Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It (6 page)

"I'm at home, not at the office and, yes, I was too busy to come to the phone immediately. Did you call just to harangue me about telephone manners?" she asked with exasperation.

He acted like waiting a few extra minutes for her was on par with a world energy crisis.

Heavy silence met her sarcasm. She waited it out. She knew this trick. She'd seen Marcus and Alex both use it to gain the upper hand in a conversation and she wasn't falling for it. She needed all the advantages she could get in dealing with him and knowing his foibles was one she intended to utilize to the max.

"Am I calling at a bad time, Ronnie?" he finally asked.

She wished he wouldn't call her that. It reminded her too forcibly of an intimacy that they would never share again. But she'd already asked him not to, pleaded even, and he had ignored her. She wouldn't ask again.

"No, I can talk now."

"Are you sure you don't need to go back to who-ever it was who answered the phone? If you've got company, I can call back later."

She didn't fall for the polite routine either. She recognized a fishing expedition for information when she saw one. "She's not company. Jenny is my sister and she lives with me."

"You have a sister?"

He made it sound like she'd just claimed familial ties to an alien. "Yes."

"How long?"

"How long have I had a sister? Since she was born about seventeen and a half years ago." She knew that wasn't what he'd asked, but she couldn't help baiting him.

"I meant how long has she lived with you?" he asked, with barely checked impatience.

"Almost five years."

Marcus sucked in his breath. He must realize the implication. She'd had full responsibility for a teenage sister during the time they'd been together.

"Impossible. You never said anything."

"You never asked," she pointed out.

He was silent again. This time she sensed it was more out of consternation than any attempt at manipulating her. "Where are your parents?"

Where was this inquisition leading? She didn't really understand his curiosity. He'd never asked personal questions like this before, when their relationship had been a great deal more intimate.

"They're dead."

Ronnie's parents were dead? She had custody of a teenage sister?

"She never answered your phone before." It was a stupid thing to say, but it was the first thing that came to his befuddled mind.

"She was sick."

"For the whole time we were dating?" he asked, his voice registering the disbelief he felt.

"Yes."

He didn't like her short responses. He wanted to know more and she could damn well tell him. "What do you mean she was sick the whole time?"

Ronnie's voice came across the phone lines clear and soft. "She was diagnosed with a potentially fatal blood disease when she was fourteen."

Damn it to hell. Why hadn't he known? The simple truth was that she hadn't told him. It appeared Ronnie's job as a corporate spy wasn't the only thing she'd hidden from him a year and a half ago.

"How is she now?" The question felt dragged out of him.

His interest in the woman who had betrayed him and her life made no sense, but that didn't diminish his desire to know details.

"Better."

"Do you mean well?" he asked, probing becausebetter could mean anything.

"Yes."

"I'm glad."

Why had he said that?

Of course, the thought of any child dying so young was abhorrent, but the surge of relief that had gone through him at Ronnie's answer had felt way too personal. He felt like cursing again. He didn't even know the girl and he didn't want to get wrapped up in Ronnie's life again. Not that he'd been all that wrapped up in it before, obviously.

Realizing how much of herself she had held back from him made him angry.

"Me too," she said, in reply to his inexplicable comment. "I'm sure you didn't call me to discuss my sister."

He gripped the phone tighter. How could she sound so soft and vulnerable one minute and so cold the next? "You're right. I called to set up our next date."

"Date?" She gave a mocking little laugh. "I'd hardly classify any meeting between the two of us as a date."

"Why? We were pretty good together before." He couldn't resist taunting her with the truth.

"Don't." She didn't sound mocking now. In fact, she sounded a little desperate.

He smiled. "Don't what, sweetheart?"

He deliberately used the endearment, knowing it would irritate her.

"Don'tcall me sweetheart anddon't pretend you want to renew our relationship. I'm not that naive."

Desperation threaded her voice and that surprised him, but it didn't stop the churning need to keep pushing.

"What if I do?" he asked, with deliberate silky menace.

She wasn't the one who'd been naive before. That had been him. He'd trusted her and look what it had gotten him. More than a year of celibacy and too many memories that wouldn't let him sleep at night.

"Come on, Marcus. We both know you aren't interested in me any longer. I was a temporary bed partner who betrayed the company you worked for. You are no more interested in renewing our relationship—if you could even call it that—than I am."

He could tell she was trying to sound cool, but her voice had wobbled there for a second. Maybe she wasn't as over him as she tried to pretend.

"What if I am interested?" he asked, driven by a compulsion that he could neither understand nor control.

But there was a burning need in him to goad her into losing her calm facade.

"You're not." Her voice was flat with finality.

"You sound so sure of yourself,sweetheart . It's always a mistake to be certain you know the mind of your opponent." Hadn't he made that mistake eighteen months ago when he had assumed he knew what Ronnie thought and felt? "Didn't it occur to you to wonder why I hadn't shared your past history as an espionage agent with Kline?"

Her sharp inhalation told him that he'd scored a point.

"Of course I wondered why you hadn't said anything," she said, her voice rising in agitation. "I asked about it, remember? But you refused to tell me why."

"What if I said I had a price for my silence?" He couldn't believe he'd asked that.

He would no more blackmail her than commit his own act of espionage. So, why had he said it?

"Don't be ridiculous, Marcus. Blackmail isn't your style and you know it."

She was back to sounding disinterested, almost bored, and that did something to him. He'd spent eighteen months pining for a spy and she acted like she'd never thought about him once, like the idea of sleeping with him again was a joke.

Something inside him snapped at her cool indifference.

"Maybe I learned something from you when you left."

"What do you mean?"

"How to play in the big leagues. What if I said that my price for that silence was for you to sleep with me?"

There was a split second of silence and then the phone clicked with ominous finality in his ear.

Damn. He'd said it. He'd actually threatened to blackmail Ronnie back to his bed. He couldn't believe he'd let it go that far and, worse, he couldn't believe how much the idea annealed to him. Decent men did not blackmail women into sleeping with them and virile men didn't have to. He'd always considered himself both.

The receiver in his hands started to beep.

Oh, hell. What had he done?

Chapter Four

Veronica stared at the green cordless phone in her hand and wondered if it would bite her.

No. Of course not. Phones didn't bite. It wasn't a dog, or a man rabid for a taste of revenge.

She'd been feeling on the edge of her sanity for a while now. Had she finally gone over? Or had Marcus actually attempted to force her back into his bed? She could not make herself believe that he had just threatened to tell Mr. Kline about her past if she didn't sleep with him.

She shook her head in denial of the euphemism. No, not sleep. Never sleep. He wanted sex, plain and simple.

When she and Marcus had shared a bed in the past, sleeping had been the furthest thing from either of their minds. Not that she would have objected to waking some morning in the security of his arms, but Marcus didn't do things that way. It was all part of the no-ties package. Sleeping, really sleeping, together might be construed as some kind of commitment.

Still, a carefree and easy bachelor who had a thing against commitment in any form was a far cry from a man who would blackmail a woman into his bed. Wasn't he?

She felt herself tremble and carefully laid the phone down on the sofa table before she dropped it.

The scent of beef stew simmering in the Crock-Pot registered at the same time as her sister's voice singing silly songs to Aaron in the other room. Mundane things… everyday occurrences that made it no easier to come to grips with the unbelievable conversation she had just had with Marcus.

The man had tried to blackmail her.

But it was more than that. He had shown more interest in her personal life than he had eighteen months ago, when they'd been lovers.

She couldn't understand it any more than she could comprehend the seductive feeling of hope curling up in her insides. Could she truly be hoping for some sort of reconciliation?

Only a besotted fool would be feeling hope after that conversation, she lectured herself.

The fact that Marcus was threatening her was bad enough, but what was beyond her comprehension, what made her shake with real fear, was how tantalizing she found the prospect of being intimate with him again. She'd missed him so much the months they had been apart.

Leaving him had opened a gaping hole in her heart that neither her son's birth nor the remission of her sister's disease could fill. She'd never had another lover, and if she were honest, she would admit she never wanted to make love with anyone but Marcus.

She sank onto the overstuffed green couch she'd gotten for a song at a garage sale from a retired couple intent on moving into a smaller home. She usually felt a certain satisfied gratitude whenever she sat on the comfy cushions, being reminded how lucky she had been to get good furniture at such an affordable price. She'd bought several other things from the couple, but right now gratitude for her windfall was the furthest thing from her mind,

Marcus's threats brought images that she'd tried hard to suppress over the past months rushing to the forefront of her mind. Memories of her first time with Marcus washed over her. They were so intense that for a second she imagined she could still feel the pressure of his lips from the simple kiss that went so far out of control.

They'd been flirting in the office for weeks. He'd cajoled her into going out with him a few times and had kissed her on the occasions she did, telling her in graphic terms how much he wanted her. She'd held him off, instinctively knowing they wanted different things from a relationship.

Namely, she wanted a future and he wanted a body.

But she couldn't stop seeing him, couldn't resist the seductive lure of the flirting and attention from the man she loved. Inevitably, the yearning and desires that she had kept in check the three years she had loved Marcus from afar broke through the tenuous hold she had had on her self-control.

And one night when he had kissed her, she had plastered herself against his body in mindless longing and need. Even in her innocence, she had recognized the signs that he was just as affected as she. She'd been amazed.

That alone had been enough to send her beyond common sense and she had said one thing she knew she shouldn't have. "Love me, Marcus. Please, love me."

Then, she had felt his hands on her face while his body stilled against hers. "Open your eyes."

She had obeyed him, though she hadn't wanted to. She had wanted to hide behind the darkness of her closed eyelids, but he wouldn't let her.