Setting his gaze in her direction, he said, “Abigail, can I borrow you for a minute?”
Abigail’s knees knocked hard against one another. She had been working at the hotel over a week, and this was the first time Ryan had expressed the slightest bit of interest in speaking to her. She couldn’t imagine what he wanted to say, especially after the awkwardness of last night’s events. But she supposed, as her supervisor, he was probably going to have to interact with her from time to time whether he wanted to or not.
“I’ll be right there,” she said. Shooting Julia a bewildered glance, she followed Ryan through the doorway.
Ryan led her into the next room. It was much larger than the other one, and unlike the break room it had recently been furnished. Several items were still in boxes, but there were filing cabinets set up along the walls and a table in the center of the carpet, which was already covered with papers. A desk had been set up in the corner. A coffee cup—Ryan’s, more than likely—had been left beside the computer. The jacket he usually wore to work was draped across the back of the chair.
Ryan pulled back the desk chair. Gesturing toward it, he said, “Have a seat.”
Abigail nodded. Feeling flustered but determined not to show it, she cleared her throat and said, “All right.”
She felt a bit like she’d been summoned to the principal’s office. But being beside a guy who made her insides flutter made the experience somewhat different.
Ryan took a chair from the opposite corner of the room. Bringing it next to hers, he asked, “How are you this morning?”
“Fine, thanks.” Abigail blinked. Wondering very much what the purpose of this meeting could be, she asked, “What is this about?”
“This”—Ryan shook his head—“is me hoping that I might put your talents to use. Apparently the hotel’s books are a bit out of whack. More than out of whack—they’re actually a mess. According to your resume, you have some experience doing bookkeeping.”
“My mother’s a small business owner,” Abigail explained. “I’ve had the chance to help her out here and there, around her gift shop. She’s taught me a lot about what she knows.”
“Excellent.” The twinkle in Ryan’s eye indicated he was almost impressed. “I’m sure you won’t mind helping me out for a couple of hours then, working out a few things.”
“Not at all.” Abigail smiled. As Ryan glanced her way, she forged a cool expression.
“You know, I’m kind of surprised,” he said to her a while later.
“Surprised?” She looked up from the spreadsheet she was reviewing.
“That you’d go from doing bookkeeping to serving milkshakes. Or in your case, not so much making them as spilling them all over customers.”
Heat crept to Abigail’s cheeks. She wasn’t sure why she thought he’d forgotten about the most humiliating moment of her life, but apparently it was still at the forefront of Ryan Newberry’s mind. Judging by the size of his smirk, it didn’t seem like something he was planning to forget about anytime soon.
Casting a look at him in his fancy ensemble, she said, “You know, not all of us have a trust fund. Some of us actually have to work for a living.”
Ryan stopped writing. Turning toward her, he hesitated a long moment. Shaking his head, he said, “You know, if you really want to point fingers at the rich and arrogant, you ought to take a good look at the guy who was giving you pool lessons last night. In case you didn’t notice, the car the two of you left in is worth about three hundred grand.”
Construction machinery buzzed outside the window, and Abigail’s ears perked up. Had she heard right? She was sure she was only imagining it but Ryan sounded like he was jealous. She wasn’t really sure how he’d gotten the idea that she and Alec had left the bar together, but the way he was acting was so intriguing, she wasn’t sure she cared.
Judging by the look of his sports car, and the fancy clothes he wore, she had believed Ryan was as rich as Alec. Maybe she’d been wrong about that. Wanting to have money when you didn’t was a certainly strong motivator for him to have done whatever it was that had earned him that wad of cash she’d seen in his pocket.
Batting her eyelashes, she stood. Leaning against one of the filing cabinets, she said, “Yes, well. Your friend definitely drives a nice set of wheels. Guess it’s a shame that we were only in the car for a few minutes.”
The buzzing outside became an explosive screech and it shook the entire room. The cabinet behind her fell forward.
Abigail was pulled out of the way just before it came crashing down.
* * * *
Ryan grasped Abigail’s small waist. Shielding her with the weight of his body, he kept her still as the filing cabinet beside them hit the floor with a blaring thud.
“Abigail, are you all right?” He cradled her shaking body. Praying she wasn’t hurt, he stroked her back, hoping to calm her down as the noises outside settled down. Inhaling her lavender scent, feeling the warmth of her curvaceous little figure in his arms, he himself was feeling anything but calm. He did his best to ignore the fact as he tried desperately to focus on the issue at hand.
Keeping one hand against the back of Abigail’s head, Ryan turned her over gently and smoothed his other palm along the length of her arm. He’d been a med student for exactly four months, but he knew enough to realize that taking such a hard fall couldn’t have been good.
Verifying that there was no broken skin, he took her other arm and studied the two, making sure that they looked the same. Still not convinced that her arm wasn’t broken, he snatched a paperweight from the top of one of the cabinets. He placed it into Abigail’s hand.
“Lift this,” he instructed.
Abigail did as she was told.
“Now the other way.” He turned her arm over as she moved it.
“Why am I doing this?” she asked, lifting the weight up and down.
Ryan breathed a sigh of relief. “I wanted to make sure your arm wasn’t injured. In case you’re not aware, that cabinet could have killed you.”
She shot him a baffled look. “I’m fine. I’ll probably have a bruise tomorrow morning, but otherwise I’m okay.”
Ryan released a heavy sigh. Without waiting for her to ask, he took Abigail’s hand and wrapped an arm around her back. Standing as she did, he helped her to her feet. Looking from her beautiful brown eyes to her soft pink lips, he assured himself that God must have set up this hotel job for him as some sort of torture test. Why else would temptation be being thrown so blatantly in his face?
Abigail smiled awkwardly and stepped back. She dusted off her jeans, and her gaze drifted to the overturned cabinet. Her eyes narrowed. Coming toward the papers that had fallen out of one of the drawers, she said, “What is all this?”
Ryan came beside her. He watched as she bent down, picking up one of the sheets. Thinking that it seemed freakishly familiar, he looked at it more closely. As he caught a glimpse of the numbers and figures, his hands shook. Praying Abigail didn’t noticed, he slid them into his pockets.
“This is a strange looking ledger,” she said, giving close examination to each of the pages she held. “These cash sale debits are off the charts. The balances, too. I can’t imagine this is what we’d be charging a guest for a visit, even if they did long-term stay.” Eyes resting on the large black symbol in the corner of one of the pages, she asked, “Can you?”
Not in a million years. But Ryan wasn’t about to state his take on the matter.
“Ledgers looked somewhat different before the age of computers,” he said. “It’s possible that these numbers represent profits made over a long period of time, maybe even since the hotel opened its doors.”
“I guess so,” Abigail replied after a moment. “But look at the date. This—whatever it is—doesn’t seem to be more than a year old.”
Ryan took the sheet from her hand. “Revenue from promotions is often higher than regular income, you know, with dinner dances and whatnot. Why don’t you go and take
your break, Abigail? You ought to take it easy with that arm. I can finish up here, pick up the cabinet. Thanks for your help, by the way.” He folded the paper in half and shoved it back into the file.
Ryan slid the file into the downturned cabinet. After closing the drawer, he slowly lifted the cabinet and stood it upright. Realizing that Abigail was still in the room, he tried his best to act nonchalant as he shimmied the cabinet back into position.
Abigail stayed there until he had the heavy metal object in perfect alignment with the one beside it. Then she slipped through the door. Ryan didn’t turn around until she’d turned the corner at the end of the hall.
God, she was so pretty, with her honey-blonde strands and petite silhouette that made his pulse race. Attractive women tended to know when they had a man eating out of their hand. Abigail MacKenzie seemed to be the exception.
Picturing her and Alec together, imagining Abigail being given the “grand tour” of the Westwood Mansion, Ryan resisted the urge to kick the filing cabinet. Alec had behaved like a lowlife predator last night and Abigail had all but leapt at the chance to be his prey. Acknowledging that he might be going off the deep end a bit, he told himself that he needed to get a grip. That was, if he cared about keeping his job.
Getting fired from one’s job for getting involved with a female coworker was something a man did once. If he was smart, he learned from his mistakes. Ryan was pretty sure he was a smart guy. But the last couple of days seemed to indicate the exact opposite. He was starting to lust after Abigail the exact same way he had Kimberly.
When he met Kimberly, he hadn’t been thinking clearly. In fact, Ryan was quite sure that his brain had had absolutely nothing to do with their involvement. Kim was stunning, what most men would consider the epitome of sex appeal. With her bright blonde hair and killer hips, she was easily one of the most attractive women he’d ever known. It hadn’t taken long before he was under her spell completely.
Brent Lombardi, Ryan’s supervisor at the Red Fox Hotel, had known about his involvement with Kimberly for months. The only reason Lombardi had come forward about it was because Ryan knew that there was something illegal going on at the hotel. And judging by the look of the ledger he and Abigail had just found, there was something going on at this hotel, too.
Ryan wasn’t sure of the nature of the crimes. He couldn’t prove them either, not based on what he’d discovered so far. But the bribe he’d been given—threat, was more like it—had certainly cemented his theories in stone. Symbols like those didn’t belong on ledgers. And certainly not on ledgers belonging to two different hotels.
It wasn’t right to keep quiet. Ryan knew that—it wasn’t as though he didn’t have a conscience. But he had no idea what these guys might do to him if he ratted them out. Beyond that, unemployment, the kind that meant no money, no medical school, and his father all over his ass, was the last thing he needed to be dealing with right now. He refused to be powerless. It had happened in the past, and never, never would he allow it to happen again.
Women in distress were his Achilles’ heel. Abigail MacKenzie would be his death. Ryan refused to allow his circumstances to destroy him a second time. Remembering the way Abigail’s body had felt when he was holding her, the warmth he could still feel and the soft scent that lingered in his nostrils, he wondered how easy that task really was going to be.
Chapter 6
Abigail slipped through the doors of the Washington Valley Hotel the following morning. Stepping past the front desk, she looked to see if anyone else was around then made her way into the room where she and Ryan had been working yesterday. She’d been hoping to get in before anyone else. It appeared as if she’d gotten her wish.
Two things occupied her mind this morning, and they had nothing to do with whatsoever her day’s assignment would be. One of them was the ledger that had fallen out of the filing cabinet. The other was the way Ryan’s arms had felt around her.
Looking at the dent in the carpet where the cabinet had fallen, recalling the way Ryan had held her beneath his body, Abigail took a shaky breath. She’d dated other guys in her lifetime, two to be exact. But she’d never before experienced anything quite like what she’d felt yesterday afternoon.
As the cabinet fell, Ryan had grabbed her and shielded her with his strong arms. He’d held her for several moments without letting go, causing a warm sensation to shoot through to her core. Her breasts had swelled, and she’d felt the strongest desire for him to touch them, for him to caress her bare skin. Thinking about it, her body became hot all over.
Abigail slapped her cheeks. She didn’t like thinking these sorts of things about her supervisor, particularly when his agenda was still so questionable. She’d yet to confront him about the money and Christopher Barrows’s business card, not that she intended to do so without having more concrete evidence. But not only was her attraction to this man potentially dangerous, it seemed to be becoming stronger by the minute.
In addition to the suspicious things she’d seen on his person was the way Ryan had pushed her out of the room when she’d discovered the ledgers. Being as concerned as he had about her arm just a moment earlier, why had he been so anxious for her to leave? And why were the numbers on those sheets all over seven figures? Was the hotel tabulating profits over a series of decades, as Ryan had alluded? Or did they have nothing to do with the hotel at all?
Closing her eyes, Abigail pictured the ledger. She didn’t know much about hotels, but she didn’t imagine that too many people working in one of them could follow such a complex log. The credit amounts were ridiculously large, nothing like the numbers she’d seen in the past. The debits were large as well. Whatever the source of the income, those ledgers pertained to a very profitable enterprise. Even though Leighton Westwood was a world-renowned billionaire, Abigail found it difficult to believe he could be bringing in so much money from one hotel.
Perhaps the ledger was somehow representative of all of the Westwood hotels. But, then, why was it stuffed away in a filing cabinet? More plausible to her was the idea that the ledger didn’t actually pertain to the hotel, and that there was some sort of a connection between it and the murder that had taken place in the old wing.
Assuming that it had in fact been a murder and not a suicide, the authorities seemed very reluctant to give the public any details about the incident. It was just as they had been with Abigail’s dad’s case. She had never followed any of the other local shootings, but she’d seen national murder investigations on TV. The cops were never so reluctant to ID the victims. Wondering if that could mean something, if the ledger could somehow be the answer to her questions, Abigail put her hand on the doorknob and opened the door.
“Abigail, you’re here bright and early,” Shane said, entering the room behind her.
Stopping short in front of the filing cabinet, Abigail turned around.
Shane tossed his leather jacket onto the back of the desk chair and sat in front of the computer. He booted up the modem and turned on the monitor. “Ryan tells me the two of you were working on some bookkeeping yesterday. Do you think that you would mind giving me a hand instead?”
“Not at all,” Abigail replied, very grateful he hadn’t mentioned the way she was hovering over the filing cabinet. She sat beside him at the desk.
They spent the next hour or so going over the books. Abigail found several mistakes, which she eagerly pointed out. It was her first opportunity to prove herself to one of the upper-level managers. She intended to make the most of it.
“This is all so exciting,” she said as she and Shane walked to the staff lounge later.
Shane took a paper cup from the stack. “Yea? How so?”
“This hotel offers so many perks, more than just an outdoor pool and continental breakfast. It isn’t just a vacation spot. We’re helping people, providing them a home-like atmosphere, and an extra bit of comfort along their way.”
“Well, our intention is to make this the number one hotel in North Conwa
y,” Shane said as he poured himself a cup of signature roast. “If the guests didn’t feel their stay here was top-of-the-line, we’d never get that sort of name-recognition.”
“No, I doubt we would.” Feeling as though he was missing her point, Abigail said, “You know, my father worked in restaurant management for most of his life. Though I guess that’s kind of a no-brainer, considering how few choices for professions we have in this area.”
“No doubt about that,” Shane replied drily.
“But the one thing that was really important to him was putting a smile on his customer’s face. He wanted to make people happy, teach them to appreciate the simple things in life. I want to be just like him, to be in a position where I can really help people. Is that why you wanted to be an assistant manager?”
“Something like that,” Shane said as they came back into the office. Placing his coffee on the desk as he sat behind the computer, he said, “But I doubt my aspirations are as selfless as your dad’s. Some of us are just trying to survive, you know?”
Abigail nodded. “You sure don’t have to tell me.”
A shadow cast itself against the wall. Abigail turned around to see that Ryan was standing in the doorway. Judging from the look on his face, he’d been standing there at least a minute. The fact that she hadn’t realized he was there sent a chill up her spine.
Staring at her supervisor, any suspicion she might have had about him seemed to slip to the back of her mind. Ryan wasn’t wearing a tie today, but the dark-blue shirt he had on brought out the deep pigment of his eyes. Abigail recalled the feel of his broad chest as her eyes helplessly studied that portion of his body. Her insides fluttered as he shut the door behind him.
Dangerous Secret [The Pinnacles of Power Prequel] (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 5