Damned If You Don't (9 page)

He fell back against the bed. There couldn’t possibly be anything remotely sexy about trying to help a man struggle out of tight jeans when he had a hard-on, but his eyes glittered as if she were the sexiest, most beautiful creature on earth.

Morgan stopped, aware, perhaps for the first time in her life, of being a woman with innate power. She’d always wondered why they called it a battle of the sexes, finding now that lovemaking could distill down to one-upmanship. But then she realized, as he watched her remove her clothes and his gaze darkened and filled with raw desire, that she was wrong. The give and take between a man and a woman was exactly that. And without balance, it meant nothing. She knew what she had to do.

She straddled his legs again, lying down on top of as much of his body as she could. “You want me.” She exhaled in awe.

“So bad, I think I might die in a second. If we don’t— You know—”

She slid back and pulled his boxers down to his thighs. As much as she wanted to inhale him right then and there, she knew better. She rose onto her knees and inched her way back up to his chest so he could feast on her breasts.

He would never know how good that felt.

Then she slid back a little so that the tip of his erection grazed the outer edges of her core. He swallowed. Hard. Sweat beaded his brow. “Umm. I thought this was going to be my show.”

“It was. It still is.” She grazed his tip again.

“You need to get off a minute,” he choked. “In my back pocket—”

She slid back a little farther and smiled. “Not just yet.”

He gasped and closed his eyes. “It’ll help if you think of complex chemical equations the way I am,” she added.

He burst out laughing. “Wouldn’t know one of those if they bit me in the ass.”

She shifted her hips, licked her lips, and lifted a brow. “Well?”

They both knew he was unprotected. After a moment of shocked silence he replied, “You sure?”

She slid back even farther and rotated, making his erection strain even harder toward her core. Yet Morgan refused the prize. “What do you think?”

“Oh God, Morgan,” he cried. “You know, a man in this position might say anything to get what he wanted.”

“That’s the point.”

“I’m clean; I’m clean,” he told her.

“Are you?” she asked as she lifted off the bed and walked away to go into the bathroom. The door slammed, and then the lock clicked.

Chapter Nine

Jack waited for her to come back. And waited. And waited. Until he figured out she wasn’t coming back. And that was when he realized how much he’d hurt her. Trust was a terrible thing to kill, so she’d gotten even with him. Inside her there wasn’t just a door that needed to be opened. There was a castle wall that would need to be breached.

Her point made with crystal clarity, Jack tried not to let her hurt him. With his cock still yearning for her touch, only one thought beat like a live wire inside his brain: he wanted her.

Had she known he was trying to seduce her for his own means? Was this her way of showing him that backhanded tactics weren’t acceptable?

Were they?

Jack wanted to put his fist through a wall. He wanted to yank on his crank so his balls would stop hurting. He wanted to know how things had gone from bad to worse.

He already knew. He’d decided to use her again. Rather than simply believing her, he’d figured sex would get the truth out of her. Instead, she’d turned the tables on him and shown him a boatload of integrity in the process.

Not to mention killing his lower extremities.

He jumped out of the bed and stormed over to the bathroom door, and pounded on the wood. “You made your point. I get it already.”

“Do you?” she yelled back. Even through the wood he could tell she was crying.

“I need the truth, Morgan.”

“Morgan?”

“Yeah, Morgan. Real names, real people, real situation. Starting from the beginning. So that we both deal on the same playing field from now on.”

“Why should I do that?”

“Because if you don’t, all we’ll do is keep on hurting each other. I need to understand. I want to believe you. I have to know what happened.”

“Are you sure?”

Jack leaned his forehead against the door. The wood felt cool, not enough to cool the fire in his gut, but soothing. “I betrayed you. I can’t take that back. I used a night like I’ve never spent with anyone else in the world believing I was doing the right thing. I was wrong.”

She didn’t answer right away. “At least now you sound like you’re telling the truth. But I had to slap you in the face to get that out of you.”

He sighed. “You’re right. And I deserved every second. I’m still paying for it, if that’s any consolation.”

“You are?”

Sounded like she was licking her lips with satisfaction. Damn her.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“Morgan, listen to me. I’m only going to say this once. I want you. I’m in agony because of that. But I won’t touch you until
you
want me to. All right? And along the way, I’m going to help you get out of this mess.”

“Why?”

“The truth?”

“Yes.”

“Swear to God. Because I believe you’re not a thief.”

“You do? Why?”

“Because I couldn’t want you as badly as I do without knowing your integrity.”

“So it’s just about the sex?”

Jeez. Does she ever give up?
“If that’s what you think, then I’ll leave. You’ve got the room for the night. And I’ve got some cash left. I’ll leave it on the table.”

Jack turned from the door, his stomach hollowing. He started to get dressed, his desire surrounded by a strange empty feeling. Funny how now that he had to go, he didn’t want to.

He was just tucking his shirt into his pants when the bathroom door opened. She’d obviously washed her face, but that hadn’t taken care of the redness rimming her eyes. He tried not to let her distress reach him. He tried not to let her nudity reach him even more.

“There’s still some wine left,” she told him in a quiet voice.

“You can enjoy it after I’m gone.” He grinned. “At least I paid for the meal this time.”

Her mouth quirked, but only sadness poured out of her gaze. “I still need to run.”

He shrugged and put on his jacket. “I know. If you can at least trust one thing, trust this: I’ll disappear for a while. Sam won’t find me. At least that will give you a head start.”

“You’d do that for me?”

He nodded, hoping that she could read the honesty he was trying to convey. “I owe you that much at the very least.”

“True.” She mulled that over as she walked toward her clothes. He tried not to watch. “You’d walk away not knowing why I’m doing what I’m doing?”

Jack knew there was only one answer to give. “Yes.”

Her bitter smile cut him to the quick. “Because I’m not giving you a choice?”

He shook his head. “No. Because I care.”

“You probably won’t after I explain.” She sighed.

Jack sat down at the little table in the room. “Try me.”

“After I get some clothes on.”

“If you insist.”

THE SAME PLAYING field. Morgan doubted with all her heart that would ever be possible. Not with his raw beauty. But he’d been right about dealing with one another. She’d needed to prove to him she was smarter than he ever expected. And honorable.

As she dressed, Morgan began to explain. “At first, I thought I was going crazy. But I’ve just spent a week in a bunch of hotel rooms with nothing to do but think. First and foremost, I’m a scientist. And like most of my contemporaries, a little OCD. It’s kind of a requirement for the job.”

He smiled at her. “I guess attention to detail is important.”

“It is,” she replied. “Well, I would go back to my desk after being in my lab all day, and I could swear someone had been there and touched my things. Items on my desk were out of place. Not by a lot. But enough for me to notice.”

Morgan shook her head. “Like most normal people, I denied reality. I dismissed it. It was impossible. There was no logical reason for anyone to be snooping around my desk. Then someone got into my lab notebook. It’s a journal of my experiments. Someone must have been reading it.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because it’s a hardbound book and pages open when you write in it. It would open automatically to a page well before the one I was writing on. As if someone had broken the binding in that spot.”

“That’s hardly life-threatening, you know.”

Morgan smiled. “I know. And, after denying everything, I thought I was simply being paranoid. But it happened more than once.”

“Someone was spying on you?”

“Science is just as competitive as everything else is, you know. Someone was reading my work and maybe threatening my career. I wanted to go to my boss and tell him. But without proof, with just feelings, he’d start looking at me sideways. And I didn’t want anything—anything—jeopardizing my project.”

“And?” Jack encouraged, pouring them both the last of the wine.

Morgan realized she needed some. She took a sip and nodded her thanks.

“I never dreamed someone was going to give me two reasons for being paranoid. One day we all went out for Rebecca’s birthday.”

“Rebecca?”

Morgan smiled inside. One of the sweetest young women she’d ever met, and with so much to offer. One of the people that Morgan was sweating bullets trying to cure. Because underneath the excess weight was a heart of gold.

“My admin. Well, all of the heads of the departments shared her.” She gave him a wry smile. “Not a lot of common sense with a bunch of PhDs.”

He half laughed. “I get it.”

“Anyway, when we got back from her birthday lunch, I could swear my desk had been searched. Everyone knew we were taking her out. But I chalked it up to professional paranoia again. Then I found a couple of creases in my lab notebook. Whoever had been reading my lab notebook had made copies of pages. I had no idea why except that I thought someone wanted to steal my thunder. God, I wish that was all that happened.”

She watched Jack lift a curious brow. “I assume that’s the second reason.”

“Yes. Someone broke into my home and ransacked it.”

“Looking for what?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I didn’t know then. They took the project away from me.”

Morgan closed her eyes, remembering the hurt and betrayal. “So you played the game and lost,” he replied. “I’m sure that happens more often than not in your business.”

“Not nice but probably true. And if losing my job was the only problem, I would never have done what I did.”

“Okay. So why did you steal the data?”

“BioClin made an announcement about my findings so they could get funding for the project. They had no right to do that. They knew there was no way my work would be finished in time to satisfy any bankers, so either someone told them they could finish the job, or they decided to use the investment capital to jack the stock price, make a killing, and let everything die.”

“Any idea who that someone might be?”

“Dr. Anton Dvorak. Sleazeball extraordinaire.”

He frowned at her. “Sorry. Personal opinions aside, he’s a molecular biologist and was kind of like my direct competitor within the company. He was always trying to impress everyone with how great he was.”

“So you think he was responsible?”

Morgan started laughing. “Anton? He’s not that smart,” she added with disdain. “All show, trust me.”

“Then he had help.”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks.”

She watched Jack nod. So far, everything she’d told him made sense. “So why did you run?”

“For that we need to go downstairs.”

* * * *

Since it was rather late, no one else was in the business center, for which Morgan was grateful. She walked over to one of the computers on the desk, then dug into her pocket and pulled out the memory stick.

“This is what Sam wants and what BioClin wants back even more.”

She turned and watched Jack take a deep breath, then let the air out slowly, gesturing for her to sit in front of the computer while he stood behind her.

“You might want to explain a little before you continue.”

“All right,” she replied, returning her focus to the computer. “I’ll try to remember you’re not a colleague.”

Jack started to chuckle, but the sound faded. “We’re in this together now, Morgan. Got that?”

She sat down, and his hands gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “I’m trying.”

Morgan booted up on the stick and began clicking on file folders. The entire screen was filled with them. But she knew exactly which one she was looking for—the presentation she’d given at the project meeting. Goodness, was it only a few weeks ago?

“I guess I’d better give you a little background. BioClin isn’t quite biotech, not quite pharmaceutical, sort of in between with a little clinical thrown in for good measure. We have several branches—Biochemistry, Clinical Chemistry, Molecular Biology, and my specialty, Cellular Kinetics.”

He squeezed her shoulders to get her to stop and gave her a bit of a sheepish grin as she looked up at him. “Remember, I barely finished high school. I still don’t speak geek, okay?”

Morgan smiled back at him but then reality started closing in and she forced herself to lock her shoulders in place.

“You’re not alone, kitten. I promised to help you.”

Morgan nodded. She took a deep breath and continued. “A few years ago, the new paradigm in the scientific community was genetics and gene mapping. Aside from not wanting to follow the crowd, the development of a new scientific process can cost millions of dollars. And there has to be enough return on the investment in a reasonable enough amount of time to substantiate that cost. BioClin simply wasn’t big enough to play with the big boys, and so they had to find something new, something no one had thought of yet. Their marketing department decided to target the weight-loss industry. I’ll bet you didn’t know Americans alone spend upward of forty billion dollars a year on weight-loss products.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No joke, Jack.”

“Wow. I had no idea.”