The Cutting Edge (20 page)

Brett was stunned by the thought that she might simply pack up and leave, and he couldn't follow her, not now. He was bound to stay in Los Angeles until he found the embezzler, so he'd have to keep Tessa with him. If he let her go now, he was afraid he'd never be able to get her back.

“You can't leave now,” he said sharply.

Her green eyes widened in fear. “I can't?”

“I need your help,” he said, improvising rapidly.

She was wary now. “Help doing what?”

“Finding out who framed you,” he said promptly.

“I don't see how I can help.”

“No one knows that the charges against you have been dropped. The embezzler has to be feeling pretty safe, but if you leave, that could tip him off. He could grab the money and run.”

“He?” Tessa asked, lifting her brows.

“A figure of speech.”

After a minute, she said, “I don't care if you catch him or not.”

He got to his feet, too, a little angry. “You don't want to catch the person who almost caused you to go to prison?”

Automatically, she stepped back. “I know I should want a criminal to be caught and punished, but right now I just don't care. All I want to do now is forget about this…all of this. Everything.”

Including me, he thought furiously. Too bad, because he wasn't going to let it happen. His navy eyes were narrowed angry slits as he reached out for her, his hands gentle despite his anger. She went stiff at his touch, but didn't fight him as he eased her into his arms, holding her against him while he stroked her hair. “You're worn out, and you've been through a bad time,” he murmured. “Poor baby, I'll make it up to you. You don't have to worry about a thing now; I'll take care of you.”

“I'm not worn out, and I can take care of myself.” His big body, pressed against her, reminded her too vividly of the times when he'd held her beneath him, making love to her with shattering intensity. Her protest was automatic, and she might have saved her breath for all the attention he paid her.

“I've missed holding you,” he said huskily, moving his lips against her temple. “You smell so sweet. Tell me something, honey. Are you pregnant? Are you going to have my baby?”

A bolt of pain shot through her. Was that why he'd dropped the charges? Was all his talk about believing in her innocence just that—talk? “No,” she almost spat, bracing her hands against his stomach and trying to push him away. “No, I'm not. I found out last week.”

He pulled her hands from his stomach and gently forced her arms behind her back, anchoring them there with one big hand. He was aware of disappointment that she wasn't going to have his baby, but he knew
that it was for the best. He didn't want her to associate the conception of their first child with anything except pleasure, anything except love. She felt so good in his arms, as if part of him had been missing and was now restored. The feel of her firm, round breasts pushing against him made his body stir with arousal, a condition aggravated by the fact that he'd held her naked in his arms all night long, longing to make love to her but knowing that she was exhausted, that she desperately needed sleep.

Tessa could feel what was happening to him, and her throat tightened in mingled fear and remembered ecstasy. The ecstasy was a part of her now, a memory that would never leave her, and she feared him because she was so terribly vulnerable to him. She loved him, and he had hurt her worse than she'd ever imagined she would be hurt. Because she loved him, he could hurt her again, and she had no defenses against him. “Brett, please,” she groaned. “I don't want that to happen. I can't handle it, not now. Please.”

“I know,” he reassured her harshly. “I know. I'm not going to do anything except hold you. You know I won't force you, don't you?”

“Yes.” The word breathed out of her. In that, she did trust him. Physically, he'd never been anything but tender with her.

He relaxed fractionally, but he still held her tightly to him, and gradually she relaxed, too. After all, she'd slept naked in his arms the night before, and he hadn't done anything, so she felt safe standing in the kitchen fully clothed.

The doorbell rang, and she jerked out of his arms,
whirling around like a small, startled animal. “Easy,” he soothed, frowning at her reaction. “That's probably Evan. I told him to come by late this afternoon and we'd start work.”

“Why can't you work in your hotel room?” she demanded, following him into the living room.

“Because I don't have a hotel room,” he explained easily, and opened the door to Evan.

Tessa had an alarming feeling that was too certain to be classified as a suspicion. Rather, she
knew
. But their relationship was too tangled and too private for her to pursue the matter with Evan present, which was something Brett had probably been counting on.

Evan greeted her with a friendliness that put her off stride, particularly when Brett rested his arm heavily around her waist and drew her with him to the couch, keeping her by his side as Evan began pulling papers out of his stuffed briefcase. Tessa sat stiffly for a moment, then moved far enough away from Brett that their bodies weren't touching. Did he think she'd fall for his devoted act? That was all it was, an act, and she wasn't fool enough to be taken in twice. At her movement, Brett's head whipped around, and the expression in his eyes was dangerous, but Evan began talking, and Brett had to turn his attention back to the other man.

“I got some interesting information this afternoon,” Evan said with controlled excitement. “The handwriting analysis of the signature on the checks.”

Brett leaned forward, and Evan passed him the report. Quickly Brett scanned it, his brows knitting in concentration.

“What does it say?” Tessa asked, tilting her head in an effort to read it.

“It says, darling, that the signature on the checks is very similar to yours, but that there are enough differences to make a definite decision impossible. However, the person who wrote those checks is almost certainly a female, and that rules out the one person we've thought all along was the most likely prospect.”

She frowned at the easy endearment, but was distracted by his last sentence. “Who did you think it was?”

“Sammy Wallace,” Evan said, accepting the report as Brett passed it back to him.

“Impossible,” Tessa said immediately.

“We know that now, but he was the most suspicious. According to you, he has a lot of expensive equipment in his apartment, and it had to be paid for in some way.”

So he'd been using her to get information on her friends, too! She clenched her hands as her anger surged. From being numb, she had gone on an emotional roller-coaster, with her moods swinging from one extreme to the other, as if, now that they had broken free of the control she'd placed on them, they were reacting wildly.

“Sammy has been trying to help me,” she said, and both of them looked startled. “If he has the name or number of the account that was used, he can trace it back to the original entry, the time of day it was made, I think even to the original terminal that was used. But he couldn't get the account name.”

A black look crossed Brett's harsh features. “Damn it, I knew someone had been going through the papers in my office!”

She blanched at the thought that she might have gotten Sammy fired. That had been the one thing she had wanted to avoid. “He was only trying to help,” she pointed out, and refrained from adding that Sammy had believed her from the beginning.

As if on cue, the doorbell rang. This time she didn't jump, though the sound jangled her nerves. Evan quickly began gathering papers up as Brett went to the door.

Sammy and Billie stood in the doorway, gaping at Brett; then Billie shot to Tessa's defense. “What are you doing here? Get out! How dare you badger her like this!”

“Settle down,” Brett advised her coolly. “We're not badgering her. We're trying to find out who set her up.”

“What do you mean, set her up?” Billie shot back.

“Just what I said. Well, come on in. This is turning out to be quite a party.” He opened the door wider, and Evan came into their view.

“What is this?” Billie asked suspiciously.

Brett jerked his head sideways in silent command, and they both came cautiously into the apartment. “To begin with, we dropped the charges against Tessa yesterday.”

Sammy's face brightened, but Billie said, “Is that supposed to make everything all right? You think you can just waltz back in here and take up where you left off?”

A flush pinkened Tessa's wan face, and Brett said grimly, “I should be so lucky. No, that isn't what I think. But someone deliberately made it look as if Tessa was embezzling, and I want to know who it was.”

“Billie, please,” Tessa interjected, intending to ask
Billie to halt the hostilities, but she didn't get any further.

“What's wrong with your voice? You sound like a frog.”

“She strained her throat,” Brett said, then deftly changed the subject. “Wallace, I understand that you can trace the account if you have either the name or the number.”

Sammy eyed him cautiously. “That's right.”

“How long would it take you?”

When it came to computers, Sammy lost all his shyness. He was a master in the field, and his confidence showed. “That depends. If I used the master computer at work, a couple of nights. Maybe less.”

“How about if that's all you work on tomorrow?”

“You mean, on company time?”

“That's exactly what I mean.”

“I can give you the data on the original entry tomorrow.”

“Do it,” Brett said.

“What's the account name?”

“Conway, Inc.,” Brett said softly, sensing the way Tessa stiffened. “They used her name, all the way through.”

“No wonder you thought she did it!” Billie muttered.

Sammy was frowning. “No, that's wrong. It isn't Conway, is it?”

“There's another account, under the name of Conmay, Inc. Only one letter is different, and that letter is so similar that, with a dot matrix printer and a bad ribbon, which is the common state of affairs, it's almost
impossible to distinguish between the two when you're checking down a list.”

Hearing how she'd been set up almost made Tessa ill. “Then my name was used to sign the checks written on the account that the company funds were deposited into… .” The evidence had been over-whelming, and all of it had pointed to her. It didn't seem like a casual choice, but a deliberate effort to incriminate her specifically.

Brett looked sharply at her. “That's right.”

“I'll work with you tomorrow,” Evan said to Sammy. “With both of us on it, we can do it in half the time. Who knows, Brett and I may save our jobs yet.”

Tessa froze momentarily, then turned and looked at Brett, a look that was long and very level. “Did you have the authority to drop the charges against me?” she asked quietly.

Brett gave Evan a cutting glance. “I have the authority,” he drawled, daring Evan to say anything else.

“Then let me put it another way: Did you have the authorization to drop the charges?”

“Not exactly,” he said with a wolfish smile. He didn't like her questions, but he wasn't going to lie to her, not now. There was a lot of information he wouldn't volunteer, but if she asked him a direct question, he was going to answer it honestly. “I took the responsibility for the decision.”

“But you could be fired?”

“It's possible, but not likely. Mr. Carter and I have an agreement about things like this. When an on-the-spot decision is called for, I make it.”

There were a lot of questions Tessa wanted to ask
him about that, but not in front of everyone else. She simply added them to her list of things to ask him about when they were alone—and she had no doubt that they would be alone. When the others left, she knew that Brett would be staying.

It wasn't particularly gratifying to find that she was right, but once they were alone again, she turned to face him. She felt far more balanced now than she had in a week, and though she couldn't help feeling grateful to him for taking care of her the day before, when she'd practically been a basket case, it was past time that she faced him. Putting it off wouldn't lessen the hurt.

“Now we talk,” she said.

He nodded, a hint of satisfaction in his eyes, as if he'd found it difficult to restrain himself. “Yes, we do. You've managed to evade the question several times, darling, but now you're going to tell me exactly what
is
wrong with your voice,” he said very softly.

Their eyes met, and she saw the determination in his. She gave a wry smile. “I cried too much.”

Something changed in his face, but before he could speak again, she drew a deep breath and said, “The next question is mine: Where are you staying, now that you've given up your hotel room?”

His eyes moved over her face, and his voice was gentle but implacable when he said, “I'm staying here.”

T
ESSA PULLED HERSELF
up very straight, her gaze unwavering. “I haven't asked you to stay.”

“I know,” he admitted dryly. “That's why I had to invite myself.”

As she stared at him, she realized that he was determined to stay, to wear down her resistance to him. He made her feel hunted, and desperation made her angry. “Damn it, Brett, it's over!”

“Not by a long shot. I'm not giving up, baby. I'm not going to let you go. What we have together is too good to just give up on.”

“We never had anything
together
!” she said bitterly. “I had love, while you had your investigation. Now you have your guilt, and I…I just don't want any part of it,” she finished in a dull tone.