IF YOU WANTED THE MOON (5 page)

“Oh no,” she cried, leaning down to touch his hand, “I am so sorry! Let me help you—”

“Stay away from me!” Ethan ordered as he shook his hand and then placed it under his armpit. “I’m sorry,” he said, calmer, “but please just. . .” He gave up on talking, as the pain continued to sear him, and fel back against the rail. Tori’s heart dropped. “Mr. Chandler, I am so—”

“Miss Douglas,” Ethan said, looking up at her, that caring,
concerned
look he had given her earlier now completely gone. “Have a nice day.”

It was a dismissal, no doubt about that. And she nodded, grabbed her gear, and began to leave, feeling awful that she had to leave him this way. But when she thought to turn, to see if she could at least help him to his feet, he quickly ended that hope.

“Goodbye, Miss Douglas,” he said sharply, without even bothering to look up at her.

“Goodbye, Mr. Chandler,” she said, and fled.

Tori stil felt the embarrassment of that moment even now, especialy as she looked at her two friends. The pained look on their faces, she thought, said it al.

“What a bastard,” Sheila said in a low tone.

“Did he realy dismiss you that way?” Macy asked. “After holding you like that?”

“Yes, Mace. But it’s understandable. I mean, I did almost put a hole in his hand with my shoe heel.”

“Dang,” Macy said. “That had to hurt.”

“Now do you see why it’s crazy for him to want me anywhere near him? He hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Macy said. “He’s just. . . a weird white man.”

“He hates me.”

“Then don’t go,” Sheila said definitively. “That’s your answer to a jerk like that. Don’t go.”

“I have to go.”

“I have to go.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“He’l fire me if I don’t go, Sheila, alright? Arthur Coughlin al but said so himself. So I have to go.”

“Go,” Macy said, “but take a gun with you.”

“Oh, Mace, please,” Sheila said frowningly. “I’m just playing, dang. But I stil say you should go, Tori. It’s obvious to me and anybody else who knows about these things that the man’s in love with you.”

“In
love
?” both Tori and Sheila said in unison, both stunned by Macy’s words.

“Yes, in love! I ain’t taking it back. The man loves her. Why else would he, just four days after she nearly knocked him out, want her anywhere near him? He selected her, remember? She didn’t go running to him. He remembered how she felt on his lap and he wants her with him, I don’t care what y’al say.”

Sheila attempted to argue the point with Macy, but Tori didn’t even bother. She didn’t believe or a second that Ethan Chandler could have any feelings for her except murderous ones, especialy after their two disastrous meetings. It was true that she hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind, especialy after the way he held her in his arms, but that was her. She was known for flights of fancy. Ethan Chandler, on the other hand, was a captain of industry, a serious man who didn’t have time to be swooning over the likes of her. No, Macy had it wrong again. He had his reasons for selecting her, she’d concede that, but, she was equaly certain, love wasn’t one of them.

“Wel?” Sheila said, and Tori, buried in thought, asked her to repeat her question. “Are you or are you not going to Florida with Chandler? Macy, of course, is al for it, but I say no, you shouldn’t go.”

“But I have to go,” Tori said. “I asked Arthur to tel it to me straight and he did. He said I could get fired if I didn’t impress Chandler, whatever the hel that means. And y’al know my situation. I just bought that house for my parents out in Arlington Heights. Do you know how much that mortgage is? And you add to that the money I’m paying out a month for that apartment of mine and there’s no way I can lose this job. One thing about Chandler he pays his employees wel. I couldn’t hope to get paid like this, based on my experience, for another eight, ten years. No, Sheila, I understand what you’re saying, I do. But I can’t afford to not go. I have to go.”

She also had to admit, although she hated to admit it, that for once in her life she needed somebody. Because for purely economic reasons, she wasn’t even thinking about the emotional ones, she needed Ethan Chandler.

She was late and she knew it, and the thought of it, of getting left behind, caused her to grab her luggage and her purse and run out of her front door as if her life depended on it. She fel back against that door, however, when she stepped outside and saw who was standing on the other side of her door, leaning against the bannister.

“You scared the life out of me!” she screeched. “What are you doing here?”

Bobby Rogers beamed. He loved catching Tori Douglas off guard. “Can’t a man come see his lady?” he asked her.

“His ex-lady,” Tori corrected, “and no, the man can’t. And especialy not today.” Tori began hurrying toward the stairs.

“Whoa, girl,” Bobby said, folowing her, “where you going so fast?”

“I have a plane to catch and I’m already late.”

“As usual.”

Tori stopped her progression and looked at Bobby. He was tal, gorgeous, with a smile to light up a room and a body that could do more than that. But the problem with Bobby was that he knew it, too, and was more than wiling to spread his good fortune to any and every woman interested. “Is there a reason why you’re here, or is annoying me your goal?”

Bobby laughed. “I came to see what was up with you. I caled Fitzgerald-Waterhouse but they said you didn’t work there anymore.”

“You knew I didn’t work there, Bobby. I haven’t worked there for over five months.”

“How was I to know that?”

“I told you, remember? During your every-now-and-then cals asking me to take you back?”

“Oh, yeah, that. Wel, I forgot, al right?”

“I’l see you around, Bobby,” Tori said, hurrying away again.

Bobby, however, grabbed her by the arm before she could make a ful getaway. “But for real, Tori,” he said. “I wanna talk to you.”

“Talk to me about what?”

“What you mean ‘about what?’ About us!”

“Us? There is no us, and you know it. And let go of my arm.” She jerked it away and began moving away from him.

“But I stil love you, though,” Bobby said and Tori almost stopped in her tracks. She had loved him once. Desperately. But that was before she discovered that she wasn’t the only female loving him, or, more to the point, that he was loving.

“Goodbye, Bobby,” she said, the pain stil too real, and hurried on down the stairs.

“Goodbye, Bobby,” she said, the pain stil too real, and hurried on down the stairs.

Arthur Coughlin checked his watch for the tenth time before puling out his cel phone and once again dialing the number to Tori’s apartment. It was a comfortable, warm morning in Chicago, but with

wind gusts up to 30 mph his oversized suit flapped like a sheet on a clothesline as he stood outside the airport. There was no answer at Tori’s place, as the phone rang and rang, but that was a good thing to Arthur because it meant Tori wasn’t stil at home. But it wasn’t so good too because it meant he stil didn’t know where in the world she was.

Just as he was about to dial her number again, a cab stopped at the curb, and Tori quickly stepped out.

“About time!” Arthur said with undisguised displeasure as he hurried to the cab. “Where have you been, Tori?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Tori said as she hoisted her shoulder bag up on her shoulder and grabbed her carrying case. “I mean, it was partly. I was running late, true enough, but not this late. There was a terrible accident we couldn’t avoid and we were jammed in. We couldn’t move until the wreckage was cleared, you should have seen it, Arthur.” But Arthur just stared at her as if he didn’t believe a word she was saying. “Ask the driver if you don’t believe me.”

The driver, who seemed eager to get rid of Tori so that he could get back to making money, lifted her suitcase out of his trunk.

“How much does she owe you?” Arthur asked, reaching into his pocket, but Tori quickly told him that she’d already paid. Arthur thereby grabbed her luggage from the cab driver and then grabbed

Tori’s arm and hurried her toward the airport’s entrance.

“Is Mr. Chandler here yet?” she asked as she moved to the swift pul of his hand and Arthur, amazed, looked at her.

“Is Mr. Chand. . . Tori, Mr. Chandler is either very early or he doesn’t show up.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yes, he’s here,” Arthur said, ushering her inside the airport. “He’s been here for nearly an hour, and he’s not thriled at al that you haven’t.”

Ethan Chandler sat quietly in a private waiting area inside the airport. Sitting beside him, in a smal arch-top chair, was his security chief, Marc Grier. Marc, dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweat shirt, was leaned forward, with pen and paper in hand, going over the final details with his boss.

“And you’re absolutely certain it’s Fred Morton?” Ethan asked him.

“We’re certain. Absolutely. Has to be him. He’s the one with the opportunity and the access. He’s the one with the connections. The other execs are stil on the list, but Morton’s at the top of that list.”

“He has access and opportunity. But does he have the motive?”

“Money,” Marc said and Ethan looked at him. “He needs it,” Grier added, “and needs it badly. We did some digging. He’s in hock up to his bushy eyebrows. His gambling habit has caused him to

incur a lot of messy debt.”

“But if he’s been seling cost projections, surely he’s been getting paid. His bank accounts any richer?”

“He’s too smart for that. These are cash transactions, has to be. He’s leaving no paper trails.”

“Naturaly.”

“Oh, Freddy’s a sharp cookie, let me tel you. He wouldn’t be on your management team if he wasn’t.”

Ethan nodded, but such faint praise hardly made him feel better.

“And what about this Douglas woman,” he said as if she was a stranger to him. “Victoria Douglas. Are you sure she can be of some real help here?”

“Al we can do is see,” Grier said. “I’m teling you I did my homework on this one, boss. Morton has a thing for her I’m teling you. And, from everything we could gather, he realy respects her, which means he’l respond to her quickly, which is what we need.”

“But wil he confide in her?”

“That’s the milion dolar question. We believe so but we can only wait and see.”

Ethan hesitated. “You say he respects her. Why?”

“He just does. I’m sure he has his reasons. And that’s why I think you made the right cal. If he sees her in Cedar Key working with you, he wouldn’t get suspicious and clam up. He respects her opinions on a lot of different subjects, so he’d just figure you would too and that’s why you selected her to accompany you. If he’l share any secrets to anybody, it’l probably be to Douglas.”

“Are they that close?” Chandler asked with a smile, attempting to bury the tinge of jealousy he found himself feeling.

“They’re pretty tight, yeah.”

“Then why hasn’t he let her in on this little scheme of his already, since they’re so tight?”

“Proximity,” Grier said as if he’d already anticipated the question. “Too close to the action here in town. But in Cedar Key, where he expects to be alone as usual, seeing a beautiful woman like her around could soften a man, maybe make him slip to where he reveals some little piece of the puzzle that can blow this case wide open.”

Ethan exhaled. The idea of Victoria Douglas caught up in al of this clandestine activity wasn’t sitting wel with him at al. “Why not let Douglas in on the game?” he asked. “Why should she have to be in the dark too?”

“She absolutely has to be, sir. We’ve already been over this. Like you said, Morton’s no fool. A female start pumping him for information or phrasing her questions just so, he’l see right through that.

He knows Douglas. He knows how she is. If she changes at al, we can kiss any hope of success goodbye.”

Ethan nodded, although his face stil looked worried.

“You chose the plan, boss,” he said. “You said she was the one you wanted with you on this trip, and I couldn’t agree with you more. But if you’re having second thoughts—”

Ethan frowned. “What are you talking about? Why would I have second thoughts? Morton and his scheme is costing my company milions, and enriching my competitors on top of it. I’l use Victoria

Douglas and ten more like her to put an end to this disaster, you understand? I don’t have second thoughts about saving my company.”

“Al right. I just thought—”

“You just thought what?”

Grier hesitated. “What?” Ethan asked.

“I just thought that, I don’t know, that you might care for this one.”

“
Care for her
?” Ethan asked as if it was the most incredible tale ever told. “What on earth would give you that impression?”

You
, Grier wanted to say.
The way you’re always asking about her, getting me and my men to check up on her, acting as if you were angrier at Morton for taking pictures of her rather than
for bilking your company
. “I was just running my mouth, that’s al,” Grier said instead, as he rose to his feet. “Remember now, boss, Morton isn’t expected until the weekend. My people are already set up for surveilance and they’re ready for any actuality. Karl Brennan wil meet your plane. I’l be along in a day or two, after I check out a few things here first. But cal me if you need me.”

“Wil do, Marc, thanks,” Ethan said as he shook his security chief’s hand and watched him leave the room.

It was another few minutes of impatiently checking his Rolex and straightening his pant seam before Arthur, with Tori in tow, hurried into the waiting room. As soon as Ethan saw Victoria his heart pounded against his chest. She wore another one of her skintight skirts, this one gray and blue with a white and blue off-shoulder blouse, a skirt so tight that it hugged her hips and gave her smal body a sensual curve. Her gorgeous eyes were bigger and brighter than he’d remembered them. He knew this wouldn’t be easy. He knew the goal was to get her interested in Fred Morton, not in him, but he stil couldn’t help his reaction. Just by showing up she made his body respond, and it wasn’t intentional on her part, she wasn’t batting her eyes or smiling some bright white smile or sashaying her hips so abruptly that it looked as if she was having spasms. She wasn’t trying any of those phony-baloney seduction techniques women have tried on him countless times. She didn’t have to do al of that. She simply had to look his way, with those doleful, big brown eyes that seemed to twist at his soul, and he felt more vulnerable than he’d ever felt in al of his adulthood.