Page 27 of The Playboy Meets His Match
Impulsively, she turned and flung her arms around Jason and gave him a hug. “We did it! We got in and got out in one piece and I think I have something you can use.”
“Hey!” he yelped, startled and glad they were on a deserted block at the edge of town and not speeding along the highway. He pulled the truck to the side of the street, turned to wrap his arms around her and hug her. Her face was inches away, and even in the dim lights on the dashboard, he could see the sparkle in her eyes. He wanted her and leaned forward to kiss her hungrily.
For one startled moment she was still and then her arms tightened around him and she kissed him back, long slow kisses that made him forget they needed to get out of town, needed to avoid drawing attention to themselves, needed to resist touching and kissing and stirring up one iota more of the sparks between them.
She was fiery, wild and passionate and he wanted her with a need that shocked him. He wanted to shove her down on the car seat and take her right here, but for a dozen reasons he knew that was impossible.
As her tongue stroked his, Jason’s senses were stormed. His pulse roared and he was hard, eager, ready. He wanted all of her and he was losing arguments with himself about holding himself in check. His hands slipped over her, following soft curves, resenting the jeans and shirt that were in his way. When he tugged her shirttail out of her jeans, she straightened, pushing against his chest.
Her breathing was as ragged as his. “We’re in town and we should get out of here.”
Jason couldn’t answer. Fighting his urge to reach for her again took all his concentration. Yet he knew she was right, so he tried to get a grip on reason. He turned his attention to the road, glanced in the rearview mirror to see if they were being followed or if anyone had noticed them. Houses were dark, lawns undisturbed, the street deserted at this early-morning hour.
He put the car in gear and drove in silence, not trusting himself to speak, trying to get his thoughts away from Merry to something neutral, something that would take Merry Silver right out of his mind.
Chattering to him about the disk, she bubbled with excitement, yet he didn’t hear a word of what she was saying. He wanted her desperately, and it took all his willpower to keep his attention on the road and head for home.
As they drove through the dark night Jason finally began to follow what she was saying and realized she thought she had something that could tie Dorian to the murder.
The moment they reached the ranch, she would want to look at the disk, he knew. That wasn’t the urgent matter on his mind, but he was certain she was intent on discovering what she had copied from Dorian’s files.
Jason turned onto his ranch road, and then he lowered the window and tossed out the padlock that he had removed from the back gate at Wescott Oil. It sailed high in the air and then dropped into a heavily wooded area with a tangle of underbrush. He had large uncleared areas on his ranch and few people ever bothered to explore them. He didn’t want the police to speculate on why the padlock had been unfastened. Seb had enough problems to deal with.
The moment they entered the kitchen at the ranch, Merry waved the disk at him. “Can we look at this right now?”
“I kind of thought you’d want to,” he drawled and they went to his office where she switched on the computer while he pulled a chair up beside her.
Jason watched her fingers fly over the keyboard and suspected she had already forgotten his presence. He openly studied her, knowing her attention was wholly elsewhere. He was curious about the files, but they were secondary to Merry herself. Since she had wrapped herself around him in the car, all he could think about was wanting her.
He ached to pull her into his arms, but he knew he should resist. Besides, he had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to get her attention away from the computer right now. The damp night air had made her thick mane of hair curl more than usual and he touched her curls slightly. Just as he had expected, she didn’t notice.
Leave her alone, he argued with himself. This was a woman who had told him she wanted commitment. He had no intention of having a long-term relationship with Merry or anyone else. Resist the lady, he reminded himself, yet still fingering locks of her hair in his hand and not wanting to break the physical contact with her.
He wanted Merry as he had wanted few women in his life and the thought scared him. He didn’t want a broken heart—something he hadn’t suffered for a long, long time. He didn’t want to get hurt that way ever again.
“Look!” she whispered, and he tried to pull his attention from her to the screen.
He forced himself to read what she had on the screen, and then his attention focused on a daily journal by Dorian.
“I can’t believe he kept records like this at the office,” Jason said, looking at hints that Dorian was pleased with the way things were going and that he was getting money from Eric Chambers to keep something covered up. There were references to moving money and Jason whistled.
“There’s not enough here to go to the police with, but it sounds to me as if Dorian was blackmailing Eric Chambers.”
“I agree. Why would he keep this in his computer files?”
“He might not have had a chance at work to get them off his computer. With his alibi and the evidence pointing to Seb, there wasn’t a reason for anyone to suspect him. And for a while after the murder, he might not have wanted to go to the office late at night to work because he might have been afraid of drawing attention to himself. He could have gone there tonight to get rid of his files,” Jason said, knowing men often tripped themselves up, and Dorian was arrogant enough to think he could outsmart everyone.
“You can tell the two men knew about company money that was being shifted around, but there’s no absolute proof that proves what was going on.”
“You’re right,” he agreed, reading another file that she opened. In emphatic words, Dorian had told Eric to stop sending him messages with attachments, to get anything off his computer that they wouldn’t want others to see.
“But there’s enough here to point more suspicion at Dorian. A whole lot more suspicion,” Jason said, too aware of the scent of her perfume as he moved closer to read the screen.
She tilted her head, studying Jason. “You said you used to work for the government. You were at home with what we did tonight. What branch of the government were you with—Secret Service, Special Forces, CIA—what?”
“CIA.”
She closed her eyes as if she had received a blow, and he wondered if, in her eyes, that was another mark against him. Smokey eyes studied him again. “Why did you quit?”
