“I DON’T LIKE THE SOUND OF THAT.” Sydney lurched forward in the passenger seat of Carl Bransom’s unmarked police car, her hand clutching the dash. He’d perched his cell phone just above the radio, the speaker phone option turned on. The voices were muffled and crackly, but Sydney knew sharp enmity when she heard it.
“Relax, Ms. Colburn,” Detective Bransom said, his beefy palm pushing softly on her shoulder. “Unless someone threatens him with bodily harm, we’re sitting tight.”
Sydney snapped a glance at the man’s hand, which he quickly and smartly removed. She watched him settle back comfortably against the worn fake-leather seat, munching on an apple, acting as if the world could fly straight to hell and he wouldn’t move one overbulked muscle.
“You can sit tight all you want, Detective. It’s not my style.” She reached for the door handle. Despite the man’s laid-back attitude and Arnold Schwarzenegger physique, he had her arm in a tight grip almost instantaneously.
“Now, Ms. Colburn, that wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Sydney hissed between clenched teeth, but knew the man was right. He allowed her to yank free, then folded her arms over her chest. She had to let Adam do this. As long as she remained in the car, she could at least hear the conversation. If she barged into the offices and disrupted things, Adam’s plan would sink faster than a stone in a puddle.
“Steven,” she heard Adam answer, his voice garbled by the movement of his cell phone inside his pocket. “Long time no see.”
Sydney closed her eyes, trying to imagine the warm, inviting smile on Adam’s face, the charming glint in those balmy brown eyes, the amazing fit of his broad shoulders in the sleek Italian suit they’d rescued from the cabin and had retailored to his new and improved bod right before their flight. She listened as Adam employed his smooth voice to defuse the hostility in Steven Malcolm. He’d barely mentioned the man when they’d talked about Marcus. But darn if Steven hadn’t sounded shocked and, more significantly, angry to see him.
Luckily, in a matter of minutes, they were on their way in to see the big guy himself. Marcus Malcolm. The man who ran the show. The man who’d had a strong influence on Adam during the formative years of his career.
The man who may or may not have ordered someone to mow Adam down and leave him for dead on a dark, quiet road. Sydney shook her head, and forced her anger and indignation aside. She trusted Adam to take care of this situation on his own terms. How could she not when she also trusted him with the most valuable thing in her possession, her heart?
“Got something else sweet I can munch on in this car?” she asked, her voice resigned. “Preferably something chocolate. A doughnut, maybe?”
So much for stereotypes. Bransom chuckled, popped open a cooler he kept behind his seat, and handed her a shiny green Granny Smith. Sydney took an incensed bite, then worked out her frustration by chewing like the fruit was her last meal.
ALMOST UNCONSCIOUSLY, Adam patted his pocket, hoping the cell phone hadn’t lost the signal. The minute he’d stepped off the elevator, he’d spotted Steven. The animosity the man had for him couldn’t have been stronger. The element of surprise had indeed given him insight. Steven Malcolm hated him, and he had no idea why.
But he couldn’t very well excuse himself right now and try to call Meg to find out if he and Steven had had any kind of fight during his five forgotten years. He had to think on his feet. Damn. He really did wish he’d brought Sydney along though. If nothing else, she’d probably recognize the missing plans faster than he could, since he’d done the bulk of the work during his five forgotten years and nothing of the design remained in his brain except the first blue-ink pen sketch.
But the moment he haphazardly glanced into the conference room adjacent to Marcus’s office, his heart stopped at what he saw.
“Adam, Marcus is right through here,” Linda said, her arm outstretched toward a decorative archway that led toward Malcolm’s two inner offices.
Adam glanced at Steven, who’d gone white as plaster again, obviously aware of what Adam had seen. Their eyes clashed, but Adam fought to keep his penetrating glare from casting accusations. He just looked—hard—willing Steven to screw up and say something revealing.
Steven’s jaw tensed, but he said nothing.
Adam matched his silence, but forced his shoulders to relax. He slipped his hands into the pockets of his pants, jingling the change he’d tossed in after buying a coffee from a vendor on the street. He thought about Sydney, wondered what the witty, resourceful woman would do in this situation—and decided that seducing the truth from Steven was out of the question. But the mental picture made him smile, causing Steven’s forehead to erupt in moisture.
“Adam?” Linda called again.
“I’d rather meet Marcus right here, Linda. Why don’t you call him out?”
Linda’s gaze darted from Steven to Adam, taking in the tension between the two men. Without another word, she disappeared beyond the archway, calling to Marcus in a voice he’d best describe as urgent.
Good. He had them off guard. He also had them red-handed…although he still didn’t know for certain who among them had been involved.
Adam didn’t look back into the room. He didn’t need to. In one glance, he’d memorized the scene. The plans he’d drawn were posted all over the walls, different angles, different views. A computer in the corner flashed a three-dimensional model on a twenty-four-inch screen. Manila files and presentation folders were stacked across the table, as if the staff had either recently met to discuss his design or would soon.
He stared at Steven, but he didn’t say a word. When Marcus emerged, looking just as fit as any sixty-year-old man who played tennis every day should, Adam allowed a genuine grin to spread over his face. He had to trust his gut. And his gut said that Marcus knew nothing about what his son had done.
“Adam!”
His hearty handshake was followed by a hug.
“I was wondering when you were going to show up here, claim your share of what is going to be our crowning deal this year.”
“My share?”
Marcus kept his arm around Adam’s shoulder and led him into the conference room, every inch the proud businessman showing off his wares.
“Of course! I have a cashier’s check that’s been waiting for you ever since we sold the design to Malaysia. I added a second one when they hired us to implement and supervise the construction. You’ll be very comfortable, Adam.”
“I doubt that.”
“Excuse me?”
Marcus had been reaching for a coffee carafe, but when he turned and faced Adam, his expression completely perplexed, Adam knew his mentor had no idea what had really happened. No time like the present to tell him the truth, but he wanted Steven inside, not lingering in the hall as he still was, his feet seemingly rooted to the spot.
“Call Steven inside, Marcus. And you might want to send Linda on an errand. We’re long overdue for a conversation.”
He didn’t know if his requests were wise, but he knew he had to expedite a confrontation. He wasn’t about to take a percentage of a fortune that should be his and his alone. He should have been the one who sold the design. He should have been the one hired to supervise construction and to deal with the invariable glitches that no architect could anticipate until someone started pounding the steel and pouring the mortar. This was his project, his showpiece.
He took a quick glance around the room. Yes, he recognized the basic design, but, beyond that, the plans were little more than blue line drawings on grayish white sheets.
He cursed. The blueprints were useless to him. Beyond making a sale, he no longer had the skill or expertise to handle the duties of a lead architect. But that wasn’t his concern right now. Couldn’t be. He had to deal with Steven, with the lies he’d told, with the plot he’d hatched.
“Steven, come in here.”
Marcus’s bark brooked no hesitation. Steven scurried inside, his gaze sweeping every corner of the room without meeting the eyes of his father or of Adam. In a gentler voice, Marcus asked Linda to make lunch reservations at a nearby upscale bistro.
“What’s this all about, Adam?” Marcus took his seat at the head of the table, then motioned for Adam to sit beside him.
Adam shook his head. “I think maybe Steven needs to be the one to explain.”
This time, Steven couldn’t look away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Adam chuckled. That ruse wouldn’t last long. “Steven, don’t insult either one of us. You’re caught. The police in Tampa are at this very minute interviewing a young man named Kyle Sanderson. Remember him? I think you might have spoken with him yesterday on the phone. You might be interested to know that he’s retained an incredibly expensive, amazingly efficient attorney who is likely to broker a very nice immunity deal for his client in exchange for his knowledge about how you got your greedy, bloody hands on my design.”
“Bloody? Adam, what the hell are you talking about?” Marcus demanded.
Adam’s voice remained surprisingly calm. “Ask Steven.”
“Steven?”
Just then, Adam’s pocket trilled. His cell phone. Damn. He must have lost the connection.
“Excuse me,” he said, not moving a muscle while he answered the call. “Hello?”
“Hey, hot stuff. Might want to check your equipment next time before you get to the good part of the interrogation.”
Sydney’s voice rumbled through the phone like warm, sugary molasses.
“My equipment seems to be fine now, thanks to you.”
“Well, damn, I hope we’re not still talking about your cell phone.”
“Not entirely.”
Her chuckle surged his blood. Here he was, about to confront the man who had stolen his future, and Adam couldn’t help but anticipate the next time he’d make love with Sydney.
“Well, you’re doing good. Go ahead and pocket us. I can think of worse places to hide.”
Adam pretended to disconnect the call, but, this time, he decided to hold the phone in his hand rather than risk the connection dying again by being bounced around inside his jacket.
“Sorry about that. Important call. You were saying, Steven?”
“I wasn’t saying anything. And I’m not going to.”
Adam arched his eyebrows. “You think? You might want to consider the fact that I am completely physically recovered, Steven, no thanks to you. I’m stronger, quicker. Angrier. Now, I may not be able to design buildings anymore, but it doesn’t take someone with perfect visual perception to calculate that before you can get your scrawny, lying, murderous ass out the door, I’ll have my hands wrapped around your throat.”
Adam raised his left hand, slowly fisting and releasing his long fingers. “I work in construction now, did you know that?”
Marcus had remained silent during the threatening exchange, but he stood, took Steven by the shoulder and pushed him down into a chair.
“Maybe I should start,” Marcus volunteered.
Adam’s eyes widened, his heart skipped a beat. “You knew about this? You know Steven stole my plans and nearly had me killed?”
“What?”
Nope. He definitely didn’t know.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Steven insisted. “Not like that.”
Adam fought the urge to punch the table in lieu of Steven’s face. “Don’t blame Kyle for the accident, Steven. I know he knew nothing about it.”
“You’re right, he didn’t. But neither did I,” Steven admitted. “You weren’t supposed to get hurt. You were so damned stubborn! I offered you the deal of a lifetime and you just couldn’t give me a break.”
“You offered me a deal?”
“A damned good one. Malcolm and Associates has the best connections in the business. I knew I could sell your plans for ten times what you could find on your own. My commission would have been more than I’d ever make drawing. I’m a better businessman than architect, but you couldn’t help me out, couldn’t make the money flow a little easier.”
“What money?” Marcus asked.
“The money I offered him for his design.” His stare speared through his father’s horrified expression. “You told me yourself how much you wished Brody was still your protégé, that you’d have loved for him to have designed that building while he was still working for us.”
“So you stole it from him?”
“I took possession in hopes of convincing him that my offer was more than generous. He wasn’t supposed to nearly get himself killed.”
“That’s what happens when you hire someone to hit me from behind.”
Steven glanced aside, neither verifying nor denying his complicity in the hit-and-run. And Adam had no recollection of Steven’s approaching him, and he must not have taken the offer seriously if neither Meg nor his attorney had reminded him of the episode. But something didn’t make sense. Steven would have known about the plans, but he couldn’t have known when Adam had finally completed the design.
“How did you know I’d finished?”
Steven rolled his eyes. “I made a contact with the developer who’d made your initial bid.”
“How’d you get Kyle involved?”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Steven sighed as if bored. Fear and wariness left his face, replaced with pure unadulterated loathing. “I knew the plans would go out by courier. I had my associates staked out at both your office and your home. With the money I was offering, I could buy off anyone.”
Adam couldn’t believe Steven so readily answered, but the man always had been an arrogant son of a bitch. He probably figured Adam couldn’t go to the police with only his word of Steven’s confession. Steven probably trusted Marcus to lie for him. Adam wondered, then decided to go for broke.
“Names, Steven. Who are these associates?”
Marcus stood, his hands slamming on the conference table. “Shut your mouth, boy. Don’t say another word.”
Adam cursed. “He nearly had me killed, Marcus. For money, which he already has plenty of, thanks to you. I deserve a complete explanation.”
Marcus hesitated, shifting from foot to foot. He wiped his forehead, tightening his salt-and-pepper brow and emphasizing the lines on his face. His shoulders slumped. “Steven isn’t capable of murder.”
“He’s right,” Steven insisted. “Once I had the plans from Kyle, I gave orders for them to trash your office, maybe make you disappear for a little while, until you could see how lucrative my deal would be for both of us. But you—”
“I said shut up!” Marcus bellowed.
With each increase in Marcus’s volume, the old man’s strength wavered. Adam knew this was the moment to go for the kill, but he couldn’t override his respect for his mentor, his compassion for the conflict undoubtedly raging through him right now for the son who’d betrayed him and the former protégé who deserved a fair shake.
Marcus bashed the button on the phone. “Linda, call my attorney. Tell him to get down here.”
Marcus shook, the color of his face changing from a healthy pink to a rage-induced ruby. Though a chair was just behind him, he remained standing.
“You can’t stop the truth from coming out, Marcus,” Adam pointed out. “He almost had me killed. He stole my life’s greatest work. Hell, he robbed me of my future as an architect. He’s going to pay, Marcus. I’ll make sure of that.”
Marcus’s face twisted in disgust. “Steven’s a fool. He always has been, always will be. If he’d had half an ounce of the natural talent you had, he’d never have become so jealous. But he’s still my son. I’m responsible.”
Adam’s chest tightened. “Did you know about this?”
“Of course not! But I should have known, should have understood that you’d never sell out to us. Took a damned long time for him to convince me that you’d hired him to market the design and that the move had been especially fortuitous because of your accident. Once I learned you’d permanently lost your memory, I thought the best I could do was get you top dollar. I’ve done that.”
Adam sniffed. “A percentage of top dollar is not what I had in mind.”
Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “If you’ll drop this, you can have it all.”
There it was—the offer of a lifetime. He watched Marcus grab a sheet of paper and jot down an exorbitant amount.
“You can walk out of here with this amount in your pocket. Cash. We’ll still handle the construction duties, but you’ll get a cut of that, too.”
The amount surpassed what Adam had negotiated on his own. Apparently, Steven had been right about the power of Marcus’s clout. With just this initial payoff, Adam could set Renée up in a mansion, give her enough capital to hire a full staff for her business and still have plenty for himself. Yet the thought of touching money stained with his own blood left a bitter, acrid taste in his mouth.
He chuckled, but without humor. “This isn’t just about money, Marcus.”
His mentor clamped his eyes shut. “I know, but that’s all I have to offer. That, and my apology. I had no idea. Honestly, no idea at all.”
Before Adam could break the news that the apology didn’t mean squat in the great scheme of things, a lawyer flanked by two assistants burst into the room. One grabbed Marcus by the arm and dragged him aside. The other whisked Steven out of the room. Adam sank into a chair, stunned. Had he just passed up the chance of a lifetime, or had he clung to principles that ran deep in his bones?
He didn’t know. He simply didn’t know.
WITH HER BOTTOM LIP clamped between her teeth Sydney listened as the number of voices in the room increased. In less than five minutes, the lawyer had arrived, reportedly from his office on the fourth floor. Sydney alternated her attention between the garbled conversations on her cell phone and Bransom’s call to the detective on the Tampa force. Once he disconnected, he explained that Kyle’s lawyer had prepared a statement that pointed at Steven Malcolm as the man who paid him and the thugs who’d actually arranged for him to swipe the plans. Steven’s so-called “associates,” who’d been staking out Adam’s condos and office for weeks, had yet to be named, though the criminals sure hadn’t minded giving out Steven’s name to Kyle. Bransom assured her that Steven Malcolm would go down, only now, with lawyers and police agencies involved, the arrest would take time.
Adam refused to leave the Malcolm offices without his original plans, so, as a show of good faith, Marcus ordered his secretary to pack them up. Adam would have his plans, but until this legal tangle was settled, he could do nothing with them. He’d refused Malcolm’s offer of payment and Sydney quietly cheered. Why take a percentage when he deserved the entire enchilada? And justice to boot?
And yet they’d come to Baltimore to close this chapter in his life. All they’d actually done is prolong the process.
The minute he emerged from the building, a long tube and a box clutched in his arms, she darted out of the car and scrambled across traffic in her high heels.
“Kind of hard to fling myself into your arms and kiss you triumphantly when you have your arms full,” she said, panting in between her words. Damn, someone really needed to invent a truly sexy running shoe.
“Sorry.”
He continued marching down the street, stopping at the intersection. He nodded at the dark sedan still parked across the street, but by the time Sydney turned, Detective Bransom had revved the engine and pulled into traffic, making a left at the light, heading, undoubtedly, to Flanagan’s for that beer he’d been craving all morning.
“That’s okay. Good romance clichés need busting up every so often. Where are we headed?”
She tried to slip the tube out from under his arm to lighten his load, but he tugged it away.
“I can handle it.”
Sydney inhaled, whistling inward. Yikes. She sniffed the air, certain she’d caught a whiff of excessive testosterone. She opened her mouth to point out his rudeness then popped her lips shut. He’d just been this close to recapturing the future he’d cruelly lost and bringing the man who’d orchestrated his downfall to justice. Now he had a cardboard tube and an overflowing box to show for the five years he’d lost. Sydney imagined that if she were in his place, she’d be a little snippy, too.
In fact, not four days ago, she’d been in a vaguely similar situation. Nothing so dire, of course, but when she’d achieved her ultimate goal, she’d been lost, too. She’d also felt frustrated and angry, with no good place to channel those emotions except in a bottle of liquor, which hadn’t helped at all. She realized just then that ever since she’d hunted down Adam, she hadn’t once worried about her career or anguished over how she could possibly top debuting in the number one spot on the New York Times. Funny how falling in love with someone who’d lost more in one night than she’d earned in thirty years could put things into perspective.
Unable to help him with his heavy load, she instead used her slim Versace dress to entice a cab to the curb. She slid inside and waited for him to follow.
Instead he slammed the door shut and instructed the driver to deliver her to their hotel.
“Wait!” she commanded. She grabbed the half-open glass of the window and shouted one more time before Adam disappeared. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
He took a steadying, give-me-patience breath before juggling his packages in his arms. “I need to walk. I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”
She stared at him, her eyes clashing with his, which were burning hot. Not with desire, but frustration. He needed to walk. Yeah, she could understand that. He probably needed to punch something or someone. Hell, he needed to punch Steven Malcolm and his father squarely in the nose, but Sydney knew that the momentary satisfaction he might gain from violence wouldn’t solve the bigger problem.
What was he going to do with his life? And how could she possibly fit into his plan?
“I’ll be waiting,” she finally answered, then directed the driver to merge into traffic.
She’d be waiting, but for how long? Sydney didn’t know. She wasn’t a patient woman and just as she’d said to Nicole and Venus back at Flanagan’s, a true bad girl didn’t change anything about herself unless she wanted to. She liked being impatient, damn it. She liked living in the now.
The question was, could Adam join the now with her or had today set him in the past so firmly, even she couldn’t entice him back to her?