Forbidden Fantasies Bundle(143)

“Are you all right?”

“Mmm, hmm.”

She didn’t sound angry. “I’m sorry.” He winced at how inadequate the words sounded.

She raised her head and met his eyes. “I’m sorry, too.”

He frowned. “For what? You didn’t do anything.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “I punched you and I said you were like Hadley Richards.”

“Okay. Apology accepted for the Hadley Richards part. But I deserved the punch.” He studied her. She hadn’t said she’d accepted his apology, but she clearly wasn’t angry anymore. Maybe he ought to leave well enough alone.

Going with instinct, he rose to a sitting position and then settled her on his lap. “You pack a mean wallop, but I deserved it for not telling you I was Ethan Blair. Are you going to forgive me?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “I kind of liked him.”

“You did?” Jed wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

When she said nothing and merely nestled her head against his shoulder, Jed found the gesture almost unbearably sweet. For a moment he couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. Minutes ago, there’d been so much heat, and now, all he felt was a warmth, pure and true, spreading through him.

“I think that punch had Hadley Richards’s name on it, and you got caught in the crosshairs of the anger I was feeling for him.”

He tightened his arm around her. “He used you.”

“Right from the beginning, I think. I’ll bet that he hired me with those reports in mind, and then he seduced me.”

Jed tried to keep his voice calm as jealousy sliced through him. “I thought you said that you didn’t have an affair.”

“We didn’t, and he didn’t literally seduce me. I don’t think I’m his type.”

Frowning, Jed lifted her chin so that she met his eyes. “What are you saying?”

“He seduced my mind by telling me what great work I was doing, how he trusted me more than any of the other data analysts. And all the time he was setting me up.” Her hands fisted in her lap and her voice tightened. “He knew that I wouldn’t go for an affair because he was married. But I can see now that he set it up to make it look like we were having an affair—inviting me to business lunches, asking me to deliver that report and meet him in the bar. He even took me to high tea once because he knew that I preferred tea over coffee. He’d done his homework.”

Jed ran his hand down her back and up again. “The bastard,” Jed murmured. He could see exactly how Hadley had orchestrated it. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She met his eyes steadily. “Wasn’t it? I was gullible and needy for some kind of male approval. He saw that and used it to his advantage. I’m never going to let a man do that to me again.”

Whatever Jed would have said dried in his throat when he saw something flash into her eyes. “What?”

“That’s it.” Scrambling up, she grabbed her clothes and struggled into them. Then she raced for the small office.

By the time he caught up with her, her fingers were racing over the keys.

“There’s been something bothering me all day, something I couldn’t quite remember. Shortly after I was hired, Hadley told me that the reason he’d hired me was because of my data-gathering skills. He wanted me to do a little off-the-record research for him. He claimed a friend had extensive corporate holdings, and he suspected that one of them was being used for money laundering. He asked me to investigate. There.” She paused to point at the screen. “The company was called Manning Imports.”

“So?” Jed asked.

“In my confidential report, I told Hadley that Manning Imports was indeed laundering money for the Vidal drug cartel.”

This time, Jed said nothing. He could hear the excitement in her voice.

“I might not have even remembered this report if I hadn’t gotten so angry just now.” She scrolled down a screen and pointed to a name. “Manning Imports is owned by a company that is owned by McManus Pharmaceuticals.”

Jed stared at the screen, his mind racing. “He had you find the proof that his wife’s company was engaged in money laundering? Why?”

“I was naive, impressionable, and he knew he was going to fire me under circumstances that I would find humiliating. Maybe he wanted to see if the connection could be made?”

Jed nodded. “And if you could make it, then someone else—like Frank Medici—could also find it?”

“Yes. But I think he’d already made his plan to get rid of Frank. And you. What I was able to find probably just cinched it.”