by Sheila Kell
What could Jake say without being beaten to a bloody pulp? That was what he’d have done to someone he’d found with Em. Yet, he knew his anger would be born more of jealousy than of a big brother protecting her.
“You should’ve contacted us, Jake.” Devon, the second oldest Hamilton brother, stepped toward him. “We searched for you, worried about what had happened to you.”
Jake closed his eyes against an unfamiliar ache welling inside him. He’d never truly expected to be away from them this long. Many times he’d considered sending word, but he couldn’t risk his identity being compromised and possibly putting their lives in jeopardy. “I thought Arthur might eventually tell you.”
“Don’t mention that goddamn motherfucker,” AJ growled. “He knew we were looking for you. He knew the toll it took on us. On me.”
The hitch in AJ’s voice on the last statement didn’t go unnoticed.
AJ cleared his throat and turned to his brothers. “I’ll call Em and let her know he’s alive.”
“No! Don’t tell Em.” Jake gripped the bed sheet tightly at AJ’s statement, hoping they would allow him this.
Their gazes drilled into him. His body trembled, but he wasn’t sure if it was from his weakness, the medicine or from the anger in their eyes; either way, he couldn’t control the noticeable movement. “I don’t want her to see me like this.” He hadn’t meant it as a plea, but that was how it sounded to his ears.
The looks that passed between his brothers worried him. He struggled to interpret them. Would they let Em see his beaten body? The brothers he knew would protect her better than that, but they also wouldn’t want to keep this heavy secret from her.
Jesse appeared to make the decision for the group. “We won’t hold this from her for long so you’d best get better fast.”
He sighed and dropped his head briefly, relieved at their kindness. “Thank you.”
The men filed out of the room, AJ bringing up the rear. He stopped at the door and looked back. “Jake, I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “I, um, don’t know what to say. I—”
Stunned, he looked at his best friend and couldn’t allow him to suffer through his apology. Knowing he wanted to give it was enough for him, so Jake cut him off. “I’d have done the same.” Catching him as he turned back to the exit, Jake hesitantly asked, “Where is Em? Is she all right?”
Before the door closed, he heard AJ answer in a pain-filled voice, “She moved away.”
Moved away? Em would never have left her family. She loved them too much to live elsewhere. What the hell had happened after he’d disappeared from her life? Good God. Had she married someone and moved away with him?
The nurse barreled back in while he’d attempted to leave his bed to chase after AJ. He had to know. AJ couldn’t just drop that bomb and walk out. It didn’t take much for her to have him back down and injecting something into his IV bag. He wanted to fight, but his fight had been exhausted long before the men he’d considered his brothers had appeared.
He had to find out what was happening with Em. What if she didn’t want to see him? He hadn’t thought of that occurring until this moment. How would he handle it? He had to apologize to her whether she wished to hear it or not. Apologize for leaving… for being the bastard his father had been by abandoning her.
Her name escaped his lips in a soft whisper as he succumbed to the drug rushing through his veins, leaving him unconscious.
Two
PLEASE, PLEASE LET me have this right. I can’t afford to screw up this early in my job. Emily Hamilton’s small, hesitant steps were a direct result of how much her confidence wavered.
She grasped the overflowing manila folder, which contained printouts of her first full-client audit, protectively to her chest. She’d triple-checked her figures, and the results were the same. Her coworker had made two major errors with reporting the client’s money. She hadn’t figured out where the money had disappeared to; that would be her next step if her boss wanted her to dig deeper or hand it over to his assistant who seemed to have her hands in everything.
As a new accountant, not even a CPA yet, Emily couldn’t afford to report anything incorrectly in her work. And to turn in her colleague for something as grievous as this wasn’t how she’d expected to begin her career. She’d been extremely lucky to be offered this job at Wright Accounting in New York City. Although she didn’t know for sure, she suspected her father had something to do with it. He hadn’t wanted her to leave Baltimore, but he also knew she wouldn’t stay. There were too many memories of growing up with Jake. Falling in love with Jake. Making a fool of herself and being rejected by Jake.
The crushing pain in her heart that she’d fought to break away from these past four years returned. She’d thought immersing herself in college and her family would help clear him from her mind, purge the memories. But, every time she looked at her daughter… their daughter… she couldn’t escape, and she loved her daughter all the more for who her father was.
Even though it had been so long without contact from him, she wouldn’t allow herself to believe him to be dead. No matter what had happened between them, she wanted her daughter, Amber, to know her father at some point. Sooner rather than later would be preferable. If only her brothers could find him. Then what? How would she handle things? He’d walked away.
Reaching Mr. Wright’s door, she heard two distinct male voices inside his office and stopped. With Teri, his bossy administrative assistant away from her desk, Emily didn’t mind waiting. A small, sitting area that reeked of power and wealth, because her boss wanted to impress his high profile clients, reached out and invited her to sit on one of the soft leather chairs. She picked her foot up and then dropped it back in place. If she sat, that’d be when Teri would return from wherever she’d disappeared to and berate Emily for slacking off.
She hadn’t planned on eavesdropping, but she’d been curious about how her boss handled his clients, how he spoke with them, what they talked about, how he explained things. One day she’d have her own firm, and she’d learn everything she could here. Mr. Wright was reputed to be one of the best in the city. He’d kept his business small and was selective about his clients.
Two words reached her ears, and the world crashed around her, panic followed right behind it. No. No. No. Hurrying back to her desk, she fought the shiver worming its way up her spine before she was confronted with Teri, who was leaving Emily and her colleague’s work area.
Taking no time to worry why the woman was there, Emily prepared to depart. “Teri, please tell Mr. Wright that the daycare called and my daughter is sick.” How easy the lie spilled from her lips. She had to leave. Now.
Teri Sheppard pursed her bright red lips. “You know, if this becomes a habit, Michael will let you go.” She loved to flaunt she’d been given permission to call their boss by his first name. Or if not, she did it anyway, out of his earshot. Emily couldn’t care less. Especially now.
Quickly shutting down her computer and grabbing her purse, Emily ignored the woman standing beside her desk. After raising her eyebrows at Teri and receiving no answer, she maneuvered around her and out the door. She almost wretched once she’d reached freedom.
What the hell was she to do now?
Everything continually played out in Emily’s mind on the subway ride when she picked up her daughter and on their cab ride home. Maybe she should call her brothers. She bit her lip, nibbling while she considered the option. No. She would handle this on her own. If not, how could she show the family that she could live independently if she had to run to them whenever a problem arose? She loved their overprotectiveness, sometimes, but they needed to understand she was a grown, twenty-two-year-old woman and mother. Now she had to prove it.
“Mommy?”
Her three-year-old blonde-haired daughter stared up at Emily, her head cocked to the right and her hands on her hips. Emily reached do
wn, and little chubby arms automatically grabbed hers to be lifted. She slung the toddler on her hip, and Amber’s arms wrapped around her neck, almost choking her. “Sorry, baby, Mommy was thinking. Now, what did you want to tell me?”
“Nemo did twick!” Amber squirmed to be let down. “Come tee.”
Although difficult, Emily held back her laugh. A big smile did push its way through. Nemo was a beta fish and did nothing but swim in place or hide, and had also been replaced three times without her daughter’s knowledge. “What trick does he do?”
Amber pointed at the SpongeBob influenced, decorated fish bowl with a pineapple house in the middle of the bowl. “Float.”
Dammit. Not another one. Grabbing her daughter’s hand, she pulled Amber away before she realized the fish floating was not a trick. “I see. How about we start on dinner? You want to help Mommy?”
“I want pasghetti.” Nemo forgotten, she raced to the kitchen and grabbed her small, ruffled apron that matched her mother’s. “Hep me.”
“Here, baby, let me do that for you.” Good grief, it was like putting an apron on a kangaroo; the girl never held still. “How about you grab the noodles from the pantry?”
Amber nodded. “I want PongeBob.”
Emily sighed. She should never have purchased those noodles. Her daughter wanted them for everything. She’d have them as a full meal, plain, if allowed.
After a quick, messy meal, Emily relaxed on the couch with her little girl lying across her lap. Amber stuck her chubby thumb in her mouth while watching The Backyardigans. They had to purchase more DVDs. No matter how many times her daughter watched them, Emily didn’t think she could sit through this particular one another time.
She brushed a piece of hair from the little girl’s face. “Big girls don’t suck their thumbs.” Being called a big girl like her cousin Reagan, Emily’s oldest brother Jesse’s seven-year-old daughter, seemed to be important to Amber, so Emily used the tactic whenever she needed it. Okay, it wasn’t the best way to break habits or behavior, but it had been working.
A small pop sounded as the thumb was removed and hidden in the cute pink shirt Santa Claus had given her for Christmas. The clothes hadn’t gone over well at the time, but now that she wanted to pick out her own outfits, which rarely matched, the shirt became a favorite.
By the time the movie ended, the thumb was back in Amber’s mouth, and she was sound asleep.
After settling Amber in bed, Emily’s mind returned to her dilemma, not that it had fully left it. If what she’d heard was true, she had to report it. She really had no choice. But, by working there, would she be considered an accessory? A party to the crime?
Settled with her decision, she fell into a fitful sleep and woke with a tension headache knotting her neck, making her wish she could stay in bed, under the covers, and sleep until everything in the world was right.
The following morning, after Samantha, the mother of another girl at Amber’s daycare left to drop both girls off, Emily made the call she’d been dreading. “I need to report a possible Ponzi scheme.”
THE cool wind accompanying the dark stormy clouds gliding toward Central Park provided Emily a temporary reprieve from the oppressive heat wave that had hit the city. The scent of rain in the damp air and thunder rumbling in the distance sent many park visitors scurrying to find cover before Mother Nature ended the drought.
Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. She scanned the area, battling strands of hair that whipped in the breeze, impairing her vision. Being too nervous during her conversation, her tattling, she hadn’t thought to ask what the man she’d be meeting would be wearing, even though he’d asked about her clothing.
She sank on the newly vacated park bench, in her fitted gray skirt. Keeping herself from fidgeting and appearing guilty instead of nervous was more difficult than Emily had imagined. Yet, she’d done nothing wrong. She was actually doing the right thing. Still, guilt ate at her, gnawing its way through her stomach that churned painfully at the knowledge she would soon ruin possibly hundreds of people’s lives, but they’d truly already been ruined, just no one was wise to it yet. Except those involved in the scheme.
“Are you certain about this, Miss Hamilton? This is a serious accusation,” the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission employee had asked her during the phone call.
She’d hesitated. What if she’d been wrong? She’d lose everything she’d just started building for her small family, and she would make a fool of herself, ending her career as an accountant before it truly began. She had no proof. “Trust your instincts,” her brothers had always told her. Her instincts screamed there was foul play, and her ethics refused to allow her to ignore it. “Based on what I overheard, yes.”
Dipping her head, she glanced at her silver watch and with her mind so preoccupied she’d had to do a double take to actually register the time. The SEC agent, Paul Thompson, was late. She’d wait five more minutes before she’d abandon this idea.
More people raced by, some in business attire, some in workout clothing and some in outfits she couldn’t even describe, but none looked in her direction or stopped to address her.
The fraying of her nerves stripped the serenity she’d usually felt when in the park with Amber. This was the little girl’s second favorite place in their new hometown. Nothing could compete with the animals at the zoo.
Giving up her wait, she stood and looked skyward, hoping she’d beat the rain since she hadn’t thought to carry an umbrella with her. She’d rushed here after replacing her daughter’s fish. She hoped this one didn’t do any float tricks.
“Miss Hamilton.”
The rough male voice, close to her left side, startled her. She reached her right hand inside her black purse, grasping the pepper spray her brothers had insisted she promise to keep with her at all times. While Emily knew many moves to protect herself, courtesy of those overprotective brothers, her tight skirt and four-inch stilettos prevented her from doing one of the most important things—running away as quickly as possible.
Knowing better than to respond to her name from someone unfamiliar, she stood and turned, acting as if just scanning the area, and glanced at the man who had spoken. That was the plan until her mouth dropped open at the sight of the drop-dead gorgeous, blond-haired man in an expensive, charcoal suit beside her. He was not what she’d been expecting. He looked more like a CEO than an underpaid, overworked government employee. This couldn’t be him. Her hand tightened its hold on her weapon.
A crooked, charming smile stretched across his face, and his green eyes captured her in a sensual embrace. “Let me try this again.” He held up official identification for her to see. “Miss Hamilton? I’m Paul Thompson from the SEC. We spoke earlier.” He replaced the identification in his pocket and held out a large hand in an offer of handshake.
Embarrassed, she closed her mouth, removed her hand from her purse and shook his as a smile crept on her face. “Please call me Emily.” The wind gusted, almost pushing her into the man, which may not have been such a bad thing.
“Would you like to sit?” He gestured to the bench she’d vacated. “I’m not sure how long the rain will hold off, but since you just wanted to meet each other first, this won’t take long. When you’re comfortable, we can go to the office.”
Nodding, she sat on the bench, smoothed out her skirt and dropped her hands on her purse, which now lay in her lap. The butterflies in her stomach bounced off the walls, increasing her anxiety about the meeting, about the subject, about the potential fallout.
He sat and turned to her. “I looked over the audits of your employer, and frankly, I couldn’t find anything that stood out.” He held up his hand, forestalling her from commenting. “But, I’m sending it to the forensics team. I’d like any evidence that you have before it possibly disappears.”
Emily’s relief at his believing her that something might be amiss was short-li
ved when he asked for anything she’d collected. She thought they’d do that when the time came. Would her not bringing the SEC anything prevent them from exposing her boss? “I didn’t hang around to look for any evidence. I only know what I heard.”
“Are you sure you didn’t recognize the voice or see who it was?”
“I’ve told you that I didn’t.”
The menacing look that developed on Paul’s face had her reaching into her purse again, clutching the cool, metal cylinder for comfort. A chill slowly crept through her. Something was off about him.
“Ah, but you downloaded information that you shouldn’t have.”
Her pulse raced, and her hands grew clammy. She had no idea what he was talking about. She’d told him everything. “I didn’t download anything.” Why was he accusing her of that? Did he think she was in on it?
“Let me try this again. Files were downloaded on your computer. Until you provide me with the information you stole from your employer, your daughter remains with us.”
Her heart stopped for a moment. Amber. Emily’s breath caught, and her heart jumped, almost clogging her throat. “What do you mean?” Oh God. They couldn’t have her daughter. Was this some kind of a sick joke?
Scooting closer to her, Paul lowered his voice, creating more turmoil to run rampant through her system. “Let’s just say that little Amber checked out of daycare early today. She’ll be returned to you as soon as you comply.”
No! No! No! This was not happening. Emily jumped up from the bench, her hand moving from the weapon to her cell phone, quickly auto-dialing her daughter’s daycare as she turned to sprint to find a cab. Blood surged through her veins, everything around her turned to a blur. Her only focus was to get to Amber and make sure her baby was okay.
A strong hand on her forearm halted her forward momentum. “Don’t do anything foolish.”
Narrowing her eyes, Emily wished she could claw out his for having anything to do with her daughter.