Ashley kissed her friend. “Perhaps you’re right, but I’m in too deep to pull back now. I’ll just have to take my chances.”
“I knew that’s what you’d say, but I had to try.”
“Thanks for caring.” Ashley whistled to Freckles. “I’ll catch you later, hon.”
Back in her own flat, Ashley quickly changed into riding clothes. She called Matt as she and Freckles walked toward the stable yard at a brisk pace.
“Are you home?” he asked.
“Yes, I made good time. It’s only half-three. I’m just off to see Lucius.”
“Good.” Matt’s sigh made it sound as though half the world rested on his shoulders. “I’m going to be later than I hoped,” he said. “More meetings and a load of stuff to sign off, I’m afraid.”
Ashley quelled her disappointment. “How late?”
“I’ll be there by eight, promise.”
“That’s fine. I’ve got plenty to do before then myself.”
“I’ll bring a takeaway.”
“Just bring yourself.” Her smile was fuelled by anticipation. “I’ve missed you,” she said softly.
“Me too.” She heard voices in the background. “Have to go, babe. I’ll see you as soon as I can. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
But she was speaking to a dead line.
Lucius was full of life, not having been ridden all week. They both needed to let off a little steam, and so instead of schooling, they went out for a hard, fast hack. When they got back to the yard, Lucius was bathed in sweat. Ashley enjoyed hosing him off and making his box ready for the night. Such mundane activities helped to quell her overactive brain, stopped her thinking about anything but the task in hand, and put things in perspective.
Back at the flat, she took a long shower, washed her hair, and dressed casually in jeans and a thin top that she knew Matt liked. By then it was six o’clock, which gave her a couple of hours to work on the company laptop before Matt arrived. Perhaps being away from the pressure of working with Charlie would spawn a lightbulb moment. There had to be something that connected the bogus life claims. Charlie couldn’t be doing it alone, but so far Matt hadn’t been able to find a common denominator. Ashley hadn’t yet started probing. It was too risky to delve into areas that didn’t concern her whilst in the office. Too many people came and went, and if she had the claims system up on her screen, someone—probably Charlie—would notice. Then her cover would be blown.
Ashley worked diligently in the quiet flat, with only Freckles’s soft snores to divert her. She delved into every aspect of the underwriting, looking for anomalies. Her clearance gave her across the board access to every aspect of Interactive’s business. She’d worked in most departments during her time with the company and kept up to date with the changes in their procedures. With overall responsibility for the general office, it was part of her brief to know how things were done. That way she could keep track of her staff’s progress and tell if anyone was under-performing.
“Damn it, where are you?” she muttered aloud, disturbing Freckles. He lifted his head from the rug in front of the fire, offered her a look of mild rebuke for disturbing him, and settled down again. “How are you doing it? What am I missing?”
Matt arrived at eight thirty, looking tired and drawn, and full of apologies.
“I’m sorry, darling,” he said, swooping her into his arms and kissing her like he never intended to stop. “I simply couldn’t get away any sooner.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said breathlessly. “You’re here now.”
“I’m so sorry about all the shit you had to take from Eve,” he said. “I don’t know what she thought she was playing at.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. I won’t have you subjected to her spite. I’ll sort it.”
“Leave it.” She reached up and touched his face. He grabbed her fingers and kissed their ends. “Don’t get involved. If it gets to the stage where I can’t handle it, I’ll let you know. Besides, it won’t be for much longer.”
“I don’t deserve you,” he said with a heavy sigh.
“Possibly not, but you’re stuck with me.”
“That’s good to know.” He glanced over her shoulder at the papers scattered round her laptop. “Looks like you’ve been busy, too.”
Freckles barged up to them.
“Hello, old chap.” Matt scratched his ears.
“Something smells good.” Ashley indicated the bag Matt was carrying. “I’m starved.”
“Me too.” But his expression implied that it wasn’t food he had in mind.
“Curry first,” Ashley said, laughing. “That is curry I can smell, isn’t it?”
“Sure is. Nothing but the best for you.”
Matt opened a bottle of wine whilst Ashley decanted the cartons into serving dishes. She cleared aside her papers, and they sat opposite one another at the small table, sharing the food, touching hands, communicating without any need for words. Ashley felt the stress slowly draining from her body as she stole glances at the only person she wanted to share her evening with. She could tell from the way Matt’s features softened and gradually relaxed that he felt the same way. She’d come home in more senses than one.
“How was your ride?” he asked.
“Fast and muddy. Lucius was fresh.”
Matt chuckled. “He’s not the only one.”
Ashley rolled her eyes. “I never would have guessed.”
“I wish I knew what Eve thought she was doing,” Matt said, reverting to the one subject Ashley didn’t want to discuss. It spoiled the mood.
Ashley touched his face. “Let’s not talk about it now.”
“I just don’t understand why she cares,” he said frowning. “Our marriage is a marriage in name only, we both know that. She leads her own life and I never cross question her about it.”
“She obviously wants to remain married to you. Otherwise she’d have taken off with Charlie years ago.”
Matt conceded the point with a nod. “I just wish I knew why she was so keen to hang on, that’s all.”
“Look in the mirror, stud.”
Matt laughed. “Thank you, ma’am, but I think there’s more to it than that.”
“It must drive Charlie demented that she won’t leave you, so if he even suspects about us, and I’m pretty sure he does, he would have planted the idea in her head. I then transferred to Southampton, and he probably suggested how she ought to play it.”
Matt thought about it. “The friending bit I get, and can easily imagine Charlie getting a kick out of seeing it happen. But the duplication of clothes? The phone call? Forcing you to go out to lunch and then ordering the same as you?”
“It’s a bit spooky,” Ashley said, “but I can handle it.”
“Why would Charlie want to frighten you off?”
“Make or break?”
“Hmm, perhaps.”
Ashley didn’t want to waste another moment of her precious time with Matt discussing his wife. They’d talked it through a dozen times before, and nothing much had changed. Matt still needed Eve’s goodwill to see this merger though, so really, what more was there to say?
“How’s it been here this week?” she asked instead.
“How long have you got?”
“No more major disasters?”
“No, just a hundred annoying little ones.”
Ashley stood up and cleared the plates away.
“I think I might have something on the bogus claims,” she said, when they returned to the lounge with fresh glasses of wine.
His eyebrows shot up. “Already?”
“It came to me just now,” she said, pulling the laptop toward her. “Let’s talk it through. We have three disputed death claims, all of which arose during the last three months. All during critical times for the amalgamation talks, right?”
“Right.”
“We routinely have claims challenged, but three in three months is way above average
, so that makes it suspicious.”
“Right again.”
“The claims have nothing in common. Two middle-aged men, one lady in her sixties.” Matt nodded. “We automatically asked for doctor’s reports when the claims came in. We turned all three claims down on the basis that they had pre-existing medical conditions that they didn’t declare on their proposal forms.”
“Right, but—”
“Let me finish running this past you whilst my thoughts are fresh.” Ashley tapped a pencil against her teeth. “One policy was an endowment, connected to a mortgage, the other two were straightforward life policies. One was sold through an agent who arranged the mortgage. The other two were over the counter at one of our offices. No similarities there. Different offices even.”
“Yes, but all three lived in the south.”
“Not so unusual. The majority of our business is generated in the south, simply because that’s where our main office is.”
Matt stood behind her and massaged her shoulders. Ashley rolled her neck. “God, that’s nice!”
“Just a taste of things to come,” he said, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “Sorry, I interrupted your flow.”
“Okay, two of the policyholders were registered with the same doctors’ office but saw different doctors within that practise. The other one wasn’t, so having two bent doctors doing Charlie’s bidding is a stretch.” Ashley sighed. “We only keep the original papers until they’ve been scanned onto the system.”
“The joys of a paperless office.”
“Exactly, and the strange thing is that none of the policyholders’ relatives can find copies in their loved ones’ homes.”
Matt frowned. “Yes, I thought that was odd.”
“Too odd. People are careless about official papers, but they always retain everything relating to something important like life assurance.”
“You’d think so.”
“I’m sure of it. Some people even lodge them with their solicitors, along with their wills.”
“But not in these cases.” Matt grumbled. “I know because we checked.”
“All the doctors say that we didn’t ask for reports when the applications were filled out, which gibes with our records. That means they were automatically accepted because there was nothing on the forms that generated a request for medical information.”
“Which means all three applicants had to have lied.” Matt shrugged. “It happens.”
“Yes, but I still don’t buy it. Even so, for Charlie to have made the claims look bogus, he would have had to substitute the original proposal forms on the system for fake ones, got two—no, three—different doctors to destroy our original requests for medical information, and broken into all three houses and stolen the deceased’s papers.” Ashley stopped ticking the points off on her fingers and looked up at Matt. “I can’t see how it could have been done.”
“Now that you put it like that.”
“Were any of the houses broken into, just as a matter of interest?”
Matt frowned. “I have no idea. Surely you’re not taking this seriously?”
“Yeah, I am. Somehow or other these genuine claims have been made to look bogus.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“The premiums. Look.” Ashley changed screens and input the information for the sixty-year-old woman, answering all the health questions in the affirmative. The system took a moment to calculate the premium. “Ta-da!” Ashley said, pointing to the resulting figure.
“Bloody hell!” Matt scratched his head. “She was heavily rated.”
“Yep.”
“So someone has tampered with the applications.”
“And not done that good a job. I mean, if I could figure it out in a few hours, then the ombudsman would have no trouble, either.”
“We all depended upon the computer and took it as gospel,” Matt said.
“Yes, we have procedures, and they were followed. No one even thought to delve deeper because, on the surface, it looks as though all three punters told porkies.”
“As you said earlier, three disputed claims in as many months is way above average and would have raised a red flat to the ombudsman.”
Ashley frowned. “Would Charlie really want to hurt Interactive that badly?”
“Evidently, the answer is yes.”
“The buck stops with you, Matt.” Ashley felt the colour drain from her face. “You could have ended up inside.”
“I still could, unless we can figure out how it’s being done.”
“The cases haven’t gone to the ombudsman yet. Can’t we just say that a mistake was made with the paperwork and pay up?”
“Not that simple. The local press is sniffing round. If we try to settle quietly, they’ll be all over it like a rash, seeing conspiracies where they don’t exist.” He clenched his hands, glowering. “Although perhaps they do.”
“Either way, it’ll weaken your position in the amalgamation talks. This can’t be kept from Stevenson’s, can it?”
“No chance.” Matt shook his head. “They probably know all about it already.”
“What will you do?”
“Hell if I know.” He thumped the surface of the table, causing everything on it to jump. “But I’d give a lot to know how Charlie’s pulling it off.”
“Me too.”
“Well, for starters, he has to have someone in systems rigging the stuff online.”
“Yes,” Ashley said quietly, thinking of her skittish friend. “And I think I know who.”
Matt’s brows shot skyward. “You do? Who?”
“You wouldn’t know her. Anyway, let me talk to her first.”
“Well, be careful what you say.”
“Rigging the company computer records would be a doddle for someone who knows what they’re doing. But how have they made medical records disappear from three different doctor’s offices and made the policyholder’s personal records evaporate?”
Chapter Eleven
“Come on.” Matt held out his hand. “We’ve talked this thing to death, and we’re both beat. Let’s go to bed.”
“At last the man says something sensible.”
He chuckled, the gesture briefly eradicating the tiredness etched in his face. “You want sensible?”
“No,” Ashley said, taking his hand and following him to the bedroom, “I just want you.”
This time his chuckle took on a wicked edge. “And the two are mutually exclusive?”
She grinned at him. “You said it, not me.”
He kicked the bedroom door closed, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her as though absorbing her essence into his very cells. His desperation communicated itself to Ashley, his needs seeming to transcend the mere physical. The realisation that only she could truly relieve, albeit briefly, the stress he was living with, empowered her. She returned his kiss with passion, never wanting it to end. When he finally broke it, they stared at one another for a protracted moment, startled by the intensity of their emotions, before frenetically shedding their clothes.
“I can’t believe we’ve spent the entire evening talking about bloody work when we could have been in here,” he said, tumbling her onto the bed.
“I’m a slave to duty, boss.”
“So I see.” Matt buried his face in the valley between her breasts. “This is only our second entire weekend together, you do realize that?”
Ashley did. Before, he’d always had to be with Eve for at least part of the time, keeping up appearances, even after he moved to Reigate. Her trip to the West Country this weekend was an unexpected bonus, but thoughts of her still spoiled the mood. She’d done a better job of unsettling her than Ashley had previously realized. Eve was the elephant in the room, coming between them, even from a distance.
Ashley squirmed as Matt’s tongue made its way toward her nipple, rasping at its sensitised peak. She tried desperately not to think about Eve, but images of her refused to be dispelled. She’d put herself in the
centre of Ashley’s life in Southampton, and now she was here, too. It was as though she’d won.
“Oh God, Matt, please don’t stop!”
“I wasn’t going to.”
He took her entire nipple in his mouth, sucking, tugging at it with his teeth, sweeping her away on a wave of pleasure that emptied her mind of fraudulent death claims—and almost everything else, except the feelings of desperate desire building deep within her core. Her fingers gouged his back as his tongue travelled lower, lapping like a thirsty cat. She bucked against him, finally dismissing images of Eve as his tongue touched her cervix and she climaxed immediately with a wild cry of surprise. He lifted his head, watching her intently, gauging her reaction as pleasure continued to spangle, sending shock waves through her entire body.
“Wow!” was all she could think of to say.
Matt smiled and kissed the end of her nose. “I guess you needed that.”
“I guess I did.” She lifted herself up and straddled him. “And what do you need?”
He quirked a brow. “I get to choose?”
“Why not?”
“Go down on me, baby.” He gently pushed her head toward his groin. “Return the favour.”
Ashley slithered down his body, already slick with perspiration, and took him in her mouth. She sucked him in slowly, only to release him again and turn her attention to his sac. Sometimes, especially when she had him at her mercy like this, she wondered if there was some mistake. He was gorgeous, and she found it hard to accept that she would ever be enough for him. As the thought passed through her head, she felt his prick expand in her mouth. A deep groan escaped his lips, and she knew he was on the brink. She let him go, and he slid out of her mouth with a soft plop.
“Ash, Don’t I—”
She offered him a wicked grin. “Now you know how I feel when you tease me.”
“Just carry on. I need to—”
“Hmm.” She flicked his erection with two fingers. It twitched. “I guess you do, don’t you.”
Ashley bent her head and sucked deep. He exploded at the back of her throat mere seconds later.
They lay in one another’s arms afterward, temporarily satiated, waiting for their breathing to return to normal. Ashley shot a glance at Matt’s profile. His eyes were closed, all the tension had left him, and he looked ready to fall asleep. But she knew that he wouldn’t. Matt would soon be ready for a repeat performance.
Soliman, Wendy - The Name of the Game (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 13