Covert Attraction

by Linda O. Johnston

  * * *

  Daniel watched with appreciation as Beth slid off the couch in front of him, still gloriously naked as she knelt to retrieve her clothes from where they’d ended up on the floor.

  As she rose again, her eyes scanned him before locking on to his. Her smile appeared both happily aware of him and his continued nudity, too—as well as rueful.

  She pulled her clothes up to block her breasts and lower points of interest from his view, but only momentarily. With a tiny snort of laughter, she moved her garments again and began donning them as he watched.

  When she was fully dressed once more, she said, “Your turn.” But as he got up and retrieved his own clothing, she, too, looked him over first, nodded with what appeared to be an appreciative grin, then turned her back and headed into the kitchen.

  He heard the sounds of the refrigerator door opening and something being moved on the counter as well as water running in the sink and figured she was well on her way to brewing their coffee.

  That gave him time to think. No regrets. That was fruitless. And besides, he’d enjoyed it. A lot. The bigger regret was that they couldn’t do it again.

  Too many things—like his job and, of paramount importance, too, her safety—stood in their way.

  He had watched the death of a lovely, scared confidential informant when he had worked for the FBI, after allowing their mutual attraction to distract him.

  Edie.

  That would not happen again. No more sex. And definitely no deeper feelings.

  What he needed to figure out now was how he should approach his upcoming conversation with Beth that also had to be a strategy session.

  Especially when wherever they sat to talk he would be aware, really aware, of the delights that lay below the surface of what she wore—and how those enticing parts of her body were once again way off-limits to him, as they should have been before.

  When Beth popped her head through the doorway again, he was fully dressed. “It’s brewing,” she said. “Let’s sit down and wait for it, okay?”

  “Sure,” he agreed. He resumed his spot at the same place at her small table where he’d sat before. “So,” he began—all business, making certain not to add even a hint of what they’d done in his tone, “the background description you gave me before was really helpful, but I want to dig into it more, okay?” If it wasn’t okay, he’d have to figure out a way to make her talk, or he’d waste a lot of time trying to extract information she had that he needed.

  “Sure,” she said in a soft tone that was a lot more friendly than his. “What do you want to know?”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what you heard back then that made you worry and who you heard it from. And why it was that you didn’t have enough information to be considered a legitimate witness who’d be able to testify and get into WitSec.”

  The satiated glow he’d seen on her face suddenly morphed into sorrow—and pain. He regretted that, but this was a conversation they had to have, the sooner the better. They had to move on, immediately.

  And as much as he wanted to take her back into his arms to soothe her, he wouldn’t do that. Instead, he forced himself to sit still. And wait.

  She looked down at the table as if it were covered in chocolate or some delectable food so exciting that she couldn’t take her eyes off it. But he understood that was both to hide the moistness that now threatened to spill down her cheeks and to allow herself to focus on what was now filling her mind.

  “I’m not sure where it started,” she said in a low, husky whisper. “I was so excited to be part of Corcoris, to be able to give back to the company that had saved my mother’s life—and to be paid for it, too. It felt amazing. Of course, the medications she’s still on were developed when Preston Corcoris’s father was in charge, not now. But I didn’t realize things had changed when I began working there.”

  “That’s what I was told when I started this assignment,” Daniel said. “The quality of the medications apparently hasn’t been fully maintained since Preston took over—only the profitability. Right?”

  “Exactly.” Beth shook her head. “But I didn’t know that, not then. I was just so pleased to be working here. I started by helping more senior members of the marketing staff write and edit television spots and magazine ads. We could say lots of good stuff about the products, but we also had to add the applicable warnings so people who were interested in asking their doctors to prescribe certain medications would also be aware of possible side effects.”

  “Right.” Daniel, like everyone else who watched TV these days, was aware of the minute-long ads where thirty seconds were taken up with telling people why they shouldn’t take the medications being promoted. He always found that odd. So was telling people what they supposedly needed but that they had to convince their physicians to prescribe it for them. He mentioned that to Beth.

  “Most doctors are happy to prescribe the pharmaceuticals that are being advertised as long as they fit a patient’s diagnosed conditions,” she said. “Companies like Corcoris make sure of that by giving out lots of free samples as well as swag to the doctors, even tickets to shows or ball games or whatever. They expect the doctors to act ethically, of course. Or that’s what my new bosses at Corcoris always told me. Until...”

  “Until what?” Daniel prompted.

  “Just a minute.” She rose and headed into the kitchen, for the coffee, Daniel figured. He followed her, and they spent a few minutes pouring their java into brown pottery mugs. She took a dash of milk in hers. He again took his black.

  She offered him some cookies from a package in her narrow pantry, but he declined, leading her back into the other room and the table where they’d been sitting.

  “You were saying?” he prompted.

  She shut her eyes for a moment, once more indicating pain. But then she said, “I don’t know how much you know about pharmaceuticals.” She regarded him quizzically.

  “I did a lot of research and worked with some experts before coming here undercover,” he said. “But am I an expert? No.”

  She nodded. “Well, you probably learned that the patents on medications last for a certain number of years, and then generics pop up all over for the good, effective ones.”

  He nodded. “That’s why the companies are always busy developing more. Or trying to. Not all their attempts are successful.”

  “Right.” She took a sip of coffee, her lovely full lips touching her cup in a way that made him want to kiss her again.

  Heck, it had been long enough that the idea of making love with her passed through his mind once more. But that couldn’t happen, not tonight or ever again.

  “When I started working at Corcoris, the medication that had saved my mother was then available as a generic. It was cheaper and just as effective. I was fascinated by the number of other drugs they were working on then, all in different stages of development. Being a public relations assistant, I helped to promote the company and its products that had recently gone through the FDA’s approval process and were then on the market. I reported to Milt Ranich.”

  Daniel was aware of that—and had known even before Beth mentioned it that the man had disappeared. Where was he? And was he still alive?

  “I still don’t know exactly what happened.” Beth was still talking, as if she needed to get everything on the table in front of him. Maybe it was cathartic to her to disclose it to him. She’d undoubtedly told Judge Treena everything before, too. “But Milt—well, one day we were best buddies, even though he was my boss. And then he seemed to withdraw into himself. Just started telling me what to do, without any friendliness between us. I kept pressing him gently, but I felt hurt. And worried. I didn’t know what was going on.”

  “But he eventually told you?” Daniel asked.

  “Well...yes. And no.” Beth sighed. “If only he had real
ly let me in on it. It might have been better for both of us.”

  * * *

  The coffee was bitter at the back of Beth’s throat as she took her next sip. It was cooler, too. She quickly rose and took her mug and Daniel’s back into the kitchen to pour in a little more to heat it up.

  That gave her a minute to think about what to say next.

  Daniel hadn’t moved. When she placed his mug back on the table in front of him, he regarded her with what appeared to be sympathy with those handsome blue eyes of his—much more apparent and expressive now that he wasn’t wearing those geeky glasses that were part of his undercover garb. Remote sympathy, from one stranger aimed toward another with issues.

  It was as if their lovemaking had never happened. They were instead all business.

  She was fine with that. She had to be.

  “Better now?” he asked gently.

  “Nothing’s better now.” Her focus was all on their discussion now, not on him. She knew she sounded upset and bitter, but he was forcing her to delve into memories she had purposely tried to suppress—before. But since she was again working here, in her own form of being undercover at Corcoris, they were back in her conscious mind anyway.

  Better to share them with someone who might be able to use those memories to achieve what she wanted: justice at Corcoris and a way to bring Preston Corcoris down before he had her family harmed.

  “Okay,” she finally said with a sigh. “Here it all is in a nutshell. I acted completely friendly with Milt—well, it wasn’t an act, he was my friend—until he finally broke down. He was so upset...and what he told me involved some of the newest designer drugs that Corcoris was getting ready to put on the market. He said that he’d learned that the formulations weren’t exactly as being disclosed to the FDA—a little more of this ingredient, a little less of another. The quality of those ingredients depended a lot on where they’d originated, and what was being used in the actual medications wasn’t always what was used for the tests that were reported to the FDA. And then there were also questions about how the clinical trials were conducted. Supposedly all the information was being doctored, so to speak. The drugs themselves were being altered for testing, using better quality ingredients—maybe. Maybe there were payoffs to certain employees or to outside labs conducting the trials...but Milt wasn’t specific.”

  She looked into Daniel’s face and saw more interest than sympathy there, or so she thought. But, hey, this was exactly the information he needed from her, wasn’t it?

  She understood his attitude—really. The fact they’d made love didn’t change the fact he had a job to do. And maybe he’d even had sex with her to open her up to him—in more ways than one.

  Cynical? Yes, but she’d learned the hard way that cynicism wasn’t always far from the truth.

  “So Corcoris, or at least some of its personnel, were involved in a fraudulent attempt to get drugs on the market quickly to make them more money?” Daniel asked.

  “Exactly,” she said. “And cheaper than the quality they were represented to be. Milt had heard about it. The fact crushed him. And then he told me. And...”

  “And?” Daniel prompted when she stopped.

  “Things got so out of control after I learned about it,” she said, feeling as if her heart were constricting inside her chest. “Milt shut down after that, didn’t talk to me. And then he disappeared—supposedly on a business trip, but I kept trying to call him on his cell phone and got no answer. People said he’d just up and quit because he couldn’t handle the stress, but I didn’t believe that. He had no family, either, so I couldn’t try to find him that way. At the same time, I was suddenly Preston Corcoris’s golden child. He kept calling me into meetings as if I were the head of the company’s PR department, but there were others with a lot more seniority than me. And then—”

  She felt her eyes close but that didn’t keep out the vision of the horrible man appearing in her office late one night when no one else was around.

  “What happened, Beth?” That was Daniel’s voice, its deepness low and sympathetic yet pushing her somehow to respond.

  She tried to make her own tone light and amused, knowing she fell woefully short of that. “Oh, he visited me in my office one night when I was working late and told me how gorgeous I was and how he had been yearning to make me his. All that ridiculous seductive stuff that if I were really naive I might really have eaten up.”

  “So he came on to you?” Daniel prompted when she grew quiet again.

  “Yeah.” Her eyes closed yet again. “He tried to seduce me, and when I told him where to go as gently as I could since I wanted to keep my job, he started talking about Milt and demanded to know what that disloyal SOB might have told me. I tried to laugh that off, too. But he didn’t buy it—and he started threatening me. I...I acted scared. I was scared. And then I heard a noise in the hall and screamed. He grabbed me, but one of the nighttime security team broke into my office. I was so upset, but I still thought I might want to keep my job—until I had a moment to think. I just smiled, grabbed my purse and went home.”

  “So when did you try calling the cops?” Daniel asked gently.

  “I had a friend who was in law school,” she said. “The sister of one of my high school classmates. I called her and told her the whole story. She said I should go ahead and contact the local cops about the attack on me, which I did, a couple of days after it happened. But they didn’t arrest Preston. I was advised not only by her but also by those cops that I could try suing him or whatever but I had no proof.”

  Daniel’s gaze appeared sympathetic as he continued, “And what about your accusations against Corcoris Pharmaceuticals?”

  The frustration she had felt back then resurfaced, but she responded. “I told the local authorities about them at the same time but wasn’t too concerned when they didn’t get involved since I had no direct proof of that, either. I needed the attention of the FDA, which I ultimately got after a face-to-face meeting a few weeks later. Their surprise inspection maybe a month after the attack on me only bolstered the company’s claim that I was a disgruntled fired employee making false accusations—yes, I was let go almost immediately after Preston’s assault because of my supposedly false accusations. I couldn’t testify as to anything regarding the fraud except that some guy who’d left town had made some allegations that, to me, were all hearsay. And apparently there was some correspondence from Milt that I didn’t see, so no one thought anything bad had happened to him. But I doubt that any of it was real.”

  She knew that tears were flowing down her cheeks by then. She wanted to throw the coffee mug against the floor, shatter it to distract her from the horror and sorrow and despair that flooded her mind all over again, as they had so many times since all that had happened nearly a year ago.

  She anticipated that Daniel would do his job and push her for suggestions of where to look for evidence of what Milt had told her—evidence that she hadn’t been able to provide when she’d needed it so desperately.

  Instead he rose, took her by the shoulders and brought her to a stand, too.

  And then he took her into his arms. Held her tightly while she broke down sobbing.

  “It was all so—so horrible,” she said. “I couldn’t find another job, and when I swallowed my pride and tried to rescind what I’d said at Corcoris to get my job back, everybody had been told about all the lies I’d supposedly made up because our beloved boss, Preston Corcoris, had gently tried to avoid my attempts at seducing him.” She laughed bitterly through her tears. “As if,” she finished.

  Daniel hugged her against him. Once more she was aware of his hard body—and the growing erection that pressed into her.

  She almost tried to encourage him to make love to her again. That, at least, would get her mind on something a lot more enjoyable than the fear and grief that engulfed it now.
>
  Instead, he pushed her away gently and looked into her eyes. His seemed full of sympathy—or was she just reading that out of hope?

  “It’s getting late, Beth,” he said. “If you’d like, I can stay here. Sleep on the floor if necessary. But even though I think we still have a lot of strategy to talk about, we’d better save it for another time.”

  She drew her breath in raggedly, forcing herself to cease crying and smile at him.

  “I agree,” she said. “I’m just so glad that Judge Treena sent someone here to help me bring that bastard down. Thank you, Daniel. It’s fine for you to leave. I’ll be okay now.”

  “You’re sure?” He sounded dubious.

  “Of course. I’m too tired now to continue discussing this anyway.” She gave an exaggerated yawn. “I’ll be able to talk to you more about it another time, and we can plan what comes next together. Right now I think I just need a good night’s sleep.”

  And time to watch TV or read a book or anything at all to distract herself from all he had brought back to her frazzled mind with his questions.

  Distract herself? Heck, she could just go over their delightful lovemaking in her mind. Remember every moment of it—when it had been the result of her own decision, not the horribly frightening attempt at seduction by Preston Corcoris.

  Cementing it all in her mind would be a good thing anyway since it was strictly a one-time occurrence.

  “Okay,” Daniel said, murmuring against her hair. “I agree I’d better leave, since if I stay, I know I’m going to have to fight wanting to make love with you again.”

  Her entire body reacted with a sudden need for him to do just that.

  Which forced her to laugh out loud and say, “Better go ahead and fight it, then—at your own place. It was fun. But now—good night, Daniel. I need some alone time, and I’m sure you do, too.”

  Chapter 8

  He felt damned bad. A real louse for leaving Beth when she seemed at the end of her emotional tether.