Lucky Charm (7 page)

Reluctantly he wrenched his mind back to what she’d said.

“Generally,” he admitted, “they took me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting that kind of response.”

“Matt,” she asked, “why were they beating you?”

Her question was like being doused with cold water – a sudden cold reminder of the reason he was here. And it wasn’t to make love to pretty, elf-like women. Bill. He was the real reason he was here. That was what he should be thinking about.

There’d been only Matt’s word about the content of the phone call. A trace of the phone call would only have verified a call had been made. Even then Bill hadn’t been specific. He’d just asked Matt to come, to look at something he’d found. What it was even Matt didn’t know. So he’d kept his thoughts and suspicions to himself and begun his own investigation, with Darrin’s consent.

He’d spotted the tail in San Diego, after he’d tried to check out Bill’s office. He thought he’d lost them when he’d gone to Sacramento, but he hadn’t. The three stooges, he called them. Larry, Moe and Curly. He’d hoped he’d lost them for good with this jump to the East Coast.

Just the fact that they were there was all Matt needed to confirm that something indeed was going on. If only because they seemed grossly over-qualified for simple security.

The three last night – Harpo, Chico and Groucho, for want of better names – were a different breed, probably part of Marathon’s standard security. He hadn’t expected them to be nearly so… aggressive. Or that they would set a trap for him. They were only supposed to be building security, little more than Rent-a-Cops. Those boys had been a lot more, and obviously they’d been forewarned.

Even so, without the Taser and the shot to his head, they should never have taken him. He hadn’t been prepared for the ferocity of the attack and he’d been caught off guard.

He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

All his training in the service and since, all his expertise, and three goons had nearly taken him down. All because of his own arrogance, his own carelessness. Would have succeeded in taking him down if it hadn’t been for the woman beside him. It had been an exercise in stupidity. His own. He knew better. He was more than a little disgusted with himself.

Matt had a pretty good idea what would have happened to him if Ariel hadn’t shown up. Another Bill. Dumped in an alley and written off as a mugging, random urban violence. Even with all his training. Now he knew how they’d taken Bill out. In the service he’d been a step above his old buddy and he’d learned a few more things since. He’d been damned stupid, damned careless… and damned lucky. Lucky that Ariel had turned up and lucky she’d had enough guts to go to bat for him. Literally.

One thing was certain, though and that was that there was a lot more going on here than even he knew. Given that knowledge, he wasn’t getting her any more involved in this than she already was. He was pretty certain those men hadn’t gotten a good look at her. She’d been quick, resolute and incredibly brave.

But she was in this as deep as he’d let her go.

He shook his head. “Thank you for last night, for this but I’d better go.”

Reluctantly, Matt turned away, pulled his clothes back on.

Suddenly there was an awkwardness between them that hadn’t been there moments before.

Ariel watched as he closed up, his eyes going opaque, his expression setting.

She couldn’t decide how she felt about it. On the one hand, something within her had eased but something else had awakened again. There was an odd pang at the thought that she might never see him again and yet she had no right to expect anything different. He was a complete stranger.

It’s probably for the best
, she decided. She wasn’t certain she wanted to know, really.

It had been wonderful, though.

Had time dimmed the memory of lovemaking or had it truly been that good
? She wondered.

Whichever it was, she was grateful for it. She’d forgotten what it was like to be touched, to make love, to feel that shattering pleasure.

It was hard not to watch as he dressed or to think of anything else except how beautiful he was. It was almost a shame to cover up those long legs with jeans but he looked so good in them. He had a body for wearing nothing but denim, tight muscles with the dusting of hair rising in a narrowing triangle above the waistband to just below his navel. Then he pulled the dark-colored t-shirt over his head and tucked it into place. His deep tan and fair hair were such a sharp contrast to the dark t-shirt. He looked fantastic, all rangy and sexy.

With a wry smile, she held out his keys. “You’ll need these, then.”

As Matt took them from her he realized she’d never really answered his question, not the one he really wanted answered. Why had she done this? Why such a need, why that yearning? She seemed strong and confident, definitely not the one-night-stand type.

“Why this?” he repeated, because he had to know and then watched that core of strength shatter.

That was the one question Ariel hadn’t wanted to think about and didn’t want to consider. Loneliness, sorrow and grief roared up out of the box in her mind. With them came the memory of strong arms and a face she’d loved to touch. Suddenly she could barely remember what he’d looked like, there was only the impression of dark eyes and dark hair. Grief battered her. She was losing him again, losing even the memory of him. He was gone.  Pain welled. She’d known love, she’d known pain and she was so tired of being alone. So tired of hurting.

No.

She couldn’t think about that, wouldn’t resurrect it, she didn’t want to suffer that pain again, that tearing grief that felt as if her heart was torn and bleeding, mourning and agony burning in her chest like acid.

Frantically, she shoved it all back inside that mental box, slammed the lid and locked it tight. She focused instead on the warmth, the joy and passion of the past few moments. She would hold that but no more and no closer.

It was better this way, for both of them. Better not to feel, not to get attached…not to care.

“You’d better go,” she said, softly, with an attempt at lightness. “We’ll probably never see each other again. They say babies fail to thrive if they’re not touched now and then. I guess some adults do, too. You gave me that. It was a joy, Matthew, and I’m very grateful.”

Matt wished suddenly and intensely that he hadn’t asked.

Where there had been such life in her eyes there was now a terrible sadness and a deep sorrow. What the hell had happened?

Looking in them he could tell it was all the answer he would get.

If he had his secrets he couldn’t quibble, she was entitled to hers as well. Maybe that was all he had the right to ask, all things considered. It might be all the answer he wanted to know. He certainly didn’t want to get any more involved with her than she seemed to want from him.

He looked down into eyes as blue as the sky and for a moment wished it could be different.

Looking up at him, at his blond hair tousled from their lovemaking, from her hands in it, Ariel committed his face, with its good, clean, rugged lines to memory. She memorized the sensation of his firm mouth, it had been so soft when he’d kissed her, his broad shoulders strong beneath her hands. His powerful hands had drawn such pleasure from her, a pleasure she hadn’t felt in so long. And his amazing, incredible green eyes.

She was grateful. Whatever else, she felt as if some kind of pressure had been relieved, that a release had been granted her. The need for human contact, for touching and holding, had been assuaged, if only for a little while. She’d needed his gentleness, his kindness and passion, and now that she’d had it she couldn’t bring herself to regret it.

It was over, though. This was as close as she could bear. There was relief in that, too.

Matt saw it in her eyes, as if a shutter closed behind her eyes.

Strength and courage against some unbearable sorrow. She wouldn’t tell him what had happened but he could see the gratitude in her expression. It would have to be enough. At least there was no regret. He could be thankful for that.

Quickly, he framed her face in his hands and leaned down to kiss her one last time.

Her lips moved beneath his. It was so tempting. He could drown in that kiss.

Instead, deliberately, he stepped away, looking back at her just once before he closed the door behind him.

She sat cross-legged on the bed, naked, utterly unselfconscious. Her dark hair framed that elfin face, tumbled over her pale shoulders and full breasts.

Ariel,

Blue eyes and that soft rosy mouth. He wouldn’t forget her soon, or easily. He owed her his life and one intense and passionate morning.

Deliberately he shut the door, closing off that vision.

Now he had to concentrate on Bill, on why he’d died. On who had killed him and why?

What had happened the previous night had been only more proof Marathon had something they wanted to hide and badly. As had everything else since he’d gotten the phone call from Bill that night.

Something was going on at Marathon Corp.

Bill had either found it or stumbled over it somehow. All Matt knew for certain was that Marathon was involved.

It wasn’t just Bill’s phone call.

While Matt and Bill’s wife had been arranging for his cremation the house had been robbed. Although the thieves had stolen the television, they’d also ransacked Bill’s office. At the same time Marathon had cleared Bill’s office. The speed with which they’d done it had been revealing.

They hadn’t started tailing him, though, until after his break-in of their office. Another tell-tale but not something Matt could take to the police.

The unknown ‘they’ had missed something, though. They hadn’t cleared his trash can.

They’d missed Bill’s doodles.

Doodling had been Bill’s way of clarifying his thoughts, clearing his mind.

On his blotter at home, on scraps of paper and the few items Matt had found in Bill’s trash were circles and arrows. Those doodles linked Marathon and another financial company called Genesis. How they were linked Matt didn’t yet know. It was that knowledge, or something about it, that had caused Bill’s death.

Matt just couldn’t prove it, couldn’t get into Marathon’s records to find the evidence he knew had to be there.

That last view he had of Ariel O’Donnell, though, hovered in the back of his mind.

Clothed only in her black hair she was lovely. A nymph or an elf.

Fort Lauderdale in the summer was beautiful. The sky was brilliantly blue. Palm trees and palmetto bushes swayed in the ocean breeze. It was also hot and very humid, sticky and close, despite that breeze.

Ariel wished she could enjoy it more. She didn’t know how it happened but she always traveled to southern states in the summer and northern states in the winter. It would have worked so much better the other way around. It was one of the ironies of life. It was a good thing, too, that the taxi had good air conditioning or she’d have been wilted before she arrived. In fact, it was better than her rental car, lost somewhere in the parking garage.

The cab dropped her off in front of the glittering steel and glass tower that housed Marathon Corp. She’d already noticed that if you stood by one of those dark tinted windows you could feel the heat radiate from it. Not that she would see any windows or natural light all day. No, she was in sunny Fort Lauderdale with no chance to enjoy it. Instead, she would be locked in a training room all day and resolving software issues for half the night.

Only day two
, she thought with a sigh, as she rode the elevator up, with three more to go in this region before she moved west. Next week, there would be another city. Marathon had offices all over the country and she was going to see almost all of them.
Sometimes more than one a week
.

The doors opened on the bottom of the two floors that Marathon occupied in this building. She knew which way to turn here.

“So,” Steve Parsons asked as she walked into the office, falling in beside her, “how did it go last night?”

He was the computer technician for Marathon. A whiz at setting up and maintaining the servers, he knew little about the software Ariel was about to set up and less about finance.