The Corporate Wife

by Leigh Michaels

  “Interesting,” he murmured. “You made such a determined play to get the man, and now before you’ve even had a chance to relax and enjoy the triumph, he’s found other interests. Poor Erin. Maybe you shouldn’t have set your sights quite so high.”

  And grabbed for you instead, Dax?

  Erin clenched her teeth to keep from saying that she’d sooner immolate herself than settle for a traitor, liar and cheat. The last thing she could do right now was let Dax suspect that his secret was out. Tomorrow, it would all be over, but tonight she had to smile and treat him just as she always had – pleasant, no-nonsense, with no more than a hint of irony.

  “Thanks for sharing your insight, Dax,” she said sweetly and turned toward the portable bar.

  Sarah was standing off to the side, watching the crowd. It was the first time Erin had seen her since she’d handed over the altered plans, and she casually worked her way across the room. “How’d it go?”

  Sarah wrinkled her nose. “He was awful. Arrogant and pompous and condescending. He actually had the nerve to thank me – in a sneer, of course.”

  “Of course, the good news is that means he swallowed the bait.”

  “Yes.” Sarah’s gaze drifted across the room. “Do you think I could talk to Mr. Livingstone tonight?”

  Drag him from Katrina’s side? Erin thought. Good luck! “I think it would be better to wait. There’ll be fewer distractions in the office tomorrow.”

  “I know. I just want to get it over with.”

  “That makes two of us.” Erin drifted away, headed toward a guest who was standing alone near the punch bowl.

  A little later, she noticed that Slater and Katrina, still deep in conversation, had edged off toward a corner. A few minutes after that she ran almost headlong into her husband near the bar. No doubt, she thought, Katrina had wanted fresh ice.

  “I hope you and the Senator are finding time to talk,” Erin said, her tone as sweet as she could manage.

  “Oh, we’ll take care of the details after the party breaks up. Katrina’s a darling, isn’t she?”

  The worst of it was that Erin couldn’t even honestly disagree.

  Before she could say anything at all, however, Slater had gone on. “It’s a nice party, Erin.”

  To Erin’s ears, the words sounded almost careless, a throwaway compliment that meant little. His voice had been level, with none of the enthusiasm he’d shown just a few moments ago. So Katrina was a darling, was she? And what about Erin? She was solid, practical, sensible... and dreary.

  She said flatly, “Of course it’s a nice party. That’s my job, isn’t it?” And without even looking for a reaction, she spun away from him and headed, almost blindly, toward the nearest group of guests.

  *****

  The evening was finally over – but even then Slater didn’t seem willing to see it end, for he insisted on going downstairs with the Senator and Katrina while they waited for their taxi.

  Through the evening, Erin’s nerves had slowly frayed till now even the soft, rhythmic click of the spangles and beads on her dress as she moved was enough to push her over the edge into a screaming frenzy. She told Jessup that the cleanup could wait, turned her back on the mess and retreated to the master bedroom.

  She dropped her dress on the floor and sat down to brush her hair, trying to get control of herself. In a few minutes, Slater would walk through the door, and she had to react like a good corporate wife. She must smile and greet him cheerfully, ask whether the Universal Conveyer people had seen reason after all, offer to rub his back...

  She must not let slip even a hint of the depressing news which would greet him tomorrow at the office. She must not be sarcastic about Katrina. And if Slater turned to her tonight and wanted to make love, she must not wonder if he was thinking of the Senator’s gorgeous daughter.

  But that, she knew, would be impossible.

  She turned the light off, and when he came in through the library she was lying on her side, curled up and breathing as evenly and softly as she could.

  Slater paused for a moment, then closed the door softly behind him. He undressed in the dark and slid into bed. He leaned over her for a moment, then sighed and gently ruffled her hair and settled back against his pillow.

  Erin’s hands clenched. He’d patted her on the head like he would a pet, she thought. One who had performed as expected.

  Good Erin, you did that trick just perfectly. Now sit and stay till I want you again.

  And she would. She’d stay, and she’d do her best on every trick he asked of her, because she loved him.

  And if someday – maybe someday soon – he didn’t want her any more...

  A silent tear slid down her cheek and hid itself in her pillow.

  *****

  For a change, Erin was the first one to reach the office in the morning. She’d expected Sarah to be there waiting – haggard from a sleepless night, perhaps, but early nonetheless – and the secretary’s too-neat desk and still-covered computer made her nervous.

  Had Sarah chickened out? Had she reassessed her chances of persuading Slater and, deciding that there was no hope of anything but rejection, decided not to humiliate herself by begging for her job?

  But just as Erin was filling the coffee pot on the cart in the corner of Sarah’s office, the secretary appeared. Her jaw was set, her face was pale, and her eyes were full of dread. “Is Mr. Livingstone here already?”

  Erin shook her head. “He was already gone when I woke up. But he left me a note – he went to the gym and will be a little late this morning.”

  Sarah’s face twitched.

  Erin knew exactly what Sarah was feeling – half relief and half disappointment. It was precisely the same mix she’d experienced on waking to find herself alone. She’d been disappointed that there was only a note on the dressing table – a note just as cool as the one she’d found the morning after her wedding – to remind her she had a husband. And yet she’d been relieved as well because she hadn’t had to face him with a bright smile in celebration of a successful party.

  “A half-hour one way or the other isn’t going to make any big difference,” Erin pointed out.

  “I know. It’s just that I had myself braced for it.”

  “How about some coffee? That might make you feel better.”

  “It might. Though even arsenic couldn’t make me feel worse,” Sarah said. “Having to face him with what I’ve done...”

  Erin, knowing that nothing she said could make things easier, poured her own coffee and retreated toward her office.

  At the same instant, both of them heard the footsteps in the hallway – firm, decisive, definitely male.

  And angry, Erin thought. But what–

  She met Sarah’s eyes, and sudden, horrible understanding flared between them.

  He’d gone to the gym, Slater’s note had said, and Erin had thought no more about it. But the gym was where he and Fritz MacDonald played racquetball from time to time. Slater might have gone in search of Fritz this morning, looking not for a game but a chance to challenge him about Universal Conveyer.

  And if he’d found him, Slater might have gotten a great deal more than he bargained for.

  Erin braced herself in the door of her office, where she’d be just out of Slater’s line of sight but only a step from Sarah’s defense. If he came in shouting – or worse yet, deadly cold and controlled – the least she could do was help to explain, to tell him that all they’d done, really, was to try to make a horrible situation just a little easier to bear.

  But it wasn’t Slater’s voice she heard, it was Dax’s, and at the first words Erin’s muscles froze.

  “Damn it, Sarah,” he said, “it doesn’t work!”

  Erin forced herself out of the doorway. Dax didn’t see her standing there; all his attention was focused on Sarah. He shook a thick sheaf of paper – the set of Brannagan drawings she’d given him just yesterday – in her face.

  “You shouldn’t have come here
, Dax.” Sarah’s voice shook.

  “How stupid can one woman be? Don’t you get it?” Dax’s voice was shrill. “The damn thing doesn’t work!”

  Erin stepped forward. “Keep your voice down, Dax. The whole nineteenth floor’s going to hear you, and you’ll have security people breathing down your neck inside of two minutes.”

  He twisted round to glare at her. “You keep out of this, Miss Virgin Pure. Nobody asked you.” Then his eyes narrowed, grew cunning. “You’re in this up to your neck, aren’t you? You know perfectly well what your precious little Sarah’s been up to. I ought to have known she wouldn’t be so cooperative without your approval. What’s in it for you, Erin? Power?”

  Erin’s brain seemed to be stuck in low gear.

  “I suppose you’re going to want a cut of the money, too,” Dax growled. “Well, you won’t get it, because for the last time, I’m telling you the damned thing doesn’t work!”

  Erin didn’t know Slater had come in until he spoke, quite calmly, from directly behind Dax. “Of course it doesn’t, Dax,” he said. “You didn’t really think we’d give you the genuine drawings. Did you?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Erin’s heart hit her toes.

  Slater obviously didn’t need an explanation of what was going on in his office; even though Dax hadn’t been specific, Slater had gone straight to the heart of the matter. There had been no surprise in his voice, only a kind of sadness. Obviously he not only knew the Brannagan plans were in the wrong hands – but he also knew exactly who had put them there.

  And he’s going to think I’m in it up to my neck, Erin thought.

  Which, of course, she was. Her attempt to mitigate the damages had backfired, and now instead of merely a loose cannon, they were suddenly faced with a nuclear warhead gone berserk.

  She shot a look at Sarah, who merely looked confused. Then the secretary glanced toward the door and her face grew even whiter.

  Erin turned her head just as two uniformed security officers appeared in the hallway.

  Sarah’s hands clenched the back of her desk chair as if it was the only thing keeping her from sliding off a cliff.

  We’re in for it now, Erin thought.

  Slater’s upraised hand halted the two men in their tracks, and he took another step toward Dax. “Well?” he prompted. “Surely you’re not foolish enough to think Erin and Sarah would give you the real drawings.”

  Erin’s heart soared high again. It was going to be all right, she told herself. Because of course that was exactly what had happened. Slater must have realized in a flash that Dax’s set had been sabotaged.

  Except... Slater couldn’t know.

  He might – just possibly – suspect what Erin had done, but he couldn’t be certain. There was no evidence; she’d made sure of that.

  Even if he’d turned her office inside out – something he’d had no opportunity to do since he’d returned from Chicago, even if he’d wanted to – he would have found nothing except her own set of plans. The real ones.

  The copies on which they’d actually made the changes had gone into the shredder, and the set Dax was brandishing hadn’t been out of Erin’s sight, or Sarah’s, from the moment they’d been created in the print shop till Sarah had handed them over to Dax yesterday.

  So, if Slater wasn’t certain of what they’d done, was he simply bluffing when he said the plans weren’t the real ones?

  Erin didn’t think so; the note of authority in his voice would have been very hard to manufacture, even for someone as experienced in the game of business poker as Slater was.

  Besides, she realized, there was another and far more sensible interpretation of what he’d said – that he was simply telling the truth.

  Dax’s plans didn’t work – there was no question about that. But maybe the failure hadn’t come from the changes Erin had made... but from something else altogether.

  She was still contemplating all the ramifications of that possibility when Slater confirmed it. “What you have there, Dax, are preliminary drawings, ones that don’t incorporate the final, most important innovations that make the switches unique. And of course before I released those copies I made sure there were a few small – shall we say – corrections made to them as well.”

  So that’s why the drawings had looked rough and unfinished – because they were only preliminaries. Not that their precise history mattered, of course.

  The important thing was that the plans had been altered – either Slater had changed them himself, or had them changed – before Erin had ever laid hands on a set. The drawings she and Sarah had started with had been false ones.

  No wonder Fritz MacDonald’s engineers hadn’t been able to make sense of the drawings; they’d been sabotaged long before Erin had started moving lines and changing numbers. And they had been changed by someone who didn’t have to guess – as Erin had guessed – how to create a failure. Slater of all people could ensure that the drawings would be both intriguing and completely worthless.

  But he hadn’t told Erin what he was planning to do. Even though she was his personal assistant, his right hand, his executive officer, he hadn’t trusted her enough to confide in her.

  No wonder Slater hadn’t seemed anxious to pursue the source of the leak, even after the Universal Conveyer disaster. He simply hadn’t wanted to tell Erin that he was already doing so, in his own way, by planting false information throughout Control Dynamics and waiting to see where it turned up.

  He hadn’t trusted anyone. Not even her.

  Slater waved the security men into the office. His voice was crisp and level. “Porter, these gentlemen will escort you out of the building. Your final paycheck and your personal possessions will be forwarded to you. Don’t set foot on Control Dynamics property again.”

  Dax’s reply shocked her; Erin had heard the words before, of course, but never expressed with such venom.

  Slater stepped back, turning slightly to give the security people room, and Dax’s fist shot out in a short, vicious jab. Erin tried to call out a warning, but her throat was so tight she could barely squeak.

  Slater had obviously expected something of the sort, however; his hand came up, knocking Dax’s blow aside and breaking his hold on the bundle of loose papers. The Brannagan drawings hit the office floor with a thud and sprayed out to cover half the carpet.

  Dax stared at the mess for an instant, and then as if all the energy had gone out of him, he turned away. Each of the security guards took an arm; he tried to shrug them off, but they maintained their grip as they marched him toward the elevator.

  Slater closed the door between office and hallway. To Erin, the click of the latch sounded as loud as a shotgun blast. “I think we’ve aired enough of this affair in public,” he said grimly. “Erin, into my office. Now.”

  She was startled. “But I—”

  Sarah stepped forward bravely. “Sir, I have to talk to you.”

  “You’ll be next. In the meantime, pick up this mess so it doesn’t get into another wrong set of hands. Erin, I’m waiting.”

  He sounded like a stranger. There was a rough edge to his voice, one she’d never heard before.

  Erin stumbled as she crossed the threshold to his office. Slater caught her arm, but there was no gentleness in his grip.

  He pointed at a chair. Erin thought hollowly that now she knew firsthand why Sarah had preferred not to sit during their confrontation, and she stayed on her feet.

  Slater walked around behind his desk, as if to put a safe distance between them. “So you were in on it, too.”

  She couldn’t deny it, precisely, for she had been involved. And she knew quite well that he wouldn’t listen to the whole explanation – not now, when his anger was so raw. Perhaps not ever. So she only shook her head a fraction and said nothing at all.

  “No wonder you spent so much time huddled in corners at the cocktail party last night – with Dax, with Sarah, with who knows who else.” His eyes were dark with fury. “Damn it,
Erin! I knew the source of that leak had to be close to the top. There were too many bits of information that simply weren’t known anywhere else. But to think that you—”

  “Don’t expect me to believe that you’re shocked.” The words felt like jagged glass cutting her throat. “You suspected me, Slater, or you wouldn’t have gone behind my back when you changed those plans in the first place.”

  “I suspected that somebody – maybe you, maybe Sarah – was being careless. That’s why I decided not to let anyone know about the faked plans. But I never in my worst nightmares thought it was intentional. The idea that you–”

  Erin opened her mouth to explain, to defend both Sarah and herself – but she knew from the black anger in his face that it would do no good. Why on earth would he believe her protests, when he had the evidence of his own eyes to prove differently?

  Not only had Dax showed up this morning with the fake set of plans in hand, he’d clearly implicated Sarah – made it plain she’d known exactly what she was doing. And it would have been obvious to anyone with the intelligence of a doorknob that Erin had known, before the man had ever started slinging accusations, exactly why he was there. So why on earth wouldn’t Slater think that she’d been involved from the beginning, and in the most sordid way possible?

  And even if someday he would listen to the truth, would he ever trust her again? If he hadn’t had faith in her even before this last calamity, how could she even hope that this wound could be healed?

  She had done it to herself. She’d acted with the best intentions in the world, of course – to save him pain by keeping Dax from getting the real plans somewhere else, to buy time for Slater to seal the leak once and for all, to give Sarah the one-in-a-million chance of saving her job.

  But by trying to help, Erin had not only sacrificed her own professional standing, she’d inflicted a mortal wound on an already problematic marriage.