Chapter 4
The cool spring air on the mostly quiet Pittsburgh street sharpened Morgan’s alcohol-dulled senses. She marched directly toward the parking garage, her heels clicking on the concrete.
What a night, Morgan thought as her feet pounded the pavement with almost violent determination. She nearly laughed out loud.
Hal Linden! My God, what had she been thinking?
But that was precisely the point. She hadn’t been thinking, not with all the alcohol, the emotional highs and lows of the day, the last two years of transition from blissfully married mother, to unhappily spurned spouse, to finally, the determined divorcee.
But she would keep moving, just as she focused like a laser on the parking garage just ahead. That was what she did.
Morgan was a survivor.
She breezed into the deserted garage lobby, fed her parking ticket into the machine, inserted a credit card, then waited for her passport to freedom to be validated.
The machine spit out her ticket, credit card and a receipt. And Morgan headed for the elevators.
The seventh floor, she thought, confidently recalling where she had parked. The color-coded garage number plate had been green. She could see it in her mind’s eye. It would not do to get lost in a Pittsburgh parking garage at 10:30 at night.
The elevator bell rang; the doors rolled open; and the elevator car deposited Morgan on the seventh floor. Her black Lexus SUV -- so practical with two kids and all -- was waiting for her just where she left it, down at the end of a shadowy row of cars in a far corner of the garage.
The soles of her pumps sounded gritty on the sandy concrete as she walked. It should have been a softer sound. But the concrete, echo-chamber acoustics of the vacant, silent garage amplified her every footstep.
For some reason, Morgan’s mind took note of this fact. She began even to listen for it. The sounds made her feel all the more isolated and alone.
And that’s when she heard it: A second set of gritty footfalls.
These sounds were a whisper compared to hers, at least at first. But, rapidly, they moved closer and grew louder.
The footsteps were coming.
For her.
Morgan quickened her pace to an all-out speed walk. The gritty, sandy sounds of her footfalls were like a soft-shoed dance shuffle. But she refused to run, or even trot. She reached in her bag for her key – and her can of mace. She palmed both. She was ready.
The other footsteps had quickened, as well. They were close now. But in the shadowy parking garage, Morgan couldn’t see anything for sure.
She strained her peripheral vision to its limits, but nothing came into view. Nothing of substance. But the shapes and shadows of the darkened garage played hell with her imagination.
Morgan returned her focus to the front. Ahead was the goal, and it was in sight now.
The dark, gleaming Lexus shone like a black diamond at the end of a long row. She fingered the car’s key fob in her palm, and pushed the button unlocking the car. The SUV’s taillights winked, and her vehicle chirped in pleasant recognition of its owner.
Morgan’s chariot awaited. And as soon as she was inside its cocoon of safety, she would hit another button to slam shut the vehicle’s electronic locks, then another to ignite its purring engine. She saw all this happening inside her mind. She envisioned her safety. It was right from the pages of every self-help book: You can’t achieve it unless you can visualize yourself achieving it. The mantra worked in the corporate world. Morgan hoped now that it held true in deserted parking garages.
She reached the rear bumper of the SUV.
Morgan needed only to make a sharp cut to the right, swing around the driver’s side of the car and grab for the door handle.
She made her turn. Her right ankle wobbled a bit, fighting to hold its ground as her body weight and momentum shifted abruptly.
Don’t fall, she told herself. God, don’t fall now!
She didn’t.
Instead, she lunged for the door handled, grasped it, and then pulled it open.
Her car door swung wide. Morgan clutched the interior door handle like a gymnast gaining purchase on parallel bars. With her arms and shoulders assuming her weight, she swung her feet forward and plunged legs-first into the leather bucket seat.
It was one fluid motion. And Morgan was in.
She reached out her left hand to close the car door behind her. Morgan’s white-knuckled fist gripped the door handle. Her muscles’ fibers fired with all their strength to slam shut the door. It swung toward her, then stopped dead in its tracks.
Someone was holding the door, preventing her from shutting it.
The footsteps had reached her.
Morgan relinquished her hold on the car door handle. The force acting in the opposite direction pulled the door open wide.
Morgan plunged both hands into her bag, pawing and scratching for the mace.
The cold, slender canister found her hand. She pulled it out and brandished it like a revolver, aiming it toward the terrifying vacuum of the open car door.
But as her body swung around to defend herself, her action was halted by a familiar voice.
“Morgan,” the shadowy shape said from outside her SUV.
“Ms. Chase.”
She recognized the voice, of course.
She identified the moment she heard it echoing off the garage’s concrete walls. Relief washed over her at once, but it didn’t slow her pounding heart a whit. It would take many seconds for Morgan’s anaerobic, fight-or-flight response to ease.
In the meantime, someone had some explaining to do.
“Jesus Christ, Darren,” Morgan exhaled, a mix of relief and annoyance. “Are you trying to give me a coronary? What the hell are you doing here?”
Darren’s well-muscled, finely tailored figure filled the frame of the open car door. His boyishly handsome face wore a sheepish, shamed look that was impossible to remain angry with.
“Waiting for you,” he said in a low, embarrassed tone. “I’m sorry I gave you such a start.”
Morgan rolled her eyes. Her heart rate was ebbing now, and the rush of adrenalin surging through her system felt quite wonderful, in fact. She never felt more alive.
She let out another, long release of air from her overworked lungs.
“Let’s just say, it’s probably the most excitement I’ve had in a while,” Morgan said, dialing back her anger. “No harm done on that score. But why in the world were you skulking around a parking garage like some serial killer?”
A still-chastened Darren dipped his head and frowned.
“I just didn’t feel right about you and Mr. Linden,” he said without meeting her eyes.
“You didn’t feel right about it?” Morgan repeated with emphasis. “Two colleagues going to dinner to celebrate a successful project? What’s the problem?”
Darren raised his eyes, but not his lowered chin. He looked at Morgan from under his thick brow, like a little boy.
Somehow, this made Morgan feel all the more powerful, yet struck a chord deep within her. It was an emotionally resonate string that hadn’t been played in years and years. Maybe not since high school, when her lot in life had been the underdogs and misfits, not corporate gods like Brock Ballentine.
“I know there was more to it than that,” Darren finally muttered. “At least on Linden’s part. I didn’t want him taking advantage of you.”
Morgan frowned. She did not need protecting. Not like this.
“Why do you assume he was using me?” she asked, reversing tables on the automatic male image of a damsel in distress. “I think I can take care of myself.”
Darren lowered his eyes again.
“Well?” she demanded.
“I know,” he mumbled.
“Then, what were you thinking?”
There was a long moment of silence, then he spoke.
“Maybe, I was jealous,” Darren offered shyly.
“Of your
boss having dinner with her boss?” Morgan repeated.
The young, handsome man raised his head. This time, he was fully confident, and his voice was strong.
“Of you with another man,” he stated.
Now, Morgan was the one with no words.
The chemistry between them -- all the lingering looks, the soft touches, the shoulder massages, the too-close office contact, even the playfully suggestive banter – always managed to remain unspoken and undefined.
Now, Darren Spencer was laying it all out there.
“Darren,” Morgan stammered. “It’s not like that.”
Morgan looked down. She could no longer face Darren’s confident, defiant stare, his willingness to look this thing directly in the eye.
“I know what it’s like in the office,” he said. “How it has to be. How it will remain so. But it doesn’t have to be that way out here. In private. With you and me. Just Darren and Morgan, not Ms. Chase and her hunky assistant.”
“So that’s what people say?” Morgan sheepishly asked.
“Huh?”
“About you and me?” she clarified. “That I’m the Alpha female getting serviced by her hunky assistant?”
“Pretty much,” Darren shrugged. “That and worse. You know, little remarks about how closely I’m assisting you. Whether I make house calls. Whether my duties include the bedroom, as well as the boardroom.”
“People think we’re doing it, don’t they?” Morgan ventured, wrinkling her cute, pert nose, as if not wanting to hear the answer.
Darren nodded. “A lot do. Others think it, but won’t say it. They must have taken the company’s sexual harassment training to heart.”
“You mean people actually listen to that HR crap?” Morgan cracked, chuckling and lightening the mood.
“Guess so,” Darren smiled.
“What about you?”
“Sure,” he said. “In the office, I do. It makes sense. Not out here. Not off the clock.”
There it was, wasn’t it?
The opening. The fine print. The addendum to the contract.
It was there if Morgan wanted it. Darren was there if she wanted him. And why shouldn’t she? He was young, smart, discrete and absolutely gorgeous. She’d be kidding herself if she denied the pangs in her pleasure zones, those warm, moist sensations that sometimes gushed forward from just looking at him. Just looking and allowing her mind to wander. Permitting her mind’s eye to show her images of Darren without his shirt. Darren in her bed. Darren on top of her.
But would Morgan set loose her lust in real life?
Hal Linden would, she thought.
Their dinner together had been an object lesson in how the so-called Big Boys rationalized and justified their corporate conquests. For them, office flings were part of the perks. And they didn’t deny themselves any of those pleasures. None of them did. Only women executives would try to establish stricter rules for themselves. Only they would wring out one of the best rewards from the prize that they had finally grasped. They had scratched and clawed their way up, finally achieving the money, the corner office, the status, and the respect. Why not the romance?
When it came right down to it, that was the most human part of the whole damn thing.
Morgan scanned Darren up and down. He was still standing in the space of her car’s open door. He had made his stand, and she respected him for it. It took courage that she didn’t possess. She would have kept playing their little office games unrequited, if not for this.
If not for him.
Darren had made this possible, and Morgan could not deny his effort or this moment.
“Get in,” she finally said.
And like a good assistant, Darren Spencer didn’t need to be told twice.