The Commitment Read online

  Here it comes.

  He loosened his tie with slow, thoughtful movements, all the while staring at Miranda's unconscious figure. Then, for a brief instant, it appeared that he looked directly into her eyes. His intense stare unnerved her. It wasn't until he moved closer and reached out a hand that Miranda realized he was checking the camera.

  The breath she had held sighed out of her. Alice patted her hand. "Would you like me to leave for the next few minutes?"

  Mutely, Miranda handed Alice the key to her apartment. She kept her gaze fixed on the screen.

  "Call me when you're done." Alice left Miranda alone with recorded history.

  She froze the video as soon as Alice left. The screen showed Drake's face with startling clarity. She could even see that he needed a shave. She shivered and placed the remote onto the tabletop with a snap.

  Despite the below zero wind chill outside, a trickle of sweat tickled the valley between her breasts. Dread rocked her. What if it was true? If they had made love and conceived a child, life as she knew it was over.

  The next few minutes would drive the course of the next month, maybe the rest of her life. Drake's steady gaze from the screen mocked her. Its cool, unemotional stare dared her to go on, to learn the truth.

  Fine. Leaning forward so as not to miss anything, Miranda clicked on the play button.

  Nothing changed. For a second she wondered if she'd pressed the correct button. Then Drake blinked and backed away. She saw him look down at her image on the bed. Amazement filled her as she watched his expression soften. Maybe she imagined that part, because the next thing he did was pull that damned red satin thing out of a bag.

  She wanted to turn away, shield her eyes, anything, but a perverse fascination held her transfixed. Her hands trembled causing her to drop the remote. She left it on the floor, unable to take her eyes from the screen for even the second it would take to pick up the small rectangle of plastic.

  Holding her breath Miranda watched Drake peel away the clothes of the Miranda who lay unconscious on the hotel bed. It was not the slowness preceding seduction, though. He did it with a care and gentleness that she would not have believed possible if she hadn't seen it herself.

  Respect. Miranda perceived a measure of that emotion as Drake finished the job. His hands hadn't roamed over her breasts or bared any part of her without a degree of modesty she never had fathomed in the man.

  After he finished changing her, he went into the bathroom for a time. When he came out Miranda held her breath. His nudity showcased a brash, masculine form she'd always seen encased in business attire. Averting her eyes was the natural response from years of seeing him as her boss, then as her sister's husband. She fought it. As she did, the perspiration on her body chilled making her shiver.

  If she didn't hate him, she'd be attracted to the man.

  He crawled into bed, pulled a satin sheet to his chin, and stared at the ceiling. Miranda couldn't read the expression on his face from this angle. What was he thinking?

  He reached out a hand to the bedside lamp. The room went dark.

  End of Act One.

  She slumped back as tension released her. Her brain rolled over the realization--he hadn't raped her or seduced her. She couldn't be pregnant. At least not so far.

  At that point the screen flickered to life. Veiled sunlight fell through the hotel windows, enough light to see her own form stumble from the bed and fall to the floor. This was when she'd awoken. No point in watching the rest. She knew the rest. If, as she suspected, the fancy digital camera had an automatic on/off capacity based on movement, she was safe in saying she could not be pregnant. Alice would confirm her guess about the camera.

  She reached onto the floor for the remote and smacked her head on the coffee table as someone knocked on the door.

  "Ouch. Come in."

  Alice entered. "I should have waited for your call, but curiosity got the better of me. Well?" The sofa cushions dipped minutely as she focused her gaze on Miranda's face.

  Miranda rubbed her head. "First, tell me that this camera is equipped with an automatic off arrangement if it doesn't sense movement within its range of view."

  "Oh yes. I believe after two minutes it's programmed to go into power save mode. Once a movement is detected by tiny motion sensors the record function starts automatically."

  "Good. Here, see for yourself." Miranda rewound the video and watched Alice's reactions throughout the short playback.

  "Well." Alice fiddled with her eyeglasses.

  "Exactly." Miranda's voice hardened. "He lied to me. But why?"

  "Why did you stop here? There must be more, like the morning after," Alice said.

  Miranda flushed. "There's more, but nothing I don't remember. I got up. Drake woke and told me his version of what happened. I … I went into the bathroom. Lucy and--"

  Alice interrupted. "You left Drake alone in the room while the camera was recording?"

  "Yes, not for long. I was indisposed."

  Alice quirked an eyebrow upward.

  "Okay, I had a hangover to fight off. I don't want to be indelicate." Embarrassment flooded Miranda once more.

  "Never mind that. Let's see what Drake said or did while you were out of the room. We might find the missing piece to this puzzle."

  "Why didn't I think of that?" Miranda mumbled. Anxiety returned. She turned the television and video back on.

  They watched; Alice with a permanent quirk of the eyebrow, Miranda sinking lower into the cushions. In the end, all was as Miranda had remembered.

  Miranda got up to go back to her own place. There was nothing else to see here.

  As she opened the door, Alice asked, "I wonder why he called Jack and Lucy?"

  Miranda shrugged, disheartened, and left. Back in the comfort of her own home she could not help but think, why indeed? She was still puzzling it through when she heard the apartment door open then slam shut.

  "Get down and quit slobbering."

  Through the singular rasp that signified the happy panting of the dog, Miranda realized her husband was home. Just what she needed.

  She peered at him over the back of the sofa. "Who let you in?"

  "I live here, remember? You gave me a key." He remained at the door, pinned there by the loving Pumpkin. "How about calling off this horse?"

  Horse indeed. Miranda considered letting them bond some more; for some reason Pumpkin had taken a liking to the man. More bonding wouldn't be fair to the dog. Sooner of later Pumpkin would come to understand that Drake wasn't a very nice human. Until that happened Miranda would enjoy the way the big canine greeted him at every opportunity.

  Her head throbbed. "Pumpkin," she said. A muffled thud indicated the dog had dropped back to all fours.

  Drake straightened his jacket and stalked to the sofa. He spoke to Miranda, but his eyes strayed to the television screen. "Have a nice afternoon?" His tight-lipped voice indicated an odd mixture of amusement toying with annoyance. "Did you learn anything interesting?"

  Miranda glared at him. The image of his naked body striding with purpose towards the hotel bed flickered through her memory. She turned her back on him, settling back into her seat before he could get of glimpse of the heat she felt rushing to her face.

  "Show's over," she stated. The throbbing in her head began anew.

  A tickle on her neck had her turning until she faced him. His face rested on the back of the sofa, on her level. Impossible to ignore. She forced herself not to flinch.

  His breath touched her again. Its warmth answered the heat she'd been feeling.

  Wait, she didn't want to appreciate anything about this man. He was the enemy. Not a sexy man with nicely sculpted lips or eyes that crinkled when he twitched his nose.

  She needed more than the back of the sofa between them. Something a little bigger, like a galaxy, would be better. Something full of vacuum so she wouldn't be able to hear the rich timbre of his voice or smell the subtle wintergreen on his breath.

 
; She shushed that nagging little voice inside her that insisted that it wouldn't matter how much distance she put between them.

  With the remote firmly in hand, a hand that was not trembling she was happy to note, she backed off the sofa and stood. Drake straightened as well; his gaze never left hers.

  Pumpkin's head swiveled from Miranda to Drake as if trying to decide if he should get involved. Miranda flicked her hand as she said, "Pumpkin, down." Sighing, the dog flopped to the rug.

  Pulling anger around her to cover the other strong emotions that welled up inside, Miranda began a direct assault. "You lied to me. We never made love. I can't be pregnant."

  Drake crossed his arms. His eyes narrowed. He spoke not a single word in his own defense. For some reason his silence fed Miranda's rage like oxygen fed flame.

  "You," she stabbed a finger in his direction, "made me stay married to you and I want to know why, right now."

  He'd only heard that icy control in her voice in the boardroom. Had always been glad it had been turned toward anyone but him. A shiver ran up his back as he considered his options. If it came down to whether or not to continue lying to her and hope he could pull it off, or tell her the truth and gain an ally.

  All he knew about Miranda in the several years of their association came down to this moment. What did he know of her true character? She was bright, brilliant in fact with a quick grasp of facts and an intuitive feel for the best way to go.

  Loyalty, a trait she held in untold quantities and an uncanny ability to separate business from family. That had been made crystal clear the year he and her sister had been wed. Miranda had never tried to take advantage of that personal connection at work. It had been nothing but business at the office. Very little socializing after hours, though. At the time he'd been too involved in trying to make a marriage then hold the shreds of it together to wonder at that. Somehow Miranda had remained loyal to both her sister and him as her boss even when their marriage had disintegrated. Why she hadn't packed her bags and found a different job was a mystery he wasn't sure he wanted to unravel right now.

  Miranda listened with an intensity that made the speaker feel that he was the only important person on the universe. This one just one of the reasons she was so well respected and liked by those who worked under her. And why she was held in such high esteem by her business associates.

  Well, the one thing he was surer of than her loyalty was the fact that he could trust her. He knew his business, his secrets, the most important parts of his life as far as work went was safe with her. He had no reason not to trust her with this.

  She had every right to know.

  What a Boy Scout.

  Except watching her pace the floor, arms akimbo, face flushed, she looked anything but like a boy.

  She was everything her sister was not. Everything he had wanted in Lucy but had failed to find.

  What would she do when he told her the truth?

  He moved so that Pumpkin lay between him and Miranda. Best to have a buffer in case she tried one of those Tae Kwon Do moves on him.

  "Corporate espionage."

  She threw her arms up in the air. "I'm still waiting." Then her eyes widened. "What did you say?"

  "Someone inside is stealing from me, or was. Stealing technology."

  She stopped pacing. "What has that got to do with marrying me?"

  "Stocks, too. Buying stocks here and there in small bunches that would be overlooked by the casual observer, but taken as a group starting to become a good sized chunk of company assets."

  Her eyes narrowed. "Again, and I'm beginning to hate what I think is coming, what has this got to do with marrying me?"

  "Logic rather than lust." He knew he'd pay for that little lie later. Right now a lot of lust was involved. "You own a large number of company stock. I need control of it. I need you to stay with the company because of your expertise and know how. QED."

  "You need me. Or rather what I represent." She tapped the tip of her nose with the tip of one finger. Her thoughtful look.

  "Yes." Time to tread carefully.

  She blinked, twice. "You could have gained control over more stock without marrying me. Any number of individuals would have helped you out." Her voice slowed.

  He nodded but didn’t say anything. She was close to working it out. It was amazing to witness her deductive skills at work. He inched a little further away.

  "This is about something more than money, though. Even you wouldn't marry for just … that …"

  Here it comes.

  "Lucy!"

  Bingo.

  Chapter Six

  He expected her to throw knives at him. He even had a sofa pillow fisted, just in case he needed some kind of shield. Instead he watched her rage dissolve into the kind of chuckling bad B movies had people in insane asylums make.

  Pumpkin let out a soft huff of sound. Drake relaxed his hand on the pillow but kept it close just in case. He waited.

  The phone let out a shrill ring, then another. All three of them started. Drake waited for Miranda to answer it, but she didn't. On the fourth ring the machine answered. After Miranda's voice explained what the caller should do, Lucy's voice came on.

  Fate had a strange sense of timing.

  "Miranda. Call me as soon as you get home. It's--it's important." Sniff. "Call me, okay? Bye."

  "So, is this about revenge on Lucy? Because if it is, you have a weird way of punishing her by marrying me. She's more concerned about my welfare than about herself." Miranda's voice held a quiet calm.

  "It's about trust. How much can I trust you, Miranda?"

  "What's that got to do with Lucy? She was your wife."

  "And now you are my wife. Can I trust you more than I could trust her?" He already knew the answer to that, but did she?

  She sank into a barstool, crossed her legs. "Tell me what else."

  Now she was in information gathering mode. Good, she’d moved past emotional much sooner than he thought she would. He relaxed a couple of muscles.

  "A few weeks into my marriage to Lucy, I received an email from a competitor."

  "So? That happens everyday."

  "This one had been misdirected, addressed incorrectly. It started, Darling Lucy, and ended with lots of dollar signs and instructions for a meeting." He remembered the empty ache of the moment he had realized his bride was deceiving him. He forced the muscles in his jaw to unclench.

  Miranda blanched. She whispered, "You must have misunderstood. Lucy adored you. She would never …."

  "So you and everyone else were led to believe. Even me." Sucker. "She denied it when I confronted her, but by the time I did that, I had proof. As you know, the divorce was messy."

  Pumpkin chose this moment to stand, stretch, and rub his head against Miranda's leg. She scratched his huge ears in an absent-minded way. Drake could use that kind of comfort right now. He could use an answer, too, to a question he'd never come out and asked her.

  "Why didn't you leave the company then?"

  She shook her head. "I can't believe you're asking me that now. Look, Lucy told me you left her. How do I know what you're telling me is the truth? Why would she lie to me?"

  He chose the easiest question to answer. "Pride, regret, fear, who knows? You'll have to ask her."

  Nothing Drake said made any sense. Miranda remembered with vivid clarity the day Lucy showed up at her doorstep in tears claiming Drake had left her, called her an ice cube. Heartbroken for her sister, yet wondering how to hold onto her job while hating her boss, Miranda had listened to Lucy pour out her heart.

  Everything Lucy had said rang true. Hadn't Miranda warned Lucy against a relationship with someone as ruthless as Drake? In business he was ruthless. Miranda had never known him as a private individual until Lucy's surprise announcement of marriage.

  Even after the marriage the newlywed couple had emitted an aura of togetherness that led Miranda to believe all she'd heard about Drake was wrong. Over time their appearances together at
holiday meals and public functions had diminished. Lucy became gaunter. Drake, if possible, became even more difficult to please at work.

  Had Drake verbally abused Lucy as she'd told Miranda? The things Drake said now made her wonder if what Lucy had told her was the truth. Miranda loved her sister. She also knew that Lucy's air of vulnerability and elegance had been carefully crafted through years of practice.

  No. Miranda couldn't believe that Lucy would lie about such a big thing. She glanced at Drake. For the life of her she couldn't figure out a reason for him to lie either. He never cared what people thought of him. In fact, she was sure he relished his reputation as a scoundrel of sorts. A Rhett Butler for this century.

  The whole thing left her dizzy. An uncomfortable sensation grew in her, a sensation that she was being led along a path she would not chose for herself.

  Another thought struck her. "Lucy wanted a houseful of kids. You couldn't supply them. Is that what this is about?"

  He snorted. "I was the one who wanted children. Lucy decided it would stretch her figure. She couldn’t be bothered."

  "You're wrong. She told me she wanted to get pregnant as soon as possible."

  "Sweetheart, she always told you exactly what you wanted to hear. Then she did just what she pleased anyway."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I think it's you who wants a houseful of rugrats. Lucy went along with the idea so you wouldn’t make a fuss about her marrying me." He closed the gap between them. "She told me how you argued against the marriage. That only made her more determined to go through with it. After all, marrying the richest guy in town would have a been a huge step up for your sister, wouldn't it?"

  Miranda's throat tightened. He stood too close. It was as if all the air in the room weighed more than her lungs could take in.

  "After she had me," Drake continued, "she had complete access to company records, employee transfers, money. She had me fooled for a while. I wanted to be fooled. She shed a bright light into my life." His eyes lost their focus. "It took me months to figure out it was just a cold reflection fed by greed and ambition."

  To Miranda's relief he backed away. "Have you got anything to drink? I can't bare my soul without scotch."