Elizabeth was a person of interest all right. A person of interest to him.

Very much so, Whit thought ruefully as he got into the elevator and rode up beside the diminutive Officer Ruiz. Elizabeth was a person of interest to him despite the fact that he had broken his own rules and crossed the line with her, a line he had sworn to himself that he would never cross.

And he hadn’t.

Not until that night in Nevada when they had wound up stranded thanks to an untimely thunderstorm.

He’d been drawn to Elizabeth from the first moment he’d seen her that day she came to work for his father. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

But he more than anyone knew that business and pleasure had to be kept at arm’s length from one another. Otherwise, mixing the two together was just asking for trouble.

But none of that had been on his mind that night in Nevada. All he could think of was how very much he wanted her.

* * *

Be sure to check out the rest of the books in The Adair Affairs series—The Adair Affairs: The notorious and powerful political family is back with even more secrets.

Carrying His Secret

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author, has written two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, marieferrarella.com.

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With love to Patience Bloom for always being in my corner.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

A woman’s piercing scream shattered the evening silence.

Filling up all the spaces within the very modern glass-enclosed executive office, the sound seemed to grow in volume rather than abate as seconds went by.

Cringing in response, Reginald Adair’s executive assistant, Elizabeth Shelton, didn’t immediately realize that the terrified scream had come from her. Shock, horror and disbelief had wrapped themselves so tightly around her consciousness that she wasn’t aware of anything except for the body lying in a pool of blood on the two-hundred-dollar-a-square-foot carpet.

Reginald Adair’s body.

Handsome, dynamic Reginald Adair, president of AdAir Corp, a huge cellular company that provided signal bars for close to two-thirds of the country thanks to its numerous satellites circling the earth, lay crumpled and unresponsive on the floor of his glass-and-chrome executive office.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

Pull yourself together, Lizzy. The man needs help, not drama, Elizabeth admonished herself. It didn’t matter that she felt like throwing up. This wasn’t about her. This was about saving Adair.

It felt as if every square inch of her five-foot-seven body was trembling as she knelt down beside the man. At sixty-two and an inch shy of being six feet tall, Adair had prided himself on keeping in excellent shape.

He might have been in excellent shape, but he was also heavy. Definitely not an easy man to move.

Bracing herself, through sheer determination, Elizabeth somehow managed to turn the man over onto his back.

His eyes were closed and there was blood flowing from a hole in his chest.

It took everything Elizabeth had for her not to back away. Another scream bubbled up in her throat. She pressed her lips together to keep it from emerging.

Taking a deep breath to brace herself, she searched for any sign of life. A panicky feeling was only inches away from erupting.

“Mr. Adair, can you hear me?”

For exactly sixty seconds, it felt as if every single thought had fled her head, leaving the entire area of her brain completely empty.

And then, because she’d been independent and on her own for most of her life, Elizabeth snapped out of the encroaching malaise.

Searching for his heartbeat, the only thing Elizabeth felt was her own as it went into overdrive, thundering madly against her rib cage.

“Think, damn it. Think!” Elizabeth frantically ordered out loud, desperate to keep it together. But what could she possibly do to save him?

Splaying her hand across her boss’s bloodied chest, she thought she detected just the faintest whisper of a heartbeat. At first she was afraid to push against it, afraid to make it beat any harder than it was because she was concerned that the pressure would make Adair lose more blood that much faster.

Tugging her cardigan off, she wadded up the sweater and then pressed it against the hole in Adair’s chest, frantically trying to stop the flow of blood.

Her own heart almost stopped when she saw his eyelids flutter.

“Oh, thank God. You are alive,” Elizabeth cried. “Stay with me, Mr. Adair, stay with me,” she begged.

She saw the light of recognition enter his vividly blue eyes. His lips began to move, but he made no audible sound.

Bending over him, Elizabeth brought her ear closer to Adair’s lips, trying to make out the words he was saying. He was so weak she could hardly feel his breath on her face as he attempted to tell her something.

Was it the name of his attacker? Had he seen who had done this to him?

Straining, Elizabeth still couldn’t make any of the words out.

“What? I’m sorry, sir, I can’t hear you,” Elizabeth told him.

He struggled again to say something, but still nothing came out.

She needed help.

Adrenaline racing through every fiber of her being, Elizabeth continued pressing on Adair’s wound with one hand as she searched for her cell phone in her purse with the other.

Her phone was in her shoulder bag. It had to be, Elizabeth thought as the phone continued to avoid her questing fingers.

Finally, in frustration, she took the strap in her teeth to facilitate keeping the purse open while she used her free hand to upend it.

Wallet, keys, her AdAir ID badge, along with her cell phone, came raining down beside her. Grabbing the phone, Elizabeth quickly dialed 9-1-1.

Within a couple of seconds, a cheerful, competent-sounding female voice declared, “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

A torrent of rambling words threatened to pour out of her mouth all at once. Elizabeth struggled to sound coherent. “I need an ambulance. Now.”

“Are you hurt, ma’am?” the voice asked calmly.

“No, no, it’s not me. It’s for my boss. Someone shot my boss.”

The woman wouldn’t know who her boss was. Elizabeth knew she had to elaborate, but she had trouble finding the words and slowing her breath enough to speak.

She tried again. “Reginald Adair’s been shot. Executive suite, top floor of AdAir Corp.” She all but gasped out the words. “Please hurry!”

Elizabeth dragged in a ragged breath, doing her level best not to sound like someone having a meltdown. Breaking down now wouldn’t help save Mr. Adair.

“Do you know who shot him?” the woman on the other end asked.

The routine question, asked so calmly, filled Elizabeth with unreasonable anger.

“No, I don’t know who,” she snapped. “Don’t you think that would be the first thing I told you if I knew who did it?” Her hostile words echoed in her brain. Elizabeth forced herself to calm down. “He’s still breathing. Please. Send someone quickly.”

Everyone knew where the sleek six-story chrome-and-glass building was located, but she rattled off the address anyway.

“Please, I don’t know how much time he has left. There’s blood everywhere.” Elizabeth could almost swear she felt Adair slipping away from beneath her hand even as she spoke to the 9-1-1 operator. “You need to send an ambulance now.”

“They’re already on their way, ma’am,” the woman told her. “Stay on the line with me until they come,” she coaxed.

Elizabeth was about to tell the 9-1-1 operator that she’d stay on as long as she could when she saw Reginald’s eyes begin to glaze over.

No, no, no, no! Please don’t die, Elizabeth silently pleaded.

“His chest isn’t moving,” Elizabeth cried out loud, panic mounting in her voice again. “I can’t feel his chest moving. He’s not breathing!”

Dropping the phone, she began to do chest compressions using both hands. “Open your eyes again, Mr. Adair. Please! Open your eyes for me.”

But no matter how hard she pushed on his chest, she could barely detect that faint whisper of a heartbeat she’d initially felt.

Doubling up her fist, she began to pound on Adair’s bloodied chest, remembering something she’d once witnessed being done in a documentary.

The distant sound of a siren penetrated the wall of panic and heavy breathing, both coming from her.

“They’re coming, Mr. Adair. I can hear them. They’re coming. Just hang on a little longer and they’ll save you. Just a little longer, please,” she begged.

The man on the rug, his body partially outlined in a growing pool of his own blood, remained very, very still. There was no longer any indication that he was alive.

Refusing to accept that the man she had worked for so faithfully for the past five years was beyond hearing her, Elizabeth continued to pound on his chest.

She was still pounding when the paramedics arrived at his office.

“Come on, come on, you can do this. You can cheat death. You’re larger-than-life, Mr. Adair. Work with me here! Please!”

But a few seconds later there was no rhythm of any sort beating beneath her hands.

Chapter 1

An hour ago, Elizabeth Shelton had been driving out of AdAir Corp’s underground parking facility and on her way to her weekend.

It was eight o’clock on a Friday night and the rest of the employees who worked at AdAir Corp, one of the country’s leading cell phone providers, had already left for their weekends. Today the mass exodus had taken place at five o’clock, because that was when the building’s surveillance cameras had all been turned off. They’d had to leave, for safety reasons. A memo had gone out, and everyone knew that the existing system was being upgraded.

Elizabeth had stayed behind in order to catch up on some last-minute work. Work she needed to have prepared and at her fingertips for a meeting she was attending on Monday morning in her boss’s place. Reginald Adair was scheduled to be out of town on a business trip. He should have already left at six to catch his flight.

Preoccupied with something she had just learned earlier in the day—something that was going to completely upend her world once it became public knowledge...and it was going to become public knowledge, because that was the nature of the beast—Elizabeth had neglected to take several very important papers with her when she’d left the office. Without those papers her weekend would be completely unproductive despite the reams of papers she did have in her briefcase.

She’d gotten halfway down the block, reviewing everything she needed to have taken with her, when she realized her mistake. The papers that were the key to the entire presentation were still sitting on her side desk, waiting to be packed up in her briefcase.

Muttering a few choice words under her breath about the state of her mind, Elizabeth had executed a narrow U-turn and driven straight back to the underground parking facility.

Habit had her easing her vehicle into her designated parking space—not that she needed to stick to protocol tonight. There were no other cars on her level—or on any other level, she strongly suspected—because everyone else had gone home, or at least away from here, three hours ago.

She had to get herself under control, Elizabeth had silently lectured as she walked across the parking structure to the private executive elevator that only let out on the sixth floor. Her situation was what it was, and she was not about to do anything drastic to change it. That just wasn’t her way.

In the meantime, she couldn’t allow her dilemma to upset her to the point that she wasn’t able to do her job.

God knew she was going to need the money in the coming months. And besides, work was all she really had. She couldn’t take a chance on losing her job.

She’d laughed at herself then, as she got on the private elevator. Months? Was she kidding herself? It was more like years. She was going to need money—extra money—for years to come. Eighteen at the very least.

Most likely longer than that.

Later. She’d think about it later, she’d told herself. For now she just needed to get those missing papers and go home.

One step at a time, Lizzy. One step at a time will get you there. Wherever there is.

The elevator had come to a stop, its stainless steel doors sliding apart soundlessly. Waiting for her to get off.

Stepping out, Elizabeth hurried toward her office, which was just beyond her boss’s.

The light coming from beneath Reginald Adair’s door registered in her peripheral vision and had caught her attention a beat after she passed it.

It made her stop in her tracks.

Reginald Adair was supposed to be on his way to the airport if not actually aboard the plane by now. Had he left without remembering to shut off the lights?

That wasn’t like him, she thought. The man was nothing if not extremely precise. He believed in leading by example and that meant following all the rules, no matter how small the rule might seem. That included powering down his computer and turning off the lights when he left the office for the night.

Approaching the closed office door, Elizabeth had knocked lightly at first. Receiving no response, she’d knocked a little louder, and this time she’d called out to him so he could hear her through the door.

“Mr. Adair, it’s Elizabeth. Do you need me to take care of anything for you before I leave the office for the weekend?”

She’d looked down at her watch. “Is everything okay? Your flight is leaving soon. Would you like me to call a cab for you?”

She’d leaned her ear against the door to see if she could hear anything and that was when she felt the door move slightly beneath her cheek.

The door had been left unlocked and open.

If he was there, why wasn’t he answering her? And if he wasn’t there, why had he left all the lights on as well as the door unlocked? Perhaps in his rush to get to the airport, he had forgotten? But the man had never been late for anything in the entire five years she had worked for him.

A wave of uneasiness slipped over her.

Something wasn’t making sense.

Bracing herself, Elizabeth had gingerly pushed opened the door with her fingertips. That it gave so easily should have warned her that something was drastically wrong.

But with her own personal dilemma fresh and foremost on her mind, she had completely missed that sign. That in turn had left her completely unprepared to find Reginald Adair sprawled out on the floor of his office the way that she had.

Elizabeth had been even less prepared to be catapulted from her role as the executive assistant to the president of AdAir Corp, to a person of interest in the very same corporate president’s lethal attack.

An aura of disbelief encircled her. It felt as if the whole world around her had transformed into a surreal setting that made absolutely no sense to her, no matter how hard she tried to put the puzzle pieces together.

The first detective on the scene, a fifteen-year veteran named Otis Kramer, lost no time in firing questions at her.

At first she’d just assumed that the questions were routine, but as they kept coming, Elizabeth began to change her mind.

Her uneasiness intensified.

When the detective, who was married to his job, continued interrogating her, Elizabeth couldn’t keep the nausea tamped down any longer.

“I need to use the ladies’ room,” she’d told the slope-shouldered man in the ill-fitting, off-the-rack charcoal-gray suit. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

There wasn’t an ounce of compassion in the man’s thin, nondescript face. “When we’re done,” he’d snapped back.

“Unless you’re okay with having your shoes ruined, now,” she’d countered.

She was certain that if she wasn’t allowed access to the bathroom immediately, she was going to throw up right there, at the crime scene. Thankfully, the man’s eyes widened and he nodded his head slightly. With that, Elizabeth quickly turned on her heel and rushed to Reginald Adair’s private bathroom. The disgruntled-looking detective was right behind her.

Entering the spacious restroom, she began to close the door behind her, only to have the detective put his hand in the way, effectively stopping the door from shutting him out.

Her patience just about worn down to a nub, Elizabeth glared at the rumpled older man. “In case you failed to notice, we are on the sixth floor. I’m not about to crawl out the window.”

He glared back at her for another moment or two, then reluctantly released the door.

Just in time as far as Elizabeth was concerned. Rushing over to the toilet, she sank down on her knees in front of the bowl.

The contents of her stomach from the past few hours made a reappearance in recycled form.

After everything she could have possibly eaten spilled out—and then some—Elizabeth pulled herself up to her feet again. Standing before the marble sink, she gave herself a minute to recover, then turned on the faucet and threw cold water on her face. The face looking back at her in the mirror was almost a ghastly shade of white.

White sheets were darker than she currently was.

Get it together, Lizzy, she told her reflection. You look too guilty. That detective will be all over you like a starving dog on a bone.

Elizabeth gave herself a couple of extra minutes to pull herself together before she opened the door. Kramer was standing right in front of it. She barely avoided walking right into him.

Determined to look as if she was in control, Elizabeth told the detective, “I’m sorry about that. I can answer the rest of your questions now.”

Kramer was obviously annoyed that she had managed to put him off, no matter what the reason. He looked far from friendly.

The next minute, he was gesturing at her to stand over to the side as the gurney carrying Reginald Adair moved past them. Instead of paramedics, the gurney was accompanied by two men from the coroner’s office.

Her heart felt like lead in her chest.

Adair hadn’t made it, Elizabeth realized, startled. Somehow, maybe because the man always seemed larger-than-life to her, she’d expected him to recover no matter what the wound.

Tears sprang to her eyes, threatening to fall. She did what she could to hold them back. Tears weren’t going to help the man now.

Nothing was.

Flat brown eyes took inventory of her, moving from top to bottom. “There’s a lot of blood on you,” the detective finally commented.

Completely oblivious to her appearance, Elizabeth looked down at herself for the first time since she’d found Adair on the floor.

The entire bottom portion of her skirt, as well as large sections of her blouse, was stained with blood. Reginald Adair’s blood.

The realization—not to mention the sight of that blood—brought a chill racing up and down her spine.

“I guess it got all over me when I was trying to revive him,” she told the detective numbly.

“You tried to revive him,” the detective echoed. “Even though he was dead?”

The latter part of the question was all but fired at her. The detective continued staring at her, his eyes nearly boring small holes into her.

“He wasn’t dead at the time,” Elizabeth snapped irritably. Too much had happened in too short of a time frame. She wasn’t up to coping with a rude police detective who seemed to have made up his mind that she was guilty of murdering her boss and had condemned her right from the start. “I detected a faint heartbeat and tried to get his heart to beat harder, stronger.” She blew out a breath as she wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly cold, wishing there was someone else in the room, someone familiar she could turn to for moral support as she suffered through this entire ordeal, even just for a moment or two. “I didn’t succeed,” she ended quietly.

Kramer snorted and looked at her pointedly. “Now there’s an understatement.” The comment was accompanied by a dry, humorless laugh. “What were you doing in the building in the first place?” he wanted to know. “I couldn’t help but notice that the entire building was empty except for you two.”

“Mr. Adair gave the order for everyone to leave by five,” she told him. Maybe this would go faster if she just answered him in simple sentences, she thought, desperate to have this over with. She had calls to make, people to notify of this terrible tragedy.

“Convenient.” Kramer continued to stare at her intently, waiting for her to break or say something out of turn.

“Not really.” She knew her tone sounded defensive, but there was something about the detective that just brought out the worst in her. “Mr. Adair was having the security system overhauled and updated.”

The detective’s face was expressionless. “How many people knew about that?”

Wasn’t he listening? “Everyone,” she answered, trying not to allow her exasperation to poke through. “That’s why they all left at five.”

“Not all.” Kramer looked at her pointedly. “You stayed.”

“I had something to finish. It took longer than I thought,” Elizabeth told him, leaving out the part explaining why it took longer: because she was so preoccupied with this new situation she unwillingly found herself in. “When I finished, I left the building,” she informed him coolly, then added, “It was around eight o’clock.”

“You left,” he echoed. “And yet, you’re here. Why is that?” Kramer asked, keeping his voice deceptively light, almost friendly sounding.

Elizabeth didn’t know if the detective was mocking her or trying to trip her up into making some kind of a confession. In either case, she trod very carefully, knowing that any misstep would have the man pouncing on her with who knew what sort of accusations—not the least of which would be naming her to be Reginald Adair’s killer.

She phrased her explanation about her reappearance as simply as possible. “I realized that I’d left a few pages I was going to need on my desk, so I came back for them.”

Kramer stared at her as if he was x-raying her very bones. “So you were planning on working this weekend.”

His tone was too pleasant. She didn’t trust it. “Yes, I was.”

Kramer circled her slowly, as if taking measure of her from all sides. “An attractive woman like you, staying home all weekend, working—what’s wrong with this picture?” he asked, standing in front of her again.

It was obvious that he didn’t believe her, Elizabeth thought. She was telling him the truth and the detective didn’t believe her.

Was she going to need a lawyer on top of everything else that had happened today?

She knew that if she showed the least bit of fear in the face of this interrogation, she’d be lost.

Raising her chin, she tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder and said defiantly, “Nothing, if that woman wants to get ahead in the company. It takes a great deal of hard work.”

Kramer shrugged, his loose-fitting jacket shifting on his thin shoulders. “Another way might be sleeping with the boss,” he suggested.

That might be the way you’d do it, but I wouldn’t, Elizabeth thought angrily.

For now, the response had to remain solely in her head, since saying anything remotely antagonistic out loud would be asking for trouble and far from wise.

“Mr. Adair is—was,” Elizabeth corrected herself, “a married man with a family,” she pointed out to the detective, hoping that would be the end of his condescending inference.

Even so, she couldn’t deny that she felt guilty—and perhaps even partially responsible—for Adair’s death. Maybe if she’d just stopped by earlier...

Turning, she watched the gurney being guided by the coroner’s men until it disappeared into the private elevator car.

“I should have checked on him,” she murmured to herself.

Kramer’s ears went up on high alert. “What did you say?” he asked, his eyes once more boring into her.

She wanted to shout at the man to leave her alone. Instead, she patiently explained her meaning.

“Before I left the first time, I should have checked on Mr. Adair then. He was supposed to have already left for a business trip—that’s why I came into his office in the first place. I saw the light coming from underneath his door. It should have been off and he should have been at the airport, waiting to take off,” she added mournfully.

And now he never will.

“Looks like he found another way to take off,” Kramer commented, his tone far from friendly or compassionate.

Elizabeth pitied anyone who had to work with this man. “Am I free to go?” she wanted to know. The detective made her very uneasy, not to mention the fact that she desperately wanted to get out of her bloodied clothes and into an accommodating hot shower.

“Sure,” he said magnanimously. But when she turned to leave, he qualified, “When we’re done.” His tone made her blood run cold. “I’ve still got a few more questions for you.”

The smile that slid over his thin lips was completely disembodied from anything remotely personal, warm or sincere.

“Why don’t you come down to the station with me where you can be more comfortable?” he suggested.

“Come into my parlor,” said the spider to the fly, Elizabeth thought with a sense of uneasiness. The old familiar phrase immediately ran through her head.

Who in their right mind thought that a police station was a comfortable place to spend their evening?

“If you don’t mind, why don’t we just go into my office?” Elizabeth suggested instead. “It’s right next to Mr. Adair’s.”

To show the detective how close it was, she pointed to it and then mentally crossed her fingers that he would agree to it.

The last place she wanted to go was a police station. She was tired, upset and she had a number of people to notify. Going to the police station would just needlessly use up more time.

“I do mind,” Kramer replied. His barely open eyes—like the slits of a reptile’s—looked at her for a long moment before the detective told her, “I do better on my own home turf. You understand,” he added loftily.

No, she didn’t, Elizabeth thought as she allowed herself to be escorted out of Reginald Adair’s office. She didn’t understand anything that had transpired today. Not who would have killed Mr. Adair, or why, not to mention how they could have done it without her hearing anything. She was, after all, in the next office. Could they have done it in the short amount of time she was gone from the building?

Most of all, she couldn’t understand why the police detective thought of her as a possible suspect—and he most certainly did think of her that way, judging by the look in his eyes when he was staring at her.

Aside from proximity, which might cover opportunity, the most important factor in a homicide was conspicuously missing in this particular instance.

Namely, she had absolutely no motive to kill her boss.

Adair had never been anything but kind and fair to her in the years that she had worked for him. While she knew that Reginald Adair had his flaws—who didn’t?—whenever he interacted with her, the man had never been anything but upstanding and kind.

She’d found herself admiring Adair’s work ethic and felt that AdAir Corporation was a very good place for her to work. There was an energy here, a zest that promised good things came of efforts that were put forth.

Nowhere within all that was there anything that even distantly resembled a motive.

Rather than just allow herself to be blindly herded out of the building, Elizabeth turned to the detective as they got into the elevator and demanded point-blank, “Am I a suspect?”

She tried not to dwell on the fact that they were riding down in the same private elevator that had just taken away Adair’s lifeless body.

“You catch on fast,” Kramer commented, slanting only a side glance at her.

“Why?” She wanted to know. “Why am I a suspect—other than the fact that I was the one who found the body,” she added.

Kramer nodded and what looked like a smug expression filtered over his face.

“That’ll do it,” he told her, then paused dramatically. “Do you know how many killers actually call in to report their crimes? They like inserting themselves into the crime scene. What better way to do it than to find the body and call it in? It gives them an excuse to hang around.”

“No, I have no idea how many,” Elizabeth replied, her calm voice at odds with the huge knot in her stomach. “All I know is that I’m not one of them.”

“We’ll see,” Kramer replied. Whistling, he got off the elevator, then turned and waited for her to catch up. “After you,” he said grandly, taking hold of her arm and hustling her toward his car.

This is a nightmare, Elizabeth couldn’t help thinking. And it was only getting steadily worse.

Chapter 2

An entire storm of emotions was spinning around within him at speeds that rivaled those attained by twisters and hurricanes.

If someone had asked him to describe exactly what it was that he was feeling, Whit Adair would have been forced to say, “Numb.”

He was numb.

Numb and perhaps, for the first time in his life, more than a little lost. As the vice president of AdAir Corp, as well as the oldest of Reginald Adair’s children, Whit was accustomed to being in charge and able to handle every situation he encountered.

It wasn’t something that he’d schooled himself to do, it was just something that had evolved naturally over time—because he knew that his father expected it of him and he both idolized and adored his father. He wanted to please the man. It had never occurred to him to behave in any other fashion.

Over the years, Whit had strongly nurtured the hope that someday his father would see him as a trusted asset and actually say as much. More than anything else, he’d longed to hear his father acknowledging the fact that he wasn’t just good at what he did, he was damn near excellent. He would have sold his soul in exchange for a little praise from his father.

But now that was never going to happen.

He’d been on his way to the ranch, where he spent most weekends, when the phone call came. Some detective, whose name he heard but that failed to register, said that the police were trying to locate him.

“Is something wrong, detective?” he’d asked, a strange premonition slipping over him.

“I’m afraid so, sir. Where are you? I’d like to meet in person.”

His place in San Diego was closer and he regarded it as less of a sanctuary, so he gave the detective his address. They arrived at the building almost simultaneously.

The detective looked as if he was worn out. Perhaps as a result of years of having to give unwelcome news to victim’s families, Whit thought. “I’m afraid your father’s been shot. He didn’t make it.”

Whit stared at the detective. He remembered noticing that the man had a small stain on his tie and thinking that the man’s wife—if he had one—was going to berate him for being sloppy.

Strange the thoughts that went through your head when your whole world was shaken up, Whit thought. The detective had said something about taking him to view “the body”—as if that was now his father’s new station in life; the body rather than Reginald Adair—offer to drive him. But he wanted some sort of control over the situation, so he had said he was going to drive himself. Giving him his card, the detective told him he’d lead the way, which was good because he had no idea where the morgue was.

His mind kept jumping around, going back and forth between the present and less than an hour ago.

Grief pressed against his chest like a giant lead weight.

He was never going to get the chance to bond with his father the way he’d always secretly hoped and, yes, dreamed that he would.

Someone had stolen that opportunity from him. Someone had murdered his father.

Someone was going to pay.

Whit swerved, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with an SUV that jumped the light.

Damn it, Whit, get ahold of yourself!

For the life of him, Whit couldn’t remember getting into his car. Moreover, he couldn’t really remember the name of the detective whose card was in his pocket.

The man he was now following to the morgue.

The man who had said those awful words to him: There’s been a murder.

And just like that, his entire life was put on hold as chaos took immediate possession of his brain. Everything else in his life—the myriad of details, the pending launch of new cellular software—all of it had taken a backseat to this horrendous event.

And now he was going to the morgue to identify the man who had been found shot dead in his father’s ultramodern office.

He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to get through it.

* * *

There was glass separating him from the lifeless form on the gurney. Glass and a white sheet.

Bracing himself, Whit nodded and the attendant—probably the medical examiner’s assistant, he assumed—gently pulled back the sheet from the deceased’s face.

He hadn’t braced himself enough.

Seeing his father like that, lifeless and so incredibly pale, was a horrible shock to his entire system.

“Yes, that’s him. That’s my father.”

His voice sounded almost disembodied to his own ear. The words echoed in his head, tormenting him, long after they had faded from the air.

“Would you like to take a moment?” the detective asked.

No, he wouldn’t like to take a moment. A moment wouldn’t help. A thousand moments wouldn’t help, Whit thought angrily. There was only one thing that would.

Turning away from the glass partition, he looked at the detective and asked, “Do you know who did this to him?”

“The investigation’s just started,” the detective replied.

“So you’ve got nothing,” Whit concluded.

“We do have a person of interest at the precinct who’s being questioned right now,” the man offered.

Whit’s blue eyes, normally so brilliant, were almost flat as he asked, “Who is it?”

“Sir, we can’t discuss an ongoing investigation,” the detective said, nervously hiding behind regulations.

Whit had been trained to detect weakness and uncertainty in any and all opponents. That had been his father’s doing. Whit could tell now that the detective was a man who could be bullied into complying—to an extent.

“You can if that investigation involved my father. Now who is being questioned?” he asked the man more forcefully.

The detective shrugged, as if conducting an internal debate with himself. “I guess you’ll find out soon enough. It’s your father’s assistant. Elizabeth Shelton.”

Whit stared at the man as if he had lost his mind. “Elizabeth Shelton?” he repeated incredulously. The one he’d taken numerous business trips with—the one who stirred his soul, although that was something he never intended to admit.

What the detective was suggesting just wasn’t possible.

The detective nodded, anticipating the next question: Why? “She was the one who found the body and called it in.”

A barrage of words rose to Whit’s tongue like a band of angry villagers storming the manor carrying pitchforks and torches, but he didn’t intend to waste his breath or his time on the detective. He needed to be elsewhere.

“Where is she being questioned?” he asked.

“At the police station. Detective Kramer is handling the case. Otis Kramer,” the other man all but shouted after Whit as the latter hurried to the elevator.

* * *

This was insane, Whit thought over and over again as he hurried to the police station. Completely insane. Elizabeth could no more have killed his father than he could. Whit gripped his steering wheel, channeling his anger, doing his best to regain control over himself. He had to put an end to this farce and get Elizabeth out of there.

He owed it to both her and his father to put an end to the interrogation that was being conducted.

That he had to come to what amounted to her rescue was, in itself, only adding to his internal turmoil.

He’d been avoiding his father’s executive assistant these last few weeks. Totally avoiding any one-on-one contact with her, avoiding even being in the same room as the woman. He had wanted to work a few things through first.

But his feelings in regard to being possibly confronted and maybe even redressed by Elizabeth were trumped by this unimaginably bizarre situation. Just because he hadn’t summoned the courage to face her didn’t excuse him from coming to her aid and extracting her from being interrogated by some overeager detective looking to make lieutenant.

Doing the speed limit and above, Whit arrived at the police station in what amounted to record time. A part of him had been expecting to be pulled over at any moment and given a speeding ticket. Luckily for him, San Diego’s finest were otherwise occupied tonight.

Parking his silver-gray sports car in the lot’s first row, Whit got out of the vehicle and dashed up the concrete front steps, then hurried into the building.

The interior of the precinct was alive with multiple activities, all going on at once. Even so, it was obvious that the murder of Reginald Adair was taking precedence over everything else.

Whit was grateful—if such a feeling could be put into play at a time like this—that the media hadn’t come crawling out of the woodwork yet. One less obstacle for him to deal with.

But they would. They would most definitely come out of the woodwork. He knew that it was just a matter of time before this whole thing became a giant media circus, three rings and all.

The desk sergeant looked up just as Whit approached him. The grumpy expression on the heavyset man’s face melted away as recognition set in. AdAir Corp—its president in particular—made large annual contributions to the policemen’s fund. That earned the company—and especially Whit—respect as well as pledges of complete cooperation should the need arise.

It had arisen.

“We were all very sorry to hear about your father, Mr. Adair,” O’Hara, the desk sergeant, told him, rising in his chair to shake his hand.

“Thank you,” Whit answered, doing his best not to snap the response out. He wanted to move on to the reason why he was here at the precinct, not discuss his father’s murder. “You’re holding my father’s assistant, Elizabeth Shelton, for questioning,” he began.

“Yeah, that’s right.” The sergeant looked up from the ledger he was checking. “Ruiz,” he called out, stopping the first uniformed policeman who walked by at that moment. “Take Mr. Adair upstairs to where Kramer’s questioning that person of interest.”

Elizabeth was a person of interest all right, Whit thought, falling into step beside the officer. A person of interest to him.

Very much so, he thought ruefully as he got into the elevator and rode up beside the diminutive Officer Ruiz. Elizabeth was a person of interest to him despite the fact that he had broken his own rules and crossed the line with her, a line he had sworn to himself that he would never cross.

And he hadn’t.

Not for five years.

Not until that night in Nevada when they’d wound up stranded thanks to an untimely thunderstorm.

Stranded, attracted to one another, with just a little too much to drink—it was a recipe for disaster. He realized that he’d been doomed right from the very start.

It had turned out to be a very volatile combination—for both of them.

Neither one of them, in his estimation, had imbibed enough to be considered drunk—but they had consumed just enough to have the carefully constructed walls around their professional relationship turn into tissue paper.

For his part, he’d been drawn to Elizabeth from the first moment he’d seen her that day she came to work for his father. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her.

But he more than anyone knew that business and pleasure had to be kept at arm’s length from one another. Mixing the two together was just asking for trouble—with a capital T.

But none of that had been on his mind that night in Nevada. All he’d been able to think of was how very much he wanted her.

Outside their hotel window, the wind had howled and the rain had lashed angrily against the glass panes. Inside, though, they had managed to create their own private haven. For the space of one magical night, he’d found himself coming as close to experiencing total perfection as he could ever hope.

Even so, morning had come with its heavy mantle of guilt. He had let his guard down. Moreover, he had taken advantage of the situation and of her. There was no excuse for that.

At a loss for how to handle it, he’d felt that his only recourse was to behave as if nothing had happened.

Elizabeth had done the same, which was why he was certain that refusing to acknowledge that anything had changed between them was the right way to go.

The right way...even though he ached for her with every breath he took.

But that was his problem, not hers, and Whit was resigned to spending the rest of his life dealing with that.

What he wasn’t ready to do was spend the rest of his life without the man he’d looked up to and done his very best to emulate. Sure, for the most part, sons outlived their fathers, he knew that. But he wasn’t ready for that to happen just yet.

Not like this.

Guess what? It happened. Deal with it, a voice inside his head ordered.

The stainless steel doors parted and he followed Officer Ruiz off the elevator and down the winding corridor.

The floor could have been deserted for all the attention Whit paid to what was going on all around him. He was focused on finding Elizabeth.

“Wait right here, Mr. Adair,” the officer told him. “I’ll let Detective Kramer know that you’re here about the suspect.”

Whit was not in the mood to hang back, waiting while the officer and the detective sorted things out. The turmoil within him was building up at an alarming rate, threatening to erupt at any moment unless he found some sort of an outlet. He didn’t want to wind up yelling at anyone, but containing these emotions was becoming an increasingly difficult balancing act.

“I’ll tell him myself,” Whit informed the officer, moving ahead of Ruiz and letting himself into the room that the officer was about to open up.

His back to the door, Kramer snapped, “Not yet,” thinking that he was being interrupted by one of the uniformed patrolmen.

“Yes, yet,” Whit retorted coldly as he came in. At an imposing six feet two inches, Whit took command of any room he entered. The interrogation room was no exception.

Both the detective and the young woman he had been relentlessly questioning for the past hour turned in Whit’s direction.

If there was a single point during the entire evening’s events that she could have broken down and cried, Elizabeth thought, it would have been this very moment.

The man she had been determined to avoid until she came to grips with her private situation had suddenly been cast in the role of a white knight.

Her white knight.

Elizabeth felt more conflicted than ever.

“Mr. Adair,” she cried, remembering where they were and that their relationship was supposed to be strictly business and nothing more. To her credit, she was positive that no one else even suspected that they were anything more than two people who happened to work together and, on occasion, share a car.

He deliberately kept his face expressionless. “Elizabeth, are you all right?” he asked stiffly. With what amounted to great effort, Whit successfully suppressed the desire to sweep her into his arms and seek solace in hers.

She didn’t answer his question. Instead, because she wasn’t sure what he’d been told, she said, “Your father’s gone. I am so sorry.”

He wasn’t about to respond to that or even react to it. He couldn’t, not without breaking apart, and an Adair had to always remember to save face at all costs. So instead, he turned to the detective, his anger barely under control.

“What is Ms. Shelton doing here?” he demanded.

Obviously stunned at being challenged, Kramer was caught off guard.

“We had some questions,” he began.

“So you decided to ask them in your interrogation room?” Whit wanted to know, his tone clearly indicating that the course Kramer had taken was completely unacceptable.

“I didn’t want her distracted,” Kramer answered coolly. After fifteen years, the detective felt he knew how to play the game.

It was a weak excuse at best and a lie at worst. Whit’s brilliant blue eyes narrowed as he pinned the detective in place.

“Is Ms. Shelton being placed under arrest?” he wanted to know.

“No, but—” Kramer’s voice cracked slightly at the obvious confrontation. He hadn’t expected it to come from the family.

“Then if she’s not under arrest, she’s coming with me,” Whit informed the detective. “Anyone with eyes can see that the woman’s in shock, not to mention that she’s in desperate need of a change of clothes.”

“They offered me some sweat clothes,” Elizabeth interjected, desperately struggling to keep from breaking down. “I think one of the officers just went to get them.”

The information had no effect on Whit. “They shouldn’t have brought you here in the first place,” he said tersely, his eyes never leaving the detective’s face.

Kramer had no use for people of privilege who believed themselves to be above the law and allowed to do as they pleased.

“I’m not finished questioning her,” Kramer informed Whit.

Whit was not about to back off. He wanted to get Elizabeth out of here. He had questions of his own he wanted to ask her, but first she needed to get away from the interrogation room.

“You are for now,” Whit told him. Getting behind Elizabeth’s chair, he took hold of the back and moved it out for her as she stood. “We’re leaving, Detective,” he told the other man. There was no room for argument with his tone. “If you have any further questions, Ms. Shelton will be happy to answer them after she’s had a good night’s sleep and a change of clothes.” He barely spared her a glance as he said, “Let’s go, Elizabeth.”

Her legs felt wobbly as she walked out with Whit, but she suppressed the desire to take hold of his arm for support. Elizabeth was exceedingly relieved to get away from the detective, whose questions had come at an ever increasing rate as his tone grew more accusing.

But her sense of relief was in conflict with the sorrow she felt for the man standing beside her in the elevator.

Though she was certain that he didn’t know it, she was aware of the case of hero worship that Whit harbored when it came to his father. Knew, too, that at least on the surface, her late boss had not demonstrated any sort of displays of affection for his son. For any of his children, really, except, from what she’d heard, his daughter. The youngest Adair appeared to be near and dear to the man.

“You should have called me,” Whit told her the moment the doors closed, separating them from the rest of the police-crowded floor.

He sounded even more distant than usual, Elizabeth couldn’t help thinking.

“The detective wouldn’t let me,” she told him. “He said I didn’t need to make a phone call because I wasn’t under arrest. According to him, we were only having a friendly discussion.”

“Friendly?” Whit questioned.

“It’s a new, really loose definition of the word,” she said sarcastically. Elizabeth sighed deeply, relieved beyond words even though her heart was very heavy. “Thank you for coming to get me. How did you know I was here?”

“Some detectives came to notify me about Dad. They had me come to the morgue to make the official identification.”

But she had already told them it was Reginald Adair, Elizabeth thought. “I guess my word wasn’t good enough,” she said with a shrug.

She would have wanted to spare Whit having to make the ID. Obviously the detective had had other ideas.

“You’re not the next of kin, I am,” Whit told her the next moment.

His voice was stony, as if he was doing his very best to keep any sliver of emotion as far away from him as possible, Elizabeth noted.

He hadn’t been like that the night they’d found themselves all but trapped in the hotel room, held captive by a freak storm.

As if on cue, the warmth, the tenderness, the passion that she had experienced that night came rushing back to her. She’d had no idea that Whit was that sort of a lover. He was so different from the way he usually acted around her. If anything, she would have said he was repressed, keeping all his emotions under virtual lock and key, so well hidden that no one would ever suspect that the man had cupped her face with his hands and initially brushed his lips against hers as lightly as a falling petal floats to the ground when cradled by a spring breeze.

That had been the start of it all—and had led to so much more.

Her heart ached for him. She wished that there was something she could do to help.

But there was nothing.

Elizabeth stopped at the base of the stairs just before the relatively empty rear parking lot.

“Why are you stopping?” Whit wanted to know.

Her eyes met his. “Whit, I am so, so sorry,” she whispered.

“Yeah, well, everyone dies sometime,” he said with a careless shrug. Inside he was struggling to keep himself under control, but he had no intentions of exposing that part of himself to anyone. “The car’s right over—”

He got no further than that, absently pointing in the general direction where he had parked his vehicle.

He got no further because at that moment, Elizabeth threw her arms around him, as much to comfort him as to be comforted by him. Her feelings of bereavement were enormous.

He’d been taught from a very young age not to show any emotion. That included responding to it if it came from anyone else.

Whit instinctively began to pull back.

Chapter 3

“I’m sorry,” Whit said stiffly, successfully managing to suppress all signs of the internal tug-of-war that was going on within of him. “I’m not very good at comforting people.”

Elizabeth forced a smile to her lips. “I’m not looking to be comforted,” she told him. It was a lie, but right now, she felt something far larger was at stake here, namely the rest of the truth. “I’m trying to comfort you.”

Her reply seemed to put him off even more than before. “Well, you don’t have to bother. I’m all right,” he proclaimed as he began heading toward his car again. “I’ll take you home,” he informed her just before he reached the vehicle.

The thought of going straight home was extremely appealing, but it would also leave her stranded the next morning. Intent on questioning her at the police station, Kramer had whisked her away in a squad car. Her own vehicle was sitting in the parking structure beneath the AdAir Corp building where she had left it.

“My car is still at AdAir Corp. If you don’t mind, I need to be dropped off there,” Elizabeth told him. Getting into the passenger seat of his sports car, she quickly secured her seat belt. “And you are not all right,” she insisted as he put his key into the ignition. Just who did the man think he was kidding? “Your father was just murdered.”

“I know,” Whit replied, his voice distant and deadly calm. “I just had to identify his body.” Before she could continue her outpouring of sympathy, sympathy he neither welcomed nor wanted, Whit steered the conversation in a different direction. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened.”

Elizabeth drew in a deep breath as they pulled away from the police station’s rear parking lot. She slanted a look at his profile. “Are you asking me to tell you what I told the police?”

He considered the idea that she might have kept something back from the detective. After all, she was his father’s executive assistant. Her loyalty lay with AdAir, and if something had happened tonight that might have put his father in a bad light, Whit felt rather confident that Elizabeth would either cover it up or omit it in her narrative in an attempt to preserve his father’s good name.

“I want you to tell me what happened,” Whit repeated evenly.

“That’s not the same thing,” Elizabeth pointed out. “I don’t really know what happened,” she told him truthfully. “I only know what I saw after the fact.”

Maybe she was telling the truth, Whit thought. For now, he had no choice but to believe her.

“Then tell me that,” he said.

His voice was so devoid of any emotion Elizabeth was certain that he was going to have a meltdown at any moment.

She continued looking at him, trying to penetrate the walls he had put up around himself. “It’s not healthy to repress what you’re feeling.”

“I’m well aware of that.” His tone was frosty as he cut her off, closing the topic. “You were going to tell me what you saw.”

She couldn’t reach him, Elizabeth thought. She felt helpless even as she understood that he was doing the only thing he felt he could do—employ a survival mechanism. It was obviously too early for him to deal with the feelings of loss his father’s murder had unearthed within him.

She’d try to reach him later, Elizabeth promised herself. But now just wasn’t the time.

Elizabeth focused on the events that had transpired earlier that evening.

“I had just pulled out of the parking area when I realized that I didn’t have everything I needed to work on my presentation.”

He spared her a quick look as he made a right turn. “Presentation?”

She nodded. “It’s scheduled for Monday morning. I’m making it in your father’s place,” she explained. “He was going to be away on a business trip.” Again she thought of the fact that she needed to call people, to cancel meetings and appointments.

Tomorrow, she’d do it all tomorrow. Tonight was for regrouping. And healing.

Whit frowned. He wasn’t aware of any business trip, but his father didn’t usually clear things with him, even if he was the corporation’s vice president. His father had always had his own way of doing things. Like as not, those who worked in close proximity with Reginald Adair usually found things out after the fact. Whit supposed this presentation was to have been no different.

“Go on,” he urged stoically.

She went over the events step-by-step, thinking that without the police breathing down her neck, maybe now she would remember something that had escaped her when she was being interrogated if she reviewed all her own movements.

“I made a U-turn and drove back into the parking structure. Almost everyone else had left at five o’clock, so the lot was practically empty. The security cameras were all down and your father felt that his people shouldn’t have to be working in an unsecured building.”

“I read the memo,” Whit snapped curtly.

She looked at him for a long moment. “Sorry. I forgot.”

Realizing that he was exceeding the speed limit, Whit eased his foot on the accelerator. He also reined in his temper.

“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bitten your head off. Go on,” he encouraged.

She picked up the narrative where she had dropped it. As she spoke, she could see the events transpiring before her all over again.

“I took the private executive elevator up to the sixth floor. Your father’s door was closed, but the lights were still on. I knocked on his door to see if I could help him with whatever was still keeping him here. I knew he should have already left for the airport.

“When he didn’t answer, I knocked again, then tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked.” For a second, her breath caught in her throat as she relived the moment. “I pushed it open slowly.” Elizabeth stopped for a moment, bracing herself against the words she was to utter next. “Your father was lying facedown on the rug. I think I screamed—I’m not sure,” she confessed.

“Was he still—?” Whit couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

She spared him that by quickly replying, “Alive? Yes, he was. I tried to stop the bleeding with my sweater, pressing it against the bullet wound, then I called nine-one-one. I performed CPR on your father until the paramedics came. But I couldn’t save him,” she said mournfully, taking full responsibility for his father’s demise with those very words.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Whit told her stiffly, his body rigid as he stared straight ahead at the road.

“But it was,” she argued. Whit glanced in her direction, clearly puzzled. “If I had come back earlier, maybe the killer wouldn’t have killed your father.”

“And maybe he would have killed you for being a witness to what he did,” Whit countered, stating the fact as if he were reading chapter and verse out of a criminology textbook.

Despite his words, Elizabeth wasn’t finished beating herself up. “I should have gone to your father before I left and asked him if he needed me to do something, help with something. He would have been done that much faster and who knows, he might not even have been in the building when whoever it was who killed him got into his office.”

An annoyed look flashed across Whit’s handsome, rugged features. “You can reconstruct the scenario a hundred different ways and torture yourself from now until doomsday, it still won’t change anything. Still won’t bring my father back,” he emphasized. “Why don’t you put that energy to better use and make sure that his company continues to operate and thrive?”

If she was going to devote herself to something, it shouldn’t be work as usual. At least not yet, Elizabeth thought.

“What about catching his killer?” she wanted to know.

Whit swallowed an expletive. The last thing he wanted her to do was attempt to track down a killer. “That’s what the police are for.”

Elizabeth turned to look at him again, taking in the hard ridges of his profile. Analyzing what he had just said.

“Yes, but you don’t believe that,” she guessed. She saw a muscle in his cheek flicker slightly. She was right, she congratulated herself. “You think that vengeance belongs to you.”

Whit stopped his sports car just within the entrance of AdAir Corp’s parking facility and looked around. Her car was all the way over to the left, near the rear elevator. Getting his bearings, he drove straight for the vehicle.

Bringing the car to a stop beside Elizabeth’s vehicle, Whit turned to look at the woman who had already caused him to lose control once. With effort, he pushed that whole episode behind him.

“You sure you’re up to driving home?” he asked. His tone made it sound like a routine question instead of one fueled by genuine concern—which it was.

Whit was keeping a very tight rein on himself, fearing that if he allowed even a glimmer of emotion to come through, everything would be lost because the dam would most certainly give way and break apart. He was not about to allow that to happen.

“I’m sure,” she told him, then smiled as she added, “thanks for asking.”

Whit shrugged, not knowing how to respond to her expression of gratitude. It wasn’t an emotion he was accustomed to.

“I don’t want to have to identify your body, too,” he told her matter-of-factly.

Elizabeth nodded, expecting nothing more from him. He was very tightly wound right now, she thought, more than willing to give him a pass. The fact that she always did, no matter what the transgression, wasn’t something she was about to dwell on.

“You won’t have to,” she promised.

Getting out of his car, Elizabeth crossed to her own, taking careful, small steps as if she was afraid that tilting even a fraction of an inch in any direction would send her sprawling to the ground. Discovering her boss’s body the way she had had thrown her equilibrium into complete turmoil and she found herself both nauseous and dizzy.

Or maybe that was due to the tiny human being she was carrying within her.

In either case, she couldn’t allow herself to display any signs of weakness—especially around Whit.

At the last moment, just before she got into her car, Elizabeth turned and looked in his direction. Whit was still watching her, as if he wasn’t entirely certain that she was capable of navigating either herself or her vehicle once she got behind the wheel.

“If you need to talk—about anything at all,” she emphasized, “call me. You have my number.”

Actually, he didn’t, Whit thought. He had deliberately deleted it from his contact list the morning after they’d slept together. He had done it predominantly to remove immediate temptation from his reach. But in actuality it had been a token gesture to assuage his conscience, since obtaining Elizabeth’s phone number again would have taken almost no effort whatsoever on his part. All he had to do was pull it out of her personnel file.

So far, he had resisted the temptation to do so.

Not wanting to prolong this exchange between them a second longer than he had to—because it might lead to results he told himself he shouldn’t allow to happen—Whit said, “Yes, I do.”

“And you’ll call if you need to talk?” she asked, watching his expression.

“I won’t need to talk,” Whit told her flatly.

Someone else might have been rebuffed, gotten into their car and driven away. But that someone else wasn’t Elizabeth. Then again, no one else would have had her motivation and desire to be there for Whit.

“But if you do,” she emphasized, looking at him intently.

Whit nodded, surrendering because he wanted to finally bring this to a close. “Yes, I’ll call,” he agreed. With that, he slammed the driver’s side door closed.

He wouldn’t call, Elizabeth thought, sliding in behind the steering wheel of her vehicle. She closed the door and tugged her seat belt from behind her, clicking it into place.

The man could be unbelievably stubborn, Elizabeth thought, but there was absolutely nothing she could do about that.

Nothing she could do about any of it, except to express her heartfelt sorrow and regret. That and be there if Whit discovered that he did need someone to turn to.

She knew for a fact that Whit’s work kept him so busy he had no close friends to share things with. And if he had ever been close to his younger siblings, Carson and Landry, the past few years had seen those relationships drifting apart. Carson had enlisted in the Marines several years ago and from what she had heard, Landry had been taken over by Patsy, her mother, who was grooming the girl for a “suitable marriage” with someone the woman viewed as the “right” son-in-law.

Whit had thrown himself completely into his work for the sole purpose of earning his father’s gratitude as well as his admiration, both of which were now off the table. Permanently.

If Reginald Adair had been proud of his firstborn, he’d never given any verbal indication of that. For the most part, the man had been distant from his family.

Elizabeth shook her head, remembering. Reginald Adair had been closer to her than he had been to his own flesh and blood, she thought now as she drove the familiar path to her town house from AdAir Corp.

You can’t exactly throw rocks, now can you? Elizabeth thought, mocking herself. Talk about all work and no play—she was practically the poster girl for that cliché. All she did was work. In all honesty, she was surprised that the route from the AdAir Corp building to her home wasn’t delineated with well-worn tire marks.

Except for that recent business trip she’d made with Whit to Nevada, almost all of her time was spent either at work, going to work or preparing to go to work. The drive home was usually a tired blur.

And those hours that she had put in, she thought as she drove home now, had all involved Reginald Adair. What was going to happen to her now that he was gone?

The company was far too large to shut down. Besides, it was considered the leader in its field and it was just a matter of time before it surpassed the competition. Would Whit take over the corporation? Would he just pick up where his father had left off and act as if it was all only business as usual?

His manner just now indicated that most likely he would, but the man wasn’t a robot or an android. He was going to have to make time to grieve over his loss. If he didn’t, eventually, it would catch up to him, causing him to break down, perhaps on a grand scale.

A scale from which there would be no way to come back. It wasn’t as if things like that never happened—they did, and careers ended because of it.

Whit was too good at his job to allow that to happen, she told herself. But she was still uneasy. After all, Whit was a man, not a machine.

She had to find a way to make sure that didn’t happen. For his sake as well as for the memory of Reginald Adair.

Just missing a light, she sighed and stepped on the brake. Waiting for the light to turn green, she pressed the flat of her hand against her abdomen. Her thoughts turned to the small passenger she carried there.

“I’m going to have to hold off introducing the idea of you to the world a little longer,” she murmured to her stomach. “You understand, don’t you? Your dad just isn’t ready to hear that he created you right now, sweetie. We’ll tell him when the time is right, okay?”

Elizabeth didn’t bother saying out loud that the time might never be right. That was something she was going to have to deal with later, but not now.

For now, she was just going to have to put that problem on the back burner. This was absolutely not the time to tell Whit that their one night together had produced a dividend. She was certain that would throw him for a loop, especially at a time like this. Whit deserved to know that he was going to be a father and she had every intention of telling him—when she felt the time was right. In short, he needed to know, but not now.

Perhaps not until after it was all behind them, Elizabeth thought.

What she was afraid of was that Whit might think that she had deliberately allowed this to happen in order to trap him. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Under no circumstances did she want Whit thinking that she wanted anything from him.

In reality, she actually did want something from Whit, but it had nothing to do with the baby—or at least, not directly. She would have loved nothing better than to have Whit tell her that he wanted to marry her—but she wanted him to marry her because he wanted her and he loved her, not because he felt a sense of obligation, or because he wanted to give the baby his last name.

The last thing in the world she wanted was to look back someday and have Whit accuse her of tricking him into marrying her.

She would rather die first than have that happen to her.

To them.

And there was even a worse scenario than the one she wanted no part of. What if she told him that their one night of indescribable passion had yielded a baby and he went on to deny that the baby was his? Too busy working to form any personal relationships, she hadn’t been with anyone else in a number of years.

The child she was carrying below her heart most definitely belonged to Whit Adair.

If she heard Whit deny it—or tell her to simply “take care of the problem”—it would absolutely break her heart. Not just that, but it would completely destroy the way she thought of Whit.

No, this was most definitely not the time to tell Whit Adair that he was going to become a father.

Perhaps, Elizabeth thought as she turned her vehicle in to her neighborhood, there would never be a right time and this would just be a secret she would keep from Whit forever.

Better that than to have her heart destroyed.

Elizabeth blew out a long, ragged breath. No matter how she looked at it, this was going to be a no-win situation.

Getting out of her car, she headed straight for the front door of her two-bedroom town house. She wanted the solace of having familiar things around her.

Preoccupied, she didn’t notice the person who remained in the shadows.

The person who had followed her and was intently watching her every move.

* * *

It was hard remaining in the shadows, hard not to give in to the surge of adrenaline the observer could feel coursing through their veins, bringing with it a desire to act. A desire to have Elizabeth Shelton done away with and have her join her dead boss in whatever hell was reserved for godless people like that.

Soon. The word shimmered seductively in the observer’s mind. Soon the world would be rid of the girl just like it was now rid of that pompous ass with his phony, shallow smile.

Checking the impulse to follow Elizabeth into her town house and bring her to her knees, having the so-called “administrative assistant” beg for her life, the person cleaving to the shadows savored the deed that still lay ahead. The mistake would be improved on. Adair was allowed to die too quickly. Next time, there would be torture. Slow, painful torture.

The observer smiled in anticipation.

And made plans.

* * *

As she opened the medicine cabinet to reach for the light cologne she liked to spray on before she left the house, she saw that it wasn’t in its usual place. It wasn’t there at all.

What had she done with it, Elizabeth asked herself, trying to remember when she’d had it last. This was getting very annoying, she thought. Yesterday, her lipstick had been missing—she never had found it.

Opening the drawer where she kept several different brushes that she used to style her hair, she saw that the cologne was lying on its side—the drawer was long and shallow. She took it out, hit the spray quickly twice and then put it back in its customary place.

What was going on with her? she thought. She was too young to be going senile.

If she was going to be of any use to Whit, she was going to have to get ahold of herself and pay attention to what she was doing, she silently upbraided herself.

Opening another drawer, she took out her spare lipstick and put it on. At least that was where it was supposed to be, she thought with some measure of relief.

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