Leanne Banks - The Danforths - Marc, Tanya & Abe - The Laws of Passion / Terms of Surrender / Shocking the Senator

Damn, but she was sure glad he hadn’t tried to leave her behind. It looked like Marc Danforth was turning out to be just as honest and trustworthy as everyone said he was. So how come he kept trying to hit on her in her most vulnerable moments? It couldn’t be because he really thought she was beautiful, could it?

Exasperated with the direction of her thoughts, Dana pulled car keys out of her backpack and sidled past him into the hall. “We’re going to check out that newspaper warehouse on Montgomery Street. I’m sure Steve’s gotten permission for us to enter it by now. I called him about it after dinner.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Marc narrow his eyes. He was beginning to figure out that she’d been planning this all along.

“Well?” she urged as she started down the hall. “Come on, Danforth. You’re about to get your first lesson in surveillance. You’ll love it. It’s a barrel of laughs.”

Three hours and four huge mugs of D & D Coffeehouse’s extrastrong coffee later, the silence of the dingy warehouse was beginning to weigh on her nerves. Marc had been sitting still, with a pair of binoculars trained on the coffee suppliers’ alleyway entrance for the last hour.

Dana did a couple of isometric exercises with her calves and forearms and then decided to break the silence. “This has to be that boring time you were mentioning the other night. As long as we keep a careful watch, there’s no reason we can’t talk. How about telling me what happened a year ago that made you swear off dating?”

Even in the dark, she could see him grimace. “It’s not a big deal, Dana. I didn’t find out I had an incurable disease or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

When she didn’t counter his snide remark, he seemed to finally give up his reluctance to talk. “All right. You might as well hear about my most embarrassing moment. If I don’t tell you, you’ll hear it from one of my brothers or cousins anyway.”

He didn’t take the glasses away from his eyes, but he relaxed back onto the stack of newsprint behind him. “A little over a year ago I thought I was the Danforth that had everything going. I was engaged to marry my college sweetheart. We were redecorating the farm so the two of us could start our lives there. I had recently been named Chief Counsel for my family’s business. And my best friend from boarding school had just moved to the area to help me put together the family’s new charitable foundation.”

He took a breath. “Everything was right with the world.”

“A charitable foundation?”

Marc nodded in the dark, but she could see his features by the faint light streaking through the dirty windows. “The Danforth Foundation. I wanted our family to stand for something important. Dad was willing. He thought it would be good for his political career.”

“So what happened? Did you set up the foundation?”

“No.” He took a deep breath and she knew he was steeling himself to say something that might hurt. “I…I was pretty full of myself at the time. Thought I was on the brink of a great life with the perfect woman. Thought I was better than my brothers and cousins who wouldn’t or couldn’t settle down and find someone who loved them.”

“Pride has been the downfall of many men and women over the centuries,” she whispered.

Shaking his head sadly, he grimaced. “Yes, well. I had it—in spades. Then last fall, I got lucky and managed to come home a day earlier than I’d planned from a fund-raising trip I’d taken with Dad. The condo was dark. I figured Alicia was already asleep so I took off my shoes and tiptoed to the bedroom.”

Marc sighed, and hesitated to continue for long enough to make her afraid of what was to follow.

“I heard a noise coming from our bed that no man in love should ever hear,” he finally said with a shudder. “When I turned on the light, there was my fiancée…in the throes of naked passion and…straddling my best friend.”

Seven

Dana pressed her lips tightly together, trying to silence the cry that was forming in her throat. She knew Marc wouldn’t want her to be shocked, or disgusted, or sorry for him. But she was—damn it. She was all those things and more.

How could anyone treat a nice guy like him that way? With all the bad guys she’d met in life, why was it that the one good guy ended up being the one that got shafted?

“So did you kill them?” she muttered. “No jury on earth would’ve convicted you if you had.”

She heard him chuckle and was relieved to know she’d taken the right tack.

“No. But I have to confess that I considered it.” He put the glasses down and took a slug of old coffee. “What I did was slink away to lick my wounds. I moved out to the farm, changing scenery to get away from the memories. And I dove into my work. I kept mostly to myself, except for a few charitable fundraisers and a couple of mandatory family functions.”

He laughed out loud at his own misery. “So of course, I had to be the Danforth that Escalante chose for his frame-up. Nothing like a grand jury indictment to get a person back in the limelight…whether they want to be there or not.”

Dana figured Escalante had picked on Marc because he was squeaky clean and made a good martyr. The papers ate up that kind of thing.

But Escalante hadn’t counted on the FBI…and her.

Marc fell silent again, and she was content to quietly sit and think as the night wore on toward dawn. Dana made two definitive decisions. First, she was going to take down Escalante—personally. If she had to hound him for the rest of her life, the drug lord would never forget that he’d picked the wrong man to persecute.

And secondly, Dana vowed to be the one to bring Marc back into the world of caring relationships between a man and a woman. She had absolutely no experience with such things, of course. But she sure as hell could give it her best shot. For a man who simply oozed sexual energy, he’d been celibate long enough.

She refused to consider that maybe she wanted to explore their relationship for purely selfish reasons. No. It was much easier to tell herself she was doing this to save a good and kindhearted soul from his lonely and isolated life.

If Marc wanted her the way he said he did, then she would be the first woman to let him know he was still a desirable man. A desirable man who didn’t need a woman that came with an ugly background and no class. A woman like her.

Anyway, she knew the two of them would never be able to forge a lasting relationship. She was sure that Marc saw that as well as she did.

So she just must be the right one to bring him back his sexuality. Because of their wide differences, he wouldn’t feel like he was obligated to her in any way. That should make things easier on him. He’d be free to make love to her and then go back to his life when she moved on with hers.

Yes. That was a sensible solution. It was a nice thing to do for a decent but terribly injured man.

Dana wasn’t entirely positive she could become enough of a vamp to make him forget his past. But at the very least she had to try to help him heal. Knowing next to nothing about sexual things didn’t matter when it came to Marc.

If she had anything to say about it, their pretend love affair was about to become very real.

“It’s almost dawn,” she told him softly. “We’d better get out of here before the neighborhood begins to wake up and we’re spotted.” She gathered the coffee mugs and folded the blanket that she’d spread out for them to sit upon.

“No one showed up last night,” he grumbled.

“No. I’m afraid most surveillance is like that. Hours and days of boredom punctuated by a few minutes of sheer terror.”

“Can we try again tonight?”