The Ties That Bind (22 page)

"It's her own fault." Wes groaned, touching his jaw. "God knows I didn't want to get anyone else involved. Having to use Bonnie was risky enough. But that night at the party when I realized Shannon had taken the bid home in that damn tote bag, I figured I didn't have any choice. She had to be working her own game. It was the only thing that made sense. I came after her, hoping I'd find she still had the bid or a copy of it. There was a good chance she would have been stupid enough to make a second copy before selling one to her client. She wasn't a pro. Just an opportunist."

"Your basic mistake was in assuming everyone else was as ambitious as you are, McIntyre."

"She's as guilty as I am, Sheridan. If you don't see that, you're blind. She's been using you."

Shannon shivered. It was clear that as long as he was going down, Wes intended to try dragging her with him. She said nothing, waiting for Garth to make his decision. He didn't even glance at her.

"Call the cops, Shannon."

Wes's head snapped around. "What charge?"

"How about something along the lines of breaking and entering? That wound in your shoulder is going to be an interesting bit of evidence. Then there's your assault on Shannon today. I witnessed it, don't forget. And last but not least, we'll come up with some sort of charge to cover your attempt at industrial espionage."

"Nothing came out of that," Wes protested. "You can't prove a damn thing."

"I can make sure you have a tough time ever getting a decent job again. You'd better believe Kenyon is going to play innocent. He won't touch you with a ten-foot pole now. You know that as well as I do. And if you ever go near Shannon again, I won't go through the formalities of calling the cops. I'll take care of you myself. You've worked with me long enough to know I mean what I say, haven't you, Wes?" Garth didn't wait for an answer. He flicked another glance at Shannon. "Go ahead. Make the call."

IT WAS A LONG TIME LATER before Shannon found herself alone with Garth. He had spent a great deal of time with the local authorities. Wes was in custody, although how long that would last was anyone's guess. He was already on the phone to his lawyer. Regardless of the outcome, Shannon was fairly certain McIntyre would be staying out of her way. She had seen the expression in his eyes when Garth had warned him.

Garth had been very subdued since returning from the offices of the town's tiny police department. He hadn't said a word when he'd walked in the front door. Instead he'd gone immediately to the phone and placed a call to his own office at
Sherilectronics
. When there was no answer, he'd hung up and redialed.

"Miss Graham? Do me a favor and send someone to cover
Bonnie's
desk, will you? She's taken emergency leave, apparently. I'm out of town. We'll arrange something more permanent when I get back." There was a pause while Garth listened to the voice on the other end of the line. Then he said, "No, I don't think Bonnie will be returning. Thank you, Miss Graham." He hung up the phone and walked thoughtfully over to the kitchen doorway. He stood watching Shannon as she concentrated on spreading peanut butter on crackers.

Shannon felt the quiet gaze on her, but she didn't look at Garth. The tension that had been tightening her nerves all day was still in effect. She couldn't seem to relax even though the action was apparently over. She had started work on the peanut butter and crackers in the hopes that food would do the trick.

"
Bonnie's
disappeared?" she ventured.

"She probably got scared when I called in asking for Wes. Since she had an alibi for him, she must have known where he was. My guess is she checked and found out I'd called Jensen's firm to try to get hold of Wes. When she found out I must have discovered he had no meeting with Jensen she probably panicked. Add the fact that I wasn't in San Jose but returning from the coast, and she had a good reason to panic. She must have decided things were deteriorating rapidly and done what any smart person would have done under the circumstances."

"Run?"

"Uh-huh."

"I can't say I blame her," Shannon said quietly. "Are you going to track her down and bring charges?"

"Do you think I should bother?"

"No," Shannon murmured. "She got talked into something she shouldn't have, but I have a feeling she'll have learned her lesson."

Garth's mouth curved in a faint, cynical smile. "Like hell. She had a close call, but if she gets away with it, she'll probably try it again on some other unsuspecting employer. You have a very rosy picture of human nature, honey."

"I liked her, Garth."

He shrugged. "So did I. Damn good secretary. But I think I'll take your advice and forget her. Let the next dumb employer deal with her. Besides, she'll be a good, walking advertisement for your totes. She always did have a sense of style."

Shannon slid him a sidelong glance, unsure if he was making a joke or not. Garth's sense of humor was sometimes rather limited and sometimes rather odd, she had discovered. "I can understand how she must have felt all those years during which you never bothered to notice her as a woman," she declared vehemently. "I would have been desperate, too, under the circumstances."

Garth's smile flickered momentarily into a full grin.

"But unlike Bonnie, you took the positive, straightforward, honest approach. Sometimes I think that's the only kind of approach you can take. It's one of the reasons I worried about you so much. The rest of the world doesn't always operate the way you do. Were you afraid I'd believe Wes's lies there at the end?" he added quietly.

"I wasn't sure," Shannon admitted, the words halting. "He's been with you a long time. You seemed to trust him. You've only known me a few weeks."

"I've never believed you were involved in the theft, Shannon."

She looked up at him finally, her eyes full of the uncertainty she was feeling. "Because you're a logical kind of man and you realize how unlikely it was that I was a thief? Or because you still think I'm too naive to plan such a clever operation? Why, Garth? Why didn't you believe what Wes implied?"

Garth gazed at her pensively for a long while before saying simply, "I didn't choose to believe him because I love you, Shannon."

The answer caught her by surprise. It wasn't at all what she was expecting. Shannon dropped the knife she had been using to spread peanut butter and stood staring, openmouthed, for a full ten seconds. "Oh, Garth!" she breathed and the spell broke as she went into his arms. "I love you so much, and I was so afraid you wouldn't be able to really love me in return."

His arms closed around her with an urgency that told its own story. "It took me a while to realize what was happening," Garth whispered into her hair. "At first, I was sure you were just looking for a quick fling. I wanted you, but I intended to keep things on my terms. Then I began to realize you were sincere and I knew I was falling for you. When I decided I wanted a full-blown affair I suspected I was in love, but it seemed safer not to admit it. But I wanted to keep you safe. I wanted to keep you out of my world because my world isn't very pleasant."

"You wanted me to be waiting for you on the weekends. You were afraid I'd get contaminated if I moved into your life completely, weren't you, Garth?"

"Not exactly. I trusted you. But you seemed so soft and... and innocent in so many ways. I was afraid you'd get chewed up alive by people like Ed Kenyon and the others at that party. I knew from firsthand experience you're a little reckless when it comes to trusting strangers."

"You were the only stranger I was ever really reckless with," she protested.

"Maybe. But you did seem a little unworldly at times. A little naive. I wanted to protect you. But there was a selfish side to that protection. I'm just beginning to understand it. The truth was, I didn't want you to see my working world. I think, deep down, I was afraid you would hate it and, sooner or later, come to hate me. My world is so different from yours, so much harsher. How could a soft, sweet, gentle artist from the coast ever approve of either me or my other life? I was protecting myself rather than you."

"I think," Shannon said slowly, "that the reason you were afraid I'd hate your world was because you, yourself, have come to hate it."

There was a stillness in Garth that alarmed Shannon. She lifted her head from his shoulder to meet his eyes.

Garth's fingers moved in slow circles on Shannon's shoulders as he gazed down at her. "You may be right," he finally said. "McIntyre really is quite shrewd in some ways, you know. What he said earlier about my having lost the taste for the kind of infighting it takes to survive and flourish in Silicon Valley was damn close to the truth. One of the reasons I wanted that
Carstairs
job so badly was to prove to myself that I could still hold my own. But during the past few days I've realized getting that job will do something much more important. It will make
Sherilectronics
look very, very good to a potential buyer. And I'm going to start looking for a buyer right away, Shannon."

"Why?"

"For the past six or eight months I've been realizing I wanted to make a change. Now I know just what kind of change. I want to sell out."

"Sell out! But, Garth, you've built that company up from scratch. It's a huge chunk of your life."

"My past life. Shannon, everything crystallized for me this morning when I found out Wes had called Bailey and pretended he was me so he could get Walters taken off guard duty. I felt so damn helpless when I realized how far away I was and that you had no one to protect you. Just as helpless as I felt when I learned an intruder had gotten into your cottage. In both cases the reason you were in jeopardy was because of me. Weekend lovers aren't very useful. Weekend husbands wouldn't be much better. Annie was right. I couldn't even protect you from the dangers I had brought into your life, let alone fix the plumbing, make hot soup for you when you get sick or keep your car in good working condition. I want to be with you on a full-time basis. I want a real marriage, not a weekend retreat. And I want to get out of a world I don't much like anymore."

"What will you do, Garth?" Shannon smiled mistily. "Write poetry, after all? Maybe the great American novel?"

He grinned faintly. "No amount of imagination on your part is going to make me into a poet or a writer, honey. But I do know something about business, specifically the electronics business. I intend to stay out of the rat race of Silicon Valley, but there are other ways to make a living with electronics. I've been thinking about starting up a small consulting firm. But I definitely wouldn't establish it in San Jose."

Shannon hugged him. "Where would you establish it?"

"That's something you and I will have to discuss." Garth's eyes became more serious for a moment. "This part of the coast is a little too isolated for even a small company such as the one I'm planning. Would you mind very much if we moved to Santa Barbara or Ventura? I know you've made your home here and you have friends and I know I have no right to ask you to change your life for me."

"You're changing your life for me, aren't you?"

"For both of us," he said firmly.

"Well, I'm more than willing to make a change for both of us, too. No, Garth, I don't mind moving. Santa Barbara or Ventura sounds wonderful."

"Shannon, I love you." He cradled her face between his hands. "I've never loved like this before in my life. Maybe that's why I was so cautious with you. I knew I had something special, and I was terrified of losing it."

"You won't lose me by loving me," Shannon assured him as she wrapped her arms around his neck. "And I appreciate your desire to protect me. After all, I feel the same way about you. But I do wish you wouldn't think of me as so unsophisticated and unworldly that I need to be shielded as if were a silly, scatterbrained artist. I'm an adult and I'm not helpless, despite current evidence to the contrary. I don't need to be kept in cotton wool."

He groaned, holding her close. "Be patient with me, sweetheart. My instincts are pretty strong where you're concerned. The need to protect you is one of those instincts. I'll try to be reasonable."

"And when you're not being reasonable?" she teased gently.

"Then I suspect you'll let me know it."

"Umm. I see some trouble ahead," she murmured.

"A few marital squabbles are only to be expected."

Shannon laughed. "You sound very philosophical about marriage, all of a sudden."

"I'm a believer in marriage under certain circumstances. Have you forgotten that lecture I tried to give Annie and Dan the night you invited me to dinner?"

"I'll never forget," Shannon said in heartfelt tones. "I almost wrote you off as a complete and utter social disaster that night."

"But instead you gave me another chance." He spoke with supreme male satisfaction.

"I couldn't help myself. From the beginning I've had this incredible compulsion to get to know you. Every time I told myself I should just give up the whole project, I'd find myself pushing again, trying to get closer to you. And after I'd realized I was in love with you..."

"Speaking of which, you are going to marry me, aren't you?" He looked down at her intently.

"Yes, Garth."

"I don't really think of you as helpless or incompetent, you know," he added softly. "If I ever had any illusions on that score you cleared them up last night when you managed to fight off an intruder and rescue that damn bid package!"

"That impressed you, huh?"

"I'll say. I hope to hell you don't have to impress me like that again."

"I hated having that stupid bid package in the house, but I realized you'd left it with me to prove something. I couldn't let Wes or anyone else have it, Garth. It was a symbol of the fact that you trusted me. And I was responsible for it."

"You could have saved yourself a lot of grief by simply handing it over to Wes that night."

Shannon shook her head. "Impossible. There was no way I would have willingly done that."