Out Of Order

by Barbara Dunlop

  He grinned, still hugging her, still locked together, legs still entwined. “I like the way you feel, Jacobs.”

  Shelby felt sexy all over again. “We should probably ration them.”

  “The six times?”

  “Yeah.”

  He drew in a deep breath. “You’re right. Like, once a week?”

  She’d been thinking once a day, but she agreed with him anyway. Then she shifted, and the stirrings of new desire strummed their way along her thighs.

  He pushed her hair back from her forehead and kissed her swollen lips. Then he kissed her eyelids, and her forehead, and her cheeks. Then he went back to her lips. “As long as we don’t let go of each other, it’s still once, right?”

  She twined her arms around his neck. “I really like the way you think.”

  12

  SHELBY HAD BEEN staring at the computer printouts for over an hour when there was a knock on Allison’s door. She clambered up off the carpet, stepping carefully between the stacks of paper as she dusted off the back of her khaki cargo pants and padded barefoot to the door.

  She opened it to find Dallas, looking sexy and rugged in a pair of blue jeans, a dusty-blue T-shirt and a pair of sneakers. He carried a paper coffee cup in each hand. He hadn’t shaved, and his tanned skin creased slightly at the corners of his eyes as he smiled.

  “Hey,” he said, with a tiny nod.

  “Hey,” she answered, fighting the surge of joy that bubbled up at the sight of him. It was an affair, she reminded herself. A fleeting, temporary affair that might well ruin her life. She shouldn’t be so damn happy about it.

  “Sleep well?” he asked.

  She nodded. “You?”

  “The best.”

  “Yeah?” She realized she wanted a compliment. Some kind of acknowledgment that making love with her had helped him sleep, that maybe she’d had the same emotional effect on him as he was having on her.

  “Yeah,” he answered simply.

  Not quite what she was hoping for, but it looked liked that was all she was going to get. Well, at least he was here, and he’d brought coffee. She glanced down at the cups.

  “Mochaccino?” he asked, holding out one of the cups.

  “I think I’m in love,” she sighed.

  Something flinched in his eyes, and she quickly scooped the cup and stepped out of the way. She hadn’t meant that the way it sounded, of course. But trying to take it back would only make things worse.

  She turned to walk into the living room. “Go ahead and dive right in.”

  She gestured to the papers on the couch, rattling on to cover for her inappropriate word choice. “On those ones, I’ve confirmed McQueen did steal money.” Then she gestured to the piles in front of the television. “On those ones I’ve confirmed he didn’t. And the ones in the middle haven’t been checked.”

  She plunked herself down on the carpet again, leaning back against Allison’s plaid couch as she peeled back the plastic lid of the mochaccino. “If he stole any more money than the accountants first identified, I can’t find it.

  “I cross-referenced each of the transactions to the computer disk the accountants gave me,” she continued. “Everything checks out from timing, to profit, to commission. I’ve even confirmed that all the companies he dealt with were legit.”

  Dallas sat down in one of Allison’s armchairs. “You ever had accounting training?”

  She blinked at him. “Me?”

  “I thought you were a cocktail waitress.”

  “I’m a legal receptionist,” she corrected. And she sure hoped she got to stay as one after this affair was over.

  He leaned forward and picked up a sheaf of paper. “And one hell of a researcher.”

  “Does that mean you’re not going to fire me?”

  He glanced up. “Why would I fire you?”

  “When this ends—”

  “The case?”

  “The affair,” she scoffed.

  He tossed the reports back down, his expression turning serious. “Our personal relationship has no bearing on your standing at the firm.”

  Shelby wanted to believe him. “You say that now.”

  “Shelby. I’m a lawyer. If I fire you because you slept with me, thought about sleeping with me, or stopped sleeping with me, I’d be breaking the law.”

  “And you won’t break the law.” Why wasn’t that much of a comfort to her?

  “I won’t break the law. And even if there wasn’t a law to break, my honor and principles wouldn’t allow me to fire you.”

  Honor and principles. What a novel concept. Neil hadn’t had honor and principles. Gerry Bonnaducci sure hadn’t had honor and principles.

  Maybe she was safe with Dallas. Maybe she could let her guard down and simply enjoy his company while they made love six more times, and then got out before things got really complicated.

  Six times. She sighed.

  It sure didn’t seem like much.

  “Something wrong?”

  She forced a smile. “No. Nothing.” Then she glanced around at the scattered papers. “Well, except that we haven’t figured out what Randy Calloway knows that we don’t know.”

  Dallas slid off the chair and joined her on the floor, plunking a huge stack of paper into his lap. “Then let’s get going.”

  DALLAS AND SHELBY worked all day, looking for a needle in a haystack—a needle that might not even exist. He had to admit, he admired her focus and concentration as she ploughed through printout after printout. He, on the other hand, kept glancing at the clock, counting down the hours and minutes until midnight, when he could claim it was Monday morning and the start of a whole new week.

  They’d agreed to make love once a week, and Dallas didn’t see any reason why they had to wait until the end of it. Maybe he’d take her back to his apartment. If they made love until neither of them could walk, then slept in each other’s arms, maybe it would be enough to hold him for the next seven days.

  Maybe.

  He let his gaze shift from the report he was reading over to her once again. A page slipped through his fingers to the floor.

  Her head was bent. Strands of her auburn hair had worked free from her ponytail and curled around her cheeks. Her lips were pursed in a moue of concentration, and her cheeks were slightly flushed.

  She wore a pair of loose khaki pants, with bare feet, her toes curling and uncurling in the carpet as she worked her way through the lines of numbers. Unless he was mistaken, she wasn’t wearing a bra under that mustard-colored tank top.

  He felt a hum of arousal growing in the pit of his stomach. He glanced at the clock on the wall. Four-thirty. If he didn’t get out of here, he wasn’t going to make midnight.

  “You hungry?” he asked, levering into a standing position.

  She glanced up as if he’d startled her, green eyes blinking. “Hmm?”

  “Hungry?” he repeated. “I was going to go get us some pizza.”

  She shook herself. “Sure. Pizza sounds great.”

  “Something to go with it? Margaritas?” Maybe the crushed ice would cool him down a little.

  She unfolded her legs from beneath her. “You want some money?”

  Dallas felt himself bristle. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  She stood and stretched, showing off her sexy navel. He was growing partial to that little gold ring.

  “It’s an affair, Dallas,” she said. “We should each pay our own way.”

  He planted his tongue firmly in his cheek. “Why would you start now?”

  “Ooo.” She pursed her mouth and scrunched up her eyes. “Low blow.”

  “If we’re talking the value of my bottom line,” he teased, the tension easing its way out of his gut, “I figure you’re up a couple of world cruises.”

  Her eyes danced like jewels. “I was that good?”

  “You were that good.”

  “You do know this conversation smacks of prostitution.”

  “You do know that’s about a hund
red-and-eighty degrees away from how I feel about you.”

  It took her a second to answer, her eye color inching to turquoise. “That’s nice.”

  It was nice. It was also unnerving and confusing. He lusted after her, but he liked her. He respected her intelligence and he cared about her. He’d never coped with a combination of feelings like this before.

  It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her so, and to ask her how she felt about him. Was this just a lark? Did she feel like there was a friendship building between them? Did she respect him? Think he was funny? Want to be with him?

  A shot of insecurity suddenly hit his system—like that moment before a big trial started, when he knew his case was full of holes.

  “What do you want on the pizza?” he asked, putting the relationship analysis firmly on hold.

  She shrugged her slim shoulders. “Whatever.”

  “The works?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Lime margaritas?”

  “They might make the numbers go fuzzy.”

  “A couple more hours of this, and the numbers will go fuzzy anyway.”

  “You do have a point.”

  He winked at her as he headed for the door. “Back in a while.”

  She smiled and blew him a kiss, and suddenly all was right with his world.

  AFTER DALLAS LEFT, Shelby slit open one of the boxes she’d discovered in the Turnball, Williams and Smith storage locker. Dallas had told her the accountants had stopped looking through the dozens of boxes once they had enough evidence on McQueen.

  She flipped her way through the first report, surprised to find names of brokers she hadn’t come across before. With a sigh of resignation, she pulled her calculator closer and punched her way through the formula she could now do in her sleep.

  Click, click, click, confirmed.

  Click, click, click, confirmed.

  Then, on the third broker’s name, she sat up straight. A shot of excitement hit her square in the chest. She rechecked the calculation, and the feeling grew.

  She tested another number and another and another. She dropped the report on the floor in front of her, one hand going for her forehead, reflexively pushing her hair back.

  She grabbed another report from the new box, and did a bunch of random tests. Johnson, Larkin and Platt. She grabbed another stack of reports from a different time period.

  Johnson, Larkin and Platt again. The same three brokers had numerous rounding errors. Nobody else had a single one.

  She glanced at the phone, wondering if Dallas had his cell with him, wishing she knew the number. She wanted to tell him now. Wanted to scream from the rooftop that she’d found something significant.

  Johnson, Larkin and Platt, plus McQueen. Was it an embezzlement ring? What did they have in common? Were there others?

  While she waited for Dallas to get back, she tried some more test calculations. Same results, time period after time period. Just the four of them, nobody else.

  She headed for the computer, inserted a human resources disk and searched through the records for each man. Larkin was hired in 1998, Platt six months later, then Johnson and McQueen six months after that.

  Shelby went back to the earliest financial record.

  They’d all been at it for years. Could they have known each other prior to starting at Perth-Abercrombie?

  She checked the human resources records again. They’d gone to different universities, had previous jobs in different parts of the country. In fact, the only link she could find between them was that Calvin Abercrombie had hired them all—hardly compelling evidence of a conspiracy.

  But how could it be that four different brokers all decided to embark on the same scam at the same time? They had to have at least discussed it.

  On a hunch, she called up the employment records of Seth Bendel. He was a computer programmer suspected of helping McQueen, but there wasn’t enough evidence to connect him.

  Turned out Bendel was hired at the same time as Larkin, and he was also hired by Calvin Abercrombie.

  Calvin Abercrombie.

  Even speculating about a plot that went that high in the organization sent a shiver down her spine. She told herself she was getting carried away. Of course Abercrombie would hire employees. There wasn’t any reason in the world to suspect his hiring of these five people was in any way connected to their later crimes.

  Still, Shelby checked further into the human resources records.

  In the end, Abercrombie had only ever hired eight employees. Two were his personal secretaries, one was a broker who’d only stayed a month, and the other five may have been criminals. It seemed like everyone else in the firm had been hired by the human resources manager.

  Shelby’s heart began beating faster, and her stomach started to cramp.

  She checked on Eamon Perth’s hiring record, just for comparison.

  He’d only ever hired one employee. His personal secretary.

  Shelby sat back in her chair, blinking at the computer screen, feeling suddenly exhausted.

  The front door opened and Dallas walked in, balancing a large pizza and a freezer pack of margarita mix.

  She turned to stare at him.

  “What?” he asked, taking in her face, his expression turning worried.

  “I found it.”

  He plunked the pizza and the mix down on a table. “Found what?”

  “What Randy Calloway didn’t want us to know.”

  Dallas’s eyes grew wider as he strode over to the computer.

  “It was in the unopened boxes. It’s Calvin Abercrombie,” said Shelby, knowing now that it had to be true. Calvin was somehow connected to the conspiracy.

  Dallas’s brows knit together. “What about Calvin?”

  Shelby gestured to the computer screen, still scrambling to get her head around it. “Abercrombie is behind the thefts.”

  Dallas stopped short. “What?”

  “There were four brokers involved, maybe five, maybe the computer programmer, too.”

  “Shelby, what are you talking about? I wasn’t even gone an hour.”

  “McQueen wasn’t the only one skimming money.” She picked up a stack of printouts with reams of numbers circled and underlined. “Larkin, Johnson and Platt were doing exactly the same thing, during exactly the same time frame.”

  Dallas frowned at the marked-up report. “What does that have to do with Abercrombie?”

  “He hired them all.”

  Dallas looked up. “So? He must have hired dozens of people.”

  Shelby clicked the mouse button, bringing up a new computer screen. “He only ever hired eight—his own personal secretaries, the one broker who’s since left and the people involved in the crime. Perth only ever hired one. His own personal secretary.”

  Her heartbeat deepened, and her breathing grew faster as she realized all over again the magnitude of what she’d discovered.

  Dallas stayed silent for a full minute.

  “It proves nothing,” he finally said, tossing the report on the desk.

  “It proves there were at least four criminals, not one.”

  “Maybe,” said Dallas. “But that’s irrelevant to our case.”

  She shot to her feet. “What do you mean, it’s irrelevant?”

  “This case is against McQueen. I’m not introducing a trail of breadcrumbs that will dilute his crime.”

  She took a staggering step back. “Dilute his crime…” They’d stumbled across the truth.

  “I’m being paid to put together evidence against McQueen, not the other three.”

  “But—”

  “And Abercrombie?” Dallas’s voice went up, his hand raking through his hair. “You expect me to accuse a principal of the firm that hired me of a conspiracy?”

  Shelby’s frustration level pulsed higher. “Dallas—”

  “This is circumstantial evidence at best. It would never even make it into a court of law.”

  “I’m just saying we should
look further—”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Dallas shook his head. “I am not about to go off on a wild-goose chase trying to implicate my own client because he happened to have hired people.”

  He took a couple of steps across the paper-strewn living room. “They’d fire Turnball, Williams and Smith just for asking the question. And do you think any other company in its right mind would hire us after that?”

  Shelby’s frustration turned to anger. “What about the truth?” she nearly shouted. “What about your honor and principles?”

  “It’s against my principles as both a lawyer and a man to try to implicate my own client.”

  Something inside Shelby died. “So you have honor and principles when they’re financially convenient.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” She started to gather up the printouts she’d spent so many hours staring at for the past week. She felt deflated, bruised, betrayed. Dallas was no better than Shuster. “And what about me, Dallas?” Her voice was small.

  “What about you? I’m the lawyer, you’re the receptionist. You’re not coming to court. You don’t decide what I use or don’t use in a case.”

  “I thought we were doing something together here.”

  “We were. We are.”

  “But we’d best not mix up our roles.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means you’re the lawyer and I’m the receptionist, and when push comes to shove, your much-touted principles and honor don’t mean a damn thing.”

  His brow furrowed. “I’m not following—”

  “I’ll save you the trouble,” she said, plunking a large stack of printouts into his arms. “I quit.”

  “You what?”

  “You won’t need to fire me when this ends badly. I quit.”

  “But…” He looked shell-shocked, glancing around the room. “We have pizza, margaritas. It’s only seven hours ’till midnight.”

  Shelby didn’t understand his point. In fact, she really didn’t understand his point.

  “It’s my own fault,” she conceded. “I knew it all along. Bosses and sex don’t mix.”

  Dallas whapped the printouts down on the table. “You can’t quit over this. It’s one case.”

  “It goes to the core of who you are, Dallas.” And it went to the heart of Shelby’s judgment about men. She’d let her lust for Dallas cloud her judgment. In the end, maybe she had wanted sex more than she’d wanted the job.