A Tangled Web

by A. Claire Everward

  He wondered how many in his company could see what she could.

  “I think it’s a trap,” she said. “You expose any of these points, or any of the other pseudo-points he’s probably set up in other subsidiaries, and he knows you suspect something and triggers the real point of origin, crashing your company.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “The thing is, I think the real point of origin isn’t connected directly to the encompassing web, I think when he wants it activated he’ll have to connect it.”

  He saw the frown. “That worries you.”

  She nodded. “This, what he’s been doing, it’s careful enough. From what I’ve seen, there’s enough to throw off track anyone who might happen to notice what’s happening. So why disconnect the origin? It’s too risky. What if the reconnect fails at the crucial moment or takes too long?”

  “You think you might be wrong about this?”

  She shook her head. That was what worried her. That she was sure she was right about it. “But something is still off. I’m missing something.”

  He watched her. Trusted that she would figure it out. Trusted her. “What now?”

  She touched her laptop touchscreen again and all the screens changed. He looked at them, gaping. They were all running data, dense data, as the algorithm she’d written did its job.

  “We keep searching,” she said.

  Neither felt like going out. But there was nothing they could do now but wait for what the search Tess had set up would find, for the clues that would allow them to identify whoever was behind the damage being done to Ian Blackwell Holdings. And the facades they were putting up, the one of the past months and this new one they had devised together, had to continue.

  Ian had agreed to participate in a panel on the first of a three-day young leaders conference in San Francisco, and Robert was waiting to accompany him there, and Muriel and Tess were due to participate in a girls’ empowerment event in the city. Both had agreed to these events before they had begun to work on untangling what was happening to the company, and both agreed it should go on as planned.

  Still, Ian was restless. He was due to leave for Tokyo the next morning, to meet with the representatives of the teams that would be auditing his regional subsidiaries, and, while he was there, to meet with the heads of these companies, too. He could, and already did, move up the meetings with the CEOs, thinking he would meet with them first and only then deal with all other matters, in case his wife discovered anything that would require his return. His audit teams knew their job and he had no real qualms about dealing with them from afar and meeting them later, if the need arose. What he really wanted to do was cancel the trip, but he couldn’t risk questions being asked that could get to the wrong person. Not when he had no idea who wanted to hurt his company, and if his actions were being watched.

  Tess had taken her smartphone with her, keeping it not in her purse this time but in an inner pocket in the jacket of the pantsuit she wore, so that she would know if the search found anything new. She was using it now to look at the latest findings while they were in the back of the Bentley, on their way to their friends' home, where Ian would join Robert in a company limo while Tess would take Muriel with her.

  “Here, look at this.” She showed him the phone screen and he wondered if she noticed that she had slid closer to him on the seat, that their bodies were touching. He certainly did. Quite acutely, in fact.

  “This is one mistake he’s made in the earlier stages,” she was saying. “Looks like here and there he made changes that didn’t entirely fit in with what he wanted, but instead of restoring the original numbers and then making the changes he did want, he ‘smoothed’ the thread over the changes he’d already made, and the resulting thread is therefore just a bit skewed and so just that much visible. There’s no way he expected someone to see what he’s doing, at least back then, otherwise he wouldn’t have risked it. There’s ego there, and ego makes people make mistakes.”

  He looked at the screen, trying hard to disregard how close she was to him. She was wearing that delicate perfume of hers, the one she usually had on, the one she liked most, which told him just how much she had wanted to stay at home and work instead of going out. He had no doubt that she didn’t know the effect she was having on him, had had for a while now. It had been easier for him to push away the physical attraction when they were strangers who followed a strict contract, but things were different now, quite significantly so. Certainly for him. And the physical was no longer as easy to control.

  Just then, Tess raised her eyes to him, meaning to speak, and found her face, her mouth, near his, felt him, the proximity to him, in every inch of her body. She moved away, ending the touch, the closeness. But she did this without thinking. There was no fear, nor did she mind it, not at all. Her moving away from him was unintentional, old instinct more than anything. A well-learned, too well-learned, instinct.

  Absorbed in her own reaction, she failed to see his. The flash of disappointment, the anger that followed, anger at himself. A fool, he thought. That's what I am.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Four hours later Ian was standing on the convention center‘s mezzanine level, around him the young and hopeful who vied for an informal word, some advice perhaps, from the participating business leaders. His mind was on none of them.

  The panel discussion had gone well enough. In fact, he didn’t regret attending it. These were talented, highly motivated minds who had come to hear him, the ones his company would be seeking not too long from now, and he had noted a couple of them he wanted to keep an eye on. And he had attracted their interest, too—once the panel was over he found himself surrounded by them, inundated with eager questions.

  He had expected this. What he hadn’t expected was to be propositioned by the panel’s co-host. A good-looking woman, a mid-height blond, blue eyes, with a body it was somewhat difficult to disregard. But he couldn’t care less. He had bluntly disregarded the attention she had already given him earlier, but that didn’t stop her from pouncing on him the moment she saw him alone after the panel had ended. Literally pouncing on him. She had crowded him behind the stage in the main hall and had pressed herself against him suggestively. He had pushed her away, politely but firmly. He was married, he had said. But it’s not a true marriage, is it, she had answered, there have been rumors and they were true, weren’t they, you haven’t kissed you wife even once in public, you’ve barely touched her.

  Robert, who had come to look for him, had seen what was happening and had intervened with an excuse that allowed Ian to escape. Ian had been through this before. And in the past, he would have reacted the exact same way to a woman who behaved that way. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that she was too goddamn right. There wasn’t anything behind his marriage, and there was nothing between him and his wife.

  Even though he wanted there to be.

  He’d been walking on eggshells for weeks. They’d been working together, spending more time together than ever before. And they were close now, he had never been this close to any woman, not like this. And yet she wasn’t letting him near her. She wasn’t allowing any kind of proximity, not even that which came inadvertently, as in the car earlier. She was deliberately keeping her distance from him and he was no closer to finding out why. He trusted her, and it seemed to him that she trusted him, too—but only to a point. Still, even now, only to a point.

  Not a point. A bloody wall. She was resisting what was happening between them with the same stubbornness he had felt from her in the beginning, when they were still only strangers. Every time he thought there was something between them, every time he believed his feelings for her might be reciprocated, every single time he ventured out, giving something of himself, letting her know while still not breaking their contract, she took a step away from him, hid behind that unseen wall, beyond his reach. Every time he tried to understand, to hint that he saw, that he wanted to know, every time he tried to get through to her, she turned away. She did
n’t let anyone near her, not just him, he already knew that. But this, them, that should have been different. Yet she was more guarded with him than with everyone else.

  Damn her, he thought. This relationship had begun as strictly a business arrangement, and if that’s what she wanted it to remain, then so be it. He was done. He had fallen for her, he knew that. He hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t expected it, hadn’t thought it could be, and yet he had. For her, of all women. And there was nothing he could do about it, nothing he could use to break her hold on him by way of the pragmatism that had always guided him, the careful delimitation of the involvement he allowed himself when he was with a woman. He couldn’t tell himself how inappropriate it was, that she was not the kind of woman he wanted, that he had no chance for happiness with her, that all she was after was what his name and status and money could give her. He could say nothing of what he could so easily say about all the others he’d been with. He couldn't, because none of those arguments stood.

  She was, in every way, his match.

  Rage flashed. He was angry and frustrated. Sexually frustrated, he admitted to himself, and feeling that woman against him hadn’t help. The hell with it. He had the right to do this under the contract. Would the woman who was his wife even give a damn if he did?

  He took the drink the waiter brought him and sipped it, scanning the room in leisure, the way he had done in the past. Before her. A speaker who had participated in an earlier session smiled at him from across the room, and two rather curvy women, employees of the convention center if to judge by their formal name tags, eyed him with interest and giggled at each other, too obviously trying to decide who would dare to approach him. Everything was as it had been before the marriage that these women certainly didn’t appear to think stood in their way to him. Just like riding a bicycle, he thought ruefully. He looked at his choices. Who will I have tonight, he thought to himself, as he had countless times in the past. Who do I want?

  He scanned the room again. The speaker, the giggling duo? Maybe he would give a call to that model who had just broken up with her boyfriend, she had sent him a message the week before to see if he wanted to hook up, out of everyone’s sight, and she herself had an interest in keeping it a secret, which would adhere to the requirements of the contract. Yes. Maybe. So who did he want?

  His wife, he realized with shocking clarity. No one else had even a remote chance of interesting him anymore.

  He wanted, needed, his wife.

  He handed his near-full drink to a waiter who passed him by and strode out of the building, leaving them all behind.

  The house was quiet. He went straight to the stairs and walked up to the second floor, and turned toward his bedroom. But then, before the thought had fully crossed his mind, he changed direction and headed to her room, intending to straighten this out once and for all. If she reaffirmed her wish to remain within the strict boundaries of their arrangement, that would be it. He was perfectly capable of turning back the clock, he told himself. A contract relationship, perhaps still a work one, too, and that’s all. But he had the right to know now.

  He flung the door open.

  And there she was. She herself must have returned not too long before and was changing her clothes. She was standing by the bed, undressed to her bra and panties, and she was so absolutely beautiful, he thought, staring, need, his need for her, threatening. And then her shock wore off and she moved to take her robe from where it lay at the edge of the bed, and this broke the spell he was under.

  “God,” he said, reality crashing into him in full force. “My God. I’m sorry. Tess, I’m so sorry.” He shut the door clumsily and made his way down the stairs in a haze. In the living room, he grabbed the decanter and poured himself a drink, his hands unsteady for the first time in his life. He took a long sip and closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, tried to settle himself. Couldn’t. He had never, ever done something like that. He wasn’t sure what he had wanted to do tonight, he knew he had gone in there to talk to her, to get this thing that was or wasn’t between them sorted out once and for all, but when he had seen her that way, standing there half-naked, his body had reacted and he had wanted . . .

  He opened his eyes and caught his own reflection in the window. I’ve lost her, he thought. I’ve just lost her.

  Tess grabbed her robe, put it on and tied it tightly around her. Her heart was racing, she was—

  Not afraid, she realized with a start. At no point was she afraid that he would hurt her. She was, though, bewildered. And worried. She had seen his face when he had stood there. He had wanted to come in, had wanted her, that she couldn’t have been mistaken about. But it was nothing like . . . she shook the thought off in determination. It was nothing like that, that was the thing. And then there was what she had seen in his eyes just as he had realized what he was doing, that split second before he had rushed back out.

  She did what she never would have considered doing in the past. She went to look for him. And she found him in the living room, staring out of a window at the darkness outside. When she came in, he turned his head toward her, but then turned back to the window. Not looking at her.

  “What I did is inexcusable.” He played with the snifter, absently swirling the drink around. “That is not who I am.”

  She already knew that, beyond a doubt, which for her was a lot and which was why she was down here with him now, allowing them to be alone this way in the silent house.

  “Why did you?” She surprised them both by simply asking.

  “It doesn’t matter. The point is that I did.”

  “You didn’t. You never came into the room.”

  “I wanted to.”

  “The point is that you didn’t,” she used his own words. “The point is that you never would, not like that.” Her absolute confidence in this astonished her even as she realized it was so very true, realized, from the pain in his eyes, that she now knew it better than he did. “What happened?”

  He owed her that, at least. He risked it. “For a moment there, earlier today, I regretted that our arrangement was just that.”

  She started at the admission and he chuckled mirthlessly.

  “Yes, that was my reaction, too. I followed that with frustration and thought it would be a good time to exercise my right to . . . date, if you want to call it that.”

  She didn’t expect the force of the pang in her heart. “And did you?”

  “Pick up a woman at the convention? No, although I certainly had my choice. And it has been a while.”

  “So why didn’t you?” She needed to know. More than anything right now, she needed to know.

  “Because none of them was you.” The admission to her, to himself, uttered aloud, brought it home sharply. “Look, Tess.” He turned to her. “This has obviously gotten out of hand, and I accept full responsibility. If you wish to leave, don’t let the contract get in your way. I will arrange everything with Robert—”

  “It’s okay,” she said gently.

  “It’s not okay. It’s not.” His eyes met hers, angry at himself, at this. “It can’t be okay because it’s you. And because something happened to you, someone hurt you, that’s what happened, isn’t it? I see that every time I come near you, I feel it every time I touch you. And the fact that I made you feel anything less than safe with me—”

  “That’s enough.”

  She said it as she had that first day, and he stopped, startled. Then he laughed, and she smiled at him, and he felt something within him calm, a balance restored.

  “Thank you,” he finally said, and she surprised him, astonished him, by walking up to him and putting a soft hand on his cheek. He met those lovely eyes, the warm golden amber. Saw the trust. Needed to see it.

  “You’re tired, Ian. God knows you have enough reasons to be.” Her voice was soft. “Let it go.”

  “This is the first time you’ve called me by my name,” he said, and realized that that evening was the first time he’d called her by hers. He pu
t the drink, undrunk, on the bar and turned to leave, not because he wanted to but because of what her touch, what was between them here, in this delicate moment, was doing to him. “Okay,” he said, letting out a breath. “Okay. I’m flying out early in the morning, I won’t see you tomorrow, then.”

  He was going to Tokyo, she recalled.

  “I’ll see you when I return?” he asked, softness in his voice.

  “You will,” she said.

  “You’re flying alone?” Robert was still at home, Ian saw on his phone screen. He himself was on his way to Tokyo by now, alone in the cabin of his jet.

  “I have full days ahead of me, I imagine Mrs. Blackwell would be bored.” He wasn’t about to let on the truth. Both truths.

  “Of course she would. In Tokyo, a city she’s never been to, with a limo to take her anywhere she wants to go and people who would show her the city like only a Blackwell can see it.”

  “I might take her myself some other time.” He would have liked to take her to places she had never been to. She would have enjoyed it. He would, too. If things were different.

  If things could still be different.

  On the screen, his friend watched him. He didn’t think he was wrong. In fact, he was sure he wasn’t. Damn, he thought. If I could only find a way to make this be.

  “So, last night. What happened?” he asked.

  “I got bored. I left.” He raised an eyebrow. “Without telling you. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t care about that. I saw you leave.”

  Ian nodded.

  “You were considering it.” He knew Ian would know what he meant, what he had seen.

  Ian said nothing, confirming what his friend had thought.

  “Don’t worry, no one else noticed. I know you better than most people do, Ian, I see what they don’t. And frankly, despite those women there, most people don’t expect you to do that any longer, so they wouldn’t see the obvious.”