Covert Conception. Delores Fossen

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СКАЧАТЬ old oil and gas fumes. Hardly a fitting place for Natalie Sinclair.

      He briefly lost sight of her when she meandered around the Harley that he’d just finished, but Rick could hear her heels clicking on the bare cement. And those heel clicks got louder and louder until she appeared in the doorway.

      Her gaze landed on him again, and she slid her eyes from his hair, which was still soaking wet, down to his T-shirt. Also drenched. Not just drenched from the water he’d poured over his head, either, but from an ample amount of sweat. If she’d been any other woman, Rick would have wished for a shower and a shave before facing her.

      But she wasn’t any other woman.

      There was no need to impress Natalie. She hated him. And he felt no love for her, either. In many ways, that made things a lot easier between them. He’d long ago come to terms with their animosity.

      Not the attraction though.

      “Are you lost?” Rick asked, just so he could make sure his mouth was working.

      She stepped inside and slammed the door shut.

      Oh, yeah. She was riled.

      The stuffed-to-the-brim office was barely big enough for one person, so Rick had to work hard to keep some space between them. He leaned his shoulder against the filing cabinet, folded his arms over his chest and generally tried to appear surly. With the unbearable heat and her impromptu visit, it wasn’t a difficult look to achieve.

      He hoped.

      She stared at him. Nope, it was a glare. And it was a glare through slightly swollen, reddened eyes.

      Had she been crying?

      Odd. Natalie wasn’t a crier.

      “I want you to know that I intend to have you arrested,” she announced.

      Okay. So much for his ploy to be laid back. Her greeting captured Rick’s complete attention. “For what? Attending your birthday party?”

      Her glare got worse, and her teeth came together. “Attending it wasn’t all you did.”

      He was certain his confused look intensified. “Care to explain that?”

      She aimed her index finger at him. “You’re the one who needs to explain.”

      Rick mentally went through any and all of the possibilities, but he didn’t come up with one that would warrant this kind of strong reaction.

      “Look, we can trade smartass remarks and pointing fingers for hours, but I have a business to run,” Rick reminded her. “So, if you’re here because you’re in a snit about your mother inviting me to the party, then you can get right back in your overpriced car and head home. Because I’m not apologizing. Macy begged me to come to your party, and I came as a favor to her. End of story.”

      Natalie used her fingertips to blot the perspiration from above her upper lip, but she was blotting so hard that Rick was surprised that she wasn’t leaving bruises on her skin. “Are you saying nothing out of the ordinary happened that night?”

      Rick had already opened his mouth to say you bet nothing happened, but he had to take one giant pause.

      Something had happened.

      Someone had slipped something into his drink.

      His silence seemed to rile her even more, and Natalie flipped open her purse and extracted a small silver handheld DVD player. She deposited it on his desk and pointed to the sole chair in the room. “I think you’ll want to sit down for this next part.”

      “No thanks.” That chair would put him even closer to her, and Rick wanted all the distance between them that he could get. “I don’t expect this’ll take long anyway. I’m not into home movies, and we don’t have much to say to each other.”

      Natalie flexed her eyebrows in a suit-yourself, you’ll-regret-it gesture, sat on the edge of his desk next to the DVD player and jabbed the play button. “This is the security film from the night of my party,” she explained. Her voice was strained with emotion. “It was taken in the hall just outside my bedroom.”

      When Rick saw a couple on the small screen, he bit off another surly question about what this could possibly have to do with him. Instead, he concentrated on the images. However, it took him several moments to make out exactly what he was seeing.

      Natalie and him.

      Or rather it was a couple who looked like Natalie and him. Because there was no way it could actually be them.

      Not caring for the sickening feeling that suddenly came over him, Rick pushed himself away from the filing cabinet and moved closer to study the images on the screen. “Are you going to tell me why you doctored this video?”

      Outrage flashed in her eyes, but she didn’t voice it. The rush of emotion seemed to make her queasy. Or maybe it was the sweltering heat. Because she wiped away the perspiration again and slid her hand over her stomach as if to steady it. “I didn’t doctor it.”

      “Then someone did,” he fired back.

      “Kitt checked,” Natalie explained. Her breath was uneven now, and the color was draining from her cheeks. “The images haven’t been altered.”

      “The hell they haven’t.” Rick watched as the couple got closer and closer to Natalie’s bedroom door.

      The couple staggered. The woman’s right arm banged against the doorjamb. The man didn’t fare much better. He crossed in front of her. Staggered as well. And his left shoulder hit against the wall.

      That caused Rick’s mouth to turn to dust.

      The couple’s awkward intimate dance continued until the man caught the woman. She went into his arms. Willingly. Their bodies came together. Mouths, too.

      In a desperate, hungry kiss.

      “I know for a fact that I would have remembered that,” Rick insisted in a rough whisper.

      Natalie swallowed hard enough that he could hear it. But what she didn’t do was agree with him. Instead, she froze the images and pointed to the woman’s right arm. “I had a bruise there the morning after my party. I didn’t know then how I’d gotten it.”

      Hell.

      Rick waited for the other shoe to fall.

      She pointed to the man’s left shoulder. To the spot that had rammed into the wall. “Did you have a bruise or any kind of mark?”

      Rick didn’t even have to think about it. “Yeah. I figured I’d gotten it here at work.”

      Natalie’s posture and bearing were suddenly as unsteady as the couple in the video. “I don’t think you got that bruise here.”

      It took him a moment to get his teeth unclenched so he could speak. “Are you saying you think that happened?” Rick asked. “You really believe the two of us had a hot and heavy kissing session outside your bedroom door?”

      She СКАЧАТЬ