Now all she thought about was a cup of coffee and sleep that didn’t scare her.
“The usual?”
“Yes. Wait. No. Give me a pastry too, that one, the chocolate one that looks like pure sin.”
She took her glorified drink and her pastry and found a nice stuffed chair to sit in. She set the pastry down and looked at.
She could almost see her mother’s disapproving face. ‘Dee.’ Her mother would say. ‘Remember, you have to keep your body slender. How else will you get a man?’
She would love to tell her mom about slender bodies and men, but her mom was no longer with her. She had learned the hard way that having a man wasn’t always what it was cracked up to be.
She picked up the pastry and sunk her teeth into it. Damn it was good. Maybe she would just eat and eat until the opposite sex never looked at her again. She was good with being the local cat woman.
She turned to the window and licked her lips, taunting without remorse the imaginary male watching her.
When the pastry was gone and the coffee had warmed her insides, she slumped back in the chair. She wrapped the handle of the purse around her arm and then stuck the rest under her ass.
Yes, she was paranoid. She deserved to be after all that had happened to her. Then she closed her eyes, hoping she might cat nap for the next two hours.
She got some sleep, waking at the occasional noise. Once she swore her invisible body guard was standing over her. She felt a warm sensation. It made her tired and she slipped off to sleep.
When she woke up, four hours had passed. It was the most sleep she had gotten since the kidnapping. She almost felt human. She got up and stretched. Jim was gone and the new day was in full swing.
She needed to go. She was already late. She worked for Aran’s Dare. They were a large security company with contracts all over the world. She had always wondered how a security company became that big.
She knew from her best friend, who happened to be living with the big guy himself, that they had government and military contracts. Wow, she had no idea when she got the job.
She waved to security when she walked in. She was an accountant. Yeah mom, I can take care of myself. They actually paid good wages here. They could afford to. She knew, since she did the books. They actually hired several accountants. They were that vast.
“Dee. How are you?” Cheryl one of the secretaries called out to her.
She changed course to stop and talk for a minute. “Doing good, but as you can see, I am late.”
“Hun, you look like you slept in that outfit.”
“That’s because I did. See you later.”
Anyone who knew her knew she wasn’t the same anymore. There was a time when she wouldn’t have been caught in anything but the finest, sharpest clothes. Now she really didn’t care.
She still cared about herself, barely, but she didn’t care about the outer trappings of clothes and even hair. Her extensions were gone, nothing but tracks anyway.
She now wore her long, but way too fine hair straight. It was funny how different it made her look. She was still attractive, but not really cover girl model anymore.
The smell of donuts stopped her march towards her desk. Her stomach rumbled. She had just eaten that pastry five hours ago. Yeah, her stomach protested and before that you ate three days ago.
Oops she had forgotten that. So much for sticking it to her mom. She went over and picked up a nice big fluffy donut and grabbed another cup of coffee. Coffee was appropriate at all times as far as she was concerned.
Finally, she was at her desk. Maybe her boss would not notice she was late. Yeah, he would notice. The man noticed everything. Taking another bite of her donut she logged into her computer and hit the net.
She wanted to start by looking at the bank account. Although the money in there was not hers, now that Rena was tied to it by the owner, she wanted to make sure none of it was missing.
She had noticed a month ago that money seemed to be rerouted. Not only was she not a thief, she didn’t want one on her shift. She had gone and told Vance. He was head of the department.
Many times the brothers headed each department personally, but they had brought in managers not too long ago, because of things that had happened. She wasn’t sure that she trusted Vance. Then again she was justifiably paranoid. She did try and remember that.
She had informed him of the suspected missing funds. Unfortunately it was not the job sites she was responsible for.
She started with checking the balance. They had such a healthy bank account in this economy that hundreds of thousands of dollars could go missing with no one except the accountant of course, being any wiser.
She checked the beginning balance with the ending balance last night. She looked at every withdrawal and deposit. Money was still being directed elsewhere. There were two withdrawals that she couldn’t account for, again neither in her particular job sites.
Did she bring them to Vance’s attention again or leave well enough alone? The question became mute when Niko walked in.
Niko was one of Aran’s brothers, or at least they called themselves brothers. None of them looked alike. Maybe they had different mothers. They all shared a last name.
Ironically, it was Dare. Niko Dare. The man who haunted her dreams when the nightmares gave her a few minutes of peace. She had dreamed of him as she slept in SB’s earlier. He had stood over her and sang her to sleep in a language she had never heard before.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter One
Aran: Love me Harder - Alien Paranormal Romance Page 15