When she came, after he curled her against him, she could hear the steady beat of his heart and she wondered if it would ever be hers.
His body stirred, one leg trapping one of hers. Not sexual. Comfort. “Why did you change you mind?” he asked. “I didn’t think you would.”
“I listened to some people that I trusted, and I realized I was stupid and scared. I can’t know what’s going to happen, but I won’t be afraid of it anymore.”
“I need to tell you something.”
“No, you don’t,” she said. She didn’t want to hear anything that could spoil this moment.
“Yes. Yes. I do.” And she knew he was going to be stubborn and ruin everything. He was honorable, damn him. Catherine pulled her mouth into a tight line, and slid out from under that warm and inviting thigh.
He rolled to his side and faced her. “I know you think that this is about the sex, and that’s great, but when I’m with you I want things that I never thought I’d be able to want again.”
That was so not fair. It wasn’t honorable or noble or high-minded. It was devious and completely making her hope, and she didn’t want to hope, because hope was a Gainsborough landscape that was still fake no matter how badly she wanted it to be real. Her hands twisted in the covers. She would have to do this, to listen because that was the cost of having blood-pumping, bedpost-shaking, hoo-haw busting sexual experiences with the man who held your heart.
He looked at her, searching. “Aren’t you going to ask?”
Catherine shook her head, refusing to give in to this. “No. Because then I’ll want things, too, and I don’t want to want things. I don’t think that’s smart.”
Their eyes met, and this time he didn’t have to hold her there. He could have said so many things, but he didn’t. Instead, he went in for the sex.
Blood-pumping, bedpost-shaking, hoo-haw busting sex.
“You make this so easy,” he whispered, kissing her, his mouth on hers as if he needed her. She knew he did, but not how she wanted to be needed. He made love to her once more, and she had to steel her heart all over again.
Damn him.
DANIEL’S PHONE was ringing. He could hear it, but he had no idea where it was. He had no idea where he was. He was in a strange bed, with a woman. And he had no clothes. And his phone was ringing.
Oh. Right.
He looked over at Catherine, and his mouth inched up at one corner.
Then the phone rang again.
Phone. Get the phone.
Nah. Ignore it.
The phone stopped ringing, and Catherine stirred, her smile sleepy, and he sat there in bed watching her hands uncurl, watching her legs stretch, watching her come to life.
Daniel smiled.
Then the phone started ringing again, and he swore.
Daniel found his pants tossed over to one side, and pulled out the cell.
“Where are you?”
It was Sean. His brother. The lawyer brother.
Daniel stood and walked into the other room where he wouldn’t disturb her. “At home, why?”
“Gabe was worried. He thought you’d still be out drunk in a bar somewhere. Yesterday was August twenty-eighth, and that’s not a date you’d go out and get drunk on, so I knew that couldn’t be it, so I’m standing in the middle of your apartment, and wow, imagine that, you’re not here. Not in the closet. Not in the bathroom. Not in the bedroom. Not even on the four-by-ten-foot balcony. What’s her name, Daniel? Gabe might be sucker enough to fall for bad accounting emergencies—it’s a good line, by the way—but I’m a lawyer, I deal with liars all day. Nothing gets by me, brother.”
“I don’t want to talk about this now,” said Daniel, and Catherine appeared in the doorway. Nude. He swallowed, collapsed into a chair, the blood draining from his head. “I really don’t want to talk about this now.”
“When do you want to talk about it, Daniel? You’re sleeping with somebody—after seven freaking years—and you’re not going to let us know?”
Cautiously, he watched her. She was walking toward him, hips swaying, sun dappling her body in gold, and oh how he really loved that body. His mouth started to water, and as a man currently unclothed, she could easily see what was going on with his anatomy. Knowing Catherine, she’d want to draw it all.
“It’s nothing that should concern you, Sean,” he said, turning his eyes away from the light because he needed to converse intelligently. Sean wouldn’t be put off for long, but then Daniel saw her kneel down in front of him, her hair falling over his thighs, and her mouth closed over his cock.
“Ahh…ahh…ahh…ahh. I have to go.”
“Tomorrow. Meet me at the club.”
“Yeah,” he gasped, punched the off button with unseeing eyes, and then the phone fell uselessly to the floor.
IT WAS SOME TIME later before they made it to the Montefiore offices with the documents. They’d both showered, changed and hit the archives, where they retrieved forty-three boxes of invoices. Montefiore sold a lot of stuff.
They unloaded the boxes in the appraisal area, where there was space to work, although since it was Sunday, there was hardly anyone around. Daniel kept digging through papers, staring at them, but it took a few minutes for him to remember what he was supposed to be doing.
He was distracted. Completely understandable. Catherine had changed into jeans and a button-down blouse. Every now and then, as she knelt over the boxes, looking through the invoices, she’d pull her hand through her hair, letting the strands run through her fingers like water. It was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.
“What happened yesterday?” he asked.
She blushed. “You don’t want to know.”
“Yeah, I want to know.”
She told him the story from Saturday, and he found himself cracking up again. “I would have come and got the three of you out.”
“I know,” she said, meeting his eyes for a second, before looking down at the invoices again.
“Why didn’t you ask?” he said. He wanted her to know that she could count on him. Maybe he couldn’t give her everything that she wanted, but he could come and rescue her from Chinatown. In the big scheme of things it was peanuts.
“I didn’t want to assume things,” she said, her head firmly down.
And why couldn’t she look at him, either? Was it so hard for her? Daniel sighed, and went back to digging through the documents. No matter what he did, he was going to lose, and he knew it. She knew it, too. That was why she wouldn’t look at him.
This time when he went to concentrate it was a lot easier. “Pull May of last year. That’s where the commission structure starts matching Chadwick’s.”
Catherine read the labels, and slapped a thick pile of papers down on the desk. “May was a good month.”
“That’s okay. We start, one at a time, Catherine. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
FOR TWO HOURS they poured over documents, and Daniel was silent as he worked. Thorough, meticulous and completely focused on the task at hand. Catherine, not so much, until she found her first positive sign.
“Here,” she said, pushing the paper in front of him, her finger lasering in on the last few lines. “It’s from the McCory silver lot. If my math is right, and it might be wrong, they’re not the same.”
He took it, studied it and then looked up at her with a frown. “The original is lower. Why artificially inflate the numbers for the books?”
He had a point. As financial schemes went, this one wasn’t long on brains. “We’re a privately held company, so it’s not to please the stockholders. All it does is make my grandfather look like he’s inflating profits.”
“Your grandfather’s bonus structure is based on the profit number. High profits, he makes more.” There was sadness in Daniel’s eyes when he said that, and she didn’t understand why he would be sad when they were talking about her grandfather…unless he thought her grandfather did it.
“My grandfather wouldn’t steal fr
om the company that bears the family name,” she defended, wanting to hate him for suspecting, wanting to hate all his passive indifference to everything in the world. But sometimes indifference was the best elixir to pain. That, Catherine understood.
“I’m only here to look at data. Nothing more,” he answered, and she stared back at him, reflecting all that passive indifference, no matter what it cost her.
“There are other people who have a similar bonus structure,” she pointed out, just as objectively. “I’m pretty sure. I think. No, I’m certain. Definitely certain.”
Oh, that was good, Catherine.
“Yeah, there are other employees on the same structure, some of the VPs, some of the lead appraisers, but nobody makes your grandfather’s numbers.” In his expression she saw so much she didn’t want to see, truths she didn’t want to face. He didn’t flinch from any of it.
“I don’t want bad things to happen to him,” she said quietly, staring down at the paper in front of her.
“I know,” Daniel assured her, which seemed to be as cheerfully optimistic as he got. Then he pulled out the next invoice. “And here’s another one. Anderson furniture. Thirty-five thousand for a chair? Jeez, these people are nutso.”
“The invoice?” she asked patiently.
“Sorry. Same thing, though. The original commission listed is lower than what both the system and imaged invoice show,” he said, and then slid the paper on top of the “wrong” pile.
Catherine stared at the boxes and sighed. Two out of twenty. “We’re going to have to go through all of these, aren’t we?”
Daniel nodded once. “But don’t worry. Time flies when you’re having fun.”
THEY’D WORKED THROUGH most of the night and were only on June. Ten hours and they’d done exactly two months. Her eyes were starting to blur as if she’d been staring at a Vasarely for too long, and all the colors had run together. Catherine was exhausted. “I can’t do this.”
Daniel was sitting on the parquet floor surrounded by neatly stacked piles. His shirt was half-unbuttoned, the sleeves rolled up, his jaw covered with a dark, sexy stubble. “Why don’t you go home?” he suggested, the late hour deepening his voice. He looked up, met her eyes and Catherine shivered, a trickle of warmth dripping down her spine, a trickle of warmth dripping down her thigh. She shifted uncomfortably.
“You’re going to stay?” she asked, not wanting to sound like a wimp, but sounding like a wimp. Besides, he looked tastier than any cupcake she’d ever had the pleasure of devouring.
“I want to get through another month,” he said, taking out an invoice, his eyes processing it, then putting it aside.
“When are you going to sleep?” she asked.
“I’ll manage.”
No. She shook her head. He needed rest, he needed sleep, and she needed…something that didn’t involve sleeping. Her thighs trembled, and Catherine began to smile.
Could she do this? She studied him from under her lashes, and he was completely engrossed in the numbers. Uh-huh. She could do this.
She undid a few buttons on her shirt, and went to sit next to him.
“I’ll stay, too,” she said, and watched his eyes flicker down her chest.
“Okay.” And his gaze moved back to the paper. Okay, harder than she thought, but not impossible.
“Is it warm in here, or is it me?” she asked, flicking another button open.
Daniel slowly put the stack of invoices down in front of him.
“It’s definitely getting warmer,” he said. “What are you doing?”
Catherine pulled a sad face. “It’s my grand attempt at seduction.”
His mouth twitched. She liked the way his grin crept slowly onto his face. “Catherine, you don’t have to get fancy. All you have to do is breathe, and I’m pretty much there.”
“Really?” she asked, pleased, and his hands went to work on her shirt, pulling at the last few buttons. Then he rolled her underneath him, and she gave herself up on a sigh.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, and then went about proving it.
13
EARLY MONDAY NIGHT, and Daniel wasn’t looking forward to a game of racquetball with Sean, but there was a penance for everything. For lying to his brothers, and, according to Sean, for keeping secrets. An hour-long inquisition from his brother the lawyer seemed harsh, although Daniel had been through worse.
He would survive, and surprisingly enough he spent the hour kicking his brother’s butt all over the court, which was cause for suspicion. Sean was normally better than this, but he was missing balls, falling down like a clown, and in general, throwing the game like a two-bit amateur.
After the hour was up, the two brothers relaxed in the club’s lounge, Sean donning his courtroom face. Daniel was now going to have to pay.
“Who is she?” asked Sean. “Did you meet her at Prime?”
“Why is it any of your business if I’m seeing somebody?”
“So, you are seeing somebody.”
Daniel stopped for a second, rubbed the ring on his finger and considered his answer carefully. “Maybe.”
Sean slapped him on the back. Hard. “Way to go, Daniel. And it only took seven years. Is this serious, transitional or purely recreational? It can be any of the above, and I’ll still be fine with it.”
“It’s none of the above,” answered Daniel. He couldn’t categorize Catherine. She wasn’t transitional, she wasn’t recreational and he’d never get serious with anyone again, so that left some limbo state that seemed to work best for his conscience.
“Can I tell Gabe?”
“No.”
“I think he knows, anyway. Ever since you backed out of poker he figured something was strange. And the drinking binges are disappearing. You missed Michelle’s birthday last night, and we both thought that was a huge step.”
Michelle’s birthday? He’d forgotten about her birthday? August 28th. Oh, man, he’d slept with Catherine on Michelle’s birthday. That sounded so wrong. Claudia had probably left a message for him on his answering machine. He should call her and take her out to dinner, or something.
Sean noticed the look on his face.
“It’s only a good thing,” Sean said, and then ordered a couple of glasses of sparkling water. “It means you’re putting your past behind you.”
“Loving someone isn’t something you put behind you, Sean. It’s forever.” Daniel looked down at his wedding ring, felt the familiar weight and for today it was okay.
“She’s not coming back, Daniel. What? You’re going to be alone for the rest of your life? Another fifty years? Is that really what you want? You may be a loner, but you’re still breathing.”
Daniel rubbed the cotton towel over his face, wiping away the sweat, but not getting rid of the anger. His brother had no right to interfere in things he would never understand. Sean didn’t understand love. Sean saw everything in shades of gray and degrees of guilt, but love was absolute. “I really didn’t want to hear this today, Sean.”
“So shut up, and listen anyway. You’re my brother. I want you to be happy.”
“You be quiet. I’ll be happy.”
“Bullshit.”
Daniel stood. He wouldn’t listen to a lecture from the irresponsible brother. “I didn’t come here for this.”
“Don’t screw this one up, Daniel.”
And wasn’t that ironic? “Like you’re the one to tell me about the wrongness of screwing up?”
Sean looked at him once, his face serious. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. I know you. You think everything should equate and make sense and it freaks you out when it doesn’t. You may think you’re right, but love isn’t like pushing the correct buttons on a dishwasher.”
“I love my wife,” Daniel said and Sean swore.
Daniel left his brother in the lounge. He showered, took off his ring and called Catherine.
FOR CATHERINE, the next days were strangely odd, and strangely happy. At Montefiore’s, they worked pulling invoices, and finding
more undercommissioned items, which did nothing to clear her grandfather or the company.
It didn’t look like price-fixing anymore, but there was definitely something strange with the books. Price-fixing would imply that the customer had been charged an artifically inflated commission, but the modified invoices indicated that the customers had been charged the normal amount and then the accounting system altered to look like a crime had been committed.
Somebody was setting her grandfather up.
Maybe the price-fixing seemed less likely now, but there were still accounting discrepancies, and the board was still breathing down her grandfather’s neck, because maybe he hadn’t committed a crime, but he had profited from the doctored commission amounts. As did everyone else who got a bonus.
It was all very strange, and Catherine wasn’t an accountant. Daniel was the accountant, and he was expressing no opinions on the whole puzzle.
Daniel had a meeting with Foster and her grandfather where he asked them questions, but neither of them had answers, so they went back to sorting through the original invoices.
After hours was different. Daniel took her to dinner late on Monday night, and they spent most of the time talking casually about the auction business, the city, why the work from the New Leipzig school was overrated, and he told her stories about the bar.
Post dinner, Catherine invited him to her place where he spent the night. At four-thirty, he woke to go home and change and get ready for work—which was ten minutes from her apartment. She considered asking him to bring clothes with him, to save him a good two-hour commute that was completely unnecessary, but she didn’t want to assume, and as much as their situation had changed, some things hadn’t.
On Thursday, they went to Cummings’s jewelry store because Oliver Cummings had returned from Europe.
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