by Jill Shalvis
“You haven’t taken any drugs.”
“Then you’re penetrating the pain, an admirable feat. Why don’t you go for a run?”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“Odd, since before I was shot, you didn’t want to stay.”
“Maybe watching you be so stupid changed things.”
“Changed what?”
It’d made her realize how fragile a balance life could be. That maybe living for the moment wasn’t quite enough. That maybe there needed to be sustenance too. Up until now, the men in her life had all been like junk food. Fun, but not necessarily good for her. Joe was sustenance. Very good for her. She ran a finger down the center of his chest to low on his belly, then swirled it around his belly button.
“Red.”
The word, uttered with soft warning, gave her a shiver. “You should let me get you something to eat.”
“Stop changing the subject. What changed?”
“Shh.” Her gaze held his as she ran her finger down a little further, to the edge of his sweats.
His eyes went opaque. It might have been pain but she was willing to bet not. She began to slowly pull the tie on his sweats. “You’re grumpy,” she murmured. “I know you have good reason but I feel obligated to cheer you up.”
“Nothing could do that.”
Kenny had told Summer that Joe thought getting shot had been all his own fault, that if he’d only been quicker, faster, it wouldn’t have happened. No one believed it but Joe himself, and in fact, the doctor had said that his regretful, self-pitying thoughts might even slow down the healing process.
That wasn’t going to happen on her watch.
The bow gave way. Her eyes locked with his as she slowly slid her fingers just beneath the waistband of his sweats. “Commando?” she whispered when she didn’t come across anything but smooth, hot, hard flesh.
His eyes were closed again. Sweat had broken out on his skin. “This is not going to work.”
“Really?” She wrapped her fingers around more hot, hard flesh. “Because everything appears to be in perfectly fine working order.”
“I can’t—I won’t be able to return the favor—”
“But that’s the beauty of this.” She tugged his sweats down his hips, springing him free, smiling at the evidence that no matter what he said, he was in need. “I owe you one.”
“Red—”
She fanned her breath over him.
He moaned, his fingers sliding into her hair as his hips arched helplessly.
“See?” She licked him like a lollipop. “It’s kinda nice to lean on someone once in a while, isn’t it?”
His answer was unintelligible.
“I’m going to go make you soup and tea,” Summer said much later, when Joe was sprawled out flat on his back like a boneless fish. “Wait here.”
“As opposed to leaping up and helping you?” he asked deprecatingly.
“Hey, I worked hard to make you not grumpy. Don’t ruin it.”
There was nothing but a thoughtful silence from him as she moved into the galley. Then, “maybe I need more work,” he called out.
Her mouth twitched into a smile as she took out a can of soup and a pot. She hoped the fact that he had any humor left at all meant he wasn’t in too much pain. For days he’d been in agony, and so stubborn about the painkillers. Seeing him suffer had nearly killed her. She eyed the pill container on the small counter. She could lace his soup. It would get him through the night.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said. He stood in the doorway, gripping it with one hand, a crutch shoved under the armpit of his other arm. He was pale. No, make that green.
She rushed over to him, backed him up to the bed. “Lie down.”
“I’m tired of lying down.”
“Don’t make me get rough.” She helped him stretch out, but when she would have left him alone, he reached for her hand.
“Stay.”
“All right, I’ll just clean up—”
“Stay,” he murmured stubbornly with a grip of steel on her wrist, tugging her down until she was sprawled out besides him. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten that you owe me a bedtime story. You were going to tell me what things have changed between us. It sounds fascinating.”
“Joe…” She danced her fingers over his chest, and he let out a shuddery sigh.
“Feels good.” He hadn’t let go of her other hand, but his fingers relaxed in hers. “Really good. What changed?”
Jesus, he had a one-track mind. “Okay, maybe I like you more than I thought I did.”
Eyes closed, he smiled.
“Don’t smile. I don’t like liking you more than I thought.”
“It’s not your fault, I’m irresistible.” He seemed to be drifting off in spite of himself. “Don’t go.”
“I won’t,” she promised as he let out another exhausted sigh and went still. “I won’t.”
Chapter 23
Everyone took turns watching over him. Tina, Camille, Kenny, some of his other coworkers, and Summer, until two days after he’d been released from the hospital, he kicked them all out.
He was fine on his own. Totally and completely fine. To prove it, he wrapped his bound foot in a garbage bag, secured it with duct tape, and got into the shower. Shaky but determined, he made it all the way through soaping up before having to sit down to breathe through the pain, the water pounding down on him.
He had to crawl out and air dry right there on the floor. When he could talk, he called Kenny. “Bring me into the office. I need to see the files.”
“You’ve seen them a hundred times. You lived and breathed them. Nothing’s changed.”
“I’ve been thinking about that old warehouse fire. There was never any evidence found. The area of origin was ground level, beneath the loft.”
“So?”
“So I was there,” Joe said. “I know I was a kid, but I remember everything. That fire burned hot and damned fast. And yet the area of origin was nothing more than stacks of cardboard boxes.”
“Flammable enough.”
“Flammable, definitely. But not enough. There was an accelerant there, there had to have been. It just wasn’t detected.”
“Okay, so let’s say there was an accelerant,” Kenny said reasonably. “Let’s assume gasoline, like the subsequent two fires.”
“Right.”
“But we’ve been through this. That would clear just about everyone except…” Kenny’s voice trailed off. “Shit.”
With Braden not working, Creative Interiors needed accounting help. Summer’d had some training at the expedition company, as sometimes in the off-season she worked in the San Francisco office. She figured she could at least handle the payables and receivables.
Camille was a self-proclaimed computer illiterate, so all help was welcome. Oddly enough, for the past two days her mother had been extremely quiet, wearing an expression of misery that suspiciously matched Kenny’s. When Summer asked about it, she hit a brick wall, and finally, she gave up.
Every day at lunch she checked on Joe. He’d remained frustrated, grumpy, and mostly uncommunicative. She was willing to give him all three for the time being because she figured he’d earned them. She spent her afternoons on guided hikes or kayak rides. Word was spreading quickly, and she already had more calls than she could take. She loved it.
At night, she went back to Joe’s. She’d pet a sleepy Ashes, then slip into bed with Joe, breathing in his scent, his warmth, wondering how in the world she was going to ever get used to sleeping alone again.
“Maybe you could get a blow-up doll and paint my face on it,” Joe said.
She went still. “What?”
“You were wondering how to sleep without me.”
“I said it out loud?”
“Sure did. You said ‘how in the world am I going to ever get used to sleeping alone again?’ I’m just offering suggestions. You could tape my picture to your pillow.”
“You’
re teasing me.”
“And you’re killing me.” He rolled them over—he was clearly feeling better—and pinning her to the mattress, kissed her hard. “The answer is simple, Red. Don’t go. Damn it, don’t go.”
Simple…Had he said simple?
She lay there surrounded by him, her heart and soul terrifyingly connected to his and she just knew if she kept this up, she’d lose herself, she’d…end up like Camille.
Joe’s fingers traced her hairline with a sweet tenderness. “Relax, Red. This isn’t supposed to hurt.”
Summer wasn’t sure what it was about him, but even when she was feeling sharp as a tack, he cut right through her crap, through her neurosis, through everything to see the real her. Unlike any other human being on earth, he could piss her off, turn her on, make her question everything she believed in, and in general provoke the most uncomfortable feelings.
He wanted answers. He wasn’t going to push her for them, but his need was there, the third person in the room. Eventually she was going to have to face it, but for now, she hugged him close and didn’t say anything at all.
Joe let out a quiet sigh and hugged her back, resting his cheek against the top of her head, brushing his lips to her temple as he fell asleep.
But she didn’t fall for a long, long time.
A few days later, Summer sat behind the counter of Creative Interiors on the computer. She’d finally entered in everything since Braden had left, and had managed to figure out how to download the receivables and payables to the general ledger.
Camille came in and offered her iced tea. It was delicious, as always. “Kava?”
“Hmmm,” Camille said.
Summer narrowed her eyes. “Isn’t that a fix for a broken heart?”
“It’s for a lot of things.”
“Mom, if you want Kenny, why don’t you just go out with him?”
“Honey, some things are just complicated.”
Tell me about it. “He’s a good man.”
Camille pretended not to hear as she glanced at her watch. “Oh, would you look at the time,” she murmured.
Summer sighed, and drank her tea for broken hearts. Eventually the fire would be solved and she’d be long gone. In fact, she could have left by now. Most of the fire-related paperwork had been done, the rest was now up to the ongoing investigation by MAST and the insurance company.
The truth was she wasn’t ready to go. She wasn’t ready to give up this burgeoning relationship with her family.
And she sure as hell wasn’t ready to give up whatever it was she was doing every night with Joe.
She hit ENTER and sent the receivables and payables on their way to the general ledger. The receivables were immediately kicked back with a blinking warning message. They couldn’t be sent until they were in balance.
Huh?
She checked her work, but everything looked right. She’d entered the deposits from the cash register’s receipt report. She knew that Braden had entered the receivables after the fact, from the receipt brought back from the bank deposit. He’d gotten that routine from Camille and/or Tina, who’d done the same before Braden’s hire. But it shouldn’t have made a difference, the numbers should be the same.
She checked her work and hit ENTER again, and again was rejected. Damn it, she missed Braden. He’d always made this look so effortless. She glanced at Chloe, who was sweeping the wood floors. She still had her green-tipped hair and matching vivid green eye shadow, but she wore a rather sedate cargo skirt in khaki with a white T-shirt, and for two weeks hadn’t said a single sarcastic thing.
“You miss Braden too,” Summer said.
Chloe kept on sweeping, not missing a beat.
“Or…you’re not missing him at all because you’re still seeing him.” She caught the flash of guilt in Chloe’s expression. “On the sly. Oh my God, you are.”
“I don’t do anything on the sly.” Chloe stopped sweeping and leaned on the broom. “Okay, fine, Sherlock. I’m seeing him. It’s not that difficult. He’s working at Ally’s.”
“Ally the Loon Ally?”
“Who pays twice what we paid. Apparently her business has tripled since our troubles. And a good bookkeeper is hard to find.”
“Chloe…”
“I love him, Summer.”
Summer swallowed. “You fling that word around awfully easily.”
“It’s the way it is.”
“He’s a suspect in a crime.”
“We’re all suspects. When they discover the truth, he can come back here.”
“Is that what he wants? To come back here?”
“Well, no. But for me, he’d do it.”
“So he loves you too?”
Chloe’s gaze slid away.
“Oh, Chloe.”
“Okay, maybe he won’t say he loves me, but I know he does.” Chloe sank to a love seat behind her. “He’s just embarrassed about his past, and what we all think of him.”
Summer sat next to Chloe, tucking a leg beneath her. “I know I haven’t been around all that long, but—”
“Uh oh, is this the mushy speech? Where you say you care about me and don’t want to see me hurt?”
Summer laughed. “I was thinking about it.”
“Save it. Your side of the family gets hives using the L-word.”
“Do not.” Summer braced herself. “I love you.”
“Hmm. Soon as you can tell the rest of the family and Joe, I’ll really be impressed.”
Summer found herself crossing her arms defensively. “We were talking about you.”
Chloe patted her arm. “Whatever makes you feel better.” She rose. “I’ve got work.”
And so did she. Summer went back to the annoying computer and told herself to concentrate. She wasn’t lifting her butt off the stool until she made serious headway into the receivables issue.
It took another hour to figure out it wasn’t her fault that the receivables really didn’t match. They didn’t match because someone had messed with the books.
Specifically, with the money going into the books.
Summer sat everyone down at the table in the back room. Camille, Chloe, and Tina. Bill was there too, he’d stopped by with lunch. She put the pitcher of tea in front of her mother and moved the sugar to safety in front of her aunt, then opened the laptop. “We have a problem, a big one.”
“Sounds serious.” Tina eyeballed the computer as if it had wings.
“It is serious.” Summer took a deep breath. “Someone’s been messing with the receivables. The totals from the bank don’t always match what’s on the cash register receipts.”
Tina frowned.
Camille began pouring tea.
Chloe blinked in confusion.
Bill, a man who’d given a perfect stranger the shirt off his back, shook his head. “What?”
“I know. It’s crazy. But we’re missing money.” Summer put her hands on her hips and surveyed the group. “So. Who makes the deposit?”
“Whoever’s going past the bank,” Tina said with a baffled shrug. “You’ve been here a while now. You’ve seen how it works.”
Yeah. Everyone had access to the register, and no one watched over it that carefully. Absolutely anyone could have stuck their hands in the bank deposit envelope, pulled a fistful of cash, adjusted the deposit slip for a new total, and no one would have blinked. “Who empties the register at the end of the day?”
“Same answer,” Tina said. “Whoever’s working. The register spits out a report telling us how much there is. As a backup, the checks are added up. The cash is added up. The numbers are compared to make sure.”
“And that gets done for certain?”
“It’s supposed to,” Chloe said. “Or we get in trouble.”
But then she and Tina and Camille all exchanged a long look. A long guilty look.
Bill groaned. “Oh, ladies.”
“Okay, so we don’t always check,” Tina admitted. “I trust the printout. I mean, a computer can’t ad
d things up wrong, everyone knows that.”
“Me too,” Camille said softly. “I trusted the printout.”
Chloe winced. “And I guess this is where I admit I’ve never added it up, I just say I do.”
Bill put his heads into his hands. “Christ.”
Summer sighed. “So there’s no check and balance system?” She got a bunch of blank looks. “Okay, we’ll get back to how stupid that is in a minute. You fill out a deposit slip, right? Listing both the cash and the checks? So it’d be hard for someone to actually change the cash and the total, right?”
Another look between sisters.
Chloe studied the ceiling.
“Hello?” Summer said. “Anyone home?”
“I don’t always separate the numbers,” Tina admitted. “Sometimes I just put down the total, no breakdown of checks and cash.”
“Me too,” Camille said.
Chloe added a guilty shrug.
Bill just shook his head.
Summer sighed. “So the deposit is taken to the bank, by whoever’s available, without a breakdown of cash and checks, and then credited to the account. You all realize there’s only about four different places where it can go wrong, where the cash can be separated from the checks without a system in place to stop that from happening.”
“How many discrepancies did you find?” Bill asked quietly.
“Three hundred and fifty dollars for this first half of the month alone,” Summer said. “And I’d be willing to bet this problem goes back a while, so three hundred and fifty bucks minimum a month for all the years in business…We need to check it out.”
Tina’s frowned deepened. “On the computer?”
“I can try to do it, but I’ll need help.”
Tina bit her lower lip. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Camille shocked Summer by squeezing her hand. “I’ll help.”
Joe spent a long, seriously frustrating day spinning his wheels. He’d tried to go into work against the wishes of his doctor and therapist, and before he’d even left the boat, he’d managed to trip over Ashes on the upper deck, lose a crutch into the water, and nearly himself while he was at it, and by the end of the day was so damned sick and tired of being sick and tired.