Friday's Child (24 page)

“There was a man on the floor,” she murmured. “He was hurt.”

“Harmon. One of my security guards,” he explained tersely. “He's here, too. I'll check on him in a few minutes.”

The doctor finished and stepped back. “Well, that should do it. You're going to have a whale of a headache for a while, and we'd like to keep you overnight for observation.”

“No,” Kate said.

“Yes,” Michael contradicted immediately. “We're not taking any chances with you.” He'd already put her at risk that night in a way he never could have foreseen, and for that, a nasty demon of guilt would eat away at him for a very long time. He traced her delicate jawline with his fingertip. “Don't fight with me on this, baby. I'm too worried about you.”

“I'll line up a nurse to come and take you to your room,” the doctor said, and left.

Kate gave a sigh and then winced again as her ribs protested. “There was a prowler in your den.”

“I know.” His fingers tightened in hers. “It was a setup, start to finish. This wasn't just any prowler. He was at the open house tonight and hid himself inside until after dark. The explosion was just a decoy. He'd prearranged it with a rigged car left in the parking lot. It was a ruse to get us out of the house, giving him free access. Quincy, the guard I had stationed outside, spotted him leaving. He alerted the police, but rather than following him, Quincy decided to check the house.” A deed, Michael thought grimly, that would earn the man a hefty bonus. “He found you and Harmon and called for an ambulance, as well.”

Disappointment laced Kate's voice. “So the intruder hasn't been caught?”

He hesitated, then said slowly, “He's not in custody yet.”

“Damn,” she said tiredly. “I never even saw his face. I had just a glimpse of him right before I fell, but he was wearing a face mask.” Her gaze lifted to his and her eyes widened. “He was after FORAY, wasn't he? Oh, Michael, all your work isn't ruined, is it?”

“Shh.” He lowered his face to her hair, careful not to jar her. “Don't worry about it, baby. I told you I'd taken precautions. We'd switched my computer in the den with the one Trask keeps in his room. All my files, all my notes are safely locked up in the basement. And—” he brushed his lips across the silky, tangled strands “—I've got a security camera mounted in the wall above my desk.”

“Where?” Her surprise was obvious. “I've never noticed it.”

He almost smiled and brought her hand up to nip at her knuckles. “That's because I'm good at my job. Not that you were looking for one. Luckily for us,” he said, sobering, “neither was our intruder. At least, he didn't look in the right place. And when he didn't find any cameras, he felt safe enough to push his mask up out of the way while he worked on breaking the code on the computer.” He saw the question in her eyes and couldn't quite hide the bitterness in his answer. “It was my father.”

Her hand came up and cupped his jaw. “Michael, I'm sorry.”

His gut twisted, one violent churn. “Yeah, so am I. Sorry that you were in danger because of me, sorry I couldn't protect you from him. But most of all I'm sorry that I didn't destroy that bastard completely the first time, and avoided this situation altogether.”

He turned away from her, regret and fury a tight knot in his throat.

“Don't you dare blame yourself for this, Michael.”

The vehemence in her voice had his gaze jerking to meet hers. “Jonathan Friday has been making his own choices for a long time. Yes, some of those choices affected you, but you're not responsible for them, and you shouldn't feel guilty for
his
actions.”

He gave a grim laugh. “This time I'm going to take him down for good. Corporate espionage, breaking and entering, assault and battery—he's going to find prison a far cry from the country clubs he's used to.” And even his father's hatred would find it difficult to reach beyond the prison walls and threaten anyone Michael cared about. The knowledge banked his rage slightly. Only slightly.

“Don't do it.”

He stared hard at her, sure he'd misunderstood her meaning. “Don't do what?”

She hesitated, and he could see the exhaustion working on her, watched her attempt to hold it at bay.

“Where's that nurse?” he muttered, starting for the door.

“Don't try to destroy your father again.” Her words followed him, stopping him in midstride.

“Kate.” His shoulders were tense, his spine as inflexible as his will. “You don't know what you're asking.”

“I do,” she said softly. “I know how guilty you're feeling right now. A guilt like that will work on you, make you want to strike back at the one who tried to hurt you and yours. But you can't hurt him without hurting yourself.”

He turned to her then, the resentment bubbling inside him. “If you think I'm going to let him walk away from this when
you could have been killed tonight, then you don't know me very well.”

“I know what it is to want to protect, Michael. I felt that need tonight, for both you and Chloe.” She was swaying a little on the table and gripped its edge tightly to steady herself. But there was no hint of weakness in her voice. “Think about it, Michael. You don't have to go to the police. You've got the film from the camera. That's your leverage over him. He'll know that it would take only a whisper from you about the events of this evening to ruin him.”

He stared at her stonily, refusing to acknowledge the truth of her words. “You don't know him, Kate. If I have the tape and don't use it, he won't see it as restraint. He'll see it as me being a sucker.”

“Who cares?” Her voice was starting to rise. “You're a smart guy, you can figure a way to use the film to get what you want. But you don't have to put your father in prison to do it.”

“You're wasting your pity on Jonathan Friday,” he said flatly.

“I don't care about him,” she retorted, “I care about
you.
Hatred can be its own kind of poison, and you've seen what it's done to your father. Don't let it eat away at you, as well.” Her tone softened, the sincerity unmistakable. “You're not like him. You couldn't send your own flesh and blood to prison without regrets. If you deny that, you're lying to yourself. Don't you see?”

As if pulled by the strength of her gaze, he turned to look at her.

“To do battle with him, you have to get down to his level. Every time you do, he reels you in a little further. Show him you're a better man than he is. Walk away. That would be your greatest triumph over him.”

The silence echoed, grew. She must have seen his answer on his face, because she made one last plea. “I'm not asking that you do it for me or for Chloe. I think you need to do this…for yourself.”

He swallowed convulsively and looked away. He clenched
his hands reflexively at his sides, and his voice was bleak when he answered.

“I can't promise you that.”

 

The door to her bedroom opened, revealing a mellow wedge of light. Kate tried to move to her back in the deep mattress, but her bruised ribs hampered her speed.

“I'm awake, so don't you dare go away.”

Michael padded into the room, barefoot and shirtless. He leaned one arm against a walnut post at the base of the bed.

“You should be resting,” he chided. “The doctor wouldn't have let you come home with me if he knew you weren't going to sleep.”

“That's all I've done,” she muttered. “Is Chloe down yet?”

He nodded. “Out like a light. Fetching and carrying for you all day must have worn her out.”

She smiled. The little girl's concern had been heartwarming, and her ideas for entertaining Kate had been creative, to say the least.

She held out a hand to him, and after a moment's hesitation, he walked over and sat down gingerly on the edge of the mattress, watching her face closely for any signs of pain.

Determined not to show any, she stroked the back of his hand. “Have you been avoiding me?”

“Not a chance of that, honey. But I had some things to take care of today.”

Her attention focused on her fingers as they traced invisible patterns on his skin. “And?”

“And…” he repeated, then waited for her gaze to meet his. “I went to Jonathan with a copy of the film.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and cautious hope bloomed inside her.

“The look on his face when he saw himself breaking into my computer was worth the price of a ticket,” he said wryly.

“But then he reverted to type.”

“What did you decide?”

His hand twisted up to grip hers. “We came to a mutual
understanding. He's decided it's time to retire, and sunny California is beckoning him. I thought putting a full continent between us would be wise.” He paused for a moment, his expression pensive. “You know, I've spent a lifetime trying to avoid becoming like my father. It occurred to me that if I took the old bastard down, I'd be falling with him.”

She bit her lip, her heart suddenly full. “You made the right decision.”

“Jonathan's hatred consumed him until he had room for nothing else in his life.” His shoulders lifted. “I have more. Much more.”

He reached out his free hand to toy with the ends of her hair. “Chloe said she made sure you took your pain pills today. Where does it hurt the most?”

She caught his hand in hers and carried it to her heart. “Right here.”

His fingers caressed her lightly. “Remind me to kiss it and make it better.”

“I don't think you could help with that,” she murmured, her gaze dropping from his. “I needed to work some things through for myself, and I've done plenty of thinking in the last couple days.”

His fingers stilled, and his face grew serious. “Before you start, there's something I need to tell you.”

She shook her head. Her thoughts had become too compelling to deny expressing them any longer. “Please…let me finish. I have some regrets in my life, Michael. I don't want you to become one of them.”

His voice was carefully blank. “What exactly does that mean?”

She bit her lip, trying to explain something she'd never had to put into words before. “When I was a child, it was never the poverty of money in my house that hurt me, it was the poverty of emotion. I grew up promising myself I'd have more.”

“You can have more.”

She heard the banked urgency in his voice, and she slid a hand down his arm in an automatic effort to soothe. “I was
so worried when you went to investigate the explosion. So afraid you'd get yourself hurt.” Her touch grew more absent as she sorted through her tangled emotions, smoothed them out one by one. “I miss you when you're not around. You make me angry, you make me laugh…you make me burn.” His arm jerked a little then, but she didn't notice. Her senses were turned inward. “My life is fuller than I ever dreamed possible, and that scares me so much.” She swallowed around the lump in her throat and forced herself to continue. “I have so much to lose now, and it makes me wonder how much bigger that void in my life would be if you decided not to be in it.”

“You aren't going to have to worry about that.”

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut for an instant. “I can't bear to think of a future without you in it. You're all I think about, all I want.” She opened her eyes and lifted her gaze slowly to his.

His mouth was crooked in that engaging half smile, his eyes intent. “I think I know what you're trying to say. Sometimes looking at me makes you feel like you've been sucker punched, right?”

She blinked. “Hardly eloquent, but I imagine…yes.”

He nodded. “Do you feel like you're falling off the edge of a cliff when we kiss?”

She took a deep breath, released it. Some of the tight, panicked emotion went with it. “Another experience I don't have firsthand knowledge of…but falling? Yes.”

“Do you get all hollow and empty when we're apart? Does the thought of not ending up together make you feel like a horse kicked you square in the chest?” He wasn't waiting for her answers now, he was just letting the words pour out in a torrent, as if some sort of personal reservoir had burst. “I don't have a medical degree, but I think I can diagnose your affliction. Unless we've both caught the same strain of a weird virus, I'd say we're in love.”

“Yes, that's what I've been trying to tell…” Her voice trailed to a stop as her heart careened to her throat.
“We're?”

His smile was lopsided. “As in you and me. You can't imagine how relieved I am that I'm not in this deal alone.”

The sudden joy quaking inside her spilled into her voice. “Is that what this is? A deal?”

He nodded. “The biggest. In fact, I'm going to have to take back the proposal I made a while ago.”

For an instant, Kate's happiness threatened to plummet to somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach. “You are?”

“It was shortsighted. I think I can make you a better offer.”

She settled herself more comfortably against the pillows and smiled slowly. “Offer away.”

“What I'm thinking about is a lifetime merger. No escape clauses.”

“None wanted.”

He took her hand in his, raised it to his mouth and nipped at her knuckles. “That's good. Of course, the terms are generous. You get half of everything of mine, except my heart. That goes to you, one hundred percent.”

She reached out her free hand and cupped his hard jaw. “How about a mutual trade?”

“I was hoping you'd suggest that. In fact, that was going to be one of my demands. As a concession, in the event of more children, the labor contract will be negotiable.”

Laughter bubbled up. “Watch the terms you put on the table, champ. I've seen your reaction to needles and blood.”