He all but frog-marched her to the elevator bank and into a waiting car. He swiped his card in the reader and hit a button. As the doors closed them into the isolation of the car Josh faced her. He knew the expression on his face was anything but friendly.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"Why aren't we going up to your floor?" Callie countered.
"You wanted to talk to me. You have my undivided attention for the next five minutes. Now, talk."
"You used me."
"As you did me. Call it even." He crossed his arms and assumed an expression of boredom. "Is that it?"
"No, that's not it."
Anger suited her-her brown eyes, usually doelike and sexy, hardened and shone like dark polished cherry-wood. He tried to keep his observation on a dispassionate level, but the primal beat of his libido shouted him down. Even as distant as he attempted to remain, face-to-face she still affected him on a base level he couldn't control. And knowing that made him need to withdraw even more.
He raised one brow and waited for her to continue.
"You deliberately fed me information that would damage Bruce Palmer."
"You gave it to them."
"How could you do that?"
"Business." He sighed, "Look, this is a waste of time. You made it quite clear the other night where your loyalties lie and they're not with me. The fact you gave them the information you did is proof positive."
And that, he admitted, hurt more than he'd been prepared for. The past two weeks had been hell. He hadn't even begun to look for a new assistant. This close to Christmas who could be bothered anyway? No, he needed to be honest. He'd tried to tell himself he didn't trust anyone else to work alongside him, but it was much more than that.
He'd missed Callie with an aching need that he didn't want to begin to examine. The last time he'd felt so bereft, so lost, had been when his mother died. But Callie was nothing like his mother. It hadn't been difficult to remind himself of that.
"What happened with your employers is no more than what they deserved."
"Was everything a lie, Josh?"
He looked at her and bit back the retort that flew to his lips. She should know all about lies.
She closed the short distance between them and laid a hand on his chest, her slender fingers curving over his heart.
"We had something there. Something special. I know I screwed up, but please. Won't you hear it from my side-my reasons why?"
"You and I have nothing further to discuss. You took your job with me under false pretences. You abused a position of trust to feed information back to people you knew were my enemy both personally and professionally. Why the hell should I believe that whatever else we shared was any different?
"To be honest, you went above and beyond the call of duty by sleeping with me. I don't think even Irene Palmer could have expected that of you."
He didn't miss the look on Callie's face and felt ice form deep inside his chest at the truth he saw reflected there. He took her hand and removed it from him.
"So, she did expect that of you. And like a well-trained puppet you did exactly as she said. Well, I hope they're looking after you, Callie. You're quite the employee of the month."
"I told you before. I couldn't have done that if I hadn't been falling in love with you. I'm not like that."
"I believe you mentioned food and shelter once before. However you dress it up, this was no different."
"Josh," her voice broke, "I love you."
"Then I'm sorry for you, because I could never love anyone I didn't trust and I do not trust you."
Even as he spoke he felt a shaft of pain as a shadow of longing died deep inside. He released the lock on the elevator and the doors opened. As she walked away, he gritted his teeth and forced himself to hit the button that would close the doors and shoot him skyward to his office, to where she still lingered even though he'd ordered her things removed and her desk cleared.
It was over-the damage had been done. Which left one last task on his list.
Josh tossed the morning newspaper onto his breakfast table in disgust. Couldn't they find anything better to report in the lead-up to Christmas? Did speculation about the consul appointment to Guildara really warrant such intense coverage?
Really, he didn't know why he was so at odds. The media coverage was heightening interest. Interest that would fly off the Richter scale when he exposed the prime candidate for the kind of man he really was.
He stalked through to the living room and snatched his mother's chest off the bookcase. He flipped it open; he hadn't bothered to lock it again. What was the point? It was as if by locking it he could keep what had happened shut away inside, allowing it to fester and grow.
But the time had come to let it go. To use what was there and finally achieve some form of recompense for his mother's hardship, and her early death. Today was the day he'd planned to release the letters to the media. He'd have bet his entire fortune on the fact they'd be falling over one another to decry the man they feted now.
He should just send the letters to the national newspaper and be done with it. Then he could just sit back and anticipate Bruce Palmer's very public downfall with a deep satisfaction. Yet somehow, the satisfaction in what he knew would be the ultimate outcome was lacking. Against his will, Callie's words to him echoed in his mind.
Promise me you'll read the letters again. Really read them this time.
Unable to ignore the compulsion any longer, he carefully lifted the first of the less seriously damaged envelopes he'd retrieved and, after setting the box back on the shelf, gingerly slid the letter out from inside.
He dropped down into an easy chair and unfolded the charred sheet of paper, his fingers blackening as they held its damaged edges. His eyes roamed over the words. Words of love from a married man to his mother. Words that promised the earth, together with an undying love.
Josh finished the letter and reached for the next.
Ten minutes later his eyes burned as he read the second to last letter in the box. He was suffering eye-strain, that's all it was, he told himself. But deep down he knew he couldn't lie to himself anymore. With the maturity of his years and without the rawness of teen grief, he'd read the letters in a new light.
With each one his anger had lessened a degree. His bitterness paled. There were nuances in the letters he'd totally missed the first time he'd read them. Nuances that spoke volumes as to how miserable and unhappy Bruce had been in his marriage to Irene.
They weren't the words of a man to a woman he saw as a casual fling. Every letter he'd addressed "To my dearest, Suzanne" and he'd signed off "Yours forever, Bruce." While the rest of her life had undoubtedly been hard, his mother had genuinely known love. For that alone, Josh could find a glimmer of gratefulness.
Had Bruce Palmer really planned to leave his wife, as he'd promised? To make a new life with Josh's mother? It had certainly appeared to be so. But what had happened to kill that? To have him send her away so callously?
Josh set down the letter he'd been reading and reached inside the box for the final envelope. He extracted the typewritten note on an early version of Palmer Enterprises letterhead and the company cheque that his mother had never deposited.
How had Bruce gone from a man devotedly in love to the cold, calculating creature who had sent this letter and cheque? Telling Suzanne to leave and to never show her face again. It just didn't make sense, but it had made enough sense to his mother that she'd packed her bags and checked out of the boardinghouse where she'd stayed in Auckland, and seen her catch the first bus south.
He stared blankly at the now rusty staple that still attached the cheque to the letter and idly flipped the paper to look again at the sum of money Bruce Palmer had thought worth getting rid of his mistress forever. A paltry sum in today's terms, but it would have made a difference for his mother back then.
It didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore. Suzanne was dead and no amount of revenge would bring her back.
Josh went to scoop the letters up and put them back in the box, but something stilled his hand. A niggle in the back of his mind that wouldn't let go.
He picked up the letter with the cheque attached and studied it anew.
"Well, I'll be damned," he said to the empty room.
He hadn't expected Irene Palmer to agree to see him so easily, but it seemed that whoever was acting as her assistant these days had no idea he was persona non grata in the exalted Palmer Enterprises building. The looks he'd received on his way up to Irene's office would have made him laugh out loud had he not been so hell-bent on reaching his destination.