The Ties That Bind

concentrated on spreading peanut butter on crackers.
    Shannon felt the quiet gaze on her, but she didn't look at Garth. The tension that had been tightening her nerves all day was still in effect. She couldn't seem to relax even though the action was apparently over. She had started work on the peanut butter and crackers in the hopes that food would do the trick.
    " Bonnie's disappeared?" she ventured.
    "She probably got scared when I called in asking for Wes. Since she had an alibi for him, she must have known where he was. My guess is she checked and found out I'd called Jensen's firm to try to get hold of Wes. When she found out I must have discovered he had no meeting with Jensen she probably panicked. Add the fact that I wasn't in San Jose but returning from the coast, and she had a good reason to panic. She must have decided things were deteriorating rapidly and done what any smart person would have done under the circumstances."
    "Run?"
    "Uh-huh."
    "I can't say I blame her," Shannon said quietly. "Are you going to track her down and bring charges?"
    "Do you think I should bother?"
    "No," Shannon murmured. "She got talked into something she shouldn't have, but I have a feeling she'll have learned her lesson."
    Garth's mouth curved in a faint, cynical smile. "Like hell. She had a close call, but if she gets away with it, she'll probably try it again on some other unsuspecting employer. You have a very rosy picture of human nature, honey."
    "I liked her, Garth."
    He shrugged. "So did I. Damn good secretary. But I think I'll take your advice and forget her. Let the next dumb employer deal with her. Besides, she'll be a good, walking advertisement for your totes. She always did have a sense of style."
    Shannon slid him a sidelong glance, unsure if he was making a joke or not. Garth's sense of humor was sometimes rather limited and sometimes rather odd, she had discovered. "I can understand how she must have felt all those years during which you never bothered to notice her as a woman," she declared vehemently. "I would have been desperate, too, under the circumstances."
    Garth's smile flickered momentarily into a full grin.
    "But unlike Bonnie, you took the positive, straightforward, honest approach. Sometimes I think that's the only kind of approach you can take. It's one of the reasons I worried about you so much. The rest of the world doesn't always operate the way you do. Were you afraid I'd believe Wes's lies there at the end?" he added quietly.
    "I wasn't sure," Shannon admitted, the words halting. "He's been with you a long time. You seemed to trust him. You've only known me a few weeks."
    "I've never believed you were involved in the theft, Shannon."
    She looked up at him finally, her eyes full of the uncertainty she was feeling. "Because you're a logical kind of man and you realize how unlikely it was that I was a thief? Or because you still think I'm too naive to plan such a clever operation? Why, Garth? Why didn't you believe what Wes implied?"
    Garth gazed at her pensively for a long while before saying simply, "I didn't choose to believe him because I love you, Shannon."
    The answer caught her by surprise. It wasn't at all what she was expecting. Shannon dropped the knife she had been using to spread peanut butter and stood staring, openmouthed, for a full ten seconds. "Oh, Garth!" she breathed and the spell broke as she went into his arms. "I love you so much, and I was so afraid you wouldn't be able to really love me in return."
    His arms closed around her with an urgency that told its own story. "It took me a while to realize what was happening," Garth whispered into her hair. "At first, I was sure you were just looking for a quick fling. I wanted you, but I intended to keep things on my terms. Then I began to realize you were sincere and I knew I was falling for you. When I decided I wanted a full-blown affair I suspected I was in love, but it seemed safer not to admit it. But I wanted to keep you safe. I wanted to keep you out of my world because my world isn't very pleasant."
    "You wanted me to be waiting for you on the weekends. You were afraid I'd get contaminated if I moved into your life completely, weren't you, Garth?"
    "Not exactly. I trusted you. But you seemed so soft and... and innocent in so many ways. I was afraid you'd get chewed up alive by people like Ed Kenyon and the others at that party. I knew from firsthand experience you're a little reckless when it comes to trusting