by Lauren Esker
She retrieved a stack of ledgers from the now marginally tidier bookkeeping office and went down the hall to Fletcher's office. The sound of his voice grew louder as she approached, a rising and falling tenor. It was regular and steady enough to make her wonder if he was on the phone at all. Was he talking to himself?
Peeking in the door, she discovered that she was almost right. He was dictating into a small microphone attached to his computer. She guessed he was using some sort of speech-to-text app. At the same time, he had his phone in one hand and was idly scrolling through it.
"—need full environmental assessments of all three of the Tacoma properties and the new Northgate acquisition. Talk to Bill Wilder over at the county assayer's office—"
His carefully put-together look had fallen apart over the course of the day, and now he looked as rumpled and tired as she felt. His expensive charcoal-colored jacket was flung carelessly over one of the chairs in his office, and he'd loosened his tie. His hair was slowly unspooling from the gel or spray holding it in this morning's neat waves, starting to corkscrew into loose curls. The blossoming five o'clock shadow that had been already faintly visible at 9 a.m. was a full-blown scruff.
Completely lost in his dictation, he didn't appear to notice her stepping into his office.
"There's a chance of asbestos in the Northgate apartments, but an inspection ought to clear that up. The important thing is to get all of the paperwork for that in before the end of the current quarter, owing to a likely rise in the cost of—"
Debi cleared her throat and tossed a ledger on the polished, dark wood surface of his desk.
"Gah!" Fletcher jumped, and the phone slipped out of his hand and clattered across the desk, spinning lazily to a halt near the edge. "Where did you—" He broke off and slapped a key on his keyboard, confirming her suspicion that he'd been having the computer transcribe for him. "What the hell are you still doing here?"
"My job," she said. "Your company's in trouble."
Fletcher snorted and rubbed at the corner of one eye. The whites were bloodshot, another thing she could relate to after this many hours staring at a computer screen. "So I'm paying Chang & Luntz's exorbitant rates to have you tell me things I already know? My ex is trying to steal it out from under me."
"Not because of that." She stabbed one finger at the ledger, noting with annoyance that her once neatly manicured nails were now chipped around the edges from too much typing. "It's your bottom line that's the problem. Your business is over-extended. You've bought too many development properties and you're not turning them over fast enough to stay solvent."
Fletcher sat back in his chair, his eyes darkening. Here came the fight she'd expected. "Ms. Fallon, this is what I do for a living. You have an accounting degree. Maybe you've watched a few pieces on CNN about the subprime crisis, but that was years ago. The Seattle real estate market is booming. There's no better time—"
"It may not be my area of expertise," she interrupted, "but as you point out, I am a trained and certified accountant. That, I'm an expert in. Numbers are what I know, and your numbers are telling me that your business is approaching the brink of financial disaster."
"That's ridiculous." Fletcher snatched the ledger, pulling it toward himself. "I'm very hands-on. I keep a close eye on my bottom line. We're doing fine ..." He trailed off as his eyes drifted down the column of numbers. He flipped a page.
"I'll just let you look at that," Debi said. She placed the other ledgers on the edge of his desk and briskly heel-tapped down the hall to retrieve her purse from the bookkeeping office. Leaving was going to take her past Fletcher's office again, so she took a moment to check her messages on her phone to let herself calm down before she had to run the risk of facing him again. Her hands were shaking with suppressed rage.
It wasn't even really Fletcher that she was angry at. It was this entire stupid situation. You wouldn't have been able to talk to me like that a year ago. She'd never have been here at all; she could pick and choose her clients, and a shady little development company like Fletcher's wouldn't even have been at the bottom of her list.
You think you're such a big man, don't you, with your bespoke suits and your small-potatoes company? You're playing at the penny-ante card tables while there's a whole room full of high rollers next door, Fletcher darling.
She'd been in that high-roller card room, once upon a time.
Now those people wouldn't even give her the time of day.
And if Fletcher's at the penny-ante poker tables, she thought grimly, deleting a series of spam emails with jabs of her finger, then who am I in that scenario? A dealer working for minimum wage, probably.
There was a throat-clearing noise from the doorway. She looked up to see Fletcher standing with the ledger in his hands. Great, now he was between her and the exit. Debi braced herself to go another round, but rather than looking belligerent, he had the most uncertain expression that she'd seen on his face so far.
"We really are bleeding money," he said slowly, and Debi refrained from saying I told you so. "I don't know how this is happening. I know Chloe and I have been managing our own sections of the company, and I thought she might be ..." He hesitated. "I was prepared for some figures that didn't add up. But this isn't what I expected. It's not embezzlement, it's just—well, it's bungled. It's straight up mishandled."
So she hadn't misread the subtext earlier: he really did think his ex was embezzling from the company. Fun times. This was why nobody in their right mind got in the middle of a divorcing couple. "Maybe she made some bad business deals."
"But she wouldn't. Chloe's got a really good head for business. It's one of the things I used to appreciate about her."
"Look, that part is your problem, not mine. I've been here for nine hours without a break, so if you could get out of my way, I'm going off the clock. I need food, a drink, and bed." Not necessarily in that order. "I'll be back in the morning, and anything you need to say to me, you can say then."
"Yeah. Sure." His voice was absent, and he was looking at the ledger again as he stepped out of her way. When she started to brush past him, though, he looked up quickly. "Have you been here for the entire day? No breaks?"
This close, with her extra-sharp feline senses, she was unable to ignore the spicy musk of his cologne overlaid with the light tangy scent of aftershave. It made it hard to think—or maybe that was the hypoglycemia. She really needed to get out of here and eat something before she tried to gnaw her own arm off.
"I'm a contract employee, and I'm salaried," she pointed out. "Whether I take breaks is my business, not yours."
"Yeah, sure. Just say something tomorrow if you work through lunch. When I'm not going out to a job site, I usually order in, so it's no problem to get enough for two. Any preferences? Food allergies?"
This was so completely not what she was expecting that she didn't even know how to respond. Was he hitting on her? Just being nice? Debi instinctively distrusted people who were nice. Like her caseworker Veliz, for example. Nice people always had ulterior motives. And she couldn't think ahead to tomorrow's lunch when all she could think of right now was how much she wanted a steak.
"Meat," she said. "I like meat." The words sounded ridiculous to her as soon as she'd said them, but there was no taking them back.
A smile glimmered in his eyes. "Not a vegetarian, then?"
"No. Definitely not that." Her fingers, nervously prying at the clasp on her purse, had worked it open. She snapped it shut with a sharp, decisive movement. "Unless there's anything else you need from me, I'm finished for the evening."
He seemed to snap out of ... something, and took a quick step back. "No, there's nothing. Apologies for keeping you. Have a good evening, Ms. Fallon."
Debi walked away quickly, before she could say anything stupid like, I don't mind if you call me Debi.
Chapter Four
"Did you know the company is losing money?"
"Mmmm." Chloe barely glanced up. She was typing an
email on the computer in her home office, which was a room bigger than most people's living rooms in one wing of her family's estate. The maid had shown Fletcher upstairs with visible disapproval, and he was fairly sure she'd only done that much because Olivia was hanging off her leg, and upon the maid's answering the door, had squealed "Daddy!" in delight and latched onto him instead. So Fletcher had the Olivia seal of approval, and couldn't be kicked out, politely or otherwise, without rendering his four-year-old remora into a tear-stricken heap.
In the end the maid gave up and showed him to Chloe's office. Olivia was detached from Fletcher's leg only with a promise that he would come see the new doll Mommy had given her once the grown-ups' business was concluded.
Thinking of Olivia, he tried a new tack. "Why isn't Livvy in daycare? They called and told me she never showed up. I'm the one who had to come up with an excuse."
"Why should I put her in daycare when I work from home and Sylvia can watch her while I'm busy?"
Based on the end-of-her-tether expression on the maid's face, Fletcher was sure Sylvia had her own opinions on being asked to care for her employer's four-year-old daughter in addition to her regular duties. Chloe's staffing issues were not his problem, he reminded himself. Unlike the daycare fees, which he was paying for. "Her daycare is paid up through the end of next month. If I'd known she was only going to be there two or three days out of every five, I wouldn't have bothered trying to get the savings on the quarterly plan and gone with the daily plan instead."
He knew even as he said it that he'd picked the wrong argument. Why would Chloe care about an extra month or two of fees? She'd probably spent that much on the shoes she was wearing. She had always told him that she didn't care if he came from money or not, but as their married life degenerated into nonstop fights, it had become clear to him that she only thought money didn't matter because she'd always had so much of it.
The worst part was that after all the fighting, all the anger, all the many ways they'd hurt each other, there was still a part of him that was hung up on her. He wanted to reach out and brush the sleek line of her neck with his fingertips as she bent her head over the computer.
But suddenly, even more powerfully, he had a flash of Debi's blonde hair curling on her long neck, begging to be swept away ... Debi's vanilla scent, very different from the spicy sandalwood perfumes that Chloe preferred ...
He shook it away and leaned against the wall, impatiently waiting for her to either send him away or get tired of ignoring him and give in to a conversation just to get rid of him.
As usual in the Sperlin house, he felt underdressed despite his suit and tie. Chloe had a way of dressing that always made her look impeccably neat in an effortless kind of way. The worst part was that Fletcher suspected it really was effortless. Everything in her closet was new and coordinated and probably from designer labels he wouldn't even recognize the names of, so all she had to do was open the closet door and throw on (as today) a camel-colored sweater, pristine white jeans, and a strand of pearls, and she looked like she'd walked out of a fashion magazine. Her dark hair was trimmed in a short, sleek, no-fuss style, and she rarely wore more than a little dab of makeup, a touch of lipstick and hint of eyeliner. In her early thirties, she was starting to spend a little more time on her face—he'd lived with her long enough to notice. But he still got the sense that looking good wasn't work for her; it was something she'd grown up with, and all the expensive little habits that made it possible were just that: habit.
She looked at home here, in her pearls and white jeans, in a way he would never be. She had moved so easily back into her parents' house and her parents' orbit, as if she had never been gone at all. Maybe in her mind, she hadn't; maybe she was only slumming with her rags-to-riches husband and his little development business.
He hadn't realized until Chloe moved out of the condo that she'd always kept more than one foot in her parents' world. He was a person who went all in on everything: on his company, his marriage, his life. But Chloe never liked to commit to anything. Even when she was living with him, how much of her had really been with him? It had felt at the time like her stuff took up a lot more than half the condo's space, as big as it was—the closets were full of her clothes, the hallway full of her shoes—and it wasn't until she was gone that he'd realized the mistake he'd made. He had mistaken her stuff being there for her life being there. But for Chloe, stuff was just stuff. Every year she filled bags with hardly-worn designer clothing, took it to Goodwill, and bought a whole new wardrobe.
As an older teenager trying to break into the business world, he'd owned one pair of nice shoes and one suit, which he had meticulously kept clean, well-repaired, and neat, since he could never have afforded to replace them. Chloe could leave everything she owned behind and buy all-new versions in a new place, and because of that, an individual sweater or pair of shoes had little meaning for her.
And yet, for all of that, she wasn't careless with money. Chloe knew how to budget. She had a strong head for business. Which was why Debi's accusations rang so false. Chloe wouldn't squander the company out of carelessness. There was something else going on.
"Chloe, look at me." He pulled out his last resort. "Please."
She sighed, pressed send on the email, and spun around in her chair. "Fletcher, must we have this conversation now? We're meeting with our attorneys and the mediator on Thursday. We can talk about it then."
Knowing what the main topic at that meeting was likely to be, he couldn't help bristling. "Are you still suing for sole custody of Olivia?"
"You know that I don't change my mind once it's made up." She rested her hands on her knees and looked at him with that flat, I'm-more-reasonable-than-you expression that he'd come to loathe. Chloe had figured out a long time ago that the best way to work him up was to act like he was the unreasonable one.
Right now, keeping his cool was harder than ever. All thoughts of the company's financial troubles fled his mind, and his composure threatened to crack. He couldn't lose Olivia. He wouldn't. "She needs both her parents."
"No, she needs to be with her own kind." Chloe's voice was tense; she was struggling to keep her cool, too. Good. He wanted to push her, to goad her into snapping. "You'll still have visitation rights. You can have her for some weekends. I'm not cruel, Fletcher."
"No, you just want to take away my daughter and my company and everything I have." When you already have everything.
Chloe rose from the chair. "There's your first problem. It's not your daughter and your company. They're ours. I put as much in as you did, and I'm only taking back what's rightfully mine."
Fury pushed him across the breaking point. "Why do you want sole custody when you don't even like being a mother?"
Chloe drew back as if she'd been slapped. Fletcher had the sinking feeling he'd gone too far, but those were exactly the times when he had no idea how to back down.
"How dare you, Fletcher Briggs. How dare you. I adore that child."
If the only way out was forward, he had no choice but to double down on his argument. "Yeah, but you don't like spending time with her, do you? When she's at your house, it's the housekeeper who takes care of her."
"So what? When you have her, she spends the entire day in daycare!"
"Great, so we're both terrible parents." Fletcher's voice was raised now, his chest tight and hot. "Maybe she should go into foster care. Would that make you happy?"
"She'd be better off in foster care than with you, Fletcher! You don't know the first thing about raising a shifter child."
"What's there to know?" Fletcher demanded. "You love them and teach them and do everything you would with any other child."
"That! That is why I want full custody. She's not any child. She's a shifter child. There's no way you can teach her all the things she needs to know. All she'll learn if she grows up with you is how to hate herself."
"What? Where the hell did you get that from?"
"What do you think it feels lik
e to a little girl when you make her tell lies to humans about who she really is? When you teach her not to shift in public like it's a dirty secret? She should be around others like herself, not learning to be ashamed of who she is so she can lock away half of herself and pretend to be human."
"That's not—that's—" Only Chloe could reduce him to sputtering rage, though in just one day Debi had already come close a couple of times. "You're the one who told me how important it is that humans don't find out about shifters. I'm only trying to do the things you told me to do!"
Chloe had turned to look out the window over the hedges and flowering trees in the backyard; now she swung around to face him. "Fletcher, that's exactly why small shifter children shouldn't be around humans at all. She's four! She doesn't understand yet. All she knows is that Daddy thinks shifting is bad."
"I never—Goddammit, Chloe—"
"And the longer she can go through her life without understanding that humans would hate and fear her if they knew the truth about her, the happier she'll be—"
"What in the hell is going on up here?"
Fletcher swung around to find Chloe's brother behind him. Like his sister, Casper Sperlin was sleek and dark-haired, with a lean, whiplike build and a mesmerizing gaze. Fletcher had never quite been able to figure out if Casper made him think of a snake because he already knew about the viper thing, but once the thought had occurred to him, he couldn't stop thinking it.
It would help if Cas Sperlin would blink like a normal person. Instead he had a tendency to stare at people for minutes at a time with his dark, almost lashless eyes. He was doing it now; Fletcher had to fight not to wrench his eyes away.
"Is he bothering you, sis?" Cas didn't even bother to veil the menace in his tone.
"He was just leaving," Chloe said. "Fletcher, we'll discuss this on Thursday."
Yeah, with her team of high-powered lawyers in the room.
