Eclipse of the Heart - By Carly Carson Page 0,70

help my friend save his home."

"Number four." His ring finger folded down. "The Molloys are furious, and rightly so. They've filed a discrimination lawsuit against me. I can scarcely blame them."

"Stop." Amanda held up her own hand, unable to listen to any more. Even worse, she'd just had a terrible realization. He hadn't heard about the pregnancy. Number five was the disaster he didn't know about yet.

"Stop?" He glared at her. "You don't want to hear the consequences of your actions? Too damn bad."

"You're pretty quick to judge me," she said.

"The evidence speaks for itself!"

"What evidence? I did not send that note."

"Should I say nice try?" Logan shook his head. "You can plainly see that you're the author." He gestured to the screen.

"I—"

"Don't try to defend yourself," he interrupted. "I already did that. I was fool enough to think you couldn't have done it. I didn't want to believe you would be so heartless." He paused, and Amanda tensed for the final blow she could see he planned to deliver.

Logan blew out a disgusted breath. "I had one of the IT guys confirm that it came, not just from your email, but from your office computer."

Amanda could only stare. Why would someone have done this to her? More importantly, who had done this to her? She needed to find out. Now.

She looked down at her frumpy sweats. She needed to take a shower, get dressed and head for the office—

A new horror slammed over her. She'd been fired. How had she managed to forget that already? She couldn't go into the office and talk to the IT people, or anyone else who might help her figure out what had happened. Even worse, she'd lost her health insurance, and her paycheck, two things she needed more than ever.

"You can't fire me," she said.

Logan didn't even hesitate over the change in the topic. "Thanks to you," he snarled, "I still own one hundred percent of the company. I can do whatever I want."

She rubbed her forehead, wishing she could think clearly. Too much was coming at her to sort out the critical from the merely awful.

"Wait a minute." She looked up at Logan. "No one would cancel a public offering over a letter like that." She pointed at his computer. "What else happened?"

He pressed his lips together. "That's not the point."

"It certainly is. Two of the four things I'm alleged to have done to ruin you are related to that public offering. What else happened?"

He sat down abruptly on her sofa and pushed a hand through his hair. "If you must know, Phoebe Cattus was running an escort service out of the office. The news broke Friday morning."

Amanda slid bonelessly onto a chair facing him. "Wow."

Something niggled at the back of her brain, but she couldn't tease it out yet. "That was enough to derail the offering?"

A tinge of red appeared on his cheekbones. "There was more, but that was the gist of it."

More? Amanda studied him for a minute before the light went on. Someone had discovered that he used an escort service. Maybe the same one.

"No," he said, "not hers. Give me credit for some taste."

With a big effort, she resisted rolling her eyes. "Sooo…" She drew out the word. "Is it my fault that the use of escort services torpedoed your public offering?"

"Phoebe was clever," he admitted. "She told me she'd get back at me for firing her. She held a press conference at 8 o'clock yesterday morning. Plenty of time for the blogging world to pick up the news before the stock exchange opened."

"When did you find out about the discrimination lawsuit?"

"Those papers were filed Thursday afternoon. We spent all of Thursday night trying to contain the fallout from that."

"Really?" Amanda raised her eyebrows. "You don't think that's too much of a coincidence? Phoebe Cattus is involved in both of the actions that derailed your public offering."

"Don't be paranoid. How would she get access to your computer?"

"I don't know." Amanda sneezed. "But I do know I did not write that note. Think about it. I have a sister disabled from a serious disease. Would I hurt another person with those words? Furthermore, I would never close down any deal on my own authority. Least of all this deal." Her words rolled around in her head, taunting her. "This was the company I wanted to run," she said sadly. "Didn't you know that?"

He shrugged. "I thought you'd changed your mind."

"Why?"

He closed his laptop, as if giving her notice that