Number's Up

  “Illegal, Jen.” Lark called out from behind me, amusement clear in her voice. “Drinking in a car is illegal. Try not to do illegal things with the law next to you.”

  I was pretty sure she was right. Forgetting would have to wait.

  Chapter 14

  Closing the open bottle and throwing the bag in the trunk, I got in the passenger side, handing Nic my keys.

  “This sucks.” All I’d wanted was to get drunk with Lark. This was not the way I wanted to stay at the resort for the first time.

  “The resort is actually pretty nice.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “The date?”

  “Are you being annoying on purpose?” I complained.

  “No. Just trying to figure out how the date went without asking you. Directly,” he admitted, glancing at me quickly to gauge my reaction before glancing back at the road.

  “Do you like me?” Oh. Hmm. Maybe the vodka was a bad call because I was pretty sure that I was going to regret asking that tomorrow. Keeping mouth shut now. I was nice and fuzzy at this point, my anxiety buried in the glow of alcohol.

  I looked over at the giant next to me.

  He was so hot. Really hot. And a great hugger.

  Damn. I need something to talk about.

  “They brought you here for me. I thought that they thought Donald was my speed. Unimpressive, boring Donald. But no. They brought you.” Wow. I had no control over my mouth.

  “Are you disappointed?” he asked.

  I thought he would smirk, or throw me a practiced grin, but the look I got was unsure. Unsure was weird on his face.

  “With an Irish god in an FBI suit, is being disappointed even an option?” I admitted, deciding to just go with honesty. I didn’t like that I made this man unsure. He shouldn’t be unsure. Ever. That wasn’t who he was. Or at least, who I thought he should be.

  That got him to smirk. Good. I liked his smirk. Way too much.

  “I can be an ass sometimes,” he admitted.

  “I think you're a sexy ass.” Hold up. Too far. Was there a truth serum in the vodka? Because I knew that shouldn’t have come out of my mouth. “You never answered.”

  “What? If I like you?”

  “Yep.” I watched him, my head rolling back against the seat. The way he moved as he drove. The way he glanced over at me as his face got serious. The way….

  He pulled the car over. Hmm, this could be fun. Good thing the middle console was low. I could hop right on over it, even drunk. I had never tried to do it before, but for him, I could be game.

  “Carrie’s right. I do want to leave the FBI. In fact, I had already quit before I came here. This was to be my last assignment.”

  Hmm… not the kind of ‘fun’ I was hoping for. Probably for the best. I don’t know how good I would be trying to maneuver the middle console in heels.

  Wait. Did he just say he had already quit? Before he came here? Or did my drunk mind make that up?

  “Okay.” I definitely should have gotten water. Or eaten the food I had put in the trunk. Because I had found relaxed-drunk-Jen, and now I had a hot man telling me his deepest secrets.

  “I have wanted to quit for a while. My family doesn’t get it.” He looked away, running his hand through his hair before resting both of them on the steering wheel, his arms braced. Gorgeous arms, with muscles popping….

  Re-focusing to the serious conversation. Serious Jen was needed. Stupid vodka. Stupid break-in. Stupid… life.

  “They keep telling me that this was my dream. That I should be happy. I mean, how many accountants get to work in forensic accounting for the FBI and be an active agent? I’m a sexy, smart James Bond. I should be happy.”

  “But you're not?” I could do this. No giggling. Or kissing him. This was not the time. This was serious. “Wait. You’re the forensic accountant?” No wonder I’d never met them during the search.

  “Nope, I was definitely not happy. Then I came here.” He fell silent again, ignoring my question about being an accountant, and I was really hoping he wasn’t waiting on me because I had only two responses and neither were appropriate. Plus, we were going back to the forensic accounting thing later. When I was sober. I had so many questions.

  “John welcomed me to town. Judy gave me a listing of a house for rent by the month when I left the last time.”

  Rent by the month? That didn’t sound like her. She liked to get people to buy homes. More commitment. Pin. Putting a pin in that. We would be going back to that, too.

  “Like, to them it was a done deal. I was vetted and pre-approved. Like a car. Carrie even handed me my final paperwork today and Dorothy met me at the entrance to the resort with my new paperwork. And, to be honest, I only said yes to mess with you. I knew you wouldn’t be able to handle it being decided on so flippantly. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. But… I said it and it felt right. Then Dorothy was there, paperwork in hand, and it still felt right. So, I did it.” He smiled over at me and I returned it.

  Hold on. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the right reaction. My hormones were making it hard to tell. I squirmed in my seat before focusing on his eyes, no, lips, no. Hair line. Yep. Hair line. It wasn’t sexy. Ish. Was I supposed to be smiling?

  “I realized this fits. This town. This crazy. I’m happy. I have been happy since the day I knocked on your door and you were still in your pajamas. You didn’t fit into my mold. It shook me. Challenged me. You teased me. Fired back at my lines with your own. Soon I was happy every time you called me on my shit. When I left, I went back to being unhappy. Then they offered to send me back to close out the case. And I found my it again.”

  Okay, so this just got even more serious.

  “I’m drunk.” And too honest.

  He laughed. “Yeah, the rapid blinking clued me in.”

  Rapid… no, I was not getting distracted.

  “You aren’t staying for me, right?” For goodness sakes. I was such an idiot. “Oh, my god. I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “Get why Lark is not, not dating Brecken. Because it’s too much. Too much pressure. What if it doesn’t work out? Or if it’s just enough. Just enough to not run, but no one’s happy.” Like her first marriage.

  He still looked a little confused. “Am I going to be an ass if I direct this conversation back to me?”

  “No. Yes. No... I think the answer is no. The point is you’re not moving because of me. Right?”

  “No. Yes. I mean, I don’t know that I can fully remove you from part of the equation and say that the conclusion would be the same, but it’s not all about you. It’s about me. And my wants. I want you. Or what you represent. I want to get the girl. And have a home that I see more than a few times a month. And the community. And friends. Non-work friends. And I won’t get any of that if I don’t make a change. So, I’m making a change. A change that everyone seems to think will be good for me. For the potential of getting what I want.”

  “I’m drunk.” Oops. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the right answer. “And that was complicated.”

  “That sounded like a no.”

  “No. It wasn’t a no.” I didn’t think. “It was a request for clarification on the question.” There was a question in there, right? It felt like there had been a question.

  “Do you want to go out? With me?”

  Finally. I knew that answer. “Yes.”

  “And you’re okay if I move?”

  “No. Yes. Maybe?” Let’s kiss and take it from there. No. Don’t say that.

  “Mostly yes?” he asked, pushing for clarification.

  “Don’t you need to freak out about it? Stress out? Debate the pros and cons? Talk it over with your friends? Drive yourself crazy until you can’t think anymore?”

  He frowned. “Is that really your question? Right now? It’s that?”

  “That’s what’s confusing me,” I admitted. “I can understand wanting to change. I get that sometimes we dream the wro
ng things will make us happy.” Like money. “But… how do you just… move? Decide to move?” How did I decide to change?

  He laughed.

  “That’s not the right answer,” I informed him.

  “I didn’t. I have been thinking about this for awhile,” he smiled broadly. “I was just waiting for… motivation.”

  Ooh. I think he meant me. I beamed. Well, I drunk-beamed, so it could be anything from smiling like a crazy person.

  “Does that mean we can make out now?” I asked, my eyes fluttering to try to keep his face in focus.

  “How drunk are you?”

  “Very,” I admitted.

  “Nope. Sober making out only.”

  “I hate you.” I glared. Maybe.

  “I’m pretty sure you don’t. Not one little bit.” There was the smirk I loved.

  Liked. The smirk I liked.

  “No one likes a cocky man,” I muttered.

  “In my experience, lots of people do.”

  “People?”

  “People like me.” He got even smugger. I really needed to find a word for that.

  I wasn’t sure he understood what I was implying. Probably for the best. If he knew I was jealous it would feed his ego and then there really wouldn’t be room in the car for both of us.

  “You sure about that? Your boss seemed pretty excited to get rid of you.”

  “She just wants me to be happy,” he said, pulling onto the road.

  He was serious about the no drunk make-out sessions. That was very responsible. I had never been so disappointed.

  I was contemplating the morality of making a move while drunk and the exact amount of time until I was sober again. It was okay. I’d heard making out in a car was uncomfortable, anyway.

  “Nic?” I waited until he looked at me to confess. “I don’t think Henry was working on Tony’s accounts. I think it was Frank.”

  “So do we.”

  “And I think… hold up. What?”

  “We’ve been through all your company’s records. You think we wouldn’t notice that the cover-up was clumsy, and Henry’s skill is too high? But he confessed and all the records are under his name.”

  Well, I guess I was stressing over nothing.

  “Then you know about Donald?”

  He gave me a sharp glance. “Donald? Donald Watts?” His gaze went unfocused as his lips pursed to the side slightly.

  “I don’t have any proof,” I said quickly. “But I think he’s the source of the information for the trades.”

  “But it makes sense. And gets—” He cut himself off, giving me a sheepish grin. “Never mind.”

  “Oh please. We both think he is Tony and Dan’s source for the insider trading. But did he have an alibi during Henry’s murder?”

  “We didn’t ask. Why do you think Donald’s involved?” He glanced over at me with a frown.

  “Special projects.” And being a creep, but I didn’t think that would stand up in a court of law.

  “Special projects?” Nic echoed. With the eyebrow thing. I really needed to tell him not to do that when I was drunk, and he was trying to be good. It made me want to do bad things. Very bad. Things I would do with him in… seven hours? Yeah, I should be sober again by then.

  “Frank approached me today about continuing the business with him taking over his father’s clients and some new ones with special projects.”

  “And that’s suspicious?”

  “Would you trust your business to us? After Henry got caught helping to hide insider trading?” I snorted. It wasn’t sexy.

  “No.”

  “Unless…” I drew out the word, leading him to the next logical conclusion.

  “I was a criminal,” he conceded.

  “Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.”

  “What does that have to do with Donald?”

  “Tonight, he told me that he had worked with Henry.”

  His gaze came flying to me, his eyes open wide. “No. He didn’t. His name wasn’t on any of the records.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. I don’t date clients.” Not that it had been an issue in the past. Most of our clients were married or old. Or female.

  “So, they had worked together but there are no records.”

  “And Henry was after me all the time to get a bigger in with Dorothy’s company. I would have heard about him working with Donald on anything.” I was pretty sure.

  “You think Frank worked with him without Henry’s knowledge.”

  “Yep.”

  “Anything more than just guess work?”

  Not really. Well, it was all guess work, but pretty strong, logical guess work. “Donald said that he was working with Henry on a special project.”

  “Ahh.” He went back to focusing on the road while he thought. “Is special projects a term you guys use a lot?”

  “No.” No more than any other business. Or all of the ones we serviced. I was too drunk for this.

  We reached the resort and Nic focused on parking before he turned to study me. “I need to go talk to John. Can you get a room by yourself?”

  “Yes. Go.” I nodded too vehemently, but those things happened when you played with vodka. I was ignoring it.

  He nodded, and I leaned over to undo my seat belt.

  “Jen?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Had you been sober, I would have kissed you.”

  “Had I been sober, I wouldn’t have had the guts to ask the questions that got us there,” I replied.

  He smiled. “But I still have a date with you once you're sober, right?”

  “No.” I watched his face fall. “You need to make actual plans before I will admit that it’s a date.”

  “Tomorrow? I will pick you up at your house at six?”

  “Then it’s a date.”

  Chapter 15

  I walked into the resort pretending that I didn’t feel like dancing. In my head I was Ginger Rogers, only in better heels, dancing with Fred Astaire. Outside I was calm and collected. Okay, there may have been a corny smile etched on my face, but I was mostly collected. All in all, I was pretty happy for a girl who’d lost her business partner, was shutting down her business, got kicked out of her house, and had just had an FBI agent drive off with her alcohol. I might not have been dancing, but I was close to it. I had a date. With a smoking hot FBI agent. Well, a smoking hot soon-to-be-ex-FBI agent. Maybe my life was turning around.

  “Where did you hide it?”

  Maybe not.

  “Frank?” I turned around to see Frank hiding in the shadows of the lobby entrance, glaring at me.

  “I know you have it, Jen. Where did you put it?”

  “Put what?”

  He reached over and grabbed my arm, pulling me into the empty stairwell. I felt like I had been pulled into a ‘90s movie. A stairwell? Who wanted to talk in a stairwell? Criminals and weird guys.

  “Seriously, Jen. Where did you put it? Don’t make me get serious.”

  “Seriously, I should make you get serious?” What kind of threat was that?

  Hold up. Threat?

  Was he threatening me? Frank? Short, pathetic, annoying, criminal Frank?

  “Shouldn’t. You shouldn’t make me… it doesn’t matter. Yes. We need the proof, Jen. Dad said he had proof. Told Donald that it would all come out if he came after us.”

  “Us?” Umm, I might really be in trouble. Like, real danger kind of trouble. And still drunk. Well, less drunk now that some adrenaline had kicked in. “Who is us? And what proof? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Suddenly, he shoved me against the wall, my head hitting it with a crack that didn’t sound good. My knees gave out and I would have dropped if Frank hadn’t caught me.

  What was happening?

  I was fighting dizziness and alcohol, trying to wrap my brain around a situation that just couldn’t make sense.

  Lie. Could I lie?

  About whatever it was?

  “Sure. I h
ave it.” I knew he just told me more… “Proof. I have the proof.”

  Frank let go and turned away, too relieved to notice me slipping down the wall to the floor. Nor me reaching into my coat pocket. Where my phone was. I loved cell phones. And John. I loved John because he could keep his mouth shut in these situations. But I didn’t have John’s number.

  Shit, my head hurt.

  “She has it,” Frank called up the stairwell.

  Not working alone. Two against one poor, drunk girl. That wasn’t fair.

  “Good. Ask her where it is and let’s get this over with.”

  “Where is it?” Frank dutifully asked.

  Good to know Frank followed someone’s directions. The few times I had given him any instructions, he had never followed.

  I couldn’t believe I was complaining about work. My head rolled back, and I tried to focus on Frank’s face.

  “You killed Henry.” Wow. So not the point right now.

  “No. We are screwed because of that asshole. Dan Ellson did it. We should have never let him in, but he found out and wanted a cut. He was tracking the trades.”

  “He was tracking your drinking habits, you idiot,” the voice from above added.

  “I didn’t tell him. It didn’t matter, he swore he wouldn’t go after Dad. Stupid weakling. He knew that everything would come crashing down if he went after Dad.” Frank hit the side of the wall with his hand to emphasize the point before turning back to me.

  Okay. That seemed real.

  “It would have been fine if your father had everything under control like he said he did. I knew we had a problem, but he insisted it was fine.”

  Oh my god. It had been them that Logan saw talking to Henry the night before. Not Dan. What did that mean for the murder?

  “Maybe he had a plan and didn’t get the time because of the murder,” Frank argued back, his attention drifting towards the stairwell. Was there a chance I could sneak out while he wasn’t looking—?

  “Just get it!”

  Nope.

  “So, you need the… proof.” Holding on to thoughts was harder than it should be. I struggled to stand, using the wall as support and moving slowly so I wouldn’t upset Frank.