Intimate Betrayal (35 page)

“I'm so sorry, Max…about everything.”

“I know, Carmen, and I appreciate it.”

“Well, I'll be leaving shortly. If you need anything before I go, let me know.”

“Sure thing.”

Left alone his thoughts shifted back to his conversation
with Harlan. He had to find a way to discover who was behind the attempted sabotage of his company. Who had the most to gain? He immediately eliminated the Board Members. They'd stand to lose as much as he by a takeover. Moving mentally down the list of possible suspects he started with the managers and department heads. They were the only staff members who were privy, on a regular basis, to the financial reports.

He moved from behind his workstation and turned on his computer. Within moments he'd brought up the personnel files of the department heads at the three locations.

Hours later, his eyes burned with the strain of staring at the screen, and he was no closer to finding out anything than he had been when he started.

Frustrated, he shut off the machine and pushed away from the desk. “This is pointless!” he barked at no one. “I may never find out who did this or why.” But the one thing that was becoming perfectly, painfully clear—it wasn't Reese, and he'd been a blind, arrogant idiot to believe that it was.

She was right, he thought. He hadn't learned anything. He'd let old hurts and mistrusts seep in and erode something beautiful. How could he ever hope to regain
her
trust? How could he ever hope to win her back?

He walked to his desk and picked up the folder, deciding to take the work home with him. At least it would keep his mind off of the fool he'd been. He took his pearl gray Versace jacket and slipped it over the pale pink shirt, tucking the folder securely under his arm. He switched off the light and the room was swallowed in darkness, just as his life had been since he'd pushed Reese out of it.

 

With a drink in his left hand, his calculator at his right, Maxwell methodically went over the bills. He'd successfully gotten through the myriad office-supply bills and signed the checks for payment. He was holding off the phone bills for
last. It was the one job he hated most. With the countless phone lines, extensions, and fax numbers, sifting through the phone bills was equivalent to running the gauntlet.

The New York office was the easiest, so he started there first, making sure that all personal checks for long-distance calls were attached as Carmen had indicated.

One number was flagged several times with the Chicago exchange. His stomach did a little flip. It was the number to
Visions Magazine.
He remembered it because he'd had to contact Phillip Hart. He forced his eyes to continue down the page. Finally, he tallied up the New York bills and wrote the approval for payment. Then he moved on to the L.A. office bills, which were always a mess. He knew he had to go through each one with a fine-tooth comb, because Carmen refused to do it, saying that “cruel and unusual punishment” was not in her job description.

After about ten minutes, he realized that the same Chicago number was on the L.A. bills. He brushed it off at first, attributing the calls as being made by Reese. But something didn't sit right. He took a second look.

The phone line where the calls originated was not his office phone. He checked the directory just to be sure. Yes. It was R.J.'s private line. He frowned and looked away from the papers and figures in front of him, staring off at some unseen point across the room, his mind racing.

Maybe Reese called her office from there. She had been in R.J.'s office during her visit. His breathing deepened as he sought the elusive answer that fluttered in the back of his subconscious. Then it came to him. He checked the dates. March fourth. He and Reese hadn't arrived in L.A. until the twentieth.

His jaw clenched. His dark eyes narrowed as the harsh reality settled and took shape. But he had to be sure. He'd already been too quick to judge. He wouldn't make that same mistake twice.

Quickly he pushed away from the table and went to his files. He diligently maintained copies of all bills for three months, which he kept at home. Carmen kept all the originals for a year for audit and tax purposes. Bending down, he pulled open the small oak file cabinet that fit neatly beneath his computer station. He found the phone bill files and pulled them out, spreading the contents on the desk. He compared travel expenses, employee records, and vacation and company loan requests.

Page by page the hard truth slapped him, and a sick sensation rose from the pit of his stomach and burned his throat like acid.

 

The offices were abuzz for weeks after R.J. was terminated. The day that Maxwell fired him, he couldn't believe the things R.J. said to him. Reese had been right all along. R.J. was jealous of him and he felt that he was just as brilliant as Maxwell but was never given the chance. When his gambling debts became insurmountable, he found a way to kill two birds with one stone. Hart had promised him a top position with the company that he'd formed three years earlier. He'd been parlaying his money from the magazine, making wise investments, and had heavy backers. He also knew how to turn one dollar into a hundred, by loan sharking, which was how he'd gotten R.J. by the short hairs. They'd been gambling buddies since college. The difference between them was that Phillip Hart knew when to stop. Unfortunately, Hart would never get the opportunity to spend any of the money he'd made off of the stock market. All of his money would be going to pay lawyers. He was charged with extortion and his company was under investigation by the FTC.

Visions
was being totally restructured and was under new management. Where did that leave Reese? Maxwell wondered.

 

Since her article on Maxwell had appeared, she'd been inundated with calls and letters from every newspaper and magazine across the country to do major features on the elusive elite. But her major concentration at the moment was her current project. She was commissioned by the
Washington Post
to do an exposé on the U.S. military and their involvement with chemical warfare testing. Her focus was the “code of honor” among the U.S. government forces, which compelled its members to perform and engage in heinous acts for the sake of a “code.” As painful as it was to write, it was her way of paying homage to her parents, in the vague hope that their deaths would not have been in vain, while exposing the inner workings of a frightening system. There was already talk of a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism, but those accolades did not faze her. Her work had been a catalyst for so many things: the recovering of her memory, the uncovering of more than three decades of lies and betrayals, and the forging of a new and growing friendship with Victoria, whose help was immeasurable. And mostly it had been the starting point for the beginning of what could have been the one great love of her life. Instead, it was the albatross that had finally destroyed it. All of her genuine intentions to present to the world, a wonderful, complex human being, were obliterated by one simple sentence. Ironically, one that she did not write and that was only put there to turn the tables on her. She was expendable. What prize could ever compensate for all of that?

So, she continued to work, to accept assignments. In her work, she found the mindless solidity that helped to camouflage the deep despair of her loneliness.

She hadn't heard another word from Maxwell since that last fateful phone call, but she'd kept up with the trial of his father and Frank Murphy as it all became part of the saga that
she was drawing out for all the world to see. But even as hurt and as devastated as she had been by Maxwell's unfounded accusations, she could not keep him far from her thoughts. The emptiness still pervaded her spirit. Her heart still ached during the long, lonely nights. And each morning when she arose, she wondered just how much longer the unbearable pain would last.

She uncurled her long, gray-sweatpant-clad legs and slid off the couch. Heading in the direction of her small lemon-yellow kitchen to fix a light snack, she was stopped midway by the ringing of her doorbell.

Sucking her teeth, she went to the door and checked the peephole. She groaned aloud when she saw the Federal Express agent. “Another assignment.”

“Just a moment.” She opened the door and signed for the package.

Closing the door behind her she flipped the thick envelope over to see who the sender was. She couldn't have been more surprised if it had come from the president himself. But absolute astonishment took hold when she opened the package and viewed the contents. In it, was a letter from Sukihara along with the transfer of fifteen percent of M.K. Enterprises stock from her to Reese. There was another sealed envelope addressed to Max, which according to the letter written to Reese, should be given to him when Reese thought the time was right. “When the time was right,” she said in a soft faraway voice. “When will that ever be?”

I
t had taken much longer than he'd wanted to settle his business and get operations up and running in Tokyo. Mioshi had assembled a top-notch team to open the site and Maxwell was confident that within the year the joint venture between his company and Mioshi's would show a solid profit.

Since R.J.'s termination, Maxwell had promoted Glen Hargrove to his position to run the L.A. offices. Everyone was thrilled for Glen and he couldn't have been happier over his promotion or his move to the sunny West Coast.

As hard as it was for him to deal with, he'd accepted the fact that his mother would never be a real part of his life. And with that understanding, although it hurt him, he had discovered something more important. He'd struggled hard, but he had begun to reestablish a relationship with his father and promised to stand by him through his ordeal. His mother, Claudia, he finally realized was the real backbone of the family. What she'd endured for the love of his father and
family gave him a whole new level of respect and admiration and yes love for this woman who raised him. Through her, he forged a different outlook on what family really was. Family was made up of those people who loved you. His natural mother would always be family, because he knew that she did love him as best as she could, and with that knowledge came a sense of peace. He also realized that who you were could never be dictated by the color of your skin, the slant of your eyes, the texture of your hair, or the shape of your nose. Who you were was the person you made yourself to be, the decisions you made, the road you took. And with that knowledge he knew that his restless search for his identity had finally ended and that what he'd been looking for had been inside of him all along. And it was time that he put the rest of the pieces of his life in place.

 

It was impossible to control the erratic beat of his heart as he pulled up in front of the address that Carmen had given him. For several breathless moments he sat staring at the neat little town house. What if everything he'd hoped for crashed down around him? It had taken him this long to be right with himself so that he would be right for her with no doubts, no reservations. But what if he'd taken too long? What if she'd moved on with her life and no longer wanted him in it? Could he blame her if she did after the atrocious way he'd treated her? He didn't know how he would stand it if she turned him away. Then cool, calculated logic set in. He'd never find out sitting in his car.

Stepping out in a single fluid motion, Maxwell approached the house, his bronze-colored maxi-length raw silk trenchcoat fanning out around his matching suit.

 

Reese had just stepped out of the shower, when off in the distance she heard the tingle of her front doorbell. She pulled
her pale peach terry cloth robe from off the hook behind the bathroom door and tied it loosely around her damp body, which was beginning to show the early budding signs of life. The bell rang again. She puffed her cheeks and blew an exasperated breath. She was going to strangle Lynnette. She'd told her less than twenty minutes ago she wouldn't be ready for another hour. Her appointment wasn't until two and it was barely ten thirty. She knew Lynn just wanted to pop by early so that she could regale her with more stories about her incredible Dr. Adam Moore.

Since Lynn's release from the hospital, they'd become a real hot item, and Lynn never grew weary of telling Reese just how wonderful he was. Although she was thrilled that her sister-friend had finally found true love, a part of her was jealous of her joy. It continually reinforced how desperately she missed Maxwell and how empty the rest of her life would be without him to share in their creation.

The bell rang again. “Just a minute!” She snatched a towel from the rack, briskly rubbed her soaking wet hair, then draped the towel around her shoulders. Padding barefoot, she dashed down the short hallway to the front door. On tiptoe she peered through the peephole and her stomach did a dizzying somersault. She turned away from the door, pressing her back to it for support while she covered her mouth to stifle the gasp that rushed from her throat.

Panic, fear and exhilaration swirled like a tornado within her.
Max. My God it's Max.
She was trembling so hard and her heart was beating so fast she had to pull on some secret source of strength just to get the locks open.

They faced each other for the first time in nearly three months, but time and space seemed to slip away, passing through and around them like morning mist, as their eyes and their spirits crossed the barriers they'd erected and met in the place that only true lovers dare to go, deep in the heart.

How could she have ever anticipated the sheer magnitude of the joy she felt at seeing him again? His familiar scent, so earthy and erotic enveloped her, seeped into her pores, stole her breath. Her dazzling amber eyes snaked across his face, remembering the fine scar across his eyebrow that he worried when deep in thought. She traced the outline of the body she'd never forget, then back up to settle on his eyes that still glowed with a savage inner fire. Instantaneously, she felt the unmistakable hot yearning begin its steady pulse as if it had been only yesterday and not nearly three months ago.

Maxwell felt his throat tighten as he fought to find the words to express his elation at seeing her again. His heart filled, his pulse pounded relentlessly in his temple. She was more beautiful than his imagination could have ever conjured. The same haunting allure of her eyes, the satin smoothness of her chocolate-brown skin, the way her pulse fluttered with excitement at the base of her throat, still held the magic to make him humble and weak with need in her presence. What was even more captivating was that she seemed to radiate with an inner glow that was almost surreal in its beauty.

Cautiously, he reached out, needing to make physical contact with her, know that she was finally real and no longer the floating image of his dreams. The tip of his finger brushed her cheek and he saw her shudder as her lids slid shut then slowly opened to look up at him. Her eyes shimmered and he saw the convulsive motion of her throat working up and down. His hand cupped her cheek and hers captured his—holding it tight.

He thought his heart would explode. “I…have a story I need to be told,” he began, his voice low and threatening to break. “It's about a man who found a wonderful woman and he wasn't wise enough to listen to his heart, who needs to tell her how sorry he is for the hurt he's caused her. It's about a man who's tired of facing the world alone. It's about
someone who had one of the greatest opportunities in his life—a woman who was willing to risk herself for him—who battled her own demons and was still willing to fight his…” He pressed his lips together fighting back a sob. His nostrils flared as he sucked in air, when he felt the hot trickle of Reese's tears run across his hand. “It's about a man who finally understands who he is and wants to spend the rest of his life sharing himself with that wonderful woman. It's about me, Reese, the man who never got the chance to say I love you…I love you…I love you.”

In two short steps she was in his arms and felt for the first time in far too long that the world had finally settled beneath her feet. His arms locked around her and he buried his face against her wet hair, murmuring her name over and over again. She was home again. She was whole again. She heard his heart pound against her ear, in perfect rhythm with her own, and she knew nothing could ever be more right than this moment. She cried in earnest now, letting the tears wash away the bitterness, the pain, the loneliness so that there would only be room for the overwhelming love that she so desperately needed to give to him.

She angled her head back and cupped his face in her hands, staring deep into his magnificent coal-black eyes. Her full lips curved upward in that old seductive smile that he knew all too well. “I think I just may have some stories that need to be told as well,” she murmured in that sultry voice that drove him crazy. Her eyes sparkled as she tugged him by the knot of his color-splashed tie. “Why don't we step inside and discuss it at
length?
” She grinned wickedly, and Maxwell threw his head back and laughed in joyous relief.

Before she knew what happened, he'd picked her up, stepped across the threshold, and kicked the door shut. His heated gaze scorched her face. “When you play with
fire Ms. Delaware, you're liable to get burned,” he taunted, instinctively finding his way to her bedroom.

Reese emitted a deep throaty laugh, remembering the first time he'd thrown down that gauntlet. “So, let the games begin.” Without another word she gave the belt of her robe one good pull and the warm cotton garment fell open. She stretched her arms to him in welcome and he found
his
way back home.

 

Lynnette arrived about an hour later and rang the bell for a full ten minutes before she gave up and went to meet Adam for a late lunch. Maxwell and Reese didn't hear a thing except what their hearts and bodies sang to each other.