The CEO's Little Surprise (12 page)

The earth shifted beneath the bed, sliding away faster and faster as her mind whirled, turning over his words, searching for the angle, the gotcha. “What are you saying, Gage? That you want to keep seeing each other?”

He spit out a nervous laugh. “Why not? I like spending time with you. I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual or I'm much worse at this kind of thing than I think I am.”

“You have a lot going on right now,” she said cautiously. “Maybe this isn't the best time to be talking about this.”

“I
am
worse at this than I thought if I'm not making myself clear. Let's see how it goes. I'll come up to Dallas. You drive to Austin. We talk on the phone during the week. Maybe a video chat late at night that involves some dirty talk. I don't know. I've never done this before.”

She could envision it. Perfectly. Sexting during a conference call and naughty emails and rushing to throw her overnight bag into her Jaguar for a Friday night dash to the Hill Country in anticipation of a long weekend in Gage's bed.

But for how long? And what would happen when he ditched her again, as he surely would? “I don't know how to do that either.”

His sigh vibrated through her rib cage. “Yeah. Robbie changes everything.”

That was so not what she'd meant. “Why, because you think you being a father is a turn-off? Think again.”

“It should be. My life will never be the same. It's ridiculous to even say something like ‘let's see how things go.' I already know where I'm going. Play dates, preschool, the principal's office and Cub Scouts.”

He was committing to his child. Didn't that give her some hope he might want to commit to her, too?

“Maybe it's not so ridiculous.” Had that just come out of her mouth? It was madness. But honest.

“Stop humoring me,” he said flatly. “I get it. Everything is up in the air, which is unfair to you. Besides, you might want to think about whether you'd like to be in the same boat as Briana. I don't know how she got pregnant. I used protection every single time.”

Yeah, that had occurred to her. But he'd gotten it wrong. She was in a whole boatload of trouble regardless because she wasn't mother material. She ran a million-dollar company for crying out loud. Any conversation she and Gage had about seeing where things could go included a future with a baby no matter what. Now that she'd thought of it, she couldn't
stop
thinking about it.

But there was no point in heaping condemnation on him, especially not when it sounded as though he was doing a pretty good job of that on his own. “Of course you did, Gage. It was an accident. It happens all the time, even to smart, careful people.”

Her heart twisted as they talked about subjects that shouldn't be a part of his reality. Gage embraced this challenge in a way she'd never have guessed—the king of disentangling himself from anything that smacked of the long-term had changed when she wasn't looking. Really and truly changed, which she'd just spent a considerable amount of effort denying over the past week.

What if she
could
trust him with her heart this time? A world of possibilities might be open to her. To both of them.

It gave her a lot to think about.

In the morning, she awoke before Gage. His sleeping form was close enough to touch but she didn't dare do it. He'd only slept for a couple of hours last night, which she knew because she'd been holding him when he'd finally drifted off.

Their conversation had meandered to every subject under the sun—how they'd gone without their first year in business, what kind of spices you could add to ramen noodles to make them taste like something other than cardboard, the first splurge purchase they'd made when their companies finally turned a profit.

It was like the old days, except Gage hadn't even tried to kiss her. Last night hadn't been about sex, a fact she appreciated. But at the same time, she couldn't help but try to categorize the night.

A turning point, perhaps. But one thing she did know for sure—she had to answer that million-dollar question about Gage's involvement in the leak. Soon.

Twelve

C
ass entered this new phase of her relationship with Gage with equal parts caution and greed. She soaked up every second of laughing with him over Robbie's antics as Gage visited his son at Lauren's house, and she helped Gage shop for nursery items.

No task required to prepare Gage to take custody of his son was too small for her involvement, apparently. She didn't mind. Except for the part where they never picked up the conversation about where things were going. Whether there was a goodbye in their future or not. Was she simply a hand to hold until he found his footing?

Eventually, that question would have to be answered. But she was content, for now.

She shuttled between Austin and Dallas enough times over the next week that she could pick out roadside elements as mile markers. That weed formation meant it was an hour and thirty-six minutes until she'd be in Gage's arms again. The pile of rocks by the exit sign meant she'd see Gage's beautiful hazel eyes light up at the sight of her in seventeen minutes.

In between, she ran her company and hired a private detective to look into the leak. If she hadn't been so distracted, she would have done so earlier. The move was enough to satisfy her partners into giving her more time. And enough to satisfy herself that if Gage was involved, she'd find out before things went too far. She hoped.

On Friday, one week after she'd snuck out early to get busy with Gage in his Hummer—totally by accident, in her defense—she spent an hour at the end of the day frantically whittling down her email in anticipation of spending the weekend in Austin with Gage.

Her phone rang. Speak of the devil.

“Hey, sexy,” she purred.

“It's done,” he said. “The last of Briana's estate is settled and Robbie is officially mine.”

She swallowed. Hard. “That's great news!”

Just in time for the weekend. They'd expected it to take a few more days, but Lauren had been instrumental in pushing things through once she saw how serious Gage was about being a father. She could have made Gage's life a living hell and he'd said he was grateful she'd chosen to take the high road for Robbie's sake.

Except now it was real. Gage was a single father.

Now that the estate was settled, Robbie would come to live with Gage permanently. Lauren would still be a huge part of her nephew's life, and she and Gage had already discussed potential arrangements for holidays. Gage's parents had put their house in Houston on the market and planned to move to Austin so they could spend their golden years with their new grandson.

The only person who didn't have her future mapped out was Cass.

“So I guess Lauren is bringing Robbie over tonight?” she asked. She'd planned to drive to Austin tonight to spend the weekend with Gage.

Things had just come to a head. What did Cass know about dating a single father? If things progressed, was she really ready to be a mother? The thought frightened her. She had a demanding job. She couldn't be calm and cool around a baby. The timing wasn't great for any of this.

One step at a time. What better way to figure out what came next than to spend time with the man and his child?

“No, she asked if she could keep Robbie until Monday so she could say goodbye, just the two of them. I couldn't say no.”

“That was sweet of you.”

Her heart opened a little more with each glimpse of the man Gage was becoming as he met this challenge. Each time, she had to reprogram a bit more of her thinking. She wasn't sure what to do with the result.

“So instead of you driving here, I'm coming to you. You've already put far too many miles on your car in the past week. Turnabout is fair play,” he reminded her in case she'd forgotten about his strong sense of tit-for-tat. “I'll be there in three hours.”

She ended the call with a smile and drove home instead of to Austin. The reprieve gave her time to review the email she'd received a few minutes ago from the background-check company. They'd finally completed new scans of all her employees.

Thirty minutes later, she kicked back on her sofa with her laptop, the report and a list of cross-referenced employees who worked in the lab. The scans she'd ordered included arrest records, of course, but that wasn't necessarily a good indicator of someone's propensity toward corporate espionage. A better one was financial records such as property owned and debt, which was the section of the report where she focused her attention.

Someone with a mountain of outstanding bills might be a prime candidate for thievery, particularly in light of what the formula was worth to someone like Gage. He'd never buy it from a shady Fyra employee, but the culprit might not realize that.

But Cass knew that about Gage. The thought settled into her mind as if it had always been there. Of course that was true. Why would he have bothered to come to Fyra's CEO with an offer to buy the formula if he planned to buy it on the black market?

Or was she missing the big picture?

Everything was mixed up in her head and the addition of his new status as a committed father wasn't helping. She just didn't know whether she trusted Gage or not.

Cass refocused and noted two lab employees with outstanding mortgages that seemed quite large for what Fyra paid them. Also not a blinking sign that pointed to criminal activity. But a curiosity all the same, considering neither of them were married according to the scan. Inheritance, maybe, but Cass couldn't be too careful.

Next, she moved on to her employees' former employers and known associates. GB Skin leaped off the page almost instantly. Cass's gaze slid to the employee's name. Rebecca Moon. She worked for Harper as a lab analyst. She'd worked for Gage before coming to Fyra. Also in his lab.

It wasn't uncommon. Many of Fyra's employees had previously worked for Mary Kay, too. That didn't make them criminals, just people with skill sets companies in the cosmetics industry sought.

But no one from a competitor had approached Cass about her formula, except one.

Cass sat up and started from the beginning of Rebecca's report. The picture was not pretty. She had a wide swath of credit card debt totaling well over a hundred grand and outstanding medical bills from—Cass tapped the line once she found it—her ex-husband's many elective procedures. So Rebecca had gotten divorced but was still saddled with an ex's debt.

Shaking her head over the things people did to each other, Cass eyed the woman's known associates and a sense of foreboding grew in her stomach. All of the people linked to Rebecca had addresses in Austin. Not a big deal. The woman had lived and worked in Austin when she was employed by GB Skin.

It just seemed odd that Rebecca Moon hadn't made any friends in Dallas in the...seven months she'd worked for Fyra. Not one person from her new neighborhood had asked her to lunch via text message or friended her on Facebook?

The background check hadn't extended to Rebecca's friends' information. So there was no way to know if the people she'd interacted with online and made phone calls to were employed by GB Skin—but logic would dictate that she'd made friends at Gage's company and kept them.

If Gage had found that out somehow, would it have been a temptation to lean on that connection?
No
, she couldn't assume that. Could she?

Her stomach rolled again as she recalled how convenient the timing had been when he'd first shown up at Fyra. Yes, she knew the drive between here and Austin was easy. Someone could conceivably hop in the car with little planning and be here before lunch. It didn't mean Gage had known about the formula
before
the information hit the trade magazine, or that he'd used the leak as some kind of leverage to get her to agree to sell.

But still. Gage had been convinced Cass owed him something. But then he'd stopped reminding her of it. The formula rarely came up these days. Why, because he knew Rebecca Moon was going to steal it for him?

That was a stretch. But Cass couldn't get it off her mind. A leak was one thing, but the threat of the culprit doing additional harm was very real. As was the possibility she'd been played by the master, just like she had been in college.

She would drive herself crazy with that line of thinking. She used her time to thoroughly peruse the rest of the report but Rebecca was the only lead she had.

Who better to contradict whether he'd discovered the perfect mole in Cass's company than Gage himself? There was absolutely no reason she couldn't bring this information to him and get his explanation. They could be straight with each other. He'd talk to her and tell her she was being silly and then maybe she'd tell him that she'd hired a private detective. With the detective on the job, she and Gage could focus on each other. See what their relationship might look like with all the agendas put away.

Because if she couldn't trust him with business, what could she trust him with?

Halfway through the last page of the report, a knock on the door startled her.
Gage.

She let him into her house and drank in the man's beauty and masculinity as she stood frozen in the foyer where he'd made love to her for the first time in a decade. A million powerful emotions washed over her. She'd tried to keep her distance. Tried to keep her heart where it belonged—in her chest and shielded from Gage—but as she looked at him, images flew at her, of him as he held his son, as he laughed with her, as he made love to her.

The addition of his baby had shifted things. Far more so than she'd have anticipated, and not the way she'd have thought. Gage was a father now. Did that mean he'd changed his thinking about commitment? Was he ready to find a woman to settle down with?

But he still said things like
let's see how it goes
.
We're having fun.
You owe me. Turnabout is fair play.
He'd distracted her from the leak again and again with his talk of pleasure before business. Had he been afraid she'd find something?

Ask him about Rebecca. Go on.

The wicked smile he treated her to fuzzled her mind and then he swept her into a very friendly embrace that promised to get a lot friendlier.

She pulled away and crossed her arms over the ache in her midsection that wouldn't ease. This was why she shouldn't let her heart take over. Emotions only led to problems.

“That was fast,” she said brightly.

He raised one eyebrow quizzically. “Not fast enough, clearly. What's wrong?”

“I'm hungry,” she lied. Of course he'd picked up on the swirl of uncertainty under her skin. “I waited for you to eat.”

“I had Whataburger on the way. I'll hang out with you in the kitchen while you eat something, if you want.”

“Sure.” Then they could talk.

Except she couldn't seem to segue into
by the way, did you happen to set up a deal with one of my employees to steal my formula for you?

Gage sat on a bar stool and chatted about Robbie, absently sipping a highball with a splash of Jack Daniel's in it. As she woodenly ate a very unappetizing sandwich that didn't sit well in her swirly stomach, she couldn't stand it any longer. The best approach was to ease into it, perhaps.

“When are we going to check in with each other?” she asked during a lull in Gage's conversation. Because of course their relationship, the leak and the formula were all tied together. Without one, the others didn't exist, and it was time to get all of it straight. “About how things are going.”

“Now?” he suggested mildly. “Is that what's bugging you? You don't have to dance around it if that's on your mind. How are things going, Cass?”

Right, jump straight to her as if she could possibly articulate what was going on inside. She made it a habit of pretending she didn't have any emotions and she certainly didn't spend a lot of time cataloguing them for others when she didn't fully understand them herself.

Besides, this was about Gage. About whether he'd planted a mole in her company. Whether he'd invented a relationship with her to get his hands on her formula. Whether he'd become a man she could trust.

She scowled. “I wanted to know how it was going from your chair.”

He took in her dark expression without comment. “It's working. But it's only been a week and Robbie will be a big part of my life come Monday. So I guess I'm still seeing how things go.”

And somehow, his perfectly legitimate response plowed through her nerves like water torture. “What does that mean? Once you become a dad, you might decide two is enough?”

It would be exactly what she'd been expecting.
Sorry, this thing between us has run its course.
That's what she'd prepared for.

His brow furrowed and he abandoned his drink to focus on her. “No, it means it's a complexity in an already shaky situation.”

“Shaky how?” she whispered. “Do you have something you need to tell me?”

Oh, God, what was she going to do if he came right out and confessed? He was bound to have some kind of rationale, like he'd only planned to use Rebecca to gather information for leverage or he'd say that technically, he hadn't done anything illegal.

“Cass, you're trembling.”

Clearly concerned, he tried to grip her hand but she yanked it away, whacking her nearly empty wineglass and sending it clattering across the granite bar. Gage, bless his honed reflexes, caught the stemware before it shattered on the travertine tile below, but the trail of wine across her light brown counters would stain.

Good. Something to occupy her hands while she gained control again.
No emotions
, she scolded herself.
Brazen it out. Don't let him know what's going on inside.

“You didn't answer my question,” she said, pleased at how calmly she delivered the statement. And how coolly she wiped up the spilled wine with careful, even strokes. “If our situation is shaky, what's making it that way?”