Well. She would think about that tomorrow.
Will sat in the rental he’d driven from the airport and studied the gunmetal-gray sedan occupying his parking space. He scratched his head and wondered, not for the first time, if he was headed for a premature mid-life crisis.
Headed for? Hell—he was in over his head. That car was supposed to be back at the ranch. If Tack had come to town, he’d have driven one of the trucks. Emma didn’t drive at all. Which meant…
A few minutes later he unlocked the door of his spacious apartment. Adrenaline coursed though his body like water from a fire hose. “Diana?”
Silence.
“Dammit, Diana!”
She wasn’t there. He knew it without even looking. The place felt empty in a way it never had before she’d come into his life.
He’d driven directly from the airport to the office. This was the first time he’d been back since they’d left for the ranch three days ago. Still swearing, he tossed his coat onto the bed and headed for the bathroom. Leaning over, he splashed cold water over his face. He could have used a shower—felt as if he’d been living in the same clothes for a week, but it would have to wait.
He didn’t take time to call the ranch to see if by chance she was still there, and someone who happened to drive the same model car he did had confiscated his parking place.
The lights were on in the third-floor apartment on the corner of Macauley and Spring Streets. Not bothering with the elevator, which was evidently one of Mr. Otis’s early experimental models, he took the stairs two at a time, building a head of steam as he went.
He hadn’t intended to pound on her door, but by the time he reached the third floor, he’d had it. Flat-out had all he could take.
The door opened. “I thought you might show up,” she said quietly. “You could have called first.”
Fist raised for another attack on the door, he was caught off guard. Couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“Do you want to come in for a few minutes? I can make coffee.”
So he uttered the first dumb words that popped into his mind. “You drink too much coffee.”
Well, hell, she was standing there in that awful place of hers, wearing what looked like a Polynesian circus tent, with her hair all wet and her eyes all pink-rimmed. Dignity, though. Oh, yeah—more dignity than a bucket of starch.
“Coffee would be nice.” Even as he entered her lair, the weight of the past fourteen hours settled in on him, like a ton of bricks. After a quick glance around the room, he headed for the rump-sprung sofa with the fake fur throw.
“I’ll just be a minute,” she said.
He was asleep by the time Diana came back with a hand-painted tray bearing two mugs of coffee and a cream pitcher in the shape of a Holstein cow.
For a long time she stood gazing down at him—at the unshaven face with the incongruous creases that deepened into dimples when he laughed. At the shadows under his eyes and the touches of gray at his temples. How could any man look so exhausted, so distinguished and so sexy at the same time?
That was when it struck her that she loved this man.
Not just that she was in love with him. To her way of thinking, being in love was too often a temporary condition. Occasionally it might deepen into the real thing, but as often as not it faded once two people got to know each other and both stopped being on their best courting behavior.
Loving was different. It was a for-better-or-worse thing. Something that lasted even when both parties had aged beyond recognition. Something that encompassed all that had gone before as well as all that lay ahead.
She didn’t know how she knew this—she simply did.
Being careful not to make a sound, she set the tray down on the painted footlocker that served as a coffee table, then lowered herself into a chair and waited to see if he would wake up. They had things to talk about—things to settle between them. He probably wasn’t going to like her decision to move back to her own apartment.
Then again, he might like it just fine. After all, he’d been a bachelor most of his life. If he’d wanted to be a husband, he could have easily found a far more suitable wife. According to one of the women she’d met when she’d first gone to work at Wescott, he’d once been listed in some magazine as one of Texas’s ten most eligible bachelors.
She could kiss him now and he would never know it. Did the sleeping beauty thing work in reverse? Would he wake up and fall instantly, irrevocably in love?
Or would she turn into a frog?
Eight
Without opening his eyes, Will came instantly awake. Sensing her presence, he tried to assemble his thoughts—his arguments. The spring that was stabbing him in the rump didn’t help.
Neither did the smell of her soap and shampoo. The subtle scent of her skin. He knew her too well.
He didn’t know her at all.
“Are you in there?” she whispered.
He slitted his eyes. “Am I in where?”
Diana shrugged and looked away. “It’s just something my mother used to say when I’d close my eyes and try to shut out the—that is, try to pretend I was sleeping.”
Interesting… “Is that coffee I smell?”
“It’s probably cooled off by now. You were sleeping so hard I hated to wake you up, but I was afraid the rogue spring would get you.”
He slid a hand beneath him, trying to hang on to the anger he’d brought with him. He had fully intended to remind her of a few pertinent facts, then haul her back and install her at his apartment until they could settle on some rules.
“Look, I thought we had a deal,” he said. Tact and diplomacy was called for here. Not his long suit at the best of times, and this was hardly that.
“We sort of did, I guess.”
“We sort of did? You guess? Try again, Diana.” His wristwatch quietly signaled the hour. It had to be at least ten—maybe eleven. It felt like it had been a week since he’d left her in his bed back at the ranch.
“All right, we did. We agreed that your name will be on my baby’s birth certificate, and by now everyone in Royal probably knows we’re married. By the time my baby comes, people will have forgotten, if they ever knew about…well, about Jack and me.”
“Uh-huh. Sure they will.” Sitting up now, he gave her a curious look. “You really believe that, don’t you? I don’t know how things work where you came from, but I can guarantee that half the citizens of Royal will start counting on their fingers the day we deliver. The other half won’t have to—they’ll remember.”
“Well, shoot!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Why bother to get married, then? And besides, I’m the one who’s going to deliver. You don’t have anything to do with it.”
He studied her for several moments, trying to get a handle on her belligerence. He could have sworn it hadn’t been there a moment ago. Wariness, maybe, but not belligerence. In fact, when he’d first opened his eyes, he’d seen something that looked almost like—
He must’ve been wrong. As tired as he was, mistakes were inevitable. “Correction,” he said patiently. “We’re both involved. That baby you call yours is going to be wearing my name when he comes into the world. That means I have a responsibility. And as long as you’re carrying him, my responsibility extends to you, too. Are we clear on that much?”
She snatched up a mug of lukewarm black coffee, took a large swallow and grimaced. “All right, all right. Maybe I’m just not used to people who insist on taking responsibility. So here’s what we’ll do.”
He figured he might as well listen. She had this thing about being in control. It wouldn’t hurt to cut her some slack, just until he got to the bottom of this other matter. After that, well…they would see.
“I’ll stay here at my place, you can stay in yours, that way things won’t get, um, complicated.”
“You mean you won’t end up in my bed again.”
He could practically hear the heat sizzle as it flooded her face. “That, too. It was just
a—that is, we sort of—”
He took pity on her. They both knew what it was—a hell of a lot more than simple, no-strings-attached, mind-blowing sex. At the moment, though, she was spooked and he had too much on his mind to explore it in depth. “Sure, that’s it. Propinquity.”
“Pro…what?”
“Stuff happens when you’re unexpectedly thrown into close contact. In our case, sex happened. We’ll deal with it later.”
“Or not. I’ve got plans all worked out. Long-term and short-term. You’ve obviously got something on your mind, or you wouldn’t have hurried back to town. So…” She smiled, and it was almost convincing. “Why don’t we each go our own way, accomplish whatever needs accomplishing, and maybe have lunch together from time to time so that people will know we’re still friends?”
It was put in the form of a question, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her it ranked right up there among the top-ten lousy ideas. “Still friends. Yeah. Okay, we’ll give it a shot for a few days, then maybe we can have lunch and renegotiate.”
It was a weak shot across the bow to let her know that they weren’t finished yet, not by any means. But for now he would have to set aside his personal problems and deal with something that involved several hundred employees directly, and peripherally, several thousand more.
The change of regime in the life of any big outfit was a critical period, even when the new CEO was a known factor. There were bound to be a few hold-your-breath situations right at first. Seb lacked his father’s ruthlessness, but he was a damn good businessman. Besides, the board of directors would smooth over any rough patches.
On the other hand, the way the energy market had been fluctuating lately, if word leaked out of any past irregularities, things could spiral out of control before they could get a handle on it. The last thing they needed was a herd of stampeding stockholders.
Diana stood, looking oddly dignified in her colorful muumuu. “Go home, Will. You look worn out. Get a good night’s sleep. If there’s anything I can do, just call.”
He stood, bracing himself against swaying; he was that tired. “Thanks, Danny.” She usually objected when he called her that. This time she looked as if she might cry. So he leaned over and placed a lopsided kiss on the side of her nose and escaped before she could throw him out.
What the devil, he wondered, had happened to his so-called people skills? He was no diplomat at the best of times, but normally he didn’t go out of his way to make waves.
Left alone, Diana sat on the sofa, avoiding the middle cushion, and congratulated herself on taking control of her life. Just because she had wanted nothing so much as to throw herself into his arms and beg him to love her, that didn’t mean she’d done it. No way had she surrendered a single speck of dignity. Just the opposite, in fact.
So why did she feel as if the world had just come to an end?
Sniffling, she felt for a tissue. She didn’t have a tissue. In fact, the damned muumuu didn’t even have a pocket. So she mopped her face with the hem of the short, full sleeve and thought with tear-stained amusement that her mother had been messy, too. It was evidently in her genes.
But as dearly as she’d loved her mother, Diana had never—at least not since she was ten years old—mistaken Lila Foster for a mature, responsible adult capable of directing her own life, much less her daughter’s.
Even when he’d been there, her father had been worse than useless. He’d been vicious when he was drinking. When he was on drugs he tried to stay away rather than risk exposing them to that particular set of dangers. Which, she thought grudgingly, had been responsibility of a sort. The best Liam Foster could offer.
But it hadn’t been enough. Not nearly enough. While he had never done more than threaten his daughter and slap her around, he had beaten his wife more times than Diana could recall while a terrified child had hidden under a quilt or in a closet and tried to find the courage to go for help.
It was a lose-lose situation. She hadn’t even felt guilty at the relief she’d felt when he had piled up his van and had to be pried out with the Jaws of Life. Or in his case, the jaws of death.
By then she’d been fourteen, old enough to take control of her life. She had deliberately chosen the courses at high school that would pay off the quickest. Once her mother had got back on her feet emotionally, Diana had helped her go over the help-wanted ads. Fortunately, the economy had been in an upswing at the time. Diana had picked out a sedate new outfit for her mother and insisted she wear it to be interviewed.
Things had been good for the next few years, but gradually the past had begin to take its toll. Or so Diana had thought at the time. When Lila had lost interest in her job, as well as everything else, Diana had decided that it was their apartment, the same one they’d lived in for years, that was a constant reminder of the past.
That was when the moves had begun. Packing up all the posters and wall hangings, the linens and dishes and candles and pots and handwoven throws and whatever furniture they could cram into the rental trailer—most of it wasn’t worth the cost of moving—they would find a new town and new jobs and start all over again. The pattern had repeated itself three times before they had reached the end of the line. Royal, Texas.
And now Diana was responsible for someone else.
Will stretched out his legs, tilted his chair and closed his eyes. For one brief moment Diana’s face hovered on the fringes of his consciousness. Quickly he slammed the door shut before he could be tempted to linger there. All in all, it had been one hell of a day. He didn’t need any distractions.
He thought about the way his ranch manager, Tack Gilbert, had been led kicking and screaming into the world of technology. Farm records, breeding records, sales records had all been kept in a series of dog-eared ledgers. “Who the devil needs one o’ them machines when he’s got pencil and paper?”
Who the devil, indeed. One of the reasons Jack’s business affairs had taken so long to sort out was his insistence on his own paranoid brand of bookkeeping, backed up with scribbled records which he stashed away in places that had taken weeks to discover. A few transactions, Will suspected, had never been recorded at all.
All of which probably had nothing to do with the problem they were facing at the moment. Whoever he was, the modern-day pirate who had been smart enough to set up a string of phony accounts had excellent computer skills. He’d been savvy enough to wipe out his tracks so thoroughly that it had taken an outside expert to even get close to the truth.
Eric Chambers had given him the name of an ex-employee of the Department of Defense who could, in Eric’s words, bleed a turnip bone dry.
“First the good news,” the DOD expert had said after a marathon session that had left Will’s office littered with chili-dog wrappers and cigar ashes. He was going to have to have the whole tenth floor fumigated. “I managed to follow the trail through four offshore banks and narrow it down to two separate accounts. The bad news is that I don’t have a name for you. Whoever pulled it off was smart enough to wipe out most of the hard drive by overwriting it with zeros. That’s a DOD method, if that gives you a clue. You might want to check your personnel files for a connection there. Maybe he got in a hurry, I don’t know, but he didn’t do a thorough enough job, which is the only reason I found out as much as I did.”
“So that’s where matters stand,” Will had told Robert Cole a short time later. The two men had met at the gazebo in Royalty Park. It was about the most unlikely place Will could think of. He didn’t trust whoever had milked Wescott Oil for an indecent amount of money not to have bugged his office, his apartment and for all he knew, the meeting rooms at the Cattleman’s Club.
“I’ll need to see the personnel files.”
“My computer expert said you might want to look for DOD connections. Then again, geekdom prevails in some pretty strange places.” Ordinarily, the first place he’d have looked was in his own department, but aside from Eric, he was no longer certain who he could trust.
> “It could be a new hire or an older employee with a grudge. Lot of that going around lately.”
“You show me a roughneck who’s spent his life in the oil field who can make a computer sing soprano and I’ll hand him the money, tax-free.”
“Don’t make any hasty promises. You’d be surprised the kind of people who take to computers like a bear to honey.”
Will’s temper, already on a short rein, tightened dangerously. He needed a shave, he needed a shower, he needed some food and about twenty-four hours of sleep. Even a couple hours would help.
He wasn’t likely to get any of the above in the near future.
The shower, maybe…
“Don’t make any rash promises,” Robert had warned. “How many people know about the losses?”
“Eric, of course. He managed to stall the outside auditors until we can get a handle on it. Don’t ask me how, because these guys are supposed to be hell on wheels.”
“One of ’em’s Eric’s cousin on his mama’s side.”
Will stared at him, dumbfounded. “How the devil did you know that?”
Robert shrugged. “Hey, I’m a P.I. It’s what we do. Impress the clients by coming up with irrelevant information.”
“Which may be relevant in this case.”
“I don’t think so.” Robert shook his head.
“Why not?”
Instead of answering, the young private investigator had shoved his hands in his pockets. Blue eyes twinkling, he’d changed the subject. “How’s married life?”
“Keep your prying eyes off my marriage, okay?”
“So where’s the bride? How does she like having her honeymoon interrupted by a little financial hanky-panky?”
“I left her at the ranch,” Will said, but hell—this was Robert. The two men had been friends for years. “She drove herself back to town. At the moment we’ve agreed to put our relationship on hold until I can get a handle on this business at the company.”
“Smart man. The way I hear it—not that I have any firsthand experience with wedded bliss, you understand—these things are tricky. Takes a man’s full concentration.”
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