“Okay, then it’s just about ready,” I told him. He picked up the remote, turned off the television and followed me back to the kitchen.
While I was finishing up the sandwiches (making him two, because one would never do it for him), he grabbed a pitcher of iced tea out of the refrigerator, poured a glass for each of us and sat down at his usual place at the table. I slid his plate and a napkin in front of him, and anticipating his next question, moved to the cupboard, grabbed some chips and set them on the table next to him.
He ripped open the bag, helping himself to a couple handfuls and depositing them on his plate. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” I replied, taking my seat across from him. We ate in silence for a few minutes, while he scarfed down his first sandwich and then slowed down a bit to eat some chips.
“So,” he said. “Have you been giving any thought to who our embezzler might be?”
“Well, actually, I’m finding it hard to imagine anyone at the office who would do something like that.”
“That’s because you like to believe that everyone is basically good. And you can always justify any bad behavior as coming from good intentions.” He popped another chip in his mouth. “You’re going to have to learn to be a little more suspicious of people’s motives and behavior.”
He was right about that. I did believe that there was good in everyone and you could find it if you looked hard enough. True, you had to look harder with some people, but you could always find it. Even if the only thing you could come up with was that they meant well or they were good to their mother.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I agreed reluctantly and took a sip of iced tea. I didn’t want to look for the bad; it went against my nature - but I knew I was going to have to take off my rose-colored glasses, at least for the time being. “So do you think it has to be someone in the accounting department?”
“That seems most likely. But what’s not likely is that it’s only one person. My dad and I both agree that it’s probably at least two. Either both of them from the office, or one from the office working with someone on the outside who is submitting fake invoices.”
“Do you have an idea yet of how much money we’re talking about?” I asked.
“It looks like it could be anywhere from one to two million dollars over the last three to four years. We’re not talking about chump change.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, stunned at the enormity of that sum.
“Yeah, whoever is doing this is getting really ballsy,” he said. “I think they must be feeling pretty confident in their ability to continue to get away with it because the amount seems to be higher every year.”
I picked our plates up from the table and put them in the dishwasher. “But you would think it would be obvious in some way. A person with that much money has got to be spending it somewhere and I don’t see anyone buying big houses or boats or expensive cars. The only one who seems to have more money than they earn is Marla, and that’s only because her husband has more money than God.”
“Are you sure about that?” Jack raised his eyebrows and looked at me thoughtfully as I sat back down and finished off my iced tea. “Have you ever met her husband? In all the time you’ve worked there, have you ever even seen a picture of him?”
I thought about that and realized it was true. At any company functions where families were invited, Marla always showed up alone, with some excuse as to why her husband couldn’t be there. I never thought much about it, because I tried to avoid thinking about Marla very much in general, but Jack was right.
“But why in the world would she invent a husband? It doesn’t make sense,” I said with a shake of my head. “What possible reason would she have for doing that?”
“Who the hell knows,” Jack answered. “People do weird shit all the time for reasons that only make sense to them. I’m just saying, it’s something to think about.”
“Okay - but Frank? He hasn’t changed his style of living in any major way since I’ve known him. I haven’t heard anything to make me think he has any expenses he can’t handle. And, remember, he makes quite a bit of money. He just doesn’t seem to have a motive to steal.”
“No, it doesn’t seem like it, but what do we really know about his personal life? Only what he tells us and lately, even that isn’t much. We don’t know that much about Heather, either, except that Frank was insistent on hiring her. Which is also strange because I don’t think he really likes her very much.”
Jack had an intense frown of concentration on his face as he mindlessly continued to eat chips from the now half-empty bag. I wondered how it was possible that he didn’t weigh 300 pounds.
Letting go of my envy of his fast metabolism, I turned my thoughts back to Frank and Heather. Frank claimed to have hired her only to make my job a little easier. He said a part-time person to do the grunt work of processing the payroll, which used to be part of my job, would free me up to do other things. Although I was grateful to get rid of that time-consuming aspect of my job, and I liked Heather very much, I couldn’t help but think that Frank didn’t do it solely for my benefit. It was more likely he did it so he could dump some more of his own work on me.
And I agreed with Jack in that Frank didn’t seem to like Heather at all. He avoided her whenever he could and anything he had to say to her, he said through me. A memory flashed through my mind of Frank, standing inside Heather’s cubicle, holding the picture of her daughter that sat on her desk.
Although it had been Heather’s day off, it was still strange to see Frank there. He went out of his way to avoid Heather’s cubicle. He was looking down at the picture in his hand with a wistful, almost sad look on his face. Sensing my presence, he looked up briefly from the picture and said quietly, “She’s so beautiful, isn’t she?”
Heather changed the picture on her desk regularly and this was a new one I hadn’t yet seen. The little girl was indeed beautiful, her almost white hair was pulled back into a ponytail, held with a purple bow, a style that emphasized her bright blue eyes. She was standing outside what looked like it might be a daycare center, her small hand held by a larger one, and she was laughing up at the man standing next to her – whom I assumed to be Heather’s husband, but all that was displayed in the picture were his jeans-clad legs.
When I agreed she was a beauty, Frank gave a small, shuddering sigh, set the picture back on the desk and walked away without another word. I thought it was strange at the time for a lot of reasons, but put it off as Frank missing his grandchildren, as two of the three were currently living out of state.
A thought occurred to me and I asked Jack, “Do you think it’s possible that Frank and Heather are related in some way? I mean, I know it sounds stupid, but maybe he doesn’t want anyone to know it. He was pretty adamant about creating that position and putting Heather in it, yet he won’t even speak to her directly. Do you think he’s just putting on an act to throw off any suspicion that he hired a relative?”
Jack gave the idea some thought before replying. “Well, maybe. It is against policy to have relatives working together in the same department. And if they are somehow related, it might even make sense that they’re working together to get as much money out of the company as they can.”
I was shocked at this assumption and said so. “Heather and Frank? You’ve got to be kidding!” A more unlikely pairing I couldn’t imagine. “Heather is not flashing around a lot of money. She doesn’t even have a reliable car, let alone a new one. In fact, I’ve had to lend her my car more times than I can count just so she could go out for lunch because hers wasn’t running. And I’ve seen her house, Jack - it’s small and not in a great neighborhood. And, on top of that, I think they’re only renting it.”
Jack stopped my rambling defense of Heather with a look. “Angie, whoever is doing this is not stupid. If they were, they wouldn’t have managed to get away with so much and for so long. Just because they’re not waving the cash under our noses, doesn’t mean they don’t
have it. Don’t write anyone off based on what you think you know about them. Everyone is under suspicion. Don’t forget that.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, holding my hands up in surrender. “But I don’t like it.”
“I know you don’t and I don’t, either. But it’s the way it’ll have to be for a while. And, again, don’t say a word to anyone. We don’t want them tipped off that we’re on to them. Now, take a look and tell me if I have any bread stuck in my teeth.”
He bared his perfect teeth in a gorilla grin and I leaned forward slightly to assess them. “Nope, you’re good. How about me?” I bared my own teeth in a similar fashion for his inspection.
He looked them over carefully. “All clear.”
“Good,” I said. “And by the way, we need to talk about my new responsibilities so I can have that memo written before I see you tomorrow night.”
We discussed the particulars, the most notable being that Jack had “just this minute” decided Heather would now report directly to Frank, instead of to me. “I’m going to force him to interact with her and see if we can pick up on anything,” he said.
Jack stood up and stretched, and I found my attention riveted to the small section of his abs that he had bared. Jack liked his food too much to ever have a true six-pack, but the muscles there were lightly defined and, I just realized, very sexy. My attention slid to the line of hair that was barely showing below his navel. Hot. I had a sudden urge to lick my way down that enticing trail and see where it led.
Jack pushed his chair back under the table, breaking me out of my reverie and signaling he was either getting ready to leave or preparing to camp out in my living room.
“Do you have plans for tonight?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’ve got a date later, so I should get home and get some work done before then.” He started walking toward the front door and I followed behind him, thinking how perfectly bitable his ass looked in those well-worn jeans.
“Oh. Who’s the date with?” I inquired nosily.
“Just a girl I’ve been talking to on a gaming site. She’s been pushing me to meet in person so when she wanted to get together for dinner tonight, I said okay.” He shrugged and didn’t seem too excited at the prospect.
“You don’t seem too excited,” I pointed out.
“Eh.” Again with the shrug. “She seems okay, but not entirely my type. I guess we’ll see.” He paused for a second then stared out over my left shoulder while he appeared to be considering something. “But, then again, maybe it’ll work out and I’ll be able to get her to sign the contract.”
“The contract?” I asked with knitted brows. “What contract?”
“You know,” he said, giving me a come on, don’t be dense kind of a look. “The contract.”
It took me a second to realize he was talking about a sexual contract. I had a hard time imagining Jack the Dom. He was just too playful for that kind of thing and I couldn’t (and didn’t want to) picture him in leather chaps, or whatever the hell he wore, whipping the shit out of someone with a leather flogger. I hoped my momentary shock that he would tell me this, or that he would even do that, didn’t show and I quickly rearranged my expression into one I assumed a woman of the world would wear.
“Do you really make them sign a contract?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Well, yeah. It’s pretty standard for that kind of thing. It makes it easier right from the beginning knowing what someone will and won’t do.” He flashed me a grin and wiggled his eyebrows.
“Oh. I guess that makes sense.” I reached up to hug him goodbye. “Well, good luck with that.”
He bent down slightly and returned the hug, squeezing me tightly. “Thanks. And thanks for lunch, too.”
“Any time,” I told him as he released me. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
“Right. I expect Luke around 6:00, but I’ll be home all day. Come by whenever.”
“Okay. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way.”
“Sounds good,” he said as he opened the door. “See ya, Ange.”
“See ya, Jack.”
I closed the door behind him, finding myself wondering exactly what kind of sexual expectations Jack had and what he would write in to his side of a kinky contract. I shook off the thought before it led me back down that wayward path of perverted thoughts that I shouldn’t, and wouldn’t, be having.
Then I settled myself in and restarted my reading marathon.
Chapter 8 - Jack
Jack hopped quickly down Angie’s front steps and headed for his Jeep, almost in pain from suppressing his laughter.
God, she is so gullible, he thought with a snort. It was just one of the many things he loved about her. She was so trusting and, in some ways, so naive, that she believed every ridiculous word that came out of his mouth.
As soon as he was settled in behind the wheel, the door pulled firmly closed behind him, he let the laughter erupt. He rested his forehead briefly on his arms on the steering wheel, as his whole body shook with it.
A contract! Oh, that was genius, Jack. Pure, fucking genius!
He was sure he was going to lose it entirely when he got to the part about why a contract was so important. It took everything he had to maintain a straight face.
And the look on Angie’s own face when she realized what he was talking about! Her jaw had briefly dropped and her eyes went wide before she managed to compose her expression. He took a moment to savor the recollection of her futile attempt to look as if she had conversations on that subject every day of her life.
Priceless.
His laughter quieted down, but he still had a smile on his face as he started the car and pulled out of Angie’s driveway.
During the seven minute drive to his house, he thought about how Angie, who was always so open about everything else, did all within her power to hide her obsession with romance novels. Like he cared. Jack himself had a love of novels that involved espionage, intrigue and several dead bodies. He didn’t bother to analyze that or try to explain to people why he liked those types of books - he just did.
And if romance novels were what entertained Angie, then he wished she would just own it and give a hearty “fuck off” to anyone who didn’t like it. His mother and her mother both read those kinds of books and they couldn’t care less who knew it. But Angie felt a need to hide it, like it was something she didn’t want people to know about her.
It’s not like he hadn’t known about it for years. Before her parents had bought her the Kindle for Christmas two years ago, he had spotted many of those books lying around her house. He would barely catch a glimpse of the bare-chested, six-packed men on the paperback covers before Angie was hastily shoving them in drawers or under couch cushions. In what he supposed she thought was a very surreptitious way.
He laughed out loud again. She totally sucked at being sneaky.
But what she didn’t know is that today wasn’t the first time he had picked up her Kindle to take a look at what she was reading. Today was an exception only in that he had been in the mood to mess with her. He read her books a lot, actually. If he was at her house, waiting for her to get ready before they went somewhere, or if she had fallen asleep while reading at his house, he read.
And some of it, like the over-the-top shit he read today, was just ridiculous. And some of it was pretty hot.
When he read a few pages of the previous year’s blockbuster on her Kindle, and noting that she had all three books in the trilogy, he had downloaded his own copy and read the first book. He soon realized the book was not written with a male reader in mind. He enjoyed the sex scenes, but found himself quickly flipping past the parts that went on and on with all that emotional drivel women seemed to love.
So why that book flashed in his mind on Friday while he was having a serious conversation with Angie about their relationship was anyone’s guess. But he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Before he knew it, he was “confessing” to his BDSM tendencies, even paraphra
sing dialogue from some of her own books, and she bought it – hook, line and sinker.
Yep. Totally gullible.
This had all the earmarks of being a classic among the stories he had fooled her with over the years. Even better than the greatness of what he liked to think of as The Steely Dan Whopper. It started in the middle of a perfectly innocuous conversation he had been having with Angie about how they had each gotten their names. He had formulated a very convoluted story, on the fly, about his mother winning tickets and a backstage pass to a Steely Dan concert when she was 18.
He embellished the story by saying that the band had taken such a great liking to her, and she to them, that she decided on the spot to accept their invitation to spend that entire summer touring with them. Without coming right out and saying it, he had also hinted that she had a sexual relationship with more than one member of the band. And so, based on the fond memories she had of that summer, she had named him Jack after their song Do It Again.
The song was right, but he was named after it simply because his father liked it. His mom couldn’t stand Steely Dan.
It was one of the most outrageous fabrications he had ever told her. His mother had never even been on a single date with anyone but his father; they had been together since they were in high school. But Angie hadn’t known that at the time. And Jack didn’t know if Steely Dan was even touring when his mother was 18, but Angie didn’t know that, either - and so she believed every single word.
Then a few months later, long after he had forgotten telling the story, she innocently asked him a question about it. He had laughed his way all the way through his confession. Angie was significantly less amused. And for over a week his arm had carried the bruise to prove it. For someone who was only 5’4” and about 120 pounds, she sure packed a mean punch.
But even after all that, and the many other yarns he had spun over the years, she still fell for it. Every single time. He snorted and thought again that this BDSM stuff was going to be a classic. He wondered how long it would be prudent to keep it going. Maybe if he told her the truth sooner, rather than later, she wouldn’t hit him quite so hard this time.
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