by Kelsie Fann
He slowly slipped his phone into pocket. “What do you mean?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes at him. “You obviously don’t want to be here. Why are you making me go over this? What is your real concern?” She leaned toward him.
Darcy couldn’t tell her the truth: that he wanted to ruin Hamilton’s night. That definitely didn’t cast him in the best light. And he couldn’t tell her the other truth: that despite her impressive performance, there was no way he was buying Chambers’s Media.
“Are you even interested in buying?” Liz said.
Could she read minds too? He didn’t answer, but he decided to turn the tables. “Are you angry with me, Liz?” He leaned toward her. Together their bodies were in a standoff, each unwilling to back down.
“Just tell me the truth,” she said. “Are you interested in buying Chambers’s Media?”
Fine, if she wants the truth, I’ll give her the truth.
Darcy shook his head. “The numbers don’t make sense for purchase,” he said.
Liz leaned back in her chair and furrowed her eyebrows. “I’ve seen the prospectus. We’re making at least a seventeen percent profit. Every year. Consistently,” she said. “Try hitting those numbers anywhere else.”
“I can’t.” Darcy shook his head. “You can’t get that kind of profits anywhere. Maybe for a year or three at most, but not for fifteen.” He felt a little pleasure putting the young exec in her place.
Liz looked at Darcy so intensely it made him pull his body back away from the desk and rest it on the back of his chair. He remembered how it felt to be new in a big role, pouring himself into a company. Heck, he was still doing it for Pemberley Media.
“What are you talking about?” Liz asked.
Darcy tried to soften his words. “The reported expenses are too low, which is making the profit look higher. Someone’s most likely putting money in to cover the excess employee salaries, but not reporting it. The company is probably just breaking even. That’s my guess anyway. But I know the expenses wouldn’t even cover the staff in this office, let alone make a double-digit return.”
11.
His guess? His guess? He was slandering Mr. Chambers based on a guess? Liz thought. Who does this guy think he is?
No. Mr. Chambers was the smartest businessman she knew. He was a genius. He started the company when she was in middle school after the Chambers family paper mill went bankrupt. He commuted to Savannah until Dee was done with school, driving over an hour each way to start a new company. Now he was doing the advertising for the top ten companies in Georgia. He was better than a genius. He was a hustler.
There was no way he was faking the profits or doctoring the books.
Liz shook her head. “It’s not true.”
“It is.” Darcy argued. “He might not be doing it himself, but someone is doing it for him.”
The frown fixed on Darcy’s face was slowly replaced by an understanding gaze. Without the permascowl, Liz’s breath caught in her throat. Darcy was handsome, not in the easy way Hamilton was, but he was handsome in a tall, dark, and serious way. The realization made Liz dislike Darcy even more.
Liz knew there wasn’t anything fraudulent about Mr. Chambers or his company. He was clearly trying to sabotage the sale. Her suspicions grew until they fell out of her mouth. “Is this your way of trying to get rid of Hamilton? So, you can buy the company cheaper?”
The scowl descended upon on Darcy’s face again, and Liz swore she saw smoke come out of his ears. “You think I’m scared of Hamilton?” After a few seconds, he laughed, and the sound grated on Liz’s nerves. She planted her feet to stand up and leave the room.
“Fine,” she snapped. “If you think our profits are made up, Leave. Just back out. Go back to Chicago, and Hamilton will buy us.” Liz stood up and motioned toward the door. She was done having Darcy ruin her night.
Darcy didn’t stand. “I’m not telling you because I’m scared. I’m telling you this so you’ll know. For the past hour, you’ve answered all my questions better than—” He stopped, looking around. “Better than I bet even Mr. Chambers could have answered. You’re smart. You could get another job before the news breaks. After people find out, being a director of New Media for a firm that faked their expenses won’t look good.”
Liz walked around to the front of her desk. She sat down on the edge, just inches in front of Darcy, who still hadn’t moved from the chair in front of her desk. She bent down, so he would have to look her in the eyes. “Well, I’m telling you this. Mr. Chambers has built a great company. And it will sell. Remember his daughter, Dee? She has a very sick son in Colorado, and she needs her father’s help.”
He shrugged. “It’s just business, Liz.”
Liz could feel her blood pressure rise. It was time Darcy knew this wasn’t one of his typical acquisitions. This was about a family of very kind people who needed to be together.
“I think you need to leave,” she told him.
He didn’t move. Darcy and Liz stared at each other, both on different sides of an argument that neither could solve. Click. Click. Click. Click. Liz heard heels tapping the ground, getting closer. “Everything okay in here?” She looked up to see the strawberry-blonde-haired woman who arrived with Darcy push open the glass door and enter the executive office.
“I don’t believe we’ve met.” The woman held her out her hand as she reached Liz’s desk. She pointed her fingers toward to the floor like an eighteenth-century queen. “I’m Caroline,” she said. “James’s sister.” She tilted her head toward the strawberry-blond man who was talking to Rose.
Liz looked at James, who was shamelessly flirting with Rose in the main office. He touched her arm, and Rose’s big smile beamed back at him.
Liz looked back at Caroline, who still had her arm extended outward with her fingers pointed toward the floor.
After a couple of awkward seconds, Liz grabbed her fingers and shook a little, not knowing what else to do. Caroline slowly lowered her hand. “Are you the secretary?” she asked as she slid her hand across Darcy’s wide shoulders.
A flush creeped up Liz’s neck. Why did everyone think she was the secretary?
“This is Liz, director of New Media,” Darcy said, looking up at Caroline.
Liz stood up and smoothed her dress. She looked at Caroline and considered telling her that not every woman who sat at the front of the office was a secretary, but she could barely think anymore. Darcy’s accusation about the company she’d helped build blared in her mind. She turned and glared at Darcy.
“Please leave.”
Darcy paused for a few seconds, then turned to walk away. Caroline slipped her bony arm around his.
Liz watched the Darcy and Caroline grab James from where he was leaning on a table, still flirting with Rose. As soon as the trio stepped out of the building, Liz sat down in her chair and put her head in her hands.
Her phone dinged. “Heading home. –Hammy.”
Liz’s heart sank. Darcy’s accusation made her completely forget about her plans with Hamilton. Now, the only place she’d wanted to be tonight was the last place she could even think about going. There was no way she could be a good companion to Hamilton with Darcy’s ridiculous accusation buzzing around in her head. She picked up her phone, trying to decide what to do. Finally, she typed, “I’m so sorry. Raincheck? BTW, you’re resourceful getting my phone number.”
“The two orange girls from the office party showed up at Theo’s.”
Liz let out another long, low groan, hoping Stella and Elise had shoes on and didn’t embarrass themselves too badly in front of the last buyer standing.
“I’ll be back in a week,” he texted. “I better get to see you. My chunky-kid ego can’t handle being stood up again.”
Liz looked at her phone for a minute, then typed, “Can’t wait. Tell your ego not to worry.”
12.
Twelve discussions and twenty-four hours later, James still wouldn’t give up on Chambers’s
Media. In the middle of Darcy’s office, James pitched the company to his friend for the fifth time.
“Come on, Darcy. That party. Those southern women. Those chicken and waffles. And don’t get me started on Rose.” He raised his eyebrows. Darcy knew he wouldn’t be able to resist the tall blonde. “Let’s just throw caution to the wind and buy it.” James grabbed Darcy’s shoulders.
“Again, we can’t buy a company based on waffles, James.” Darcy scooted away from his friend’s grasp. “It’s not caution I’m worried about, it’s the millions of dollars they’re asking for a marketing company that’s not turning a profit.”
James took a step toward him, a step that told Darcy he wasn’t giving up. “You could turn it around. I know you could. You can turn anything around.”
Darcy wasn’t caving to James’s flattery. “You’re asking me to turn garbage into gold. I’m good, but not that good.” Darcy paused.
“No, I’m asking you to turn waffles into pancakes.” James raised his eyebrows, turning on the charm that usually got him exactly what he wanted.
Darcy had seen James talking to the tall blonde who worked at Chambers’s Media almost the entire night. “Is this about a girl?”
James didn’t answer, but he didn’t deny the accusation.
“James,” Darcy said, “you’re asking me to spend millions so you can get the chance to talk to a girl. Plus, if we did buy the company, you definitely wouldn’t be able to date her. You know the rule.”
“Darcy,” James pleaded. He turned around and sat down in the leather chair in front of Darcy’s desk. “I’ve never met anyone like Rose. She’s beautiful, yes, but more than that, she’s smart. She’s kind, and she laughed at my refrigerator joke. Plus, I want to help Mr. Chambers. Why does our business always have to be about numbers? It’s so cold.”
Darcy sat down at his desk. “You’re going to be out in the cold if you don’t start thinking about this business as numbers. That’s what a business is. It’s not about people. It’s about numbers.”
“Okay,” James conceded after a few seconds. “Just don’t crush him when you back out.” James got up to leave Darcy’s office, but Darcy was faster. He crossed his office in two steps and stood in front of the door, blocking James from leaving.
Darcy planted his feet. He wasn’t going to let James out of this. “No. You are telling him this time. You made the offer. You’ve got to rescind it.”
“I can’t,” James said. “I’m too close to them now. Mr. Chambers told me about his daughter and his sick grandson.”
Darcy’s skin prickled from the top of his head to the tips of his black shoes. It always ended this way. Not this time. “I’m not cleaning up after you, James.”
James stared at his shoes. “I know. This is the last time, I promise. I really can’t give Chambers the bad news. You should have seen the way he talked about this grandson.”
Darcy looked at James for a second and shook his head. “This is your mess. Be a big boy, and clean it up.”
“Okay,” James responded slowly. “I’ll make the call.”
Darcy walked back to his chair as his friend left his office. He sat in his leather chair, finally feeling victorious. This was why he went back to Savannah. James would think twice before giving out purchase offers. James had finally learned his lesson.
13.
Liz found an answer to the question that burned a hole through her whole body. Was Mr. Chambers a fraud? The answer was: She had no clue.
For three days, she pored over the financial reports. Darcy was right; the expenses looked low, especially the employee salaries. The salary category wasn’t separated out by position, so there was a possibility that Mr. Chambers was paying the entry-level employees minimum wage. Liz knew that she started out at minimum wage.
Even if Chambers weren’t paying the starter employees very much, there still wouldn’t be much room left for health insurance and other benefits. Maybe benefits were listed somewhere else?
Liz wanted to disprove smug Darcy and figure out the truth before confronting Mr. Chambers, but her high-school accounting class didn’t serve her well enough to figure out the answer by herself.
She looked across the office at her boss, his stubby fingers clacking away at his keyboard. She looked at his wrinkled cheeks, and she willed herself to ask him, but she couldn’t force herself to say the words she needed to say.
“What?” his deep voice cut across the room. His fingers stopped tapping, and he looked in her direction, his hands still hovering over the keyboard.
“What, what?” Liz responded.
He spun his chair her direction; his beard swung just a second behind. “What do you want? You’ve been staring at me for ten minutes.”
Liz sighed, crossed the office, and sat down slowly in front of him. Then she looked into his blue, twinkling eyes. “Are you confident in your accounting?” she asked.
As he stared at her, his eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead.
“Listen” she said, putting her hands over his. “I know you need to sell so you can move and help Dee.” She paused, but she forced herself to continue, “If you have been trying to make this company look a little better by manipulating the expenses, I’ll help you figure it out, but I have to know. I’ve given so much of my life to this place. I have to know if something is going on. I have to know.”
His lips clenched together in a thin line. “What?” He lowered his voice.
Usually, when he was mad, he just strung together a ridiculous number of grunts, then laughed it off. But this was different. He wasn’t yelling. He was somber.
Mr. Chambers scooted a pile of papers out of the way and leaned closer to her. “Who. Said. This?” he whispered.
Liz took her hands off his and leaned back in her chair, wondering if she should implicate her source. She didn’t have any allegiance to Darcy, and she knew Chambers would find out eventually.
“Darcy,” she said firmly after a minute. “He said the expenses you listed were fraudulent.”
Chambers stood up. He ran his hand down his beard, like he was trying to think of the next step. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to put out a fire.”
14.
“Where have you been?” Liz hopped out of her chair.
Mr. Chambers walked through the door on Thursday, three days after their conversation and just one day before the sale was supposed to take place.
She grabbed his briefcase from his hand, and he looked so fragile that she put her arm around his back to steady him. “What is going on?”
He looked down, not moving, even though she was gently pushing him toward his desk. His feet were planted in the doorway. Liz looked up, remembering the previous weekend when the building looked like the most romantic place on earth. It was different now; the brick archway looked sad. And old.
Every hairline fracture showed through the red bricks and made her feel like the doorway and the entire building was coming down on Mr. Chambers.
“Mr. Chambers, are you okay?”
He shook his head; his white beard swayed back and forth. “Darcy was right,” he said.
“What?” Liz couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She didn’t want to believe what he was saying. “You didn’t do it. You wouldn’t do something like that.”
He tugged at his beard. “You’re right, but unfortunately, that doesn’t make Darcy wrong,” he said. He looked up and smiled a little. “Apparently, everyone can see the truth except me.”
“What happened?” she said.
His shoulders collapsed, and he slowly shuffled inside the building. “I didn’t misreport our expenses, but someone else did. Someone else I trusted completely.”
Liz ran to her desk and pulled the chair underneath him, just in time for him to collapse into it. “We’re done. No one is going to buy us.”
He put his head in his hands. “Darcy was right. I should have kept a better eye on the books. I just trusted . . . ”
“Wh
o? Who did you trust?”
Chambers shook his head, which was still buried in his hands. “Dee.”
The news hit Liz like a ton of bricks. Mr. Chambers looked up. “Please don’t tell anyone. I can’t let it get out. She won’t find work ever again.”
“Dee wouldn’t lie.” Liz knew her friend was one of the most honest people in the world.
“She didn’t start the lie. She just continued it. Sharon kept the books up until she died.”
Sharon? Chambers’s wife? Liz couldn’t believe that Mr. Chambers’s spitfire of a wife, known for her parties and fiery temper, was in charge of the books. “Sharon was your accountant?”
How did I not know that? Liz wondered, realizing she’d been so preoccupied with the social media strategies that she never asked about the business fundamentals.
Mr. Chambers raised his shoulders, tucking them around his beard. “I started as a one-man shop. She was the only person who I could afford.”
Liz felt like the walls were coming in around her. She could barely look at the man sitting in front of her. His face twisted in pain. Her heart even broke for Dee, thinking of the torture she probably felt the past couple years, trying to cover up her mother’s mistakes.
“I just wish I would have known so I could have done something earlier. It’s too late now. I put everything into this company. Even my retirement, apparently. I’ve got nothing left except an old house.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. She couldn’t stand watching this strong man’s company be torn out of his hands. “It’s never too late,” Liz tried to console her boss.
“Can you give me a minute?” he asked.
Liz looked at Mr. Chambers. She didn’t want to leave him, but she knew he probably needed a little space. After a few seconds, she nodded. “Sure. I need to go to lunch anyway,” she said.
