David’s mind whirled. Just how popular was this class? “How did you know that?”
Kelly looked him in the eye. “Kevin and I are on the waiting list.” Kelly and Kevin had been together since high school and engaged for three years. If Kevin weren’t attending medical school in Washington and Kelly at OHSU, they’d be married by now. David figured they were having sex, but didn’t want to think about it. He shook his head and marched into the living room.
“You didn’t answer my question.” She chased after him. “How long has this been going on?” He ignored her, still trying to block the mental image of his sister showing up for that class.
“No wonder,” Kelly said, sinking into the leather sofa.
David rolled his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s just that you haven’t been going out lately. You know, on your little trolling expeditions.”
David didn’t want to think about how long it had been since he’d had sex. Sophie kept showing him that it had been far too long.
“You’re reading this all wrong, Kelly. It’s not what you think. I’m just helping her, nothing more. She’s really not my type.”
“That could be a good thing.”
He was starting to think so too.
———
Sophie shifted her weight, crossing her legs beneath her as she sorted through the reports in the file. Her morning Pilates class left her energized, even with last night’s lack of sleep, and she wanted to take another look. She’d glanced through the financial statements from Strong Gyms Inc. when she found the file on her desk this morning, but set it aside knowing that David must have forgotten the file.
The forensic accountant in her wanted to look further. She’d noticed something earlier, and on further inspection she smiled, knowing she was right. She scribbled a few more notes, excited to be using her skills again. Sophie genuinely liked auditing, liked the mystery of finding things people hoped would stay hidden. It was the long hours of her old job she could do without.
The intercom rang, pulling her attention away. “David Strong is on line two for you. He says it’s important.”
She’d been caught. Sophie broke out in a cold sweat. She’d be breaking his no talking business rule, though his rules didn’t really apply to her. David wasn’t going to be happy that she peeked, but maybe if she helped it wouldn’t be so bad.
Sophie clenched her fists to stop her fingers from trembling before she picked up the receiver. Play it cool.
“You don’t know what you’re looking for, do you?” she asked, hoping to take him off-guard.
“What?”
She smiled, it worked. “With the reports you left on my desk.”
“Oh, good. I was hoping they were there.” She heard him let out a breath.
“How much?”
“How much what?”
“Are you hoping to find?”
“Oh, the reports. I’m not sure. It’s just a hunch really.” His light, calm voice suddenly turned tense with realization. “Wait, you looked through the reports?”
Did he want her to deny what she’d already admitted to? She needed to redirect him, and end the long, awkward silence echoing through the phone line. “You don’t know what or how much you’re looking for?”
He cleared his throat. “Like I said, it’s just a hunch.”
“Very professional. I could recommend a firm,” she offered.
“No, no,” he said quickly. Very quickly she noticed. “It’s private. I don’t want to involve anyone until I know what I’m dealing with.”
Sophie shrugged. “Okay. I’ve made a list of reports you should run that will help you narrow down where you should be looking.”
His sigh was audible across the phone line. “Thanks. This kind of thing is what you did before, right?”
“No problem. It feeds my brain. I actually miss accounting that goes beyond simple debits and credits. How sick is that?” She laughed at herself. “It’s a good hunch, David.”
“Thank you. I’ll run over and pick them up.”
Sophie waited, hoping he might ask her to join him for lunch, dinner, a walk on the waterfront, anything. Nothing. “I’ll leave them at the desk.”
———
“I need a favor,” David said, holding out the silver crescent-shaped box. Sophie sat crossed-legged in her office chair, pounding away at her laptop. Her curls had been obstructing his view of her face, but when he spoke she looked up. David smiled, watching her sparkling eyes take him in before they drifted to the box he was holding.
“Wow, Moonstruck chocolates. You must need some kind of favor.” He smiled, pleased she knew the company. Entering the office he sat on her desk.
“What’s your favorite?” he asked, pulling the box out of her reach.
“Favorites are so overrated,” she pouted, leaning closer to him. Close enough for him to breathe in her sweet almond scent.
“Come on, play along,” he teased, hoping he had gotten it right.
“Don’t you mean play fair?” she teased. “Okay, let me think.” As she pondered the question she wrapped a dark curl round and round her finger. “Extra Bittersweet is fantastic for a chocolate craving.” David chewed his lower lip. He hadn’t even considered that one. “But The Ocumarian is probably my favorite. They get the chocolate from the Ocumare valley in Venezuela and blend it with chili pepper. It’s fantastic. Have you tried it?”
David felt his cheeks begin to ache from smiling so hard. He’d known it.
He handed her the box, watching as she opened it greedily. “There’s only two kinds,” she said, looking up at him.
“Your favorite and mine, Italia Espresso.”
When she smiled her cheeks glowed pink all the way to her eyelashes. Sophie looked down at the box, then back up at him. “How did you know which was my favorite? You didn’t ask Craig did you? He has a serious chocolate ban.”
David rolled his eyes. “Forget Craig. I was making a gesture. If you don’t want them…”
“No!” Sophie snatched the box away in her greedy fingers.
David smiled again. “About that favor.”
“These are your favorite?” Sophie rolled a truffle between her tiny fingers.
David nodded slowly.
“And these are all mine.” Sophie tucked the box in her desk drawer. “You must be dying for a bite. I wonder if I ate this, if you would kiss me just for a taste.”
David rolled his eyes again. He grabbed her wrist, plucking the candy from her fingers with his mouth, chomping it down quickly.
“No fair!” Sophie squealed, jumping out of her chair.
David laughed and grabbed her shoulders, pulling her across his lap to steal a teasing kiss. Setting her back on her feet he watched as her eyes slowly fluttered open.
“Wow. That is good.” She said licking her lips.
“Don’t sound so surprised or you’ll bruise my ego.”
“You could stand to be taken down a few pegs.” Sophie said, not backing away.
David smiled looking into those eyes. He liked the color they were right now. Bright, shining blue, a little glassy from the kiss. He’d done that. “Now do I get my favor?”
Sophie’s hands rested on her generous hips, reminding him of what was hidden beneath the sweats she wore. “I’m still mad at you.”
“I brought chocolate.”
“Sugar to cure the sexual frustration you left me with last night? Too little too late.”
He laughed out loud. Leaning into her, he whispered. “If I had gotten out of the car we never would have made it up the stairs.”
“You’re all talk.” Sophie leaned closer and grabbed his tie. “You look nice today. Very nice.”
“Sophie,” David warned as she pulled him closer.
“David,” she taunted.
“Aren’t you even curious what I want?”
“Unless it’s me, I really don’t care.” She pressed her forehead to his.
He chuckled. “Wanting you is not a problem we have. But I need your help.”
“With your missing million?”
His posture straightened. “It’s a million? Are you sure?”
“Yes and no. In that order.”
“Damn.” David ground out, rubbing his palms on his thighs. He knew that profits weren’t as high as they should be, but that much money? How had he let it get past him? “You’ll help?”
“Actually I’d love to. I can’t prove anything, but I could point you in the right direction. For a price.” Her hands rested on top of his.
“Can you come in tomorrow? It will be easier on a Saturday. I don’t want a lot of questions from the staff until I know what I am dealing with.” And whom.
———
Sophie sat across from David at his desk as he furiously plugged away at his computer, printing the reports she had listed, leaving her to ponder the two pictures that sat beside his computer. They were the only personal effects in the huge office which was barely decorated in glass, chrome and leather.
She looked at the snapshot on his desk of two little boys standing in front of a tent. From the way it was sloping, she guessed they’d put it up themselves. Even with the faded color of the photo Sophie recognized Craig’s fire-red hair.
“I didn’t realize you and Craig had been friends so long.”
“Yeah, since second grade. We were neighbors.” He answered without looking up.
She studied the picture closer. The brown-eyed little boy grinned proudly up at her, his face rounder and softer than she would have guessed. “You’ve always been tall.” She set the picture back on his desk next to a snapshot of a little girl with white-blond pigtails.
“Thank you for not mentioning I was fat.”
“What?” she asked, eyeing the picture again. “You weren’t fat. Maybe it’s standing next to Craig that makes you think that. I guess he was always a toothpick.” He was round, but he was what, eight years old? Kids’ bodies weren’t supposed to be chiseled like his was now.
“Yeah, and a bully magnet. Guys were always trying to snap him like a twig.” He spun around, whipping papers off the laser printer and sorting them.
“You protected him?”
“You don’t mess with bulk like that,” he said with a sad chuckle. “We helped each other.”
“Oh, no. Did he start telling you what to eat back then?” she asked, attempting levity.
He laughed, loud and long and full. She loved making him laugh.
“No, not until high school when we decided to go into bodybuilding like my dad. He read everything about bodybuilding, and we worked out all the time. It worked for me, but the poor guy has never been able to gain an ounce.”
She leaned closer. “Bastard,” she said, eliciting another peal of laughter from him. She loved the way he sounded when he laughed.
“Craig can’t help it, trust me. I’ve seen him try.” He looked up and caught her. She wasn’t watching him, she was ogling. She brought a hand to her mouth, checking for drool. She was relieved to find she hadn’t embarrassed herself that much.
“Here is the last round of statements.” He broke their eye contact abruptly. “You can look at them in here, or I could get a conference room for you.”
“No, here is good. Unless it would disturb you.” She had to give him an out, though the only reason she was here was to share air with the man.
“No, of course not. Besides, you’ll probably have questions.”
“Right,” she said, pulling the folders toward herself. She just prayed she could find something that would help him. Something that might mean she would have to spend more time here, near him, looking deeper. “You still haven’t told me what made you suspect money was missing in the first place.”
“Do you need to know?” he asked, his face tense, almost pained.
“Not if you don’t want to tell me.” She began looking through the reports. It wasn’t long before she was lost, the accounts and amounts coming alive in her brain. She liked chasing the numbers around, trying to catch a thief. Sometime between the January and September reports David had actually left the room. Sophie didn’t even notice until he walked through his office door, handing her a bottle of water.
“Thanks,” she said, accepting the water. She finished her notes, opened the bottle and drained it.
David chuckled. “I thought so.”
“Excuse me?”
“You were thirsty.”
“Oh yeah, I guess I was.”
“How’s it going?”
“I don’t suppose you’d let me into your network?”
“Have at it.” David offered, booting up the program. “How much longer?”
“Depends, why?” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at his face. “I warn you. If you say you have a date, I can’t be held accountable for my actions.”
He smiled. “I’m hungry.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re always hungry.”
“Sophie, we’ve been here for six hours and all I’ve been able to find is stale pretzels.”
“Oh.” Sophie checked the time on the bottom of David’s computer. Two eighteen. Where had the time gone? “You do know that I’m doing an extremely accelerated search, that usually I would spend months documenting things before I’d get this far?”
He nodded. “Of course. How about if I order a pizza? Do you like Pizzicato?”
Sophie shrugged as the spreadsheets began to dance in front of her. “Hot Lips is better.”
“Sophie, you promised no kissing until after.”
“Hot Lips Pizza, you pervert. I thought you actually lived in this town. Pizzicato is too gourmet for me, Hot Lips is more New York. They have a store right by the university so I got hooked. They also have one in the Pearl District, way too close to Working It Out.” She smiled and looked up at his confused expression. “Whatever you want.”
“What’s good?”
“The brownies.”
———
“The delivery driver had one of those electric cars,” David said, setting the pizza box on the coffee table in his office. The smell of garlic and melted cheese wafted to her nose as he opened the box.
Sophie turned from the printer and smiled. “Maybe that’s what I should get.”
David shrugged as he started to inhale the pizza. Half Veggie Nirvana no olives, half Omnivore Bliss. “You should get something you’re willing to park.”
“I know. The van was going to waste so I donated it to a family at my parents’ church.” Sophie returned to what she’d found, not wanting to hear another lecture on trade-in value like she had gotten from Craig and Daphne.
As good as it felt to be tracking down missing debits again, Sophie never missed this part of the process. No one liked to get bad news, and considering what she was about to say, he really wasn’t going to like it. She wondered if it would be easier coming from her, or if he might blame her for finding it.
She shook her head, reminding herself he’d be fair. Most of what she found was purely circumstantial. Hopefully he would put his anger on what she’d found, instead of on her.
“How are you not hungry? You’ve been working all day.”
“One track mind.” She forced a smile as she crossed the room. She didn’t want to eat, she just wanted to get this over with.
“David, what tipped you off?” She perched on the end of the sofa, watching as he wiped his hands on a paper napkin.
“She bought another house.”
Sophie arched a brow. “She?”
“Her third this year. And she went on and on about return on investment and not having to finance. I knew she was into him for the money, but I thought it was his money, not the company’s she was after.”
“David, she?”
“Tessa, my father’s wife. Fifth wife. The same woman who sued him for sexual harassment two years ago. She’s a real piece of work. Blackmailed him into marrying her, and now I guess he’s trying t
o make a go of it. I knew she was bad news from the beginning.”
Sophie tried to wrap her head around that angle. It was possible she was wrong in her suspicions, but highly unlikely. “What kind of clearance does she have?”
“She’s his assistant. I’m sure he’s given her carte blanche.”
“Does your assistant have that kind of clearance?”
“I’m not married to my assistants.”
“What did she do before?”
“Before she became my father’s personal vampire? She was an aerobics instructor.”
Sophie winced. “Does she have a background in finance? Because the transactions were very complicated.”
“You don’t think it’s her.”
“I could be wrong.” Sophie handed David her notes.
He looked into her eyes. “Just tell me.”
Sophie took a deep breath. Should she sugar coat or go for the jugular? She dove right in. “There are only two people who have clearance on all the accounts involved. One of them is you.”
David closed his eyes and slumped back against the couch. “My father?”
“Lance has been very careful. As far as I can tell, he didn’t start until April. He’s siphoned off profits during transfers, so no one club has been affected, just the company overall. Which is how it’s been overlooked. The money went first to the capital account, then into a personal account.”
“Can you hide it?” His voice was barely audible.
“Yes.” She heard herself say, surprised how quickly she answered. Cooking the books went against everything she’d learned, but it was David’s money that was being lost and if he didn’t want to shine a light on the infraction, she couldn’t either.
He inhaled loudly. “How much?”
“2.6 million.”
David opened his eyes wide as he sat bolt upright. “Since April?”
Sophie nodded.
David sunk his head into his hands. “How did I not notice that?”
Sophie knelt beside him and placed a hand on his knee. “You did notice. SGI is still turning a very healthy profit. The only alarms going off were in your head. And each transaction is for a small amount of money, given the size of the company. They’ve just added up.”
Compromising Positions Page 7
