Authors: Claire Kent
Her mother handed her a sheet of paper.
It took Kelly a few moments to focus on the words, but then she read what was evidently a memo.
It came back to her then. She’d seen this memo before. It was the piece of evidence that her mother had used to try to get the police to make a case against Vendella.
It was a memo written by her father, saying he was concerned about some of the research he was doing on a potential new medication they were developing.
Kelly stared and stared and stared at the name on the
TO:
line.
Caleb Marshall
.
“This isn’t real proof,” she said at last. “It doesn’t mean he had him killed.”
“Of course it’s not real proof. If I had any new proof, I would have tried the police again. They wouldn’t believe me now any more than they believed me back then.”
The police had closed the case quickly, calling it a random mugging, since her father’s wallet had been taken. Her mother had believed differently from the very beginning, since she’d known her husband had decided to blow the whistle on the company once they’d continued pursuing the development of the medication despite the problematic findings. But no one believed her. With nothing else to do, she’d spent months filling Kelly’s head with bitter hate for Vendella, making her listen as her mother scoured memos and reports and endless files, searching for concrete evidence to implicate Vendella in the murder. Kelly had believed her mother, turning Vendella into a kind of monster in her mind.
Even now, the sound of the company’s name caused a chill to break through her spine.
But there had never been any proof. No one believed her mother. And finally the woman had just walked out on everyone.
Including Kelly.
“Then why do you think it was Cal—”
“Because it’s his name on the memo. He knew what your father knew, and he knew your father wasn’t going to let it go. He had the most to lose, and he was the one who gained the most from the murder. Use your brain! Obviously, the top-level executives would have been involved, but in any scenario, Caleb Marshall would have been at least partly responsible.”
It
did
make sense. Kelly couldn’t imagine a scenario where the project manager wouldn’t know that one of his research scientists was about to turn on the company—unless no one knew at all, when obviously they did.
Her mother handed her a file of papers, and Kelly opened it with trembling hands, staring down at it blankly until the words unblurred again. It was a dossier on Caleb. His picture—grinning smugly at the camera—and the details of his birth, the son of a self-made millionaire, his childhood in DC, his education at fancy private schools and then the Ivy League for college on an accelerated track and a joint graduate degree in business and medicine. He’d climbed the corporate ladder quickly—too quickly to be the result of nothing but hard work.
He was either blessed with the kind of luck the gods only dreamed of or he wasn’t afraid of taking shortcuts.
Kelly flipped the pages of the file. Stacks of articles, documents, correspondence from his years at Vendella. “Where did you get all this?”
“I’ve been working with a private investigator. Read through all that, and you’ll see the lengths he’ll go to to get his way. It’s not a pretty picture.”
“The detective hasn’t been able to get any proof about the murder though?”
“Nothing that will cause the authorities to change their minds.”
“So, what am I supposed to do?”
“How did you get along with Marshall?”
“What do you mean?” Finally, Kelly looked up from the file to catch a coldly calculating expression on her mother’s face.
“Did you hit it off?”
Kelly suddenly realized what her mother was asking. “He seemed like a spoiled asshole.”
“That’s what he is, but that wasn’t my question. Did he seem interested in you?”
“Why would he—”
“Because he likes attractive women in their twenties.”
Somehow, Kelly wasn’t surprised she wasn’t the first young woman he’d hit on. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know? You’ve been around the block enough. You’d know if a man was interested.”
Kelly felt a sudden flash of horror, picturing herself coming hard around Caleb’s cock, her skirt hiked up around her hips.
“You screwed him, didn’t you?” her mother asked.
“I didn’t—what—”
There was absolutely nothing Kelly could say.
“Why bother with embarrassment? I know all about your habits. And this actually works perfectly.”
“What works perfectly?”
“You need to get close to him.”
“Close to him? Why?”
“Because we need proof. Some sort of evidence. If there was any other way to get it, I would have found it by now. But there’s not. There’s no way I can get close enough to him to search his home and computers, but you can. You can.”
“You want me to—”
“Get close to him.” The words were like chips of ice. “Any way you can. Get close enough to bring the man down.”
Kelly thought for a moment she might actually faint.
This was too much. Simply too much.
“You’re crazy! I’m not a spy. You want me to fuck him again, knowing that he was responsible for—”
She had to break off the words because the reality suddenly came home for her. She’d had sex with the man responsible for her father’s death. He might not have pulled the trigger, but he’d killed her father just the same.
And she’d allowed him into her body, she’d felt his hands all over, she’d surrendered part of herself to a man she could only hate.
The wave of nausea was too strong, and it drove her to her feet. She jumped up and ran for the bathroom, gagging a few times as she processed the truth.
It was too horrible to accept. Too horrible to allow.
She stood over the toilet, waiting to vomit, but it never came.
Her mother’s voice came from behind her. “You’ll have to be stronger than that, if you’re going to get this done.”
“I’m not going to get any of this done. It’s crazy, and I’m not going to do it.”
“Yes, you will. If you ever want to live with yourself, after today, you’ll do it.”
“It will never work. He’ll find out who I am.”
“No, he wouldn’t. I paid good money to bury the records of your identity. He won’t find anything.”
“I still won’t do it.”
When her stomach had settled enough, Kelly went over to the sink to splash water on her face.
“Just go away. Why are you all of a sudden so set on this anyway? You’ve had eighteen years to put your ridiculous plans into place. Why now?”
She was drying her face when her mother responded, no resonance at all in her tone. “Because I’m dying. It’s now or never.”
Kelly gasped and whirled around, clutching the towel in her hand.
“Cancer,” her mother said blandly. “I have no more than three months. Do this for me now, so I can die in peace.”
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But you abandoned me when I was ten, so I’m not sure what you expect of me now. Blood just isn’t enough. Not to do this. It will never work, and I can’t even stand the thought of the man now, much less get close enough to him to”—she shook her head—“I’ve put all this behind me. I’m not going to let it drag me down now.”
“You haven’t put it behind you. Don’t lie to me about that. I’ve been watching you for a while now. You don’t let yourself get close to anyone. You never risk a real relationship. You never let anyone really touch you. Why do you think that is? It’s because you’re still trapped in the same nightmare I am—the utter injustice that has no answer. Well, here’s your chance to answer it, to move on at last. And to let me die with some sort of peace.”
For a moment, just a moment, Kelly wanted that so much she could taste it. Closure. Peace. Healing. An answer. Something to cover the dark void beneath the precipice she always felt perched on.
But it was too slim a hope, and there was no way she could do what her mother wanted her to do. The woman must be completely heartless to even ask it of her.
Heartless. Or desperate.
“He thinks he’s untouchable, Kelly. We can’t let it him get away with it forever.”
“No,” Kelly said again. “That’s my final answer.”
“You say that now, but I don’t think it is.”
It took almost an hour before Kelly could get rid of her mother, and she had to drink the rest of an opened bottle of wine before she could dull the pain of the day.
She fell asleep or passed out afterward, waking to the sound of her telephone.
It was Reese. Her friend. Her only real friend, whom she’d known since high school. Wanting to go out for the evening.
Kelly blinked at the clock to discover that it was after nine. She felt like absolute crap, but the empty apartment and the memory of Caleb—and her mother—and her
father
—rose up to meet her in the void. Quickly, she told Reese she had to shower and get ready, but could do something afterward.
They ended up going to a trendy pub in Georgetown, since Reese currently had a thing for academic types.
Kelly already had a headache, so she didn’t drink very much, but she flirted with every guy who approached in an attempt to wipe out her conflicted thoughts.
It was wrong of her mother to ask something like this of her. It was absolutely wrong.
And the thought of Caleb and his fine body, hard cock, and cold, calculating mind still made her stomach churn in horror and disgust, partly because it still turned her on.
Why the hell had she been so stupid as to fuck him in the park? She couldn’t forget how good it had been. And now she’d fallen right into her mother’s trap.
He probably was at least partly responsible for the death of her father, if not the primary guilty party. She completely believed he was capable of it. That afternoon, she’d read through the file her mother had given her. As promised, it wasn’t pretty at all. He’d blackmailed and extorted. He’d ruined people’s lives. It was widely believed in certain circles, although never proven, that he stole the research that led to the development of one of Vendella’s most profitable medications.
The man was a monster in a five-thousand-dollar suit.
But she would have to hate him at a distance. She couldn’t do anything else.
“What’s the matter with you tonight?” Reese asked, turning away from the law student she’d been chatting with. He was too young for her, but Reese didn’t care about such things. She was pretty and tiny, with dark hair and big brown eyes, and she was a serial dater, always desperately in love with whatever man she happened to be with until she decided he wasn’t in fact the love of her life.
“Nothing. What do you mean?”
“I thought you were going to launch yourself at that guy just now. I mean, you always come on strong, but not that strong. It’s like you’re possessed.”
“I’m not possessed. Just horny.”
Reese was peering at her. “I don’t think so. Something is eating at you.”
“Nothing is eating at me.” Kelly was closer to Reese than anyone else, but there was no way in hell she would tell her about Caleb or her mother.
“Okay. You don’t have to tell me.”
Kelly sighed, feeling like she’d hurt Reese’s feelings. She hated feeling guilty like that, and Reese was the only one who could make her feel that way so easily.
“I’m sorry. I just can’t talk about it now.”
Reese’s expression relaxed. “Well, tell me later, then. Did you meet someone?”
Kelly rolled her eyes at the sparkle in Reese’s. “No, I didn’t meet anyone.” It wasn’t exactly true, but meeting Caleb was closer to a nightmare than a potential romantic interest.
Before Reese could reply, Kelly’s phone buzzed. She pulled it out and blinked down at the screen for a long time after she read the words.
Let’s not call it seconds. Let’s just say it’s more of the first time. Tomorrow evening?
Kelly’s breathing was loud and ragged as she stared down at the text. It was Caleb, although he hadn’t used his name. Asking to meet up with her again—in his typically clever, arrogant way.
He’d probably killed her father, and now he was asking her for a date.
He wanted to fuck her again, and her body kind of wanted it too.
A surge of rage swept through her, the likes of which she’d never experienced before.
“What is it?” Reese demanded, grabbing Kelly’s arm. “What’s the matter? Did something happen?”
Something had happened. Caleb Marshall had happened. And ten-year-old Kelly’s life had gone into a downward spiral she’d never been able to pull out of.
But she wasn’t helpless. And she wasn’t weak.
Caleb wasn’t as untouchable as he thought, and he wasn’t irresistible either.
So Kelly tapped out her reply.
I guess. As long as we’re not talking about seconds. They’re never as tasty as the first time.
Not seconds. Dessert.
Caleb Marshall told himself not to be a heartless ass and to make the damn call.
It was already four, which meant it was after ten in Paris. Pretty soon, it would be too late to phone, and he knew he needed to get it over with today.
So he stopped procrastinating, hit send on an email, and reached over for his phone.
He’d known Wes since first grade, but he hadn’t talked to him in more than two years. He hated making calls like this.
“Fuck,” Wes said, answering on the second ring without any semblance of a greeting. “If even
you
are making a pity call, then I must be in really bad shape.”
Typical.
“Are you?”
“What do you think?”
“I have no idea. But I’m sorry about your mom.” Caleb said the words automatically, since they were the ones he’d called to say. They felt artificial, though, as if they weren’t what needed to be said.
“Yeah. How did you hear?”
“I ran into your dad the other day. What’s the prognosis?”
“Two or three months? They don’t really know. They’ve got nothing left to try.”
“We’ve got a couple of projects in the works, but they won’t be ready for clinical trials until next year.”
“Yeah. There’s nothing to hope for here.”
Caleb didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t like feeling that way. He was tempted to end the conversation quickly, but, if he had a friend in the world, it was Wes.
“Are you coming home any time soon?” he asked at last.
“I’m going to try to get over there in a couple of weeks.”
“Good. Give me a call when you’re in town.”
“Will do. Any new trauma with you?”
“I don’t do trauma.”
“I guess the one was enough for any lifetime.”
A brief cringe shuddered through Caleb at the words.
“It wasn’t a trauma.”
“Yeah, it was. It just lasted more than a year.”
Caleb sat in silence, his whole body tense for a moment before he made himself relax. This was why he hadn’t wanted to make this call, why he hadn’t touched base with Wes for so long.
His friend knew everything—his entire history—even things that didn’t need to be remembered.
Caleb wasn’t that helpless boy anymore. He’d constructed a life to ensure he wasn’t. And he didn’t like to be reminded of who he used to be.
“Well, maybe I can catch you when you’re in town,” he said at last.
“Still the same old Caleb. The minute it turns real, you’re out.” Wes sounded resigned, not annoyed. “But thanks for calling anyway.”
After saying good-bye, Caleb set down the phone and tried to focus again on his email. His father had died in his sixties and his mother a few years ago. There was no one left from childhood now. No one but Wes.
He brushed away the thought—and the memories it evoked—so he could work. He had other things to focus on now anyway.
And a date tonight he was really looking forward to.
Caleb had a long-standing habit of working in the office on Sunday afternoons.
He usually took Saturdays as a break, except for email and the occasional phone call, but by Sunday morning he was itching to get to all the work waiting to be done in the office. So years ago he’d given up on the pretense of a weekend and just started going in.
His staff technically had the weekend off, but a lot of them ended up coming in on Sunday afternoons anyway.
It made things easier for him, so he never tried to stop them.
He’d been in the office for five hours already, since eleven that morning, and he’d completed the project he’d wanted to get done today. He wasn’t meeting Kelly until seven that evening, though, so he’d started to go through some of his email before he’d called Wes.
His inbox was like a bottomless pit. Any time he got even close to clearing it out, it would pile up again in less than an hour. Even with Linda culling through it several times a day, they never seemed to make any progress.
Sometimes he was tempted to just delete his account and tell everyone to contact him by mail or phone. He was in charge here. What could they do? There were plenty of executives who demanded companies adapt to their eccentricities. Maybe refusal to use email would be his.
Even as he stared at the screen right now, at just after four on a Sunday afternoon, three more emails came in, and he felt the familiar tightening at the back of his skull at the thought of all of the email still waiting for him.
When he’d started working for Vendella as a young man, his biggest source of stress had been keeping up with email so no one thought he was lazy or incompetent.
One would think the last twenty years would have made more of a difference.
He was replying to one of the messages Linda had tagged as “priority” when she tapped on his office door and walked in. She was a plain, quiet woman in her fifties. She’d been his assistant for fifteen years, and she was always in the office when he was.
“Here’s the information you wanted on Miss Watson,” she murmured, placing a file in his inbox. “And are you available for a call from Richard Helms?”
Caleb made a face, but nodded his affirmation as he reached for the file Linda had just put together. “Give me fifteen minutes.”
When Linda left his office, he opened the file to find a picture of Kelly, standing with a friend of hers outside of a stone building. She wore jeans and a fitted T-shirt, and her hair was pulled into a long ponytail. She was smiling broadly, as if she’d been laughing.
She looked different in the casual clothes, but she had the same fresh beauty—glowing with a kind of innocence that was impossible to ignore. As if she weren’t jaded and corrupted by experience with the world.
She’d said that appearances could lie, and he knew it was true, but he still felt that pull of attraction and curiosity—as if she were a quest that must be undertaken.
He genuinely hadn’t known if she would agree to a second date with him. He’d believed her when she’d said she didn’t do seconds. He was actually a little disappointed that she’d given in so easily, but another round of sex like the first one they’d had would do a lot to ease that disappointment.
He glanced through the information on her that Linda had collected. Twenty-eight. Adopted by Mel and Irma Watson when she was eleven.
She’d gotten through high school without any honors and then had gone to an expensive art school. She’d started building her business as a pet artist immediately afterward, and nearly everything available online about her was connected to her work.
She’d never been married. Never been arrested. Never done anything particularly noteworthy.
There was no reason why she should be so fascinating to him. But the sex had been really good, and that was reason enough, as far as he was concerned.
Sex had been boring lately. He dated often enough, but never for very long. The women would start to whine or cling or demand he change his habits, which he wasn’t about to do. So he’d send them an expensive gift, and end it with as little mess and drama as possible.
More and more, he was just using women from a high-class escort service, since it was easier and cleaner. But that got old after a while too.
Kelly was the first woman to leave him wanting more in a really long time.
After reading the file, he slid it into his top drawer and tried to focus on work again. He had to talk to Richard Helms, who led Vendella’s marketing division. He was putting up a fight about Caleb’s directive to trim the marketing staff by ten percent, so now Caleb had to deal with the headache.
He didn’t take pleasure in layoffs. They were unfortunate, but necessary in the current environment. Sometimes hard decisions had to be made to protect the company—even if it meant hurting people in the process.
One of the reasons he was sitting where he was now was because he could make the hard decisions without flinching.
Business was business. And taking it personally was always a mistake.
Almost three hours later, he was leaving the building, having gotten through the conversation with Helms and two more hours of work besides.
The cute blonde who was temporarily working building security in the lobby smiled at him as he walked by.
He smiled back. They’d had an eye-flirtation going on for a few weeks now, ever since she’d begun the job—filling in for one of the regular staff who was out for surgery. As soon as her temporary position was over, he was definitely planning to give her a good fuck.
He had no doubt she’d be amenable to the idea.
He stopped at the coffee shop next door to grab a coffee and mentally cringed when he saw who was behind the counter.
He never should have screwed that redhead. He’d known she worked just next to his building, so he would likely continue to see her occasionally. They’d had one hot night, and he would have been satisfied with the encounter, but she’d kept coming on to him in the days afterward, until he’d had to be quite rude to get her to back off.
She looked at him now like he was some sort of monster as she coldly handed him his coffee.
It had been one time, and he’d never claimed to want anything but sex. If she’d imagined something else might happen afterward, then she was just deluded.
He didn’t do relationships. He just didn’t have time. He liked women and he liked sex, but only if things were kept simple.
He couldn’t handle this kind of lingering messiness, some silly girl’s attempt to guilt him into thinking he’d treated her poorly.
He forgot about the redhead as soon as he crossed the street, walking the two blocks to the hotel bar where he’d arranged to meet Kelly.
He arrived a few minutes after seven and glanced around to see if she was there yet.
When there was no sign of her, he went to the bar and ordered a scotch, glancing down the line of stools and idly admiring the long legs of one of the women sitting on the opposite corner. He glanced up, but she wasn’t pretty enough to interest him, so he let his gaze move on.
At a quarter after seven, Caleb was starting to get annoyed. Being a few minutes late for a date was normal. Women seemed to do it on purpose, so they could make an entrance or feign a degree of disinterest. But Caleb was not used to waiting this long for anyone.
She better not have stood him up.
He wasn’t a fool. The sex had been just as good for her as it had been for him. There was no way she was faking her responses to him.
No matter what she said, she would want to get together with him again—just as he wanted her.
If she didn’t show up, then she was playing some sort of game, and women never won when they tried to play games with Caleb.
He was starting to get angry when he saw her enter. She was dressed differently tonight—wearing heels and a short, sexy dress in a striking shade of bronze. Her hair was pulled back in a loose braid that was unexpectedly sexy.
She’d obviously made an effort with her appearance, which confirmed his belief that she wasn’t at all indifferent to him.
She smiled distractedly when she saw him and came over, setting the beaded clutch she held on the bar.
“I was starting to wonder if you were going to come,” he said, feeling a familiar tightening of his groin at the sight of the clear, fair skin of her neck and shoulders, the graceful lines of her arms and legs.
“I wasn’t sure myself,” she admitted. She was having trouble looking him in the eye, which was strange after the direct way she’d acted with him the day before. “I told you I never do this.”
He leaned forward, holding her eyes intentionally, since her flitting gaze was starting to bug him. “So why do this now, then?”
She took an odd little breath and looked him square in the eye. “I don’t really know. Just something to try, I guess.”
His smile broadened. “Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.”
“How did you get my number?” she asked, after the bartender came over and she ordered red wine.
“I remembered your name from the business card, so I just looked you up. Wasn’t that hard.”
“Oh.” Her eyes flickered down and then up again. There was definitely something elusive about her tonight that hadn’t been present just yesterday.
It was almost like she was nervous. Women often were around him, but she hadn’t been nervous at all yesterday.
Maybe in the interim she’d found out who he was.
As if in response to the thought, she said, “Are you planning to tell me your name, or is this supposed to be truly anonymous?”
“You don’t already know it?”
“How would I already know it?” She looked a little calmer and was able to hold his gaze without wavering. “You’re not famous, are you?”
“No. I’m a businessman. But some people know who I am.”
“That’s your arrogance talking. I’m not likely to know or be impressed by a random businessman.” She reached over to skate her fingers over his shirt sleeve, which was propped on the bar. Her eyes focused on her fingers and not on his face. “So, what is your name?”
“Caleb.”
“Ah. It’s nice to meet you, Caleb.”
She smelled of something light and fresh, and her face looked even more sweet and dewy in the artificial light of the bar. Her body was close to his now, tantalizing in all the little moves she made.
Tension hardened in his neck and his groin as he felt arousal deepening. He wanted her again, and he didn’t want to chat endlessly in some pretense of civility in order to get her.
“So what do you think? Have we done the social thing long enough?”
She blinked, her lips parting slightly in lovely confusion. It took a minute for her to understand what he was asking, but her cheeks darkened when she did. “You move fast, don’t you?”
“I think I proved that yesterday.”
“Well, yeah. I was wondering if it would be different tonight.”
“Why would it be? That’s why you’re here, right? Or were you expecting simple sex to turn into some sort of saccharine romance?” His tone had an edge he hadn’t intended. He was suddenly worried that she was expecting more.
All of his interest would die an instant death if he discovered she was after something serious with him.