hand to stray to her breast with the same objective. He cupped her through the thin cotton of her bra and felt her sensitive nipple stab into his palm.
"Oh, yeah. Baby, you make me so hot." He was melting and so was she.
All the tension had drained from her and he could taste her surrender in their kiss. Her shallow breath rasped the skin of his cheek. She pressed the pouting little mound of her breast into his hand and ran her own hand along his thigh, coming perilously close to his throbbing sex.
Unable to help himself, he shifted a little until her fingertips were brushing against him intimately. He moaned and moved again, wanting, needing a more complete contact, and ran into the gearshift.
They couldn't make love for the first time in almost two years in a car park. He pulled away, pleased by the look of raw sensuality on her face.
"Invite me up," he demanded.
"Yes." Then her eyes seemed to focus and a horrified expression replaced the passionate daze in her eyes. "I mean no. That's impossible."
"Why the hell is it impossible?" Did she have a boyfriend after all? Then he remembered Jenny. Of course, her sister would be home now. "Damn. I forgot about your sister. Come back to my place."
She shook her head, her eyes wild. "No. I won't do that."
He could feel his desire and passion coalescing into raging frustration.
"Why the hell not?" He asked again, this time in a near shout.
"I told Jenny I would be home by nine."
The blinking light on his dash clock told him it was already a quarter till. "You can call her from my place and tell her you are going to be late."
He turned and rebuckled his seat belt before placing his hand on the ignition key, intending to start the car.
"No." Her voice didn't waver in the least bit.
He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his hands felt molded to the leather grips. "You want me as much as I want you." He'd seen the evidence. He'dfelt her need. She couldn't convince him otherwise.
She looked haunted. "Yes."
"Then why are you saying no?" he asked from between gritted teeth, his frustration morphing into anger.
Her eyes narrowed and her mouth set in a mutinous line. "Maybe I can't stomach the thought of going to bed with a man who's blackmailing me into it."
With that she flung open her door and rushed from the car, running from it and him as if the hounds of hell were on her heels.
Cursing viciously, he slammed his fist into the steering wheel. An agonizing drive home and a long, cold shower were all he had to look forward to for the rest of the night, and he had no one else but himself to blame.
With an angry twist of his fingers, the Jag came to life and peeled off with a squeal of tires.
The sound of Marcus's less-than-cool exit from the parking lot echoed in Veronica's head as she stood outside her apartment door, trying to bring her rampant emotions under control. Her hands shook as she dug into her purse for her keys.
She would have let him make love to her right there in the front seat of his car. She'd been that far gone from his kisses. It was worse than before.
At least then she'd been conscious of their surroundings. Marcus had often kissed and caressed her in semipublic places, but she'd always broken it off before it could get embarrassing. Not so now.
Instead of their time apart subduing her ability to withstand the intense attraction she felt for him, it had seemingly increased it. She sucked in a trembling breath and let it out again. If he hadn't demanded an invitation into her apartment, she would still be out there, kissing him and most likely half naked by now.
Only the reminder of their son had had the ability to cool her body's response to Marcus enough to get her out of that car. Even then, she'd been so very tempted to take him up on his offer to take her back to his place.
She'd wanted to. More than she wanted to admit.
Whyhadn't she just called his bluff then? It had been the perfect opportunity.
'teah. Right. The point was to get him to admit he didn't mean his threat by agreeing to meet his terms and having him reject her. From the way he'd been close to losing control in the car, that wasn't going to happen. He wanted her. The thought shocked her.
His desire when they had kissed had definitely been genuine. He'd been as desperate as she.
What if hewasn't bluffing about taking her to bed or telling Kline? Had she just signed her own pink slip by refusing to return to his apartment with him?
She couldn't accept that. Marcus just was not that slimy kind of toad. He could be selfish. He could be arrogant, impossibly certain of his own-appeal to the opposite sex, and with reason. But he wasn't a blackmailer. Something else had to be going on. Something she didn't understand.
Okay. He wanted her. He truly wanted her. And that had to be about as palatable to him as a plate-ful of metal shavings. He wouldn't like wanting her, not when he considered her a thief and a liar. She'd explained her actions, but she could tell that he hadn't accepted the explanation. He did not understand why she had not come to him.
How could she explain something she did not understand herself? She'd been desperate, both with the feeling of helplessness in the face of her sister's illness and with shock at her own pregnancy. She'd regretted her choices so many times over the intervening months, but she couldn't change them.
Maybe the blackmail was his way of getting into her bed and keeping his own pride intact. Maybe the idea of a real relationship, even one of just the sexual variety, with her was so unacceptable that he had to
make it something cheap and emotionless to deal with it. She shook off the depressing thoughts and unlocked her door.
She'd clearly misread Marcus's feelings a year and a half ago. He had been shocked that she hadn't shared her worries with him. What made her think she would be any better at comprehending his thoughts and motivations now?
"How did it go?" Curled up in one corner of the couch, Jenny looked up from her book.
Veronica laid her purse on the table by the door. "Fine."