In the dark, an unwilling grin spread over his hard face. Life with Tessa would never be boring. And she’d said that she loved him. She’d marry him without question, whenever he wanted. All in all, it was a very satisfactory plan. He relaxed, hugging Tessa closer to him, her bewitching fragrance tantalizing him as he drifted into sleep.
Tessa woke first the next morning, made restless by the unfamiliar weight and warmth in her bed. When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring at the back of his head. During the night he’d turned over on his stomach and he was sprawled out on the bed, taking up his share of the bed and half of hers. Her breath caught at the sight of his tousled tawny hair, like a shaggy lion’s, and her heart actually skipped a beat. Love so powerful that it hurt welled up in her, and she’d reached out a trembling hand to touch him before she realized what she was doing and drew it back. Let him sleep. What should she say to him this morning, anyway? How should she act? Surprised, she realized that she was nervous about facing him the morning after. The compulsive passion they’d shared had made them intimate physically, but she was unsure of where she stood in every other way.
Gingerly, she slid off the bed and grabbed up her robe, quietly leaving the room to take a shower. Her eyes were troubled. She’d told him how she felt about him, but not even in the most passionate moments between them had he indicated that he felt anything for her other than sexual attraction. That was powerful enough, she admitted wryly, standing under the shower head and letting the water hit her full in the face. Her body was tender and achy, reminding her of his strength, reminding her of what had happened between them the night before.
She paused, her thoughts drifting. It had been good, so good that she’d thought she would die from the sharp pleasure of it. So that was what it was like… . She’d never imagined it would be so wanton, and so exalted. So that was what it was like to give herself to the man she loved.
When she finished with her shower, she wrapped herself in the robe and peeked into her bedroom, but Brett was still asleep. She went into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee and sat down at the table, folding her hands on the tabletop and staring at nothing, her thoughts absorbed by the man in her bed and the lovemaking they’d shared during the night. Despite his passion, she sensed that there was a part of him that remained aloof, untouched, some inner core that watched but didn’t become involved. Why did he want so much from her, when he refused to share that part of himself? She didn’t want to hold in her emotions; Tessa was too warmly responsive to constantly rein herself in. She wanted to give him everything that she could, but because of his reserve, she felt wary and uncertain of herself. She didn’t like the feeling. She’d never been the sort of person to be uncertain. She was generally decisive, knowing immediately what she wanted, though she was equally realistic in estimating her chances of getting it.
She wanted Brett, wanted him with a fierce female need that she’d never before experienced. He’d become as necessary to her as the air she breathed.
The coffee finished brewing, and as she was pouring herself a cup she heard Brett stirring. Immediately she felt warm all over, and she felt her face flush. Taking a hasty sip of coffee, she burned her tongue, and her hands trembled. She set the cup down before she spilled the coffee all over herself. Stop acting like a teenager! she scolded herself, but not all the scolding in the world could calm her racing heart.
“Tessa.”
His early-morning voice was a raspy grumble, and a shiver of response raced down her spine. Slowly she turned her head and looked at him standing in her kitchen doorway wearing only a pair of dark blue briefs. Fascinated by his hard, tough masculinity, her eyes drifted down his body, examining him from head to toe, and not missing an inch in between. Heat began to color her face, caused by a mixture of excitement and embarrassment.
He’d been watching her expressive face, seeing the open admiration in the way she looked at him, and her bold innocence made him want to pick her up and take her back to bed. Then, incredibly, she blushed.
He crossed the floor to her, putting his arms around her and easing her against his chest. “Why the blushes?” he asked gently.
“Last night…I acted so…and the things I said…”
“And the things we did,” he finished, smiling a little above her head. “Are you all right?” As much as he wanted to make love to her again, he’d felt the delicacy of her body with its slender, aristocratic bones, and he didn’t want to hurt her.
“Yes,” she sighed, leaning her head against him. Her hands slid around his taut waist, then began to search over the heavy muscles of his back. “A little achy, that’s all.”
He kissed the tumble of curls on her forehead, then brushed them back, schooling himself to patience. He could wait; not easily, but he could wait. Remembering his plans of the night before, he felt a sudden urge to begin putting them in motion. The sooner he could have her installed at the ranch, the better. “Next weekend,” he murmured, “if I can manage to get free, I’ll take you to the ranch.”
Her head lifted from his chest, and her eyes sparkled with excitement. “The ranch! I’d like that. But why shouldn’t you be able to get free? Even executives usually get an occasional weekend off.”
“Usually,” he agreed, smiling at her impatience. “But this isn’t the usual job—” He broke off, frowning at himself. It wasn’t like him to confide in anyone, especially about sensitive matters, but he’d nearly blurted the whole thing out to her. It was one more measure of how close she’d gotten to him, how deeply she’d embedded herself in his thoughts.
Attuned to him as she was, Tessa felt his abrupt tension. Her smile faded. “Brett? Is something wrong here?” Alert now, she remembered snatches of gossip about Brett Rutland. His appearance usually meant trouble, not for him, but for the people who had to deal with him. He was called the Ax-Man. He found the root of any trouble, and the people causing it were fired. And after talking with Brett the day before, Perry Smitherman had been a basket case. “Perry…is something going on in the bookkeeping department? Is it Perry?”
Instinctively he moved to cover his slip, though he was uneasy at how swiftly she’d picked up the correct thread. “No, nothing like that,” he murmured, distracting her by bending down to kiss her. He held her mouth under his, leisurely tasting her, until the growing tightness of his body warned him to slow things down.
The ploy had worked, almost too well. She was clinging to his shoulders, her soft body pliant against him. He could have her now, he realized, and groaned aloud. The temptation was too great. Despite his concern for her, despite the fact that he needed to check in with Evan, he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet. Instantly her slender arms wound about his neck, and she began kissing him fiercely as he walked back to the bedroom with her dangling from around his neck.
* * *
EVAN TRIED BRETT’S hotel room again, and again there was no answer. Frowning, he dropped the receiver back into its cradle. It wasn’t like Brett to disappear when there was work to be done, or not to let someone know where to reach him. Brett was a hard man to know, but when it came to work, he was utterly dependable. This was the first time in Evan’s memory that Brett Rutland hadn’t been there when his job called for him.
Well, there was no point in worrying about it. Brett could take care of himself, and there was work to be done. Evan began going over the computer printouts again, straining his eyes at the difficult print. The ribbon on the printer needed replacing, too, which made his job that much more difficult. He still had that nagging feeling that he was missing something, something so obvious that he should have seen it from the beginning. One of these accounts was bogus; it had to be. But he’d spent hours tracking the accounts down, and so far every one of them was legitimate; he’d been systematically checking them off his list. It should be getting easier, like the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but it wasn’t working that way. Nothing seemed wrong, yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that som
ething was, if he could only see it.
Damn! The print swam before his eyes, and he squinted to refocus his gaze. He was going to go blind before this was over.
The phone at his elbow rang, and he snatched it up. “Evan Brady.”
“Found anything yet?” Brett’s raspy voice growled in his ear.
“Nothing. I was beginning to think someone had taken out a contract on you. I’ve been trying to get you all day.”
“Nothing like that. I’m in my room now; I’ll be there in a minute, as soon as I take a shower. Is there any coffee ready?”
Evan reached over and lifted the pot that he’d had brought up some time ago. Nothing sloshed. “I’ll call room service.”
Brett hurried through his shower, well aware that he’d spent the day making love instead of working as he should have been doing, but he just hadn’t been able to walk away from Tessa. She was wildfire, burning through his veins, out of control. The way she responded to him drove everything else out of his mind, until nothing else mattered but having her again, fusing their bodies as tightly as he could, wiping out the separateness of their beings. When he’d left she’d been asleep, curled on her side in exhaustion. He’d straightened the tangled sheets and pulled the covers up over her bare shoulders, fighting the urge to get undressed again and crawl into bed beside her. She was the most powerful distraction he’d ever seen, but he had work to do, even if he was a little late in remembering it.
After putting on khaki pants and a blue pullover knit shirt, he went to Evan’s hotel room and rapped on the door with his knuckles.
“It’s open; come on in!”
Evan didn’t look as tired as he had before, but he was irritable, and the overflowing ashtray on the table was a measure of his tension. The room was filled with stale blue smoke. He didn’t question Brett about his extended absence. Evan had worked with Brett long enough to know how far Brett would let anyone probe into his life, and those boundaries didn’t stretch very far.
Still, there was something about Brett, and Evan eyed him closely. He looked tired, and he needed to shave, but he looked…almost happy. Strangely satisfied. It wasn’t easy to read Brett; he wasn’t beaming, but there was a hint of contentment in his eyes, a small relaxation of the line of his mouth. A woman! Evan thought, and had to control a grin. And not just any woman, either. Tessa Conway. It had been a long time coming, and Evan had long ago decided that the woman didn’t exist who could get under Brett’s skin, but that was before he, and Brett, had met Tessa Conway.
Yawning, Evan got to his feet and stretched his cramped muscles. “I’m going to move around for a while before I become rooted to the chair.”
Brett took his place and lifted the sheaf of printouts onto his lap, then stretched his long legs out and propped them on the coffee table in front of him. By the time room service delivered the pot of fresh coffee, Brett was frowning in concentration, everything else wiped out of his mind as he went over the printouts line by line, checking them with a pencil. Evan poured two cups of coffee and set one beside Brett, but he remained on his feet, prowling about the room.
“Stir crazy?” Brett muttered, checking yet another line.
“Yeah. And half-blind, too. The first thing I’m going to do Monday morning is see that that printer has a new ribbon in it.”
The print was bad, Brett admitted. Two hours later, he felt as if his eyes were crossing, and he stopped, leaning his head back and pinching his nose at the point between his eyes. “Is the coffee gone?”
“We emptied it about an hour ago.”
Brett checked his watch. It was almost midnight, and he wondered if Tessa was still asleep, or if she was restless without him. He wanted to work himself into exhaustion, knowing that he’d toss and turn if he didn’t, thinking about her, wanting her again. Sleeping with her the night before had been oddly satisfying, as if holding her in his arms while they slept completed him in some way.
Looking back at the printout sheets, his eyes fell on a name that had recurred frequently in the payout sheets. What caught his attention was that the name was the same as Tessa’s. “What’s this Conway, Inc. that so many checks are made out to? What sort of business is it?”
“Supplier,” Evan said. “They’ve been supplying Carter Engineering for years. Basic building materials. I checked it out.”
Several minutes later, Brett looked up. “What about Conmay?”
“Weren’t you listening? They’re a supplier—”
“No, not Conway. Conmay,” he said, stressing the last syllable.
“That’s what I thought you said.” Evan went very still, staring at Brett. “Conmay belongs to two men, Connors and Mayfield.”
Brett’s eyes were narrowed. “We have checks sent out to both a Conway, Inc., and a Conmay, Inc. Are they both legitimate?”
“I’ll be damned if I know,” Evan growled, crossing to Brett’s side to lean down and squint at the two very similar names. “That slipped by me completely. I thought it was the same account.”
Brett began flipping back through the pages they’d already checked, looking for the first entry for Conway, Inc. Instinct told him that they were on the right track. Conway, Inc… . If it hadn’t been for the similarity to Tessa’s name, he wouldn’t have noticed it.
“We need a computer terminal,” he said decisively, getting to his feet. “We might as well go to the source.” It would be a lot easier to track down that account with access to the central computer.
“Might as well,” Even agreed. Like Brett, he sensed success, and that banished his fatigue. They could work as long as they liked, without fear of detection, for it was Saturday night, almost Sunday morning, and the building would be deserted except for the guards.
By three o’clock Sunday morning, they were both certain that they’d found the right thread. All they had to do was follow it back to the embezzler. The computer-made payments to Conway, Inc. had begun a little over a year before, weren’t made with any regularity, and were never for an outstandingly large amount; but a few thousand here and there added up before long. All of the checks were on microfilm, but they were unable to get a signature from the canceled checks; they were all stamped with a rubber stamp that said DEPOSIT ONLY, CONWAY, INC. with the account number and bank name beneath it. Brett jotted down the number and bank.
“That’s it until we can see the withdrawal slips, or the name on the checks written on that account.” He had a headache from hours of staring at the bright green numbers on the display screen. Impatience rose up in him, impatience with both himself and the job, which grated on him increasingly as the days passed. Soon, he promised himself silently. Soon he would be on the ranch, and his fatigue would be the result of good, hard physical work, rather than from sitting hunched over faded computer printouts or working his way through the maze of computer programming, ferreting information out of electronic files.
“Let’s pack it up and get some sleep.”
Evan was more than willing, and the drive back to the hotel was accomplished in silence. In his room, Brett undressed and sprawled on the bed, almost groaning aloud as his tired muscles relaxed. The end was in his grasp now, and he wanted to get it over and done with; he wanted to put this behind him and get to the ranch. Funny, but years ago, when he’d been in college, the ranch hadn’t pulled at him the way it was doing now. It had been home, but there had been an entire world out there that had challenged him, daring him to take his sharp, icy intellect and master it. He’d done it; he’d made a success of himself, using his cool grit and steely determination. He was not only very good at what he did, but he was well paid for it, too, and that had enabled him to invest, to diversify. His financial acumen had put the ranch on solid ground, much better able to weather the vagaries of the beef market than a lot of ranches. Tessa wouldn’t be reminded of her youth, spent in a rundown old farmhouse. She’d still be able to wear silk, if she wanted it.
He closed his eyes, but her image filled his mind, and he ope
ned them again, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to sleep. His body burned, as if she were still lying against him, her arms and legs twined around him.
It was a hell of a coincidence that the embezzler had used Conway as a name.
His memory was almost photographic; abruptly he recalled Tessa’s personnel file, and the dates of her employment. She’d been working at Carter Engineering for fifteen months. The embezzling had begun roughly thirteen months before. She worked in the bookkeeping department. And she was on very friendly terms with Sammy Wallace.
He swore aloud in the darkened room. Hell, what was he thinking? It wouldn’t be Tessa; she was all sunlight and laughter. No, it would be Sammy Wallace, who’d probably picked Tessa’s last name as some sort of twisted tribute. Like all men, Sammy Wallace could easily make a fool of himself where Tessa was concerned.
But, damn him, why did he have to drag her into his dirty little scheme? Didn’t he realize that using her name would automatically make her the first suspect? Brett’s mouth tightened. Of course he realized that! Why not try to throw the blame on Tessa? Wallace probably knew well enough that she would be less likely to be prosecuted than anyone else working at Carter Engineering.
He’d like to knock the bastard’s teeth down his throat for putting her in jeopardy like that.
He was so tired that his entire body ached, and it was almost dawn, but he couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking of Tessa, of the day he’d spent with her…mostly in bed. His good intentions hadn’t been worth a damn when faced with the temptation of her body; he couldn’t get enough of her. No matter how wild their lovemaking had been, he’d begun wanting her again as soon as it was over. Nothing in his previous experience had prepared him for the deep hunger he felt for her, and the inability to satisfy that hunger. But he’d tried, and she’d been sleeping in exhaustion when he left her, her dark hair spread in a wild tangle across the pillow.