Eclipse of the Heart (25 page)

"Stop?"
He glared at her.
"You don't want to hear the consequences of your actions?
Too damn bad."

"You're pretty quick to judge me," she said.

"The evidence speaks for itself!"

"What evidence? I did not send that note."

"Should I say nice try?" Logan shook his head.
"You can plainly see that you're the author." He gestured to the
screen.

"I—"

"Don't try to defend
yourself
,"
he interrupted. "I already did that. I was fool enough to think you
couldn't have done it. I didn't want to believe you would be so
heartless." He paused, and Amanda tensed for the final blow she could see
he planned to deliver.

Logan blew out a disgusted breath. "I had one of the IT
guys confirm that it came, not just from your email, but from your office
computer."

Amanda could only stare. Why would someone have done this to
her? More importantly, who had done this to her? She needed to find out.
Now.

She looked down at her frumpy sweats. She needed to take a
shower, get dressed and head for the office—

A new horror slammed over her. She'd been fired. How had she
managed to forget that already? She couldn't go into the office and talk to the
IT people, or anyone else who might help her figure out what had happened. Even
worse, she'd lost her health insurance, and her paycheck, two things she needed
more than ever.

"You can't fire me," she said.

Logan didn't even hesitate over the change in the topic.
"Thanks to you," he snarled, "I still own one hundred percent of
the company. I can do whatever I want."

She rubbed her forehead, wishing she could think clearly.
Too much was coming at her to sort out the critical from the merely awful.

"Wait a minute." She looked up at Logan. "No
one would cancel a public offering over a letter like that." She pointed
at his computer. "What else happened?"

He pressed his lips together. "That's not the
point."

"It certainly is. Two of the four things I'm alleged to
have done to ruin you are related to that public offering. What else
happened?"

He sat down abruptly on her sofa and pushed a hand through
his hair. "If you must know, Phoebe Cattus was running an escort service
out of the office. The news broke Friday morning."

Amanda slid
bonelessly
onto a
chair facing him. "Wow."

Something niggled at the back of her brain, but she couldn't
tease it out yet. "That was enough to derail the offering?"

A tinge of red appeared on his cheekbones. "There was
more, but that was the gist of it."

More?
Amanda studied him for a
minute before the light went on. Someone had discovered that he used an escort
service.
Maybe the same one.

"No," he said, "not hers. Give me credit for some
taste."

With a big effort, she resisted rolling her eyes. "
Sooo
…" She drew out the word. "Is it my fault
that the use of escort services torpedoed your public offering?"

"Phoebe was clever," he admitted. "She told
me she'd get back at me for firing her. She held a press conference at 8
o'clock yesterday morning. Plenty of time for the blogging world to
pick up the news before the stock exchange opened."

"When did you find out about the discrimination
lawsuit?"

"Those papers were filed Thursday afternoon. We spent
all of Thursday night trying to contain the fallout from that."

"Really?"
Amanda raised
her eyebrows. "You don't think that's too much of a coincidence? Phoebe
Cattus is involved in both of the actions that derailed your public
offering."

"Don't be paranoid. How would she get access to your
computer?"

"I don't know." Amanda sneezed. "But I do
know I did not write that note. Think about it. I have a sister disabled from a
serious disease. Would I hurt another person with those words? Furthermore, I
would never close down any deal on my own authority.
Least of
all this deal."
Her words rolled around in her head, taunting her.
"This was the company I wanted to run," she said sadly. "Didn't
you know that?"

He shrugged. "I thought you'd changed your mind."

"Why?"

He closed his laptop, as if giving her notice that her time
had run out. "Managing Daily Eats would have required a move to
Philadelphia," he said. "I thought maybe you'd decided you didn't
want to move and figured the best way to eliminate the opportunity would be to
sabotage the deal."

"Excuse me," she said carefully. "What made
you think I wouldn't want to move?"

He stretched his long legs out in front of him and seemed to
study his toes. "Hell. I was a damn fool."

"Yes, we've established that. But I still don't know
why you thought I wouldn't move to Philadelphia."

His gaze snapped to her face. "I thought you might have
been hoping for a relationship with me."

Her mouth opened. Actually fell open in shock. All this time
she'd been thinking she'd hidden her feelings. She was as much of a fool as he
was.

Then another thought sideswiped her.
The
pregnancy.
For a few minutes, she'd managed to forget that calamity
again.

How was she ever going to tell him about the pregnancy?

Given what he'd just said, he would be sure to think she'd
tried to trap him.

Logan frowned, as if he'd been listening to her thoughts.
"Why were you carrying on about this being my fault?"

"Why did you say you knew why I didn't come into work
yesterday?" she countered. "I didn't know about this lawsuit."

"Josh didn't warn you the offering had been
pulled?"

"Uh—" At her hesitation, a cynical look entered
his eyes.

"He called," she said quickly. "But only to
tell me the dinner was off."

"He didn't tell you why? You didn't ask?" Logan
shook his head. "Come on, Amanda. You're not stupid."

She couldn't even take comfort from that backhanded
compliment. The father of her child didn't think she was dumb, but he despised
her.

She took a deep breath, trying to crowd out the dread that crept
through every cell of her body. She had to tell him and get it over with. There
was no point in thinking he might be more receptive to the news if he were in a
better mood, because he was never going to be in a better mood with her.

"I didn't ask Josh for any details because I was in the
doctor's office when he called." She swallowed. This was going to be hard,
very hard.

"I'm sorry you're sick." The words were
perfunctory. He stood up, clearly intending to leave.

"I'm not exactly sick." She heard the note of
desperation in her voice. She had to tell him before he left because, in the
back of her mind, a plan was forming. He wouldn't fire her if she were
pregnant.

Would he?

She had to have that job. Even if Daily Eats were a lost
cause, and she would get to the bottom of who'd sent that note if it was the
last thing she ever did, she still needed an income and health insurance. Her
baby was more important than her pride.

She opened her mouth, and the words finally spilled out.
"I'm pregnant."

Logan collapsed back onto the sofa, closing his eyes as if
he couldn't bear even to look at her. For a long moment, there was no sound in
the room.

"You know," he said softly, "I suppose on
some level I always knew I’d be caught this way."

"Caught?" The word strangled in her throat.
"How are you caught?"

He placed his computer back on the table carefully and
looked at her, his gray eyes expressionless. "I presume you’re expecting
me to marry you."

Amanda gasped. "You presume too much!" She surged
to her feet. "I have no intention of marrying you."

His gaze never wavered. "Then what is the point of the
big confession?"

"Good question," she snapped. "If I ever
figure out why I thought you might be interested in knowing you were going to
be a father, I’ll be sure to let you know."
Thank you, God, she said,
rolling her eyes to the ceiling. She got the whole thing out without a single
tremor
.

Turning on her heel she walked across the room and yanked
open the front door.
"Out!"

"Damnit, Amanda—" He stood up and hefted his
laptop once more.

She had to say something to get him to leave before she
broke down completely. "You can console yourself," she said,
"with the fact that the doctor said I wasn't likely to be able to hold
onto the pregnancy." It wasn't true. What doctor would say that? But he
was a guy. He wouldn't know. If he believed her, he might decide he was well
and truly off the hook, and get out of her life. She'd carry on by herself.

***

Before the weekend was over, Logan knew he'd badly bungled
his confrontation with Amanda. He wasn't ready to absolve her of guilt in the
matter of the Daily Eats email, but that issue was overshadowed by his
clumsiness in how he handled the announcement of the pregnancy.

For one critical moment, he'd been terrified at the thought
of bringing into the world a child of his own seed who would need his love, a
person who would plunge him into the morass of human emotions he had
permanently forsworn. He didn’t want any claims on his emotions. Hadn’t he made
that clear enough?

But the look in Amanda’s eyes at his response had been a
dagger thrown deeply into his heart. He feared it might end up being more
painful than the emotional pull of a child.

That didn't mean he was ready to forgive her for her
betrayal. No matter how he sifted the news about the pregnancy, he couldn't
imagine a scenario where she was innocent. Yeah, they'd had that one
unprotected moment. But she'd initiated that encounter, and she'd been the one
to slide over him without protection. His blood heated at the memory. But no
matter how good the ungloved slide had felt
,
he hadn't
lost his head. He'd been the one to stop and insist on the condom, not her.

He had to conclude that she wasn't on the pill as she'd
said. If she had been, she wouldn't have gotten pregnant even with that one
unprotected moment. If she'd lied about the pill, it was hard to avoid the
conclusion that she might have been trying to trap him by getting pregnant.

That was an unforgivable betrayal.

He sighed, flipping on the CD player in the limo. A Debussy
sonata wrapped around him, and he tried to lose himself in the music. But guilt
hammered at him.

No matter how the pregnancy had happened, he had some level
of responsibility. Of course, he intended to support the child and be involved
in his or her life, but he feared that wouldn't be enough. He really couldn't
simply walk away from the child's mother. Amanda was a strong woman, but she
didn't seem to have a good support network. Her mother was already dealing with
the sick sister and living in Denver, her best friend was in France, and Logan
himself had just cut her off from her job and health insurance.

One fact was inescapable. Although she deserved firing for
the Daily Eats email, he would have to arrange some kind of a job for her now
that she was pregnant. He'd have to have a talk with Letty in HR and see what
could be worked out.

With that decision made, he tried to clear his mind and
attack Monday's work. He'd wait until mid-morning to call Amanda. She hadn't
looked well on Saturday, and he hoped she was sleeping in.

***

Amanda had been up at dawn on Monday morning. By 7, she was
in the office, talking to a tech about the email message to the Molloys. She
didn't know if Logan would send a security guard to throw her out of the
office, but she had to take the chance.

Unfortunately, the tech confirmed what Logan had said. The
message had definitely been sent from Amanda's computer.
Which
meant someone had used her computer to send it.

The pieces of the puzzle swarmed around in her head. Her
email would have had to be open. How did the person know what to say to the
Molloys? Who knew enough about the Daily Eats deal and also had reason to try
to create trouble for her?

She texted Rosie and begged her to come in early and meet
her for breakfast.

"It would take balls to sneak into your office and type
on your computer," Rosie said after hearing the story about the email.

"But it feels like a female thing to do," Amanda
argued.
"The sneakiness."

"Yeah, it would be easy to be trapped in an office.
With the cubicles, you could hear someone coming and simply move on."

"Wait!" Amanda dropped the plastic spoon she was
using to eat a carton of plain yogurt. "I surprised Phoebe in my office
one day. She—"

"Phoebe!" Rosie slapped her hand on the table.
"Who else?
She's hated your guts since the first
day."

"What did I ever do to her?"

"Attracted the boss," Rosie said wryly.
"That's all it took to piss off a conniving bitch like Phoebe."

"I didn't—"Amanda cut herself off. She could
hardly argue she hadn't attracted the boss after everything that had happened.

"Right."
Rosie grinned.
"No point
denyin
' he's got the
hots
for you."

"Had," Amanda corrected absently. "I'm fired,
by the way."

Rosie gasped.
"No way!"

"Yes, way.
Hurry up." She
waved at Rosie's breakfast. "I need to go confront Phoebe." Her own
small appetite had fled.

"Wait!" Rosie waved her hands in the air.
"Back up a minute. Why are you fired?"

"Never mind that now. I need to get my job back and the
way to do that is to prove that someone else sent that email."

"Ugh." Rosie dropped her bagel onto her plate.
"You can't confront Phoebe. She's fired, too."