Lucky Charm (32 page)

Somehow it didn’t surprise her he’d carried two full loads of curriculum.

“You and Darrin get along well then?”

He nodded. “He’s my stepfather but I count him as much a friend as father and boss now. Although we’re actually partners.”

With a wry smile he shook his head.

“What?” Ariel asked, smiling in return.

“You’d think with my degrees, I’d have been smarter but I never saw what he was doing.”

She waited as the waiter delivered their salads and Matt sat up a little, shaking his head at the memory.

“He snuck it by me,” Matt said, grinning.

Intrigued and amused, Ariel said, “Snuck what by you?”

“The business. We’d talked about it more than once but Darrin was offering me a full partnership without any strings. I wouldn’t do it that way, I wanted to buy in but with all the cases I was working I kept putting it off. Without letting on, he started deducting money from my paychecks. I was too busy working to worry about it. Me, with the accounting degree and I wasn’t checking my own paychecks. Sneaky bastard. Of course, it was Darrin so I never even considered he’d rip me off. The few times I might have questioned it – a check that wasn’t as big as I’d expected – all I had to remember was that this was Darrin I was talking about, there was no way he’d do anything underhanded. The man is as honest as the day is long.”

Matt chuckled, remembering.

“I forgot it was
Darrin
, who’d learned sneaky and underhanded from every case he closed. All the money was mine, every penny documented, with interest. He waited until my birthday to tell me. His present to me. Half the business, bought with my own earnings.”

He remembered it vividly, sitting at the table in another restaurant. Darrin with his usual calm, unperturbed look, his blue eyes twinkling in the candlelight at Matt’s poleaxed expression.

“Your mother must have been happy,” Ariel said.

There was something in his face. A sudden sadness.

“I’m so sorry. What happened?” she asked.

He looked at her, startled at her perception since he hadn’t meant to show that much.

“By then she was gone,” he said. “In my senior year of high school.”

It was obvious by the sorrow in his voice, the shadow in his brilliant green eyes, that they’d been close

Taking a deep breath, he said, “About six months before my senior year she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was deep. A mammogram caught it but it had already metastasized.”

Reaching out, Ariel caught up his hand. “Oh, Matt, I’m sorry.”

With a sigh, he squeezed her hand, appreciating the sympathy. “She was a great lady, my mom. I’m not sure which of us took it harder, Darrin or me. I had more time with her but Darrin virtually worshipped her. He’d been so busy building the business up he hadn’t had time for anything else. Until he met her. Then he got me, too, as part of the bargain. My own father was long gone. I never knew, never asked, why they didn’t have any more kids but Darrin never made me feel like I was anything but his son.”

“You were lucky,” Ariel said.

He grinned. “Damned right and I know it.”

“My father was looking for a son, not a daughter, while my mother thinks I should stop all this traveling, settle down and get married,” she said, with a rueful sigh.

“Do you like it? The traveling, your job?” he asked.

It was more than a casual question. He wanted to get to know her better. A lot better now. That would be hard if she was always on the road. After having watched her appear in city after city this past month or so, he’d wondered. It had to be rough on her sometimes. Remembering her as she walked alone through the streets of Birmingham late at night bothered him, too.

Shrugging a little, Ariel considered it.

“I like it well enough. Every day and every office is different, even if I could train the software in my sleep I’ve done it so often. I used to think the travel would be exciting but unless I carve a little time out for myself like I’ve done here and in Tampa, I usually don’t get to see much of the cities I visit. A lot of people think it’s exciting, going to different places all the time. Most of the time I fly in for a few days then fly right out again, depending on the size of the company. There’s no time for sightseeing. For all I’ve traveled, I’ve actually seen very little of the cities I visit. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Also sightseeing isn’t as much fun without someone to share it.”

“Sounds lonely,” Matt said, quietly.

It had been there in her voice, carefully hidden but there.

Her blue eyes flickered up to him. “It was. Is.” She paused for a second. “But if you’re busy enough you don’t always notice. I kept busy enough.”

Taking her hand, he pressed his mouth to her palm.

A wave of warm heat washed from where his lips were pressed straight to Ariel’s heart.

“Mind if I keep you busy, instead?” he asked, his green eyed gaze smoldering.

“No,” she said, on half a gasp at the look in those eyes, “no, not at all.”

Matt liked the pretty flush that washed through her ivory cheeks and the way her voice went a little husky.

“Good,” he said, softly, “because I intend to.”

Drawing her hand closer, he pressed his mouth hard against the pulse point in her wrist, savoring the feel of the rapid beating of her heart beneath his lips and the flickering of his tongue on taste of her soft skin.

A breath of a moan escaped her, her eyelids fluttered.

Curious in a new way, Matt caught her fingers and brought them to his mouth. The expression on her face was priceless. Had no one ever done this to her? Color flushed her cheeks and made those dark-fringed blue eyes glow. Pressing her fingers against his mouth, he slid his tongue between two of them. Her eyes widened.

“Amazing,” he said, softly. “I have a great deal to show you.”

Ariel had never considered her wrist to be an erogenous zone until that moment but a surge of heat raced from her wrist into her depths, a warm liquid swirl that spun through her belly. She’d never felt anything like it.

Reining in her breathing, Ariel lost it again at the husky undertone to his voice and the look in his eyes. The waiter bringing their dinner and taking their salad plates gave her a little breathing space. Her heart was hammering.

Matt grinned. “Now, to make you absolutely perfect, I have to ask. Do you play poker?”

Laughing, Ariel said, “I know the basics but I’ve only played for pennies.”

“We’ll have to rectify that,” he said. “Tonight, we’ll teach you how to really gamble.”

Matt took her to the table games and taught her how Texas Hold ‘Em is properly played. As she’d said, she knew the rudiments so she picked it up quickly. Too quickly. He’d forgotten how good a poker face she had. That bland look expression in Birmingham as she gave him a chance to escape should have warned him. Every now and then he had to distract her by kissing her fingers or her wrist. To the same effect he’d gotten earlier.

It also pleased him enormously. He was going to have to watch out for her in more ways than one, which was a nice challenge. The last woman he’d been with hadn’t been the least bit interested. By the light in Ariel’s eyes she was thoroughly enjoying herself. Better yet, she gambled smart. It would be fun to put her in a game with Darrin and some of the other guys they played with. That would be something. The thought of having her join Darrin and the guys on their poker nights gave him an unexpected charge. It was also a relief to know she knew when to quit.

Neither of them won big, they pretty much drew even but they had several hours of fun doing it.

As they walked back to the hotel, Matt noticed a few eyes on them. Not the stooges, these faces were all smiles. He glanced down at Ariel, her dark head barely reaching his shoulder, just as she looked up. Those brilliant dark-fringed blue eyes met his, warm and sparkling. Her sweet mouth was curved in an entirely unconscious smile. It was the two of them together that caught the eye, the two of them and Ariel’s smile.

Arnold Blumer glanced around at the listening ears of those around him. His one call now that he’d been patched up and slept it off in the hospital’s jail ward. After they’d gotten the shit kicked out of them in that alley he hadn’t been able to see straight and had had a bitch of a headache besides. How was he to know he’d had a concussion? They’d all been pretty pissed so they’d found the nearest bar, then gotten really and truly drunk. Which on top of the concussion he hadn’t known he had was stupid. Quantities of alcohol had only made it worse. Not that it took much.

He dreaded this phone call but he couldn’t put it off any longer. They needed to be bailed out.

The voice on the other end of the phone was, predictably, furious.

“You’ve been what?”

“We got busted,” he said, cautiously.

“On what charge?”

“Drunk and disorderly,” he answered slowly, then took a deep breath, “and assault on a police officer.”

“I don’t recall those instructions. What happened?”

“We were interrupted,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Some guy from the hotel stepped in.”

There was a pause and just the faintest sense of alarm. “Security?”

“Naw, some do-gooder.”

Silence again. “All three of you.”

“Yes,” Arnie said, tightly. He was royally pissed. It was embarrassing.

Abruptly, the connection terminated. He stared at the phone in consternation. No mention had been made about getting them out of jail.

Genardi swore beneath his breath, his balls drawing up tight at the mere thought of calling Lovell and yet he knew he had to.

Reluctantly he reached for his office phone and then snatched his hand back as if it had been burnt.

Personally he thought this kind of precaution was ridiculous but the one person who’d instituted them obviously didn’t.

He picked up the disposable cell, hit the call button.

“Lovell.”

Looking at the cell phone display Lovell swore under his breath. Genardi still hadn’t disposed of that phone. Call records were on it, perhaps voice mails. It was incriminating evidence. Fortunately once he himself got rid of his, it could only incriminate Genardi.

Even so.

“Get rid of that phone,” Lovell snapped.

Whatever this was couldn’t be good. Clearly.

“Speak.”

On the other end Genardi flinched back from the tone, already regretting having made the call, but what choice did he have? If Lovell had found out later…

“You told me to put the fear of God into that computer girl,” he began.

For a moment he almost told Lovell of the first failed attempt at the motel on the way to New Orleans but then thought better of it. What Lovell didn’t know couldn’t hurt anyone. Certainly not Thomas Genardi.

“Yes,” the voice on the other end of the phone hissed.

That was how Genardi pictured Lovell sometimes, as a snake, something out of that kids’ movie. Cold and calculating.

Lovell caught the betraying hesitation in Genardi’s voice.

“What?” he demanded.

“My men ran into a problem.”

Coldness flushed down the back of Lovell’s neck as anger surged through him.

“Your men. What kind of problem?” he asked, quietly as he throttled it back.

“Some do-gooder.”

Lovell swore softly but vehemently.

“What did you do?” he demanded, keeping his voice even with an effort.

“You said to put the fear of God in her,” Genardi said.

Closing his eyes, Lovell forced himself to calm. “I meant only for you to give her a warning.”

“Sh…” Genardi cut himself off quickly.

“Yes, shit,” Lovell said, with sigh of exasperation.

Once more, as with Parkhurst, Genardi had overreached his bounds.

Ariel O’Donnell, the woman installing the new software program for Marathon, was now a concern. According to Genardi, her intervention with Matthew Morrison appeared coincidental. Nor had Lovell’s own people reported any contact between them. At least they hadn’t seen any. To all appearances there seemed to be no connection.