Ulterior Motives

by Laura Leone

  “What?” he prodded. He was far less a gentleman than Shelley realized, but that was something he didn’t think he wanted her to know about him.

  “Mike Paige of Keene International confided to me that Chuck insinuated that I offer... after-hours favors to men, to clients I mean, to get them to sign contracts and pay bid money. He implied that I didn’t know how to run a language school but had... slept my way into this position.” She was relieved to see Ross’ eyes widen in surprise. At least he believed her this time. “You can imagine, I’m sure, how embarrassing that is. Fortunately, Mike didn’t believe a word of it, and I know it won’t go any further. But I shudder to think how many other people Chuck may have said that to. I mean... for God’s sake, Ross!”

  He stood up abruptly. For the first time since Shelley had met him, he looked agitated. He rubbed a hand across his face, started to speak, stopped himself, then thrust his hands into his pockets and looked away from her with a dark, brooding frown.

  She saw confusion, anger, and surprise in his face. She waited for him to apologize for his employee’s behavior, assure her it wouldn’t happen again, make some personal gesture of comfort or commiseration.

  He simply stood there, though, looking dark and unapproachable, looking like a total stranger, neither the charming flirt, nor the polite businessman, nor the teasingly tender suitor she’d seen in him. He looked like the ruthless man Henri Montpazier had hired to strengthen Elite’s worldwide business empire and to eliminate obstacles to success.

  She suddenly knew that he hadn’t come here to hear her complaints about Chuck or to propose a more civil relationship between their companies. With a sinking heart, she stood and drew herself up to her full height.

  “Why did you come here today?” she asked.

  His eyes met hers. He realized there was no point in denying anything. She obviously knew. She was too damned quick for her own good. He merely nodded, confirming her suspicions.

  “How dare you?” she exclaimed.

  “I didn’t come here to accuse you of anything,” he protested wearily. “I just came to find out if it was true.”

  “Why would you believe it even for a moment?” she demanded.

  “Because it would explain a lot of things.”

  Shelley felt as if he’d slapped her. “Explain what? How I managed to get this job? How I run a successful business with a growing clientele in a city where my only competition is a dishonest, incompetent, underhanded slime-puppy like Chuck?”

  “Shelley, don’t—”

  “You obviously have a very high opinion of my capabilities,” she continued angrily, “to think for even a moment that I would sleep around to get a job, to get clients. And to think that I would need to! As if I had no intelligence, no self-respect, no business acumen, no integrity—”

  She broke off suddenly, and stared at him with wide, shocked eyes. “Is that what you were doing the day we met?”

  “No,” he said. “Stop—”

  “Is that why you came to my apartment? To see if it was true? To see if you could get some entertainment while you confirmed Chuck’s preposterous stories about me?”

  “Sit down and listen to me,” he said firmly.

  “Get out of my office.”

  “Shelley, this has nothing to do with how we met or what happened between us in your apartment. I hadn’t even talked to Chuck yet,” he said, unconsciously using her nickname for the man.

  “Oh, well, that makes all the difference!”

  “Will you try to think objectively?” he snapped. “I’m new in town, I hardly know you, and I don’t know Chuck at all. As my employee, he offered one possible explanation about why your business has done so much better than ours ever since you came to town. It’s my job to investigate that possibility. It’s not personal. It’s got nothing to do with us,” he insisted.

  “Of course it’s personal, and there is no ‘us!’ Do you think I can hear an accusation like that and simply forget about it when I go home at the end of the day, not caring who else heard it or might believe it? Do you think I can feel anything but embarrassed about kissing you on Saturday, knowing that it was so casual to you that you seriously considered Chuck’s accusations about me?”

  Feeling surprisingly defensive and a little ashamed, he retaliated. “I think you’ve met Chuck blow for blow when it comes to accusations, Shelley. And yours can’t be proven any more easily than his can.”

  There was a tense silence between them. Shelley was shocked at them both. She so seldom lost her temper that her stomach was churning now. He had hurt her. She was disgusted with herself for allowing him that kind of access to her emotions and furious with him for doing it. As if they realized in the same moment that things were getting out of hand, they both sat down and composed themselves.

  “All right, Ross,” she said with forced calm. “If you want to regard my experiences as unfounded accusations while you deem Chuck’s insulting stories to be worthy of investigation, that’s your choice. But I will continue to take it personally, and I don’t want to see you again under any circumstances.”

  “Look,” he began, wanting to prevent an ultimatum like that, “we need to talk—”

  “What’s more, I’ll give you something you can investigate. Chuck’s salary can’t be much more than mine, yet he owns a house in Hyde Park, drives a Mercedes, and vacationed in Japan last year. Since he’s not independently wealthy and hasn’t won the lottery recently, and since your profits in Cincinnati have fallen off while he’s been the director here, surely a smart fellow like you can figure out that there might be a connection.”

  “How do you know all this?” he demanded.

  “There are very few secrets around here, Ross. Besides, it’s written all over his face,” she added with certainty. “But I wouldn’t want to bore you with any more of my unfounded accusations. If you’ll excuse me, I have a business to run.”

  He sighed. “Okay, I’ll go quietly, officer.” She didn’t smile. “I know I’ve offended you, but... Oh, hell. Look, can we talk about this? Can I call you tonight?”

  “I’m busy tonight.”

  “Oh?” He had caught the note of challenge in her voice.

  “Yes. You see, Mr. Tanner, my Chicago office just sent me a big pile of information today. About you. And it looks like I’ll need the whole evening to go over it. It seems you’ve been a very busy man.”

  Ross regarded the sheaf of papers with hooded eyes. His life in black and white. He could guess what she would find there. Nothing very reassuring from her point of view, that much was certain.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he conceded. “Maybe we should forget the whole thing.”

  “Yes, that’s the only thing to do,” she said frostily.

  “Have a nice evening, Shelley. I hope it makes fascinating reading.”

  He stood with his usual grace. Shelley rose to open the door. He brushed by her and stopped suddenly to look down at her. She looked up at him, feeling small and feminine and, for some reason, desirable. She took a shallow breath and felt an overwhelming urge to touch him. Her skin suddenly burned so much she felt he must notice the heat. His gaze dropped to the rise and fall of her breasts, and a hungry expression stole over his face. A silent, primitive message passed between them, and he suddenly seemed a little wild, standing there in his expensive suit. Danger and excitement coursed through Shelley. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was about to crush her in his arms, ignore her sensible protests, and kiss her till her soul melted. She could hardly wait. She leaned forward to encourage him.

  Then, as if she had imagined that sudden moment of desire between them, Ross broke free of the spell surrounding them. “Thanks for your time,” he murmured, and walked out of her office.

  She trailed after him into the lobby. Francesca, Wayne, and Ute all looked at them with curiosity. Shelley wondered whether desire was an aura that people could see.

  Ross politely said goodbye and left. Shelley held
herself together by force of will. She wanted to run after him, tell him she’d changed her mind, that she’d go somewhere quiet and romantic with him—somewhere a thousand miles from work and distractions and responsibilities. Shelley went back to her office and tried to concentrate, but she couldn’t shake her dissatisfaction and disappointment. What had she expected?

  Except for the obvious fact that she wasn’t a femme fatale, why shouldn’t he investigate Chuck’s accusations? Could he have trusted her implicitly in favor of his own employee? This was a clever—if rather obvious—ploy on Chuck’s part; such a situation would certainly exonerate Chuck for all blame for losing new business to her. Ross had been trying to do his job. Shelley wondered whether she had lowered her credibility by playing the woman scorned. She couldn’t help it. After the instant rapport between them on Friday, after the special passion between them on Saturday, how could he have doubted her character?

  She glanced at the report on him, feeling sheepish. She doubted him, didn’t she? She was checking up on him, just the way he was checking up on her. The only difference was that the rumors he had heard about her were insulting and sordid, whereas what she had heard about him was alarming and intimidating. Perhaps she should have agreed to let him call her so they could talk it over.

  No, it was best to put a stop to it before it began. She was a sensible adult and a responsible professional, and she would have to master this attraction she felt for a business competitor.

  So stop feeling like you’ve just lost your best friend, dummy, she chided herself silently.

  She picked up the report on Ross. She was dying to know what it said, yet she was as loath to touch it as if it were a venomous snake. She was tentatively leafing through it when Ute stuck her head into her office and asked whether she had a moment to see her.

  “Yes, of course, Ute,” Shelley said, annoyed with herself for forgetting the woman had come early just to talk to her.

  Shelley sat down and spent a moment composing herself so she could give Ute her full attention. Then she asked the woman what was on her mind.

  “I want a raise or I’m quitting,” Ute said in a rush.

  Shelley had sensed this coming for a while but was sorry to hear it nonetheless. “Ute, you know that pay scales are decided upon by the New York office. I have already recommended you for a raise—”

  “Perhaps you can ask again.”

  They discussed Ute’s demand for several minutes. Shelley listened sympathetically, particularly because she agreed that Babel underpaid its teachers. Although most of them were part-time workers, they were the backbone of the language schools. Big international organizations like Babel and Elite, however, had such enormous overhead that they had to cut corners somewhere. Shelley thought her superiors made a mistake in assuming that good language teachers who were willing to work for low wages at odd hours were in plentiful supply. What’s more, native speakers were particularly difficult to find in Cincinnati, a small Midwestern city with a limited foreign population.

  “I understand your position, Ute, and will try to influence my superiors at headquarters.” She smiled encouragingly but she was privately pessimistic about her chances. Headquarters maintained an inflexible policy about pay scales. “In the meantime, Ute, I have new clients that I’m sure you’ll enjoy teaching. They’re a group of engineers being transferred to West Germany, and they want to begin lessons soon and study as much as possible before their departure. I’m counting on you. I’m short two German teachers since the Schmidts went back to Munich last month.”

  “You will tell me what headquarters says. Then I will tell you if I will be here any longer.”

  “All right, Ute.”

  The German woman shrugged in frustration. “I like you. I like the job, and the hours are convenient for me. But it is a question of respect and fairness, Shelley.”

  “I understand, Ute,” Shelley said, feeling caught in the middle.

  After Ute had left her office, Shelley looked at her watch and realized she only had a few minutes before her next appointment. She picked up a stone-cold cup of coffee, which had been sitting on her desk since Francesca had brought it to her ages ago, and stirred it around, feeling dispirited.

  Some days at this job were wonderful, and other days... “Well,” she said aloud.

  She was walking down the hallway to get a fresh cup of coffee when a spine-chilling, blood-curdling, ear-splitting noise erupted throughout the building.

  Wayne came charging into the hallway with his hands over his ears. All the doors along the hall opened as teachers and students peered down the corridor or cried out in alarm.

  “What the hell is that?” exclaimed Wayne.

  “Fire alarm,” Shelley said wearily.

  It just wasn’t her day.

  Chapter Four

  That evening Shelley sat curled up in an easy chair in her apartment with a big mug of coffee and the report on Ross Tanner. The report did indeed make interesting reading, particularly when coupled with notes Wayne had taken during his conversation with an informative friend in New York who had once worked for Elite.

  Shelley figured her mother would refer to Ross as a remittance man. Ross’ father was one of the five hundred richest men in America, a wealthy banker with international holdings. His mother came from an old family in Provence. He had two sisters, both of whom had married men of the same exalted social and financial status. Ross clearly made a good living at Elite but, as the family outcast, he had given up a birthright of vast wealth, power, and influence.

  His life until Elite seemed like a series of false starts. He had been thrown out of three expensive private schools during his youth. Jerome’s report offered no specific cause for those expulsions, though Wayne’s friend vaguely said it was because he’d been incorrigible. He had evidently wound up finishing his education in France before returning to the US for college.

  Wayne’s scrawled notes indicated that Ross’ family’s influence had overcome his erratic grades and terrible reputation, and he’d enrolled in the exclusive Ivy League college that his father and grandfather before him had attended. He had majored in medieval Middle Eastern philosophy, a major he’d invented himself and somehow talked his professors into accrediting. Shelley grinned, realizing that he must have done it just to foil another of his family’s attempts to make him fit the mold. That must be when he began learning Arabic, too.

  Predictably, he had been thrown out in the middle of his sophomore year. Shelley frowned as she sifted through the garbled information about his collegiate adventures. His family had initially been able to soothe the university’s anger about Ross’ pranks, rebelliousness, sloppy work, and infrequent attendance. Naturally, there were escapades with women, too. It was sheer speculation, of course, since the facts had been suppressed by his family, but Ross had apparently got himself involved with a female faculty member who was supposed to be above such shenanigans.

  Shelley sipped her coffee and considered this. Yes, even at nineteen, Ross must have possessed enormous sexual magnetism. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, Shelley supposed the older woman in question had been at least equally responsible for their entanglement. Shelley doubted he’d been innocent even at that age, but everything about his life until then implied he wouldn’t have yet possessed the unflappable savoir faire that characterized him now. He must have been quite endearing in those days—in a thoroughly exasperating way.

  She returned her attention to the report. Ross had finally done something even his family couldn’t smooth over, and he was expelled. The official reason was destruction of university property and disruption of classes; he had used the chemistry lab to concoct a mysterious aphrodisiac he’d read about in his studies. Inhalation of the substance caused immediate euphoria, followed by about twelve hours of unconsciousness. A number of wildly euphoric students and professors had done considerable damage to the hallowed halls of the building before sleeping it off for a day. The fumes didn’t fade for three
days, so classes had had to be rescheduled or cancelled. The incident had been widely written about. It had even made the national evening news, since it was amusing and involved both an exclusive university and a boy from a prominent family.

  My, my, Shelley thought wryly, never a dull moment. His parents must have been livid. If they had attempted to enroll him in any other colleges, there was no evidence of it. Ross’ educational career was over.

  The information, both official and unofficial, became vague at that point. Large gaps of time were unaccounted for, and even Wayne’s source could only offer vague rumors about this period of Ross’ life.

  Whether the family had cut him off or he’d simply deserted them wasn’t quite clear, but it was apparent that he had no contact with them for quite some time. He dropped out of sight for several years.

  It was believed that he had spent considerable time in North Africa, and rumor had him involved in everything from smuggling to espionage. There was no doubt, however, that he had managed a casino in Marrakech for a while.

  Shelley’s eyes widened as she tried to picture Ross in this exotic lifestyle. It would have been very hard on a spoiled, high-spirited, sheltered society boy, no matter how adventurous and rebellious he’d been. She guessed that it was during this period that he’d acquired the strength of character and self-confidence that lived under the surface of his charm and elegance.

  He’d eventually resurfaced in Nice where he had managed a nightclub for a while. Shelley recalled that his mother’s family came from that area, and she wondered whether he had chosen to live closer to loved ones.

  He quit the job in Nice and wound up in Paris. That was where he had met Henri Montpazier—and so began his career with Elite.

  From this point forward, the information on Ross’ career was specific and alarming. The man had the Midas touch. He had been twenty-six years old, a college dropout with a shady past, when Henri Montpazier had sent him to the Elite school in Toulouse. Montpazier had given him a free hand, a big expense account, and one year to change the school from a money pit into the goose that laid the golden egg.