Damned If You Don't Read online

  Morgan kept on speaking, deciding not to listen to a word he said. “You know what hurts the most? I mean, I know this might not seem true after what happened to us, but it is. I don’t just fall into bed with men.”

  He picked up her hand, gently rubbing the back with his thumb. “I believe you. Do you think you could start believing me too?”

  “I’m trying, Jack. I really am.”

  “Try harder.”

  “That is soooo easier said than done. Every time I open the gates on my feelings, those feelings get trampled. You’re smooth, Jack. Almost too smooth. Don’t you get it? I’m really tired of being hurt.”

  He grinned, rose, and then gave her a swift peck on the cheek. “Guess I’m going to have to convince you the hard way. Go take your bath. By the time you’re finished, room service will be here.”

  Morgan shook her head. Jack was Jack. She rose and shrugged. He wasn’t about to give up but neither was she.

  * * * *

  Nearly an hour later and feeling definitely more human, Morgan stepped out of the bathroom. The aroma of dinner made her mouth water. He’d even ordered a bottle of wine.

  “I thought we were on a budget,” she said, before her tone turned nasty. Was her desire to be bitchy because she was afraid of what would happen if she allowed him to be nice?

  “We are. I kept it simple. I could have spent a lot more.” He opened the bottle, pulling out the cork with way more force than necessary. “Do you want to have a glass, or not?”

  Morgan frowned. Her emotions were already riding a colossal roller coaster; he didn’t have to add to her angst. Or maybe that was his way of retaliating. “I don’t get it. Not too long ago you were being nice. Now you’re not. You doing the good-cop, bad-cop thing?”

  “No. I just got testy. I really am trying.”

  “Try harder.”

  She watched his jaw clench, but he had the good sense not to answer, which made her feel better.

  “I’m hungry,” he stated, placing dishes and cutlery on the small table. “How about we eat first, fight later.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Then we can have make-up sex,” he added with a wink. Funny, but Jack’s moods seemed mercurial. And about as stable as her own.

  Morgan threw him a look, sat down at the table, and lifted the cover to her dish. She inhaled. “Heavenly.” The chicken, covered in sauce and mushrooms, looked delicious. And asparagus, green and seemingly cooked to perfection. She lifted her wineglass after he poured.

  “What shall we drink to?” he asked. “Us, perhaps?”

  “No. Let’s drink to the truth.”

  He stared at her as if to say she needed to learn that one as much as he did. However, he lifted his glass and replied, “Truth it is.”

  They ate in near silence, both of them starving. Then Jack cleared away the dishes. Once he’d placed the tray in the hallway and come back into the room she asked, “Do you want to go downstairs now and let me show you the data stick?”

  “No, I have a better idea.” His gaze lasered into her, bypassing hot, hotter, and hottest all the way to supernova. “I’ll show you my stick first.”

  He didn’t give her a chance to say no. He rose, walked around the table, lifted her out of her seat, and simply pulled her tight against his body. Even though Morgan had known he would try, she hadn’t expected immediate capitulation. Oh, pride? Hello? You in there?

  Talk about being betrayed. By her own body, no less. It knew exactly what it wanted and refused to accept no for an answer. He feathered kisses over her forehead, down her cheek, grazing her lips with his. Delicate shivers racked her muscles. Her hands clenched at her sides. She willed them not to move. She refused to give him an inch.

  He took a mile. He lifted her up and threw her onto the middle of the bed. “All right, kitten. We’ll play this your way. I already know you’re hotter than a furnace for me right now, but if you want me to prove it, then I guess I’ll just have to prove it.”

  He pounced on her, covering her body with his. At first, he simply kissed her. And kissed her. And kissed her. Until she knew she was going to go insane if he didn’t play with the other parts of her body.

  She squirmed, trying to get her hips against his.

  He finally came up for air with a soft laugh. “Oh no, kitten. I’m not going to do this with clothes on. So you make up your mind right now. Yes or no?”

  Was he kidding?

  Morgan found her pride cowering in a corner in the face of desire. God, she was going to hate herself in the morning. Or was she? A thought entered her head that wouldn’t leave. Did she dare? Not one scruple stopped her from taking his hand and placing it squarely on top of her breast.

  He bent his head down and lowered his mouth to hers again and all sane thought ceased. He pumped his hips, just as a reminder, and flames shot through her core. He’d wanted this to be his show, so Morgan let him drive. He reached under her shirt to play with her breast as requested. The next thing she knew he decided her shirt had to go and she found her buttons had been unbuttoned and his fingers were pulling on her nipples inside her bra.

  She gasped, unconsciously riding him. “Fly with me,” he whispered.

  But before she could, his lips locked on hers again. His tongue tasted everywhere inside her mouth. Hers entwined with his as pure heat filled her body.

  This getting dressed, getting undressed, business would have to go. He flipped over onto his back. “The jeans,” he choked out as he bit and sucked his way down her neck.

  Morgan scooted to the side a little and unsnapped them. He let out a heartfelt sigh of relief when the denim folds parted. She rubbed her hand up and down the hard length of him through his boxers and he shook his head. Her turn to grin.

  He fell back against the bed. There couldn’t possibly be anything remotely sexy about trying to help a man struggle out of tight jeans when he had a hard-on, but his eyes glittered as if she were the sexiest, most beautiful creature on earth.

  Morgan stopped, aware, perhaps for the first time in her life, of being a woman with innate power. She’d always wondered why they called it a battle of the sexes, finding now that lovemaking could distill down to one-upmanship. But then she realized, as he watched her remove her clothes and his gaze darkened and filled with raw desire, that she was wrong. The give and take between a man and a woman was exactly that. And without balance, it meant nothing. She knew what she had to do.

  She straddled his legs again, lying down on top of as much of his body as she could. “You want me.” She exhaled in awe.

  “So bad, I think I might die in a second. If we don’t— You know—”

  She slid back and pulled his boxers down to his thighs. As much as she wanted to inhale him right then and there, she knew better. She rose onto her knees and inched her way back up to his chest so he could feast on her breasts.

  He would never know how good that felt.

  Then she slid back a little so that the tip of his erection grazed the outer edges of her core. He swallowed. Hard. Sweat beaded his brow. “Umm. I thought this was going to be my show.”

  “It was. It still is.” She grazed his tip again.

  “You need to get off a minute,” he choked. “In my back pocket—”

  She slid back a little farther and smiled. “Not just yet.”

  He gasped and closed his eyes. “It’ll help if you think of complex chemical equations the way I am,” she added.

  He burst out laughing. “Wouldn’t know one of those if they bit me in the ass.”

  She shifted her hips, licked her lips, and lifted a brow. “Well?”

  They both knew he was unprotected. After a moment of shocked silence he replied, “You sure?”

  She slid back even farther and rotated, making his erection strain even harder toward her core. Yet Morgan refused the prize. “What do you think?”

  “Oh God, Morgan,” he cried. “You know, a man in this position might say anything to get what he wa
nted.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “I’m clean; I’m clean,” he told her.

  “Are you?” she asked as she lifted off the bed and walked away to go into the bathroom. The door slammed, and then the lock clicked.

  Chapter Nine

  Jack waited for her to come back. And waited. And waited. Until he figured out she wasn’t coming back. And that was when he realized how much he’d hurt her. Trust was a terrible thing to kill, so she’d gotten even with him. Inside her there wasn’t just a door that needed to be opened. There was a castle wall that would need to be breached.

  Her point made with crystal clarity, Jack tried not to let her hurt him. With his cock still yearning for her touch, only one thought beat like a live wire inside his brain: he wanted her.

  Had she known he was trying to seduce her for his own means? Was this her way of showing him that backhanded tactics weren’t acceptable?

  Were they?

  Jack wanted to put his fist through a wall. He wanted to yank on his crank so his balls would stop hurting. He wanted to know how things had gone from bad to worse.

  He already knew. He’d decided to use her again. Rather than simply believing her, he’d figured sex would get the truth out of her. Instead, she’d turned the tables on him and shown him a boatload of integrity in the process.

  Not to mention killing his lower extremities.

  He jumped out of the bed and stormed over to the bathroom door, and pounded on the wood. “You made your point. I get it already.”

  “Do you?” she yelled back. Even through the wood he could tell she was crying.

  “I need the truth, Morgan.”

  “Morgan?”

  “Yeah, Morgan. Real names, real people, real situation. Starting from the beginning. So that we both deal on the same playing field from now on.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because if you don’t, all we’ll do is keep on hurting each other. I need to understand. I want to believe you. I have to know what happened.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Jack leaned his forehead against the door. The wood felt cool, not enough to cool the fire in his gut, but soothing. “I betrayed you. I can’t take that back. I used a night like I’ve never spent with anyone else in the world believing I was doing the right thing. I was wrong.”

  She didn’t answer right away. “At least now you sound like you’re telling the truth. But I had to slap you in the face to get that out of you.”

  He sighed. “You’re right. And I deserved every second. I’m still paying for it, if that’s any consolation.”

  “You are?”

  Sounded like she was licking her lips with satisfaction. Damn her.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “Morgan, listen to me. I’m only going to say this once. I want you. I’m in agony because of that. But I won’t touch you until you want me to. All right? And along the way, I’m going to help you get out of this mess.”

  “Why?”

  “The truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Swear to God. Because I believe you’re not a thief.”

  “You do? Why?”

  “Because I couldn’t want you as badly as I do without knowing your integrity.”

  “So it’s just about the sex?”

  Jeez. Does she ever give up? “If that’s what you think, then I’ll leave. You’ve got the room for the night. And I’ve got some cash left. I’ll leave it on the table.”

  Jack turned from the door, his stomach hollowing. He started to get dressed, his desire surrounded by a strange empty feeling. Funny how now that he had to go, he didn’t want to.

  He was just tucking his shirt into his pants when the bathroom door opened. She’d obviously washed her face, but that hadn’t taken care of the redness rimming her eyes. He tried not to let her distress reach him. He tried not to let her nudity reach him even more.

  “There’s still some wine left,” she told him in a quiet voice.

  “You can enjoy it after I’m gone.” He grinned. “At least I paid for the meal this time.”

  Her mouth quirked, but only sadness poured out of her gaze. “I still need to run.”

  He shrugged and put on his jacket. “I know. If you can at least trust one thing, trust this: I’ll disappear for a while. Sam won’t find me. At least that will give you a head start.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  He nodded, hoping that she could read the honesty he was trying to convey. “I owe you that much at the very least.”

  “True.” She mulled that over as she walked toward her clothes. He tried not to watch. “You’d walk away not knowing why I’m doing what I’m doing?”

  Jack knew there was only one answer to give. “Yes.”

  Her bitter smile cut him to the quick. “Because I’m not giving you a choice?”

  He shook his head. “No. Because I care.”

  “You probably won’t after I explain.” She sighed.

  Jack sat down at the little table in the room. “Try me.”

  “After I get some clothes on.”

  “If you insist.”

  THE SAME PLAYING field. Morgan doubted with all her heart that would ever be possible. Not with his raw beauty. But he’d been right about dealing with one another. She’d needed to prove to him she was smarter than he ever expected. And honorable.

  As she dressed, Morgan began to explain. “At first, I thought I was going crazy. But I’ve just spent a week in a bunch of hotel rooms with nothing to do but think. First and foremost, I’m a scientist. And like most of my contemporaries, a little OCD. It’s kind of a requirement for the job.”

  He smiled at her. “I guess attention to detail is important.”

  “It is,” she replied. “Well, I would go back to my desk after being in my lab all day, and I could swear someone had been there and touched my things. Items on my desk were out of place. Not by a lot. But enough for me to notice.”

  Morgan shook her head. “Like most normal people, I denied reality. I dismissed it. It was impossible. There was no logical reason for anyone to be snooping around my desk. Then someone got into my lab notebook. It’s a journal of my experiments. Someone must have been reading it.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because it’s a hardbound book and pages open when you write in it. It would open automatically to a page well before the one I was writing on. As if someone had broken the binding in that spot.”

  “That’s hardly life-threatening, you know.”

  Morgan smiled. “I know. And, after denying everything, I thought I was simply being paranoid. But it happened more than once.”

  “Someone was spying on you?”

  “Science is just as competitive as everything else is, you know. Someone was reading my work and maybe threatening my career. I wanted to go to my boss and tell him. But without proof, with just feelings, he’d start looking at me sideways. And I didn’t want anything—anything—jeopardizing my project.”

  “And?” Jack encouraged, pouring them both the last of the wine.

  Morgan realized she needed some. She took a sip and nodded her thanks.

  “I never dreamed someone was going to give me two reasons for being paranoid. One day we all went out for Rebecca’s birthday.”

  “Rebecca?”

  Morgan smiled inside. One of the sweetest young women she’d ever met, and with so much to offer. One of the people that Morgan was sweating bullets trying to cure. Because underneath the excess weight was a heart of gold.

  “My admin. Well, all of the heads of the departments shared her.” She gave him a wry smile. “Not a lot of common sense with a bunch of PhDs.”

  He half laughed. “I get it.”

  “Anyway, when we got back from her birthday lunch, I could swear my desk had been searched. Everyone knew we were taking her out. But I chalked it up to professional paranoia again. Then I found a couple of creases in my lab n
otebook. Whoever had been reading my lab notebook had made copies of pages. I had no idea why except that I thought someone wanted to steal my thunder. God, I wish that was all that happened.”

  She watched Jack lift a curious brow. “I assume that’s the second reason.”

  “Yes. Someone broke into my home and ransacked it.”

  “Looking for what?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I didn’t know then. They took the project away from me.”

  Morgan closed her eyes, remembering the hurt and betrayal. “So you played the game and lost,” he replied. “I’m sure that happens more often than not in your business.”

  “Not nice but probably true. And if losing my job was the only problem, I would never have done what I did.”

  “Okay. So why did you steal the data?”

  “BioClin made an announcement about my findings so they could get funding for the project. They had no right to do that. They knew there was no way my work would be finished in time to satisfy any bankers, so either someone told them they could finish the job, or they decided to use the investment capital to jack the stock price, make a killing, and let everything die.”

  “Any idea who that someone might be?”

  “Dr. Anton Dvorak. Sleazeball extraordinaire.”

  He frowned at her. “Sorry. Personal opinions aside, he’s a molecular biologist and was kind of like my direct competitor within the company. He was always trying to impress everyone with how great he was.”

  “So you think he was responsible?”

  Morgan started laughing. “Anton? He’s not that smart,” she added with disdain. “All show, trust me.”

  “Then he had help.”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks.”

  She watched Jack nod. So far, everything she’d told him made sense. “So why did you run?”

  “For that we need to go downstairs.”

  * * * *

  Since it was rather late, no one else was in the business center, for which Morgan was grateful. She walked over to one of the computers on the desk, then dug into her pocket and pulled out the memory stick.

  “This is what Sam wants and what BioClin wants back even more.”