Trading Secrets (4 page)

“They’re all hard these days,” he grunted.

She drew another deep breath. “Just tell me one thing. I got the feeling you hated me. But we only met this evening. Were you confusing me with someone else? Were you so damn drunk you thought I was another woman?”

“Hell, no. It was nothing like that.” He was on his feet now. She could feel him coming up behind her, although he made no sound on the cool slate floor. Sabrina still didn’t turn. She didn’t want to face him. “If you weren’t confusing me with someone else, then why?” she demanded tightly.

His hands came up to close around her upper arms and he tugged her gently back against him. “Sabrina, I’m sorry. I guess I had some notion of doing the guy back in Dallas a favor or something. Shit, I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve had too much to drink!”

“And you’ve had a tough day! What guy back in Dallas?”

“Forget it. Things got a little out of hand. I understand you’re a bit upset right now, but—”

“Your perception is definitely improving with every second! Who the hell do you think you are?”

He turned her gently to face him, his eyes dark and brooding as he gazed down into her stormy features. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can say. Come back to bed with me and I’ll make you forget what just happened.”

“You must be out of your mind! Get out of here. Do you hear me? Get out of here before I call the house detective or whatever they use here in Mexico!”

“Easy,” he soothed, moving his thumbs in gentling motions on her jaw. “Take it easy, honey. This time will be different. I’ll make it good for you; I promise. I’ll—”

“You’re not only drunk, you’re crazy. And to think you’re trying to justify your actions by telling me you’ve had one too many whiskeys.”

“It’s more complicated than that, but I don’t think I can explain it very clearly tonight,” he muttered. “Sabrina, will you please calm down? You’re getting hysterical.”

“I’m getting goddamned furious!”

“This time we’ll do things right,” he promised, trying to pull her back into his arms.

“You can say that again! This time I’m going to throw you out before you have a chance to play any more weird games!”

“Sabrina!”

But she had already broken free of his grasp and was rushing across the room to the side of the bed on which he’d lain. Scooping up the leather sheath that he’d placed on the floor, she fumbled with the handle of the knife and then whipped out the sleek blade. Moonlight gleamed on the sharp, savage length of it. “I said get out of here, Matt. Get dressed and get out. Right now.”

“Put down the knife, Sabrina.” This time there was soft command in his tone. Matt’s voice had taken on the same cold edge as the steel she was holding.

“I’m not putting it down until you leave.”

“Damn it, stop acting hysterical and give me that knife.” Imperiously he held out his hand as he walked deliberately forward.

“I’ll give you about five seconds to get into your slacks, then I’m tossing you out into the hall. If you want to run through Acapulco stark naked, that’s your business.”

“Sabrina, you’re being ridiculous. For God’s sake be careful with that thing,” he added quickly as she raised it menacingly. “It’s not some rusty pocketknife. It’ll cut your hand to ribbons if you don’t watch it.”

“Think what it will do to some of the more useless portions of your anatomy.” Her eyes dropped scathingly down his chest to his naked thighs.

“Oh, shit. I can’t believe this. Sabrina, you’re out of your head.” But Matt reached for his slacks and yanked them on with more haste than he had planned. He was aware of just how sharp the blade of the boot knife was, even if she wasn’t, and it was distinctly uncomfortable having her wave it around like that. Christ, if Kirby could see him now, dodging his own weapon, he’d probably laugh himself sick.

“Hurry up!”

“Sabrina, we’ll talk in the morning when you’ve had a chance to calm down.” Matt edged toward the door, collecting his shirt and shoving his feet into his boots.

“I don’t ever want to talk to you again.”

“Honey, we got off to a rocky start, but if you think it’s going to end here—”

“I don’t think it’s going to end here,” she hissed, “I know it’s going to end here. Because I’m putting a stop to it!” She motioned aggressively with the knife and Matt found himself moving respectfully back a pace.

“I’m leaving but I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Out!”

“Okay, okay!” He opened the door and stepped into the hall, feeling like an idiot having to retreat before his own knife. Any attempt to take it away from Sabrina was going to enrage her further and they’d probably both get cut in the process. “Give me the knife before I leave, Sabrina. It’s not a toy and it’s not a tool. It’s a weapon, and I don’t want you accidentally hurting yourself with it.”

“You want this damn knife? You can have it!”

Before he realized her intention she had raised the blade to shoulder height and hurled it as if it were a baseball. Matt sucked in his breath as the polished steel blade whipped end over end faster than the eye could see and landed with a solid
thunk
in the corridor wall behind him.

Stunned, he turned to stare at the vibrating handle. He was watching it in fascination as she tossed the knife sheath at his feet. Matt was still staring at the blade when the door to Sabrina’s room slammed shut.

A lucky throw in more ways than one. She must have been standing at just the right distance. A few feet farther forward or a step backward and the knife would have struck the wall on the flat side and clattered to the floor.

On the other hand, a foot or so to the right and the thing would have buried itself to the hilt in his shoulder.

“Well, shit.”

Gingerly Matt pried the blade free from the wall and picked up the sheath. With a last glance at Sabrina’s locked door he started down the corridor to the elevators.

It really had been a rough day.

Sabrina went eyeball to eyeball with a small, brilliant-orange fish that had just darted out from the protection of the reef. She blinked slowly at it through the diving mask, and the nervous creature flashed back toward the convoluted reef.

Sabrina watched it disappear and considered the proposition that there was no justice in the universe. The proposition was false, of course. The universe was full of justice: manmade justice. And it varied from man to man. Perhaps it was some defect intrinsic to the masculine mentality that made the male of the species so determined to exert his authority. It seemed to Sabrina that she had spent a good chunk of her life defending herself against authoritarian types. At one time or another she’d done battle with everyone from her father to her schoolteachers, employers, and the IRS. The world at large had trouble handling an independent person like herself, and men in particular had trouble with the notion. Last night wasn’t the first time she’d run afoul of some male’s embittered attempt to even his score with life by punishing her.

But the last time it had been tried Sabrina had at least known why she had come under fire. Floating in the clear tranquil waters this morning, she made another stab at trying to understand what had gone wrong last night, and failed. It was decidedly disgusting to discover that her normally sound intuition had fallen short on this occasion. Perhaps she could just blame it on the Margaritas and forget all about it.

She dismissed that approach when she recalled that August had used his one-too-many whiskeys as an excuse. Damned if she would lower herself to his level when it came to rationalizing!

No, last night had been a mistake. It wouldn’t happen again. Besides, in the end, she had handled a potentially dangerous encounter intelligently enough to emerge unscathed. Assuming one discounted the vague muscle ache in her thighs, of course, she added with a mental wince. Matt August was a strong, toughly built male. The struggle could have ended disastrously. Still, she had handled him.

It was an entirely different situation from the mess in which she had become involved in California. She’d had no control at all over those events and the memory of how she had let a man cast her in the role of victim still rankled. In spite of her determination to put it all behind her, stray thoughts of that devastating experience on the West Coast flickered through her mind.

Talbot Sheffield had been forty-nine, only twenty-three years older than his son Greg, whom Sabrina had been dating just before everything collapsed around the younger man. One year less than fifty, his body still astonishingly fit, silver hair thick and eye-catching, the president of his own computer software firm, Talbot Sheffield was a man at the height of his power and knew it. The quintessential aggressive, successful businessman. From the moment she’d first been introduced to him, Sabrina had kept her distance. He was exactly the sort of male she preferred to avoid.

His son Greg, on the other hand, displayed absolutely no indication of following in his father’s footsteps. Easygoing, amiable, and fun-loving described Greg Sheffield. Sabrina had liked him at once. Her feelings for the man had never gone much deeper than friendly affection, but she had empathized with him, knowing herself what it was like to grow up with a forceful, domineering father.

In spite of his casual attitude toward life Greg had had enough perception to foresee the difficulties that would arise if he chose to work for his father. Instead he had taken a middle-management position at a computer design company elsewhere in California’s Silicon Valley, and that’s where he and Sabrina had met. She had been a low-level manager in the accounting department. It wasn’t Sabrina’s first entry-level management position. She had started out in a number of them at various companies since graduating from college. But because of an unfortunate tendency to tell higher management what she thought, she rarely climbed any higher on the corporate ladder. While Greg was not outspoken the way Sabrina tended to be, they had shared similar views of the corporate environment.

But it wasn’t Greg’s sandy-brown hair and vivid blue eyes that Sabrina recalled this morning. It was Talbot’s already magnificently silvered head and the blue eyes that had burned with a father’s fury as he faced her in her own office.

“You cheap, conniving little bitch,” he had flung at her. “It should be you the FBI arrested last night, and you goddamned well know it. You’re the reason Greg did it. If it hadn’t been for you—”

“Mr. Sheffield, I had nothing to do with it! I had no idea Greg was even involved in such activities!”

“The hell you didn’t! You were his mistress. You were the one who made the financial demands on him; the one who pushed him into doing anything he had to do in order to get the cash to keep you happy!”

“That’s insane!” White-faced with resentment and the first stirrings of genuine fear, Sabrina had stood her ground. “I can understand how you feel, Mr. Sheffield, but that doesn’t give you the right to blame me for Greg’s behavior. I don’t know why Greg sold company secrets, and neither do you. But it certainly wasn’t because of me!”

“Don’t hand me that crap about understanding how I feel, you bitch. I watched them arrest my only son last night!” His hand came down in a frustrated fist on her desk. “My son! Someday he would have taken over my firm. He had everything going for him. Only a woman could have pushed him into doing what he did, and I know damn well you’re the woman who did it!”

“Greg and I have been seeing each other for the past couple of months, but that’s the extent of the relationship,” Sabrina had protested angrily. “I’m not some femme fatale, for God’s sake, I’m an accountant!”

“You’re sleeping with him. You’re his mistress. Don’t you think I know that? I’ve seen the two of you together. Hell, I’ve even taken you both out to dinner a few times. I saw how Greg looked at you. You had him under your spell, didn’t you? The poor kid was enthralled!”

“Greg is twenty-six years old! Hardly a kid.”

“At twenty-six any male is still a kid,” Sheffield had blazed.

“Well, I’m only twenty-nine. Why don’t you make the same ridiculous allowance for me?” she’d shot back unwisely.

Sheffield had stepped around the desk and seized her, his hands digging into her upper arms as he shook her the way a wolf would shake a small cat, as if he wanted to break her neck. Sabrina had known real fear then.

“Women like you are born full-fledged adult piranhas. You have no business seducing kids like Greg!”

“I didn’t seduce him,” Sabrina had managed as he released her. “Mr. Sheffield, you’re out of your head with worry, and that’s the only reason I’m not calling Security. Please get out of here before I change my mind.”

“Don’t you dare threaten me. I’ve seen the new Alfa Romeo. And I’ve seen the new condo. I know how you’ve been bleeding my son dry these past few months.”

“I bought the car and the apartment myself!” She had tried to tell herself that Talbot Sheffield was a grieving father. She could accept some of his impotent rage and pain, although it was hard to believe this was the same suave, sophisticated, charming man who had entertained Greg and herself on several occasions.

“Bullshit. Greg bought them for you. He was trying to please you,” Sheffield had rasped.

“That’s not true and I can prove it.”

“Oh, I’m sure the papers will all be in your name. You would have made certain of that. After all, you’re an accountant.”

“Mr. Sheffield, please listen to me,” Sabrina had begged, making one last effort to appeal to his reason.

He’d cut off her words with a vicious backhanded slap across her face. The blow had snapped her head to one side, leaving her cheek reddened and bruised. Wide-eyed, she’d stared up at her tormentor. Things had gone far enough. Now she would scream.

“I’m the one you should have picked to seduce, Sabrina.” His hands digging into her shoulders, he shook her. “If you’d come to me, you would have had a Mercedes instead of the little Alfa Romeo. The condo would have been in a better part of town, and there would have been jewelry by now if you’d behaved yourself. And I wouldn’t have had to sell corporate secrets to the Russians in order to give it all to you. What’s more, I’m a man, not a boy, and I would have kept you under control. You wouldn’t have been able to manipulate me the way you manipulated Greg.”