He looked at her again. “Who else are you drawing?”
“Most of what I do is sketching from a sculpture or a painting. I’m not big on asking strange men to sit nude for me.” She smiled.
“It was kind of fun.”
“So you’d do it again….” she said, trailing off in a leading voice.
“Under duress, only.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Can I have one? Not the ones of me. That would be weird, and Sean, or even Gabe—they wouldn’t understand. But this one. The lady sitting in the chair, looking out the window. That’s really nice. If you don’t mind, I mean, if you do, it’s okay, and I’d completely understand.”
“No, you can take it. I’d love for you to take it. You can even take two if you’d like. I can share.”
He met her eyes for a moment and she realized what they’d done. They had shared. She grinned at him, possibly goofy in her Killers T-shirt and plaid flannel boxers, with a hulking tangle in the back of her hair, but she liked this.
“I missed you last night,” he told her. More sharing, definitely more sharing. Oh, she was really starting to like this sharing stuff.
“I did, too,” she said, and then he kissed her. She truly did love kissing him; it was like floating. She could feel his hips pressing against her, sure, steady and completely stimulating.
He lifted his head. “Coffee? Or shower?”
Catherine didn’t hesitate. “Shower.”
“I could wash your back,” he offered, because he was that sort of man.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
TWO HOURS LATER, and they were draped across her bed, and Daniel was looking at her sketches. “These are really good. Have you shown them to your grandfather, or mother or somebody that knows about art?”
“Nah. They’re aware I play around at this, but I get nervous.”
He stretched, muscles bunching along the line of his torso, and Catherine thought she’d never crave cupcakes again. He was so much tastier, and zero calories, zero fat, too. “You shouldn’t be nervous,” he said, completely oblivious to her ogling.
“Tell that to my stomach,” she said, just as the phone in her apartment rang. Reluctantly, she undraped herself from Daniel and the bed. “That’s probably my mother. She’s that way when she’s in New York.”
It wasn’t her mother. It was Sybil.
“Okay, it’s Labor Day weekend. What are we doing? I’m thinking, like, maybe the Shore, or maybe Jones Beach. The Hamptons possibly. What say you?”
“Oh, uh…” And Catherine looked at Daniel. “I think I’m going to work today,” she said, with a question in her eyes. He nodded.
“So, you heard.”
“Heard what?”
“About Charles’s e-mails to Chadwick. There was a presentation to the board last Monday. I wasn’t sure if you knew or not. The final audit report is next Friday. You didn’t seem, like, bummed or anything, and I didn’t want to depress you, but I still don’t believe it about your grandfather.”
“Thank you for not telling me,” muttered Catherine. She watched as Daniel undraped himself from her bed, and pulled on his jeans, carefully avoiding her gaze.
“Sorry, Catherine. If you need me. I’m here.”
“Thanks,” said Catherine, and then she hung up, wishing she wasn’t naked. It wasn’t right that she should be decimated like this, and be caught without clothes. She stalked into her bedroom and wrapped a robe around her like an avenging goddess coming down to smite the one mortal who was so going to pay for this.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
He stood, taller than her, broader than her, but those things didn’t matter. He should have told her. “I couldn’t.”
“What? Now your duty calls? Some idiotic code that lets you sleep with the subject in question, lets her help you with your work, but then withhold one key piece of evidence?”
“I knew you’d be mad. I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Catherine paced around the room, robe flying in her wake, and it didn’t help that the sheets were well-tousled, and that he smelled like sandalwood and sex. “Well, it’s too freaking late for that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“When did you find these e-mails?” She sat down on the bed, he sat beside her, reaching for her, and she shook his hand away. Not now. Not now.
“They were there almost from the first. Steve, your IT manager, he got me into the system, and they weren’t hard to find.”
“My grandfather hates e-mail.”
“A lot of people do.”
She looked at him flatly. “He doesn’t use it.”
“Apparently he did, more than once.”
“Are you also aware that my grandfather’s user ID and password are pasted behind the calendar on his desk, and most employees at Montefiore know exactly what they are?”
His brows came together in a V. “That doesn’t sound very secure.”
“We’re an auction house. Not a bank. Security is spent on the art, not the e-mail system.”
“You don’t think he sent it.”
She popped up, mad enough to hit. “Duh.”
“So who would, Catherine?”
“Someone who wants to make my grandfather look bad,” she answered, frowning.
“This is coming from inside the company. Not outside.”
“Then it’s an employee with a grudge.”
“Maybe somebody is trying to make some extra money,” he said carefully.
“Not enough people directly make money from padding the profits.”
“Your grandfather, your mother and you.”
She froze. Stared. Then pointed to the door. “You can get out now.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said, his eyes no longer impassive.
“But you’re setting my grandfather up for a fall, even though you think he didn’t do anything? What are you going to say on Friday?”
“I’ll report the facts as I’ve found them. I’m an auditor, Catherine. Nothing more.”
Catherine resumed her pacing, thinking, trying to figure out what to do.
“I’m something more,” she answered.
“Yes, you are,” he said, and just like that he’d thrown her another curveball. Surely, she didn’t need to be swinging at curveballs at the moment.
“We’re going to do something. We will go through every box until I find something, anything that proves my grandfather is innocent.”
“Okay,” he told her, but it was there on his face. He didn’t believe her grandfather was innocent. Daniel was merely humoring her.
Screw that.
“I’ll do it myself.”
“I want to help you,” he insisted.
“I don’t need someone who’s trying to send my grandfather to jail.”
“I’m not the cops, Catherine.”
“Save it, Daniel. Why don’t you go? I have a long day.”
“No.” He shrugged slowly, and his jaw got stubborn. She had seen that look before when he was working, but she’d never seen it directed at her.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I’m not leaving. Not like this. You need me.”
“I do not.”
“How many audits have you done, Catherine?” he asked, putting on his shirt.
She glared, since she didn’t want him to be right. She didn’t want to need him. Not with the audit. Not with anything.
“Go get dressed.”
“I will not,” she said, still mad.
“You’re going to Montefiore like that? It’s cute, but…I wouldn’t.”
She didn’t want to smile. She didn’t want to smile. She didn’t want to smile.
She smiled. A tiny twitch on the right-hand side. He saw it.
Bastard.
God, she loved this man.
“What if there isn’t anything to find?” asked Catherine, thinking the unthinkable.
; He took her into his arms and held her, strong, sure and satisfied. “We don’t know that. If somebody is setting up your grandfather, they’ll have made a mistake. All crooks make them eventually.”
THE MONTEFIORE offices were mostly empty. All but a few diehard employees had taken the holiday weekend off. On Sunday, she and Daniel worked long into the night, and had found another thirty invoices that didn’t match, but nothing more.
Catherine didn’t want to think her grandfather had done anything, but late at night, when her eyes hurt from the endless numbers, the doubts would creep in.
“I don’t think he sent the e-mails, Daniel. Grandfather is a total Luddite. He wouldn’t do it.”
Daniel put aside the invoice he was working on. “So we check out who else could have sent it.”
“Everybody. Anybody.”
“Maybe we talk to IT, then. I assumed it was legit. If not, maybe they were careless enough to use their own computer and not your grandfather’s.”
“You can check that out?”
“Sure. We’ll call Steve and see if he’ll let us into the communications systems.”
“I thought you just did audits.”
“I’m a man of many talents,” answered Daniel with a weak smile. “Besides, it’s pretty standard stuff.”
She stared at him, nervous, and felt her heart turn over—twice. She wanted to tell him, but she didn’t. More sharing. And this wasn’t the petty-birthday sharing. This was the big stuff. Nope, not there yet.
“You’re tired?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
He rose, pulled her by the hand. “Tomorrow’s another day. Let’s go home.”
THE NEXT MORNING was much of the same, and Catherine felt the tension eating away inside her every second that passed, which moved her closer to Friday.
“Have you heard from Steve?” she asked, for the third time, even though Daniel was sitting only a foot away from her, and his cell would ring, not vibrate, so she knew exactly when he received a phone call. Still, the anxiety was killing her.
His cell rang and Catherine popped out of her seat.
“O’Sullivan.
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.”
If he said “yeah” one more time, Catherine was going to hit him.
Daniel hung up. “That was Steve. He was relaxing at home, but he’ll be here in an hour.”
Catherine looked at her watch. “An hour? That long?”
He came over, and sat on the edge of the table next to her. “It’s going to be okay, Catherine.”
“You don’t know that. There’s nothing but two sets of invoices and we don’t even know which ones are correct.”
“Sure we do.”
She stared at him curiously. “What did you find out?”
“The originals are correct. I did some checking. Your customers have records of what they were charged. We were discreet, and yes, it’s the originals that are correct. Not the digital copies. Those have been doctored.”
“So what does that prove?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What if there’s nothing in the computer e-mail log as well?”
“I don’t know, but don’t think like that.”
“I hate this.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and took her hand. “I wish I could make it go away for you.”
And then she felt bad because she was acting like such a child, but she’d never shown grace under pressure. All this building and building, until she felt as if she was ready to explode.
“You want a break?” he asked with courteous concern.
“We should work,” she said, pushing back her hair, and his gaze tracked the agitated rise and fall of her breasts. All that pressure…
“There’s an hour before Steve’s here,” he noted, not so much courteous concern.
“We can get a lot done in an hour.” She used her mother’s appraisal stare on him. And it worked.
He started to smile, his eyes dark, and he took her by the shirt, pulled her closer and kissed her full on the mouth. All that pressure, all that glorious pressure. Catherine unashamedly scootched into him because she now understood why she wasn’t grace under pressure. She was horny under pressure, which put a completely different spin on things, and apparently Daniel knew exactly how to handle it, how to handle her. His hands held her cheeks, and she yanked his pressed shirt free from his pants.
“I’m sorry. Am I interrupting?”
Catherine jumped off the table, and Daniel flew to the other side of the room.
Foster Sykes looked at the two of them, and Catherine felt a blush on her cheeks. “No. Not interrupting. Not interrupting at all.”
“What did you need?” asked Daniel, calm, cool. Now that was grace under pressure.
“I saw the lights on, thought I’d check and see how it was going. If you needed anything, but I guess not.”
“Steve Keating is coming in to go over some of the logs in the e-mail servers,” Daniel explained.
“Good, good,” said Foster. “I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t know. I’ll go now.”
After he disappeared from the room, Catherine sighed. “Okay, back to work.”
Daniel nodded. “Yeah.”
Steve showed up an hour later, exactly as he’d promised. He’d been the resident IT geek at Montefiore for almost ten years, and he looked the part with a baby face and a two-game-a-day Xbox habit. Although they were from completely different planets, Catherine thought he was nice.
“What do you need?” he asked, dressed in the requisite surfer shorts and flip-flops, looking as if he’d just come from the beach.
“Thanks for coming in on the holiday,” Daniel told him, shaking his head. “I’m sorry to take you away from the water.”
“I was playing Halo Three.”
“Oh. Well. So, I was thinking about checking over the e-mail server logs. What sort of tracking do you have in-house?”
They got into a detailed conversation about services, permissions and event logs that went completely over Catherine’s head.
“Do you mind if I take a look at the logs?” asked Daniel, and Steve laughed.
“Not a problem, dude. Boring, though.” He badged them into the server room, and the temperature dropped forty degrees.
“It’s very cold here,” she said, rubbing her hands together.
“You get used to it,” answered Steve. He went over to one of the racks of machines, pulled out a keyboard and went to work. “Here’s what you need.”
Daniel stood behind him, watching. “What else is on the box?”
“Pretty much everything. Phones, e-mail, and then we backup to tape over there.”
Daniel nodded wisely, and looked at Catherine, who nodded wisely, too.
“Here are the days you’re looking for,” said Steve and he sent the file to the printer.
“You don’t mind if I take this?” asked Daniel.
“Go ahead. No secrets here,” he said.
Four hours later, they had looked over twelve months’ worth of e-mail logs, Catherine reading over Daniel’s shoulder.
“There’s nothing here, is there?”
“Nope. The e-mails between Montefiore and Chadwick’s came from your grandfather’s computer.”
She tugged her hand through her hair. “What’s going to happen to the company?”
“I don’t know,” said Daniel with a shrug. “Let’s get out of here.”
“But maybe there’s something—”
He shook his head. “Steve gave me an idea. Let’s go to the beach.”
THE HARDEST PART of being back at the beach house was how completely different Daniel was this time. He was working so hard to make her forget the audit that it wasn’t like before when they were two strangers awkwardly getting to know each other.
Now, he was acting as if they were two lovers.
By the time they reached the Hamptons it was almost dark, but Catherine didn’t care. Dark was wonderful, dark was romanti
c, dark made her not remember.
She brought out a bottle of wine, and they sat on the deck, listening to the distant roar of the waves. Constant, comforting.
“It’s so nice out here. I always took it for granted.”
He stared down the long expanse of beach. “I think we’re the only two people on Long Island at the end of Labor Day.”
She clinked her glass to his. “Beats all the traffic.”
He reached out, touched her hair. “You look better.”
“I feel better.”
“Catherine,” he began, but she put a finger to his lips because she didn’t want him to say anything. She wanted her perfect night at the beach with the man she loved. The one she deserved. The one that he deserved. She took him by the hand and led him into the house, into her bed. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her tenderly, as if she were the rarest sort of porcelain. He slid the shorts from her legs, and she wasn’t nervous or shy. She drew the shirt from his shoulders and he watched her with purposeful eyes. They had come so far in such a short time.
His hands were gentle and reverent, tracing her curves, caressing her skin, and she smiled at him, smiled at the dulcet moonlight that drifted in through the window like music. Tonight he was thorough in his attentions, whispering how beautiful she was, how much it meant to him to be with her.
He savored the arch of her neck until she was limp, laving at her breasts until she bent into him like a willow, and farther down, teasing between her thighs until her muscles trembled with delight. Everything was slow tonight, the urgency gone, and his mouth skimmed up her body, taking her lips again. Lingering, loving. She nearly told him. The words were there on her tongue, ready to be delivered in his ear, against his skin, but she held back because this was her secret, not to be shared. He slid inside her, filling her, their bodies moved together, each stroke blending into the next with a beauty that no artist would ever re-create.
Catherine’s eyes drifted down because she didn’t want him to know, but he took her chin between his fingers and made her look. So much in his eyes. Tenderness and passion, and everything that a woman could ever want.
Everything except love.
15
DANIEL MADE IT BACK to his apartment before first light. He’d just stepped out of the shower when the phone rang.
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