by Kara Lennox
Her wardrobe had been gradually morphing from workplace-casual to high fashion, but rather than seeing it as a sign of weakness, Conner was starting to appreciate her flare. Her legs looked amazing in those heels and a short, sassy skirt, the hem of which flipped up enticingly every time she turned.
He forced himself to catch and meet her gaze. “Even if your theory about Cuddy’s activities are accurate, it’s not going to bring the company down. A few thousand dollars won’t make or break us.”
“It’s many thousands. And you want to turn a blind eye?”
He very much wanted to. Facing off against Isaac Cuddy was one headache he didn’t need. But Jillian was right; he had a duty to stop office pilfering, if that was what Cuddy was up to.
She wasn’t stupid. He had to acknowledge the truth of what she’d just reported—Isaac Cuddy was a thief.
“I’ll speak to George LeMaster. He handles security. And you need to steer clear of Cuddy. We might be equal on the organizational chart, but he has a ton more clout than me in this company. He, Stan and Hamilton go way back. If it comes down to a showdown, I won’t be able to protect you.”
She nodded.
“Now, then, what specifically do you know about accounting software?”
“I have a good working knowledge of Peachtree, which is what the company uses.”
“IT just upgraded and I’m lost.”
“I haven’t seen the upgrade. Give me an hour to acquaint myself, and then I’ll help you.”
Help him? He could see it now, the two of them side by side, peering at the computer screen, her scent teasing his nose, her graceful hands playing the keyboard like a delicate musical instrument, all the while his insides getting tied up in knots.
He never should have kissed her. It had seemed like the most expedient way to get them out of trouble, but now he had the memory of it to taunt him.
Lately he’d had this fantasy that, when he was ready to leave his director’s job and go back into the field, he’d take her with him. She had such a quick intellect, plus the physical stamina and curiosity to match him. He would love to show her mahogany forests in Palau, stands of Ceylon ebony trees in Sri Lanka, teak forests of India, coconut palm plantations in Fiji.
He would teach her about the forest. Together they would witness eagles soaring, the Northern Lights, salmon spawning. And they would make love—on the banks of the Euphrates, under the stars in Tunisia, in a tent in Morocco, within the cocoon of the forest canopy on the Amazon.
Would that be before or after Mr. Baxter shot him?
It was a stupid fantasy, given their history, and not even the sort of purely sexual daydream a normal, red-blooded man engaged in. He’d developed some sort of feelings for Jillian, and that scared the hell out of him.
Normally, Conner was an intelligent sort of human being. The only other time he’d let emotions cloud his judgment was when he’d been with Chandra. For three years he’d allowed his hormones to rule his life, spending way too many hours of the day figuring out how to win her, how to please her, how to be the perfect husband.
He’d wrecked his own life because of her, taken a job he despised and practically bankrupted himself getting out of the marriage.
No, working side by side with Jillian, the schoolmistress of accounting software, would be another colossal mistake.
“I was hoping I could just shove my whole budget at you. I’ve made a mess of it.”
“Of course you can. That’s what I’m here for.”
Did the woman ever say no? She was so turning him on, just standing there doing nothing.
He went to his desk and opened the bottom drawer, where he’d stuffed everything related to his expenditures. Jillian obviously hadn’t gotten to organizing that drawer yet; she’d been focusing on the more visible chaos. He pointed to the inside of the drawer.
“That’s what I’ve been using for an accounting system.”
“Oh, Conner. Do you print out every email you receive? The idea of email, you know, is so that you don’t have to shuffle papers. You set up folders, use filters to sort incoming emails so you can always find—”
“So you can always find them.”
She sighed again, but she couldn’t help smiling, apparently relishing the task of turning his chaos into order. “I’ll go get a file box.”
She didn’t seem as angry with him. Nothing further had been said about the science fair incident, so maybe she was true to her word and wanted to put it behind them. He hoped so. It surely hadn’t been his shining moment.
He supposed he should go talk to George. Jillian might trust him to take care of the matter of Isaac’s thievery…for now. But if she didn’t see some action, she would take matters into her own hands.
Her moral compass, while inconvenient, was yet something else to admire about her. If only she had a few flaws—an annoying laugh or a lazy streak—he would find it easier to dislike her. As it was, he just depended on her more and more.
He couldn’t imagine how he’d survived without her.
* * *
IT FELT GOOD FOR JILLIAN to dive into Conner’s gargantuan pile of papers. Whenever she was in the midst of organizing, she could put troubling thoughts out of her mind for at least a while. She enjoyed learning the ins and outs of a new computer program, typing numbers into blanks, figuring out which categories Conner’s expenses should be filed under.
She was very lucky she still had this job. But either Conner didn’t remember she’d slashed his tires or he didn’t know. He saw their past quite differently than she did—through rose-colored glasses. Get their families together? What was he thinking?
She was relieved, though, that he now knew she was Jillybean, and nothing disastrous had come of it.
As she tamed the pile of papers, it occurred to Jillian—and it was a horrible thought, but she couldn’t suppress it once she acknowledged it—that Conner was not very good at his job. As a director, he was supposed to be managing resources—people, time, money. But as she analyzed the various documents he’d provided, she realized the timber buyers who reported to him were sometimes overworked, sometimes idle and not terribly happy with their jobs or their boss.
And he hadn’t taken any steps to replace Greg Tynes; meanwhile he was behind schedule with negotiating deals for multiple desirable stands of timber.
He had overspent in some areas of the budget, like travel, and underspent for others.
She felt certain his intentions were good. But he’d become overwhelmed in red tape.
What it boiled down to was, he wasn’t suited to a management position—especially if he treated the men who worked out in the field as disrespectfully as he treated his office assistants.
He needed to be out in the field himself. In Stirrup Creek, when he’d been faced with a logistical problem, he’d performed brilliantly. And he’d dealt with the people end of things quite well. He’d seemed to draw energy and wisdom straight from the forest; she could almost see the stress melting out of his body as he breathed in the fresh air and gazed upon his beloved trees.
His beloved trees.
That was how Hamilton Payne had described them. It was a shame to take a man like Conner Blake and pen him up inside four walls. It was like corralling a wild mustang.
Had he loved nature that much as a kid? She did seem to recall that he’d loved being outdoors, even in summer. When Jeff had been content to sit inside with the air-conditioning and watch TV, Conner had wanted to ride bikes or build something.
As she worked on his department’s travel expenses, she came across something that stopped her cold. It was an airline ticket to Jakarta. In Conner’s name. Scheduled for November.
Why was he going there?
So far as she could tell, Conner’s job didn’t involve much travel. The trip to Stirrup Creek had been an exception, to solve an urgent problem.
Had something gone terribly wrong somewhere in Indonesia, so that he had to go there himself? She hadn’t heard a
whisper of a problem. Surely she would have gotten wind of trouble—an email, a phone message. But the last communication she’d seen from the buyer responsible for that part of the world had been just a few days ago, and he’d reported his current job was on schedule and everything was good.
Was Conner perhaps going to Jakarta for a vacation? If so, would he put it on the company credit card?
Another, insidious thought occurred to her. Was Conner preparing to flee? Had the stresses of this job become so bad that he had plans to leave the country, disappear? Once in Indonesia, it would be easy for him to get to any number of destinations where a new identity could be purchased.
Jillian chided herself for thinking such a terrible thing about Conner. Lots of men didn’t like their jobs and they didn’t intentionally disappear.
Unless they were suspected of a murder.
She’d tried not to give credence to the rumor she’d heard that first day. As frustrated as she’d been with her new boss, she’d never seriously believed he could be guilty of taking a human life—even when Daniel had named Conner as a possible suspect. Yes, he could be brusque, even rude, and yes, he had been cruel to her in high school. It was a big leap from there to murder.
Toward the end of the day, Conner stopped by her desk to provide her with a few more stray pieces of paper related to the budget and to check if she had any questions.
“I do have a question,” she said. “Have you taken any steps to replace Greg Tynes?”
“Oh, um, Joyce placed some ads and collected a stack of résumés, but I haven’t had a chance to go through them.”
Was there something slightly evasive about the way he’d answered that question? Or was she being hypersuspicious?
“Would you like me to do that?”
“Jillian, you are an amazing person, but you’ve only been here a week. I doubt even you could have learned enough about the timber business in that short time to know what constitutes desirable qualifications for a timber buyer.”
“Well, when you cut some good candidates from the applicants, I’d be happy to set up the interviews. We’ve got several landowners waiting for us to make a decision, and some options that are expiring at the end of this month.”
“I’ll see what I can do. It’s after five o’clock, you know.”
“Is it?”
“You don’t have to stick around past quitting time just because I’m still here.”
“Oh? I thought your policy was, if you were here, I had to be here.”
“C’mon, you know I was just being a hard-ass on purpose.”
“Yes, I suppose I did figure that out. You were seeing how hard you could push me. Pretty hard, as it turns out.”
“You took all the crap I could throw at you and you came back for more,” he said with a laugh. “Why is that, Jillybean?”
Her face grew warm at his use of her nickname. “Please don’t call me that.” She wasn’t sure why she hated hearing it from him so much. She let other people call her that—family members, at least, and it didn’t bother her.
“Sorry. I’ll try to remember. But I am curious.” He propped one hip on the edge of her desk, looming over her. “I can’t understand why you would want or need such a menial job. Your parents are some of the richest people in Houston. You went to an elite high school, and Dartmouth isn’t a college you go to if you can’t cut the competition. I assume you got good grades because you were smart.”
He knew that about her? She always assumed he hadn’t noticed anything about her—except perhaps her less than ideal proportions.
“You could,” he continued, “have become anything you wanted to be—a doctor, a lawyer. You got a business degree, but you work as a secretary.”
“There’s no shame in clerical work,” she said. “I’m good at it. I enjoy it. And I prefer the term administrative or executive assistant.”
“Yeah. But it still doesn’t add up.”
Suddenly there didn’t seem to be enough air. Had he figured out her game? Had he figured out she was working for someone else?
“You must have recognized me long before I knew who you were, yet you didn’t say anything. Why is that?”
“Are you kidding? I didn’t want you to remember me from high school. Jeff Baxter’s goofy kid sister—you would never have hired her! She’s a joke, and nothing like the person I am today.”
“You’re still the same person,” he argued. “You can change the outer trappings, but the inner Jillybean is still there.”
Jillian was so rattled, she switched off her computer without saving the file she was working on. Why was he torturing her like this? Why couldn’t he just drop it, as she obviously wished him to?
She opened the bottom drawer of her desk and retrieved her purse. She wouldn’t sit still for this.
“If what you say is true, that must mean you’re still a sadistic little prick who gets his kicks from torturing teenage girls.”
Any sign of humor fled from his face. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. What you did to me was cruel. Heartless. Unforgivable.” To her horror, tears sprang into her eyes. My God, she had to get out of there fast! She scooted around the desk and headed for the elevator. And when she realized Conner was following her, she headed for the stairs instead.
“Jillian. Wait.”
“Good night, Mr. Blake.”
* * *
CONNER LET HER GO. THE LAST thing he’d meant to do was make her cry. He’d be very, very lucky if he still had an admin come tomorrow morning.
He’d never intended for the conversation to take such a bizarre twist. He’d merely been trying to find a way past the cool barrier she’d erected against him. He’d thought that by teasing her a bit—like he did when they were kids—she might soften.
Boy, had he gotten that wrong.
Cruel. Heartless. Unforgivable.
What he remembered of the infamous science fair was hilarious. A melting dress, seminudity on the football field, teachers and parents in shock. Of course she’d been embarrassed, and he’d suffered a small twinge of guilt—later.
Apparently she and her whole family remembered the incident in radically different terms.
He would straighten it out with her. He would apologize, send flowers, whatever it took. But right now, he had another gut-wrenching task to attend to.
He’d talked to George LeMaster about Isaac Cuddy’s office theft—without mentioning Jillian’s name, or how he came to know about the cache in Cuddy’s garage.
It turned out LeMaster already knew, or suspected, someone was stealing from the company. The thefts weren’t inconsequential, either. They amounted to tens of thousands of dollars over the course of more than a year.
LeMaster had narrowed down the suspects to a few key people who had access. Cuddy was one of them.
Together, Conner and LeMaster went to Hamilton Payne.
Poor Ham. The guy just wanted to get through the next few months so he could retire. He hadn’t asked to be named acting CEO, but he’d been the logical choice as Stan’s right-hand man.
Now, in addition to the accusations leveled against Stan, another director was about to be revealed as a criminal.
The three men had decided to go to Cuddy’s house together. They would confront him and ask to see what was in his garage. If he cooperated, there would be no criminal charges, he would simply be asked to resign. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than dragging Mayall Lumber through the mud yet again.
There wasn’t much discussion in the car on the way to Cuddy’s house. Conner had a knot in his stomach the size of a bowling ball. He wanted to be anywhere but here in this hornets’ nest.
He wanted to be in the forest, where the worst thing he might face was a real hornets’ nest. Bugs. Skunks. Snakes. Those were things he understood.
People, not so much.
Cuddy’s wife, Ariel, answered the door with a big smile. “Well, hi, fellas, what brings you here? Come on in. Isaac,” she
called over her shoulder as she ushered them into the cavernous, marble-tiled foyer of their home, “you have company.”
Conner imagined that when Isaac saw them—the three of them, showing up without warning and looking somber—he would know the jig was up. But he greeted them with a smile as well, though slightly more bewildered than his wife.
“Hey, guys. What’s going on?” Suddenly the smile fell away. “Oh, God. It’s Stan. What’s happened?”
“Stan’s fine, as far as we know,” Hamilton said. “Isaac, I don’t know how to approach this except to just blurt it out. Can we look in your garage?”
“What? Why?”
“I think you know why,” George said.
“No.” He laughed a little nervously. “Scratching my head here. But if you want to look in my garage, be my guest.”
Conner’s mouth went dry as paper. Why had Cuddy agreed so easily?
Cuddy led them through a gracious living room, into a kitchen that looked like a magazine layout and down a hallway to the garage. He opened the door and let them file into the three-car garage.
He flipped on the light.
Two cars. A Jet Ski on a trailer. A lawnmower. A couple of transparent plastic storage containers labeled Christmas, which clearly contained ornaments and tinsel.
No office equipment. No blue tarp. Nothing remotely suspicious.
Conner’s head spun. He didn’t believe for one instant that Jillian had made up her story. Or that she’d been mistaken, that she’d seen something innocent and misinterpreted it.
“Now are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Cuddy demanded.
“Someone in the company is stealing large quantities of office supplies and a source identified you as a suspect,” George said baldly. “I thought the simplest way to deal with the matter was to check. Obviously I was misinformed. I apologize.”
“Wait a minute. You accuse me of being a thief, and then you just say, ‘oops, sorry’? Hamilton, did you actually think I could—Ariel, honey, don’t cry. It’s all right, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Isaac put his arms around Ariel, who had her face in her hands, weeping silently.
