The Right Thing (14 page)

Thea walked up to him, fist clinched, drew back, and punched Morgan hard enough in the stomach to double him over. Heat flooded her. Anger won out over the hurt.

“
That
was for Gerald Reed. You don’t deserve to call yourself his son. But this is for sleeping with me under false pretenses. I wish to God I had never let you put your hands on me,” she said, pulling her fist back again and bringing it up hard into Morgan’s face.

Blood squirted instantly from his nose when she made contact.

Thea jumped back avoiding the blood, shaking her hand because it hurt like hell. She checked her knuckles for damage, thinking that Morgan Reed’s head was every bit as hard as she had concluded it was.

“Damn it! You hit me. That hurt, Thea,” Morgan said, holding his nose as blood ran into his hand. “And a bloody nose. Great. Now I’ll get to add assaulting the investigating officer to the other charges.”

Thea was still shaking her hand. “
Investigating officer?
You’ll lose your damn badge if I have anything to say about it.
I
should be the one pressing charges, but there’s no legal penalty for the worst thing you’ve done to me. You’ve broken my heart, Morgan Reed, and I didn’t even see it coming.”

Morgan grabbed the hand she was shaking and twisted Thea around with it before she knew what was happening to her. Sweeping a foot to the bend of her knees, Morgan put her easily on the floor face down. Since he didn’t have cuffs to restrain her, he was sitting on top of her bucking rear end when Amy came rushing through the kitchen doors.

“There’s a crowd. . .” Amy began, stopping when she saw the two of them locked in a physical struggle on the floor together.

“Amy, hand me a bar towel. Thea bloodied my damn nose,” Morgan told her.

“If you give this stupid jackass anything, you’re fired,” Thea said angrily, trying to move Morgan’s body off hers but he was too heavy and too determined to pin her down.

Amy walked over with a bar towel and handed it to Morgan with eyes wide as saucers. The blood was nauseating. The shock of them physically fighting was sickening, too.

“I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but there are at least ten families outside waiting to get in here for dinner. It’s five after already,” she said, voice trembling.

“Shit,” Morgan said, standing with the bar towel pressed to his nose. “We’ll talk about this later, Althea. If you try to run, I’ll call this in tonight. If you stay and cooperate, I’ll help with your customers and we’ll talk later about—options.” Morgan chose his words carefully, not wanting Amy to know what was going on.

Without his weight, Thea stood and dusted herself off.

“I ought to make you call. I ought to force you to get this farce over with right now. I’m just worried about how Gerald is going to react. The last thing he needs is to deal with your stupidity on top of everything else going on.”

“Dad is going to have to know anyway. It’s only a matter of time,” Morgan told her, sad that it was true.

Thea looked at the restaurant with its romantic white table clothes and softly burning candles. Why had she even bothered with romance? She was too old and tired to deal with this drama, Thea thought. All she wanted was a moderately happy, peaceful life, but she had no clue how to achieve it.

Thea looked at Morgan, holding a bar towel to his face and glaring.

Men were nothing but trouble most of the time, she thought viciously. Morgan Reed had done a damn good job of ruining her for other men because it would be a long damn time before she would trust another one, in bed or out. In fact, abstinence had never looked more appealing than it did at that moment.

“You win for tonight, Morgan Reed. But if you get within three feet of me for the next five hours, you’ll have to call the police to save your own ass, so stay the hell out of my way. Amy—open the doors and seat the customers. I’m going to go wash up,” she said.

Thea walked away, and Morgan followed her through the swinging kitchen doors. He wet the bar towel in the kitchen sink and held it to his sore face. The blood was slowing to a tiny drip, which was a hopeful sign that maybe Thea hadn’t broken his nose after all. He knew Thea had strong hands, but the mean right hook had been an unwelcome surprise.

In his line of work, Morgan had found people didn’t usually punch an investigator when they were upset. They feared the repercussions too much. Thea either didn’t know or didn’t fear what could happen.

She had gone from looking remorseful and mildly guilty, to incredibly furious and righteously indignant in the blink of an eye. Morgan hadn’t really processed the change completely before Thea hit him the first time. He had expected Thea to get weepy on him when she found out, not mad.

“Put on an apron and cover up that blood,” Thea demanded on her way back to the main room.

Morgan snorted at the nerve of her command, but went to retrieve the apron that Pete wore for grilling. Fortunately, it covered almost all of his bloody shirt.

As he prepped the food for the first customers, Morgan found it hard to believe he’d been so wrong about her reaction. Thea didn’t look like she was going to shed a damn tear over any of it. Instead, the woman was angry and totally lacking in remorse.

In a way, Morgan decided, Thea not crying bothered him the most because he had wanted to believe she had a kind and caring heart. He didn’t like being so wrong about her.

*** *** ***

For the next four and a half hours, the restaurant served salad and pasta. When they flipped the sign to closed at nine-thirty, there were only two servings left.

Amy dashed off as soon as her tables were clean, citing a late date.

Thea nodded, saying goodnight and nothing more as the girl fled. Amy obviously wanted to escape what was about to happen between her and Morgan, Thea thought sourly, feeling abandoned and betrayed by yet another person.

And she knew Amy was too upset not to talk about it with someone. Word would get out quickly about her fight with Morgan, which made her even more angry about the situation. Now she would have to deal with uncomfortable questions even after Morgan Reed was long gone from her life.

It was just one more reason, Thea reasoned, one more reason she would never trust another man.

And she for damn sure would never take one home with her again, she vowed. Every time she thought about Morgan searching her house, she was torn between the urge to throw something at his head and wanting to die of shame that she’d slept with a man who was investigating her.

Thea cleaned up the remaining dishes and stripped the tablecloths, thinking about how she could explain her altercation with Morgan to people who didn’t know what he was really like. Gerald would be mortified to learn Thea had felt the need to physically attack his son, but that couldn’t be helped now.

Thea certainly didn’t regret the two punches she’d gotten in on the man before he’d stopped her. If Morgan had fallen to the floor, she would damn well have kicked him, too.

If she kept thinking about it—Hell, she might still find a way to make it happen.

*** *** ***

Morgan watched Thea make countless trips in and out of the kitchen, stopping only to run loads of dishes through the dish washer. She had sent Pete home shortly after Amy left, which had left only the two of them cleaning up.

Morgan had tried all evening to reconcile what he had learned with what he knew about Thea. Now, at the end of his contemplation, he realized the columns of his fact sheet just didn’t add up. There was something missing, and he needed to know what it was. If Thea would just tell him what she was using the money for, Morgan was sure it would explain the unease in his gut.

“There are two servings of ziti left. You need to eat one. That way you’ll know what you served your customers tonight. Sit and eat with me,” Morgan ordered, wanting to establish some measure of control over both her and the situation again.

Thea stopped and looked at him. The food smelled good, but the idea of sitting and eating with Morgan was gut-twisting. She was still finding it hard to believe a man that sensitive in bed could be such an unfeeling, cold-hearted, stupid bastard outside of it.

In fact, the only way she
could
explain it to herself was to accept that Gerald had been right. Morgan’s job had done a real number on him.

While blaming his job wasn’t forgiveness, it at least gave her a way to call a truce until the truth came out. For Gerald’s sake, she needed to deal as well as possible with his son. She had no wish to cause Gerald any further emotional problems just because his son had deeply disappointed her. Cursing her sense of loyal to the elder Reed, she swallowed as much of the bitterness as she could to be civil and answer him.

“Dish it up then,” Thea agreed finally, resigned to her fate, but definitely not willing to play nice yet. “I’ll be right back.”

Thea used the restroom, and then went to her office. When she walked back to kitchen, Thea tossed the envelope full of cash between the two plates on the stainless steel prep counter. She climbed up on a counter stool and pulled the closest plate to her, digging right in to the food without even acknowledging Morgan’s presence on the other side.

“The pasta is very good, Morgan, and it explains all the empty plates tonight. You could probably do this for a living,” Thea said flatly, her natural fairness forcing her to speak the truth.

“Thanks,” Morgan said, wondering if Thea was ever going to look at him, hating that she wouldn’t even though he well understood the reason.

“Take the money back to your father. Tell Gerald—just tell him I love him and found enough cash for everything and didn’t need his. You better hope he buys the story,” Thea told him.

Morgan scooped up a bite of pasta. It tasted like nothing to him.

“Tell me what you used the cash for, Thea. Maybe I—look, if you need the money, really need it, I wouldn’t mind helping you myself,” he offered.

If she had a good reason, Morgan decided, he would give her his life savings.

“Why would you do that, Morgan? Feeling guilty about sleeping with a potential criminal?” Thea asked harshly. “I don’t need anything from you, least of all money.”

“Explain this situation to me then. If I’m wrong about any of my conclusions, you haven’t done a damn thing to convince me differently,” Morgan told her, forcing himself to eat, hurting that Thea could be so ugly about what had happened between them. “And I don’t sleep with people I’m investigating. I’ve never had to in order to get the job done.”

“Well, you for damn sure didn’t have to climb into bed with me to find out what you wanted to know,” Thea said harshly. “You could have just shown a little faith and asked me instead of accusing me of taking money from your father.”

She took a final bite, polishing off her plate.

“I didn’t sleep with you to investigate you,” Morgan denied, ignoring her denial of the rest.

“Well, I don’t believe you. Right now you couldn’t do much to prove to me there’s a human heart beating inside that empty shell of yours. I’m not telling you a damn thing. You can come home with me, and I’ll sit up with you while you go through my house legitimately. We can go to the office here and get that out of the way right now if you want. Make sure you tell the authorities tomorrow that I fully cooperated with your
fraud
investigation
,” Thea told him sarcastically.

Morgan didn’t like her tone, the hurt on her face, or the coldness she had about the situation. There was no regret, no humility, and still no sign of remorse. It was a side of her that surprised and disappointed him.

“I was never trying to hurt you, Althea. I was trying to protect my father. He left a receipt at the bank and when I asked him what the cash was for he lied to me. I started looking into it because taking that money out every month leaves him about three hundred dollars left to live on. He can’t fix his car or the house or do normal things. I didn’t believe it was you when I slept with you Thea. I didn’t,” Morgan told her. “I didn’t believe it until I saw you take the money today.”

“So I’m guilty simply because your mind can’t think of any reason why I wouldn’t be guilty?” Thea asked sadly, pushing her empty plate away. She doubted Morgan Reed ever gave anyone the benefit of the doubt. “When you finish eating, I’ll load the dishwasher and we’ll lock up. Unless you’ve got some place in mind to lock me up for safe keeping tonight, I’m going the hell home—alone.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Morgan told her, standing. He scraped his remaining food into the trash. “I hadn’t thought about anything beyond telling you what I knew. I’ll take out the trash while you finish washing up.”

Thea slid off the stool and walked to the dishwashing area with their plates. “You know, Morgan, if you had walked through that door earlier today and asked the right question in good faith, your father would probably have confided in you. Now I absolutely understand why Gerald kept it from you, and I’m not going to betray him to try to save my reputation with a man who has no faith in me.”

“If I let you go home alone, will you promise to talk to me tomorrow?” Morgan asked, his hand on back door.

“What other choice is there? You’re trying your best to ruin the only life I have, Morgan Reed. Just know that the next time you touch me, I’m taking out your bad leg and going for your crotch. When I get done, you’ll never be able trick another woman into bed again. So be warned,” Thea said coldly.