Everything You Are (20 page)

“So.” Mark tossed the potatoes into the sink and turned on the faucet. “You're going to stay here permanently?”

“Yes,” Ian said before Jane could answer.

“You have a lot of things left in the apartment.” Mark rinsed the potatoes under the water and tossed them into the pot Jane set on the counter beside the sink.

“I know.” Jane turned the stove on. But bringing those things to Ian's flat would have made moving out of Mark's place final. It wasn’t that she didn’t want ‘final’ if that meant living with Ian on permanent basis, but... She glanced at Ian.

“You’d better take good care of my girl,” Mark said to Ian over his shoulder.

“Oh, I will.” Ian smiled.

Jane rolled her eyes.

“And marry her,” Mark added.

“Mark!”

The smile on Ian's face grew. “I have every intention of making Jane my wife.”

Jane was glad that she didn’t have anything in her hands, because if she had, it would have ended up on the floor. “You do?”

“If you'll have me.” Ian stood.

“What's there not to have?” Mark intervened, a smile, almost as big as the one on Ian's mouth, embellishing his face.

“Will you have me?” In a step Ian was by her side. His hands framed her face. “Will you have me?”

To marry Ian? Of course she would like to do that, but... What about Ian's family? Yes, Ian had said that they wouldn't mind even if he brought home a hooker, and they had welcomed her with open arms, but... They were an old family and very rich, they didn't seem to mind Ian dating her, but how would they feel after they learn that Ian had proposed marriage? “Shouldn't you go down on one knee and all that?”

“I could, but do you really expect of me to get my pants dirty? They were quite expensive, you know.” Ian grinned.

“There's no sign of listening devices in any of the offices,” Andrew, Izzy’s husband, the chief of Thornton Security, said.

Ian rubbed his chin, his gaze lost at the end of the hallway, where the elevators were. He and Andrew had been walking across the hallway. Because of who their suspect was, they hadn't expected any bugs in Thornton Tower, but they had to make sure. That was why Andrew and his staff had swept through all the offices of upper management, including Ian's and his father's. There were bugs in all the common rooms on the Thornton estate, though. Andrew, when he scanned the rooms, even found a few of them in Ian's and his parents' bedrooms. “Have you already told my father that?”

“No, not yet,” Andrew said. “He asked that we leave no paper or digital trail and to report to him personally. I planned to tell him that at our next meeting.” He glanced at his watch. “Which starts ten minutes from now.”

“The one with Southern?”

“Yes.”

“That means we’re going the same way,” Ian said. From the corner of his eye he noticed something familiar and he fixed his gaze there. It was Jane. His step slowed down and his mouth stretched into a smile on its own.

“Why are you grinning?”

“What?”

“You're grinning, and you never grin at work, especially not as stupidly as you are right now.”

“Is this better?” Ian smoothed his features into a frown, but the corners of his mouth refused to cooperate. She was so lovely, as she waited for the elevator, chatting with one of her co-workers, an older lady. They were a few steps away from him.

Jane saw them and gave him a small lift of her chin and a barely visible smile.

“Oh... It's because of Jane,” Andrew commented.

“You go ahead.” Ian patted Andrew's shoulder.

“You don't have time.”

“I'll make time,” Ian said. He stopped. “Miss Bennet.”

“Mr. Thornton,” Jane greeted him back.

“Mr. Thornton.” The older lady beside Jane nodded.

Andrew lightly shook his head as he passed them.

“I went through the report on K-steel's last quarter production costs.” Jane had been relocated to the Analysis and Planning Department where, under Robertson's supervision, she prepared statistical reports and analysed data. Which, even though she whined about how bad she was with numbers, she did surprisingly well.

“Yes.”

“There's a heading I feel should be expanded. Can I have a moment of your time?” Ian grabbed her elbow, gave a nod to the woman, and guided Jane toward the door leading to the staircase and then through it.

“Which heading?”

He blocked the door with his body. His hand went to the back of her neck and he drew her close. “This one.” He bent down and his mouth captured hers in a heated kiss.

Her arms embraced his shoulders and she pressed herself tightly against him.

She was so sweet and so pliant in his hands. He couldn't get enough of her. His hand stroked its way down her side and over her hip to cup her ass. Her lovely, curved bottom that drove him crazy. He pushed her up and against him, so that he could feel her softness flush against his groin. Want for her flared up and sizzled through his veins. He had to stop. He had to stop or otherwise he would have taken her right there, on the stairway landing. He pressed a small kiss at the corner of her mouth. “Jane, sweet Jane.”

Her hands curled around his shoulders.

He leaned his forehead against hers and with his eyes closed, waited for his desire to quiet down. But it was there, pulsing in the pit of his stomach. He knew that as long as he was breathing in her scent and feeling her warmth against his body it would be there, throbbing inside him like a tense knot of dull ache.

She took a deep breath and pushed herself out of the hold of his hands. Her cheeks were flushed with a lovely pink and tempted him to lean over her again.

He stepped backward, his back bumped against the door. He leaned against it. “You're so lovely.”

A smile lit her face. “You're not bad either.”

His eyes went up and down her body. “Can't wait until we get home.”

“Is that all you can think about?”

“Yes.” With the back of his knuckles he caressed the outline of her face before he shoved his hands into the pockets of his black pants.

She caught her lower lip between her teeth and looked at him from under her eyelashes.

So beautiful and alluring. “Stop doing that.”

“What?”

“Being so tempting.” He pressed a quick kiss on her forehead. “I have to go, I have a meeting, which should end at three. Will you come and wait for me in my office so we can go home together?”

“I promised Mark I’d drop by his place.”

“We can go together.”

Her hand wrapped around his and she squeezed it. “I love you,” she said with a softness that melted his heart. “And I love spending time with you very much. Very, very much.”

“But...”

“Mark and I have been friends forever, and I miss him. We haven’t had any time for ourselves since I moved in with you and, well, we do need some time on our own.”

“But you two talk over the phone all the time.”

Another squeeze of her fingers. “It's just an hour or two.”

As much as he would have loved to monopolize her time and have her all to himself, he had to be realistic. She had people she cared about and he shouldn't even try to isolate her from her best friend, especially somebody who meant as much to her as Mark did, no matter how tempted he was. Mark, now that Jane lived with Ian and spent most of her time with him, was probably quite lonely. Maybe Ian could introduce somebody to him. He would call Chris and ask him if he knew a man that would be suitable for a modest and likeable guy like Mark. After all, his brother did owe him a favour. “Okay.” He kissed her cheek. “After you're done socializing call me and I'll come pick you up.”

She nodded.

He gave her another small kiss on her cheek and then tore himself away from her. He pushed the door open and went back to the hallway, then strode to his father's office.

Andrew and Mr. Southern were already there, sitting in front of the large desk, his father behind it.

“Just in time,” his father said.

“For what?” Ian lowered himself in the chair to Andrew’s left.

“For Mr. Southern's report on Martha.”

“Did you find anything?” Ian shifted forward so that he could see Southern past Andrew.

“Nothing of importance,” the old man said. “She's a childless widow, with no criminal record. There's not even a parking ticket. Her last job was working as the headmistress of a small private boarding school.”

“Yes, we are aware of all that,” Ian said. “The first thing father and I did was to go through the list of her previous jobs and references, something that Thornton Security verified when father hired her. Is there any sign that she could be working for somebody else?”

Andrew moved the chair backwards so that Ian had an unobstructed view of Southern.

“We have had her under surveillance since last Sunday, and in that time she hasn’t left the estate or had any visitors.”

“Are we eavesdropping on her phone conversations?” Ian asked.

“No,” Southern said.

“Why not?”

“Because that's against the law,” Ian's father said.

“So what, are we going to just wait and allow her to continue destroying our business?”

“She's not destroying it.” His father leaned back in the chair and folded his hands on his lap. “Because of you, all of her attempts have been thwarted. Since we are aware of the microphones, there won't be any new attempts at sabotage.”

“I have been wasting time on damage control instead of working on new business. She wasted not only my time, but the time of our employees and business partners.” And cleaning up the mess had cut short his Italy trip with Jane, not to mention that irritated him to know that a third party was listening to everything that was happening in his private moments. It was the reason he tried to spend as much time as he could in Jane's bedroom. “That's not acceptable.”

“She might not be the one guilty of all those anonymous letters, or the source for those articles alleging Thornton's production was going offshore” Andrew said.

“Martha's the only one who could plant all those bugs.” Ian crossed his arms.

“Somebody with my background and with my training could have broken into your apartment and planted those devices easily,” Andrew said.

“What about the estate?” Ian asked. “The security of the estate is too good for anyone, even with your expertise, to break in without being noticed.”

“We have already proven that Mrs. Casey is the one responsible for the listening devices on the estate,” Southern intervened. “I set a camera in Mr. Thornton's office and broke the microphone under Mr. Thornton's desk lamp. She was the one who replaced it. To proceed with this investigation, we need to learn her role in this game. Is she a pawn or a queen?”

“What I would like to focus on is the motive behind Martha's actions.” Ian's father took a pen and absently twirled it in his fingers. “I re-read her references and noticed that she was recommended by Bertha, our old housekeeper. Mr. Southern's employee went to the nursing home to ask her a few questions, but Bertha refused to talk with him, since she doesn't know him. The man also said that she appears to have memory problems. It seems I'll have to go there personally.”

Ian remembered Bertha, who liked to spoil him the same way their cook Beth did. If he remembered correctly, she lived on the same side of town that Jane's parents did. “Jane plans to visit her parents on Saturday and I intend to go with her. They live a village away from Bertha. When I'm there I could go and talk with her.”

Ian's father nodded.

“So what's our next step?” Andrew asked.

“We left all the microphones untouched,” Ian said. “We might as well have fun with them and give Martha false information and talk about bogus deals.”

“I have already been doing that.” Ian's father put the pen on the desk.

“We'll continue to monitor Mrs. Casey, and with your father's permission we could hack into her laptop.”

“No,” his father said.

“Stop being so righteous. She planted bugs. She invaded not only your and Mother's privacy, but also mine and Chris's, and Andrew and Izzy's.” And with that Martha had, in Ian's opinion, waived any rights she had to her own privacy. “Or we could just turn her over to the police for planting listening devices and be done with it.”

His father pressed his lips together.

“Fine. I won't insist on hacking her computer or tapping her phone.” Even though that would have saved them time and helped them shorten the investigation. Ian faced Southern. “But I want cameras in all the estate's common rooms, including the staff's.”

“It's unfair to subject all the staff to surveillance,” his father said.

“We monitor her alone, through her phone and her email correspondence, or we monitor all the staff. Your choice.” Ian looked at his father. Father had a strong sense of right and wrong, and as much Ian admired him for it and tried to follow in his footsteps in that regard, in this case Father's high moral sense was an unnecessary hindrance. “Think of it this way: Martha's action has jeopardized the company that employs more than forty-eight thousand people. If she, or whoever is behind her, got their way, at least a thousand people, if not more, would have lost their jobs. Doesn't that justify invading her privacy?”

“Very well, then,” Father said. “Mr. Southern can make arrangements to tap her phone.”

“Good.” Ian stood. “If that's all...”

“No,” his father said. “Mother expressed a desire to see Jane again. You two could visit us this Sunday.”

“We are going to Jane's parents this Saturday, and we might spend the night there. Why doesn't Mother come here next week? I have a free guest room which she's welcome to use. You can come too, as long as you don't expect us to wait on you hand and foot.” Ian’s mother had expressed the same wish in a conversation three days ago. Because of that he had proposed to Jane that they visit the estate, to which she replied that she had already promised her mother a visit that upcoming weekend. She sounded as if she didn't want to go to see his family, but that must have been just his imagination, because whenever his mother requested that he put Jane on the phone, Jane appeared to get along with his mother quite well.