Defiant Mistress, Ruthless Millionaire(24)

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.