He felt her go still next to him.
“Were they accusing you of being involved in organized crime as well, Thomas?”
“No. But they were trying to link my father to a huge gambling operation, and using one of my clients to do it. They’ve already arrested my client for supposedly using his vending machine plant and distribution business to launder mob money. They were trying to use me to get a link between my client—Doug Mannero—and my father.” He glanced away from Sophie’s luminous face and inhaled slowly. “Tax evasion and money laundering are the least of the crimes the FBI would love to pin on my dad. Agent Fisk claimed they have someone on the inside providing them with information, but the only thing they’re being fed is lies,” he finished grimly.
“You believe entirely in your father’s innocence?”
He turned abruptly, causing pain to slice through his head.
“Thomas?”
He shook his head briefly, trying to bring her into focus as well as shake off a momentary vertigo. He peered at her closely. Why was he telling her this stuff—a virtual stranger?
“Of course I believe he’s innocent. The FBI must be getting desperate these days. They were trying to get me to say my dad had referred Doug Mannero to me, but I refused to give them any fuel. I went over Mannero’s accounts myself when I first took him on. They were clean.”
She swallowed convulsively and spread her hand on the side of his head. “What are you planning to do?”
He glanced around her private office dazedly, feeling like he was just seeing it for the first time—which maybe he was, as consumed as he’d been by a fever to fuck earlier. Her office was about a sixth of the size of his, bu
t the cinnamon-colored walls, tasteful paintings, and candles on the end tables next to the ivory couch gave the room a warm intimacy that his workspace had never known.
“I should go over to Mannero, Inc., and look at the books. I was actually on my way over there when I came here ...” He faded off, once again focusing on her somber face. Regret lanced through him. “I can’t imagine what you must be thinking of me.”
Her brow crinkled. “I think you’re not yourself, Thomas. You loved your brother and nephew. You’re drowning in grief. The FBI’s investigation of your father must feel like another blow when you were already spinning. I can only imagine what it’s doing to your family.”
He watched himself as he ran his fingertip over the soft shell of her ear. She was so delicate . . . so exquisite.
He felt like swine when his cock tightened.
“Abel was my godson, you know,” he murmured distractedly as he stroked her. “He was ten years old. I was teaching him how to water-ski. Rick and he were going to be picking me up at Diversey Harbor on that day. They never came.”
She didn’t reply but she placed her hand over his heart. Her simple gesture made something dangerous swell in his chest.
“I should go,” he said roughly.
“Where?”
The sharpness of her query made him blink. She probably thought he was abandoning her after he’d just fucked her like a madman.
“Can I see you . . . later tonight?” he asked.
“Come with me now, Thomas.”
A trickle of unease went through him. She’d sounded soft, but the thread of steel in her tone confused him.
“Listen . . . I know how strange the way I’m acting must seem to you,” he tried to explain. “You must be thinking I’m a real asshole for busting in here and making love to you so . . . forcefully for the first time while you were bent over a desk.”
She paled and her mouth dropped open. She looked stunned, but he rushed ahead, needing to tell her this. Jesus. Here stood a woman who likely had an IQ that would put him to shame, forget about the body of a Venus, and look how he was treating her? He rushed ahead anxiously, trying to explain, even when he himself couldn’t understand what the hell he was doing.
“I’m not trying to get away from you, Sophie. I’m just . . . something . . . something’s happened.”
Her expressive, dark eyes made him want to relent, to stay there with her, to forget all the horror and chaos that was his life.
“But I need to go and have a look at those books at Mannero, Inc. I need to know what I’m dealing with as far as this FBI investigation,” he finished regretfully.
For a split second, he saw panic flicker across her flushed face. “Thomas, don’t go there. Please. You . . . you need to rest. You’re not well.”
He brushed his thumb across her cheek and attempted a smile. “Is that your professional opinion?”