He looked through sleepy eyes at the dresser across the room, then back at her by the bed and clearly not anywhere near the clothes.
“Then I came to check on you and make sure you were breathing normally,” she explained in answer to his unasked question. “You know, all the typical concussion checks. Steady breathing, ability to wake up. Congratulations, you passed.”
He sat up in bed and the sheets fell away from him, revealing a bare torso.
So much for the T-shirts she’d offered him.
And so much for her resolve to keep a professional distance from him. This was a sight that would easily fuel the romantic fantasies of any red-blooded American woman, and it was right here in her own house.
“Thanks,” he said. “Am I okay?”
“I think you’ll live.”
“Can’t ask for more than that, I guess.”
This was hard, all this small talk in a room filled with such big tension.
“If there’s nothing you need, I’ll be going to sleep now,” she said to him. She swallowed. “Do you need anything?”
Three heartbeats passed.
“There is one thing …”
“What is it?”
“I—” He stopped. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”
“Oh. Okay. If you’re sure …”
He nodded.
“Good night, then.”
“Good night.”
She started to go, then stopped and turned back. She had to ask him this. If she didn’t, it would drive her crazy. “Evan?”
“Hmm?” He sat up again.
“Can we talk for a minute?”
“Sure.” He scooted back in the bed. “Have a seat.”
She went over and sat on the edge of the bed, facing him. “I want you to be absolutely honest, okay?”
He frowned. “Okay.”
“Did you know what your father was planning to do to my father’s business?”
He blew air into his cheeks, then let it out in a long, tense stream. “I guess we were going to get to this someday.”
“So you did.”
“I had an idea, yeah.”
“An idea? Or you knew?” The possibilities mounted in her mind. “Did he tell you?”
He raked his hand through his hair and looked at her. “You sure you want to do this?”
Her stomach began to feel shaky and upset. It was like getting a phone call and knowing it was bad news before even picking up the receiver. “Tell me,” she said.
“I knew my father wanted to buy your father’s paper. Everyone knew that. He even made an offer, but your dad refused.”
“He loved his work.”
“I know,” Evan said softly. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“Obviously not,” she said, a tad too defensively. “So your father told you he was going to plant lies about my father’s paper to cast doubt on the credibility?”
“No, he didn’t tell me.” He was choosing his words carefully, talking slowly.
Meredith wanted answers now. “Then how did you know?”
“I heard him talking to someone on the phone one night. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together and figure out what he was planning to do.” He shook his head. “I tried to warn you one night—”
“At the beach?”
“That’s right.” He nodded. “You remember that?”
“It only just occurred to me.” She shifted her weight, and the mattress squeaked. “But if you knew, why didn’t you tell me directly? You were so vague…. I had no idea you were trying to make me aware of something so important.” Her eyes burned but she wouldn’t cry. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
There was a long moment where Evan said nothing. Then at last he said, “Because I was a kid, Meredith. I didn’t have firsthand information about the plan, and even if I did, we’re talking about betraying my father.” He shook his head again, the slow movement showing his regret. “I thought I needed to be loyal to my family. To my father.”
A terrible thought occurred to her. “Did our relationship. did it have anything to do with helping your father take over my father’s company?”
“Of course not,” Evan said, clearly offended at the suggestion.
Relief coursed through Meredith, calming her tight stomach.
But it was short-lived.
“I would never have dated you in order to help my father get access to the newspaper,” Evan went on. “In fact, when he suggested our relationship could be of use to him, I ended it.”
She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. Had she heard that correctly? “Wait a minute. You’re saying you left because your father wanted to use us to gain access to my father’s business?”
Evan nodded slowly. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Chapter Twelve
It was the first time in her life Meredith had ever even thought about quitting a job halfway through. Her job description of corporate researcher had a lot of mutations, and while she wasn’t usually a corporate spy—or, as some put it, competitive intelligence agent—it wasn’t unheard of for her.
As long as she felt comfortable with the reasons for her research and believed she wasn’t breaching her own personal morals and standards she was able to do a good job.
This time, though, things were getting foggy.
She’d told her employer she might have a conflict of interest, and her employer had guessed right off that it might have something to do with her relationship with Evan.
It was hard for Meredith to explain that it did because of something that had happened a long, long time ago. How could she say that she’d just learned he’d once had the chance to do almost the same thing to her that she was doing to him and he’d opted not to?
It sounded so. unprofessional.
So she’d had to settle for explaining that she’d never before taken this kind of job with a company she had any personal relationship with—even a relationship as tangential and outdated as the one she had with the Hansons—and that she was finding it more difficult than she’d anticipated to completely fulfill her obligations to everyone involved.
Especially when the end result would be the hostile takeover of Evan’s company.
To Meredith’s surprise her employer had assured her that there was no hostile takeover in the works. That they were seeking a merger—a way to take two strong companies and put them together to make them both even more powerful.
Hanson Media Group wasn’t going to lose in this deal, Meredith was told—they were going to win.
That was believable, Meredith supposed. Hanson could accept an offer to share partnership instead of being subject to a hostile takeover and thereby having no choice.
“So are you prepared to stay on and finish the job you began?” her employer had asked.
The sixty-four-thousand—only in this case it was more like million—dollar question.
Meredith