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ADAM
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I KNEW I WAS STARING, and I knew I probably looked completely insane. I knew my face was probably flushed, the way it always got when I saw something I didn’t like, and that my eyes were probably enormous. I could feel that my mouth was hanging open.
I snapped it shut, thinking that I could at least solve that problem. Make myself look a little bit less insane.
Because let’s be frank here. What had I really seen? Not much. Katie talking to one of our suspects. Which I was literally paying her to do. And what did I have to be jealous of? The girl wasn’t my girlfriend or wife or anything like that.
She was my private investigator.
The problem was, she was also the girl I’d spent last night with. The girl who had slept in my arms, cuddled up against me like we did it every single night. She was the girl who’d admitted to me last night that she had once thought she was turning into a bird and had freaked out about it.
She was the girl who admitted to me last night that she liked me. A lot. Even though she knew she shouldn’t.
And I had told her the same thing back, because it was absolutely true. I liked the girl enough that I wanted to get to know her better. I wanted her to be more than just my private investigator or the girl who was nice to talk to when I was on a job.
I wanted a whole lot more.
So when I heard another guy telling her how beautiful she was and asking her out, and saw her flirting right back at him and accepting?
Yeah, it sent my blood straight from normal temperature to molten hot lava, and not because I was excited or turned on, but because I was insanely, incredibly jealous.
I could actually be turning green right now, and I wouldn’t even know it.
Katie, who had just been caught, took one look at my face and turned her head a bit, narrowing her eyes. She looked me up and down once, no doubt wondering whether I was going to Hulk out on her right then and there, and then...
And then she let her lips twitch. Just a little bit.
Just enough to let me know that she knew exactly what I was thinking, and thought it was kind of hilarious.
I bit my lip, told myself to calm the fuck down, and strolled toward her as casually as I could manage in the situation. “New friend?” I asked. Casually.
Because I was casual. Super casual.
She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Could be. He asked me out for Friday night.”
“Yeah. I heard that part.”
Super casual, Adam. Be casual. Don’t lose it over a girl you can’t even claim as your own.
Katie looked at me again, and I could see her eyes sparkling. She was acting like this was some sort of enormous joke. Like it was the funniest thing in the world.
“I really had to play dumb to get him to like me, though. You should have seen how unfriendly he was in the elevator. When I was asking him questions about how many refunds he gives customers.” Then one eyebrow lifted very elegantly as she waited for me to catch on.
Oh. Oh.
“You set that whole thing up,” I said, crashing right into the wall she’d led me right toward. “You did all of that on purpose.”
She let the grin out now. “Not really, no. I saw him in the elevator and thought I had a good chance, so I started asking some questions. He pushed me off, though, and got off the elevator on his floor. I had no idea he’d be up here ready to apologize for it. But I figure, if he wants to apologize, and if he wants to do it by taking me out and giving me a chance to ask more questions...”
“Then it gives you the perfect fucking opportunity,” I finished for her, feeling incredibly stupid. “Well played, Katie. Well played.”
Her face turned sarcastic. “It’s not my favorite persona, but I have found that it comes in handy sometimes. Now what are you doing on my floor?”
I tried to claw my way up out of the jealousy that was still eating at my insides, knowing that she was right, and that she had set herself up with a great opportunity. If she could get closer to Joseph and get him to actually answer some questions, it might actually really help us.
Unfortunately, the green monster currently had his fingernails sunk into my nether regions. And I wasn’t positive he was going to let go—no matter how good Katie’s reasoning was.
Because she was still going out on Friday night with some other guy. Not me.
I did everything I could to put the thought down and tried to move toward my reason for being here.
“Right, well, I’ve actually come to see you about that same thing. Oliver wants to do a conference call to go over what he’s found out, and I want you in on it. James is going to be there, and Samuel, plus Chase, so we’ll have the whole team. Wouldn’t be right if you weren’t there.”
She held out her hand for me to take and did a little shimmy with her shoulders. “Conference call date? I’m in. Let’s go.”
I took her hand... and tried like hell to ignore the thrill that ran through me at the touch of her skin.
This wasn’t a woman I could call mine, I told myself firmly. Right now, she was just my PI. And she was going out with some other guy on Friday night.
Though I was going to do everything in my power to change everything about that.
***
“SO YOU’RE SAYING YOU think it’s Joseph Parissimo,” I said, leaning over the speakerphone in the conference room.
“He’s definitely got the background for it,” Oliver said, his voice crackling a bit as something happened to the line somewhere between us and New York City. “Record as a juvenile, and some hacking stuff when he was young. I mean, it’s pretty vanilla—not enough to get him marked for life, that’s for sure—but it doesn’t speak well about his character. I haven’t found anything like it on the other two.”
I stifled the grin I could feel growing on my face and told myself firmly that I was not allowed to look at Katie with triumph in my eyes. She didn’t even like the guy, for shit’s sake. Why the hell was I acting like we were in an actual competition here?
Why was I secretly so freaking pleased about the thought that Joseph Parissimo, he of the smooth dating requests, was actually our guy?
Also, why was I already picturing me leading him out in handcuffs, with Katie right beside me?
I really had to get it together. This was not how a grown-up acted to information about a man who might be stealing millions of dollars from the company.
“You know, it’s interesting,” I said, trying to force my brain into action. “Arthur Smith, the tech guy, actually told me that he’s friends with Joseph. Brought it up all by himself. I wonder—”
“They could be in it together,” Katie interrupted, leaning forward on her elbow and bringing the index finger of her other hand down on the table in front of us. “Think about it. What if the scam is deeper than we realize? Right now, it looks like Joseph is refunding too many people, but for him to actually benefit from that, if it was real and aboveboard, he’d have to actually have contact with those people outside of the office. He’d have to have some sort of deal with them. But if he and Arthur are in on it together—”
“It could be something entirely different,” I said, picking up the thread of her thoughts and running with it. “Arthur’s a tech guy. He could actually be creating those customers that Joseph is refunding. And they could be funneling the money right into their personal accounts, rather than the accounts of the customers.”
She pointed right at me. “And if the money isn’t going to actual customers—and if they’re getting their refunds from a different agent—then that money would definitely show up as excess expenses in the books.”
“Which would lead my accounting department in New York to suddenly see it,” I finished, shaking my head. “You’re right, Katie. I didn’t even think of it, but it’s the perfect con.”
“If it’s what’s actually happening,” Samuel, the main exec in Houston, broke in. “It seems a little convoluted, don’t you think?”
“Not really,” Katie said, her voice incredibly professional. “When you’re pulling a con, you want it to be simple enough that you don’t even up giving yourself away, but you also want to make sure there are enough twists and turns to keep anyone from discovering you. And if they’ve set something up where the only one who could discover them is Arthur himself...”
“Then they’ve created the almost perfect crime,” I stated firmly. “But it’s only perfect if you don’t have a genius PI on your trail.”
She gave me an affectionate look that did a whole lot to certain regions of my body. “And her trusty sidekick,” she said.
And yeah, that reaction I’d already had got even bigger at the look she shot me out of the corner of her eyes.
Damn, the woman was amazing. She didn’t have the first clue how sexy she actually was—and that somehow made her even sexier.
“That’s got to be it,” Oliver said, interrupting my Katie-centric thoughts. “It makes so much sense that it’s almost brilliant. And they’d definitely think they were getting away with it. Arthur is the tech guy, right? So one step further, then: If he thought anyone was catching onto them, he’d be able to get into the system and cover their tracks. That’s got to be it!”
He sounded so excited that I wondered for a moment if he thought he’d come up with this one his own. Then I wondered if he had something against Arthur Smith and Joseph Parissimo. I’d never heard Oliver so committed to something that didn’t directly involve him before.
Still. Maybe he was growing up and getting more serious, now that he was in charge of the executive office of Miller and Co.
“So what do we do about it, then?” James asked. “All well and good to think we know what they’re doing. How are we going to prove it?”
“Actually,” Katie broke in. “I might already have that covered. I have a date with Joseph on Friday night. It’ll be the perfect time to ply him with alcohol and start picking his brain.”
The rush I’d felt a few minutes ago died just as suddenly as it had started at the reminder that she was going to be going out with the creep. I didn’t think it was possible, but I now liked the idea even less than I had before.
If this guy was truly stealing millions of dollars from the company, then trying to figure out how he was doing it—and asking him about it personally—could be really dangerous. Yeah, he seemed harmless and sort of like a dork, but that didn’t mean it was who he really was.
If he was smart enough to pull off this con, then he might be smarter than we realized. And he did already have a record with the cops.
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” I said before my brain had completely processed the fact that I was about to talk. “We don’t know anything about this guy, and he might get really aggressive if he thinks you’re asking questions about something he has to keep a secret.”
She gave me long-suffering look. “Adam, after all this time, you still don’t believe I can take care of myself?”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “I know you can.”
“Then you shouldn’t have any problem with me going out with him. After all, I might find out whether he’s the guy who’s stealing from you. And you should want that more than anyone else.”
This time, the raised eyebrows, the big eyes, the slightly cocked head were all telling me one thing: Get it together, buddy, and act like you’re excited about catching this guy, or everyone else here is going to suspect that something’s up.
Right. The case. The fact that it was my company.
I should be excited that we might be on the verge of catching the thief. That should be topmost in my mind.
Not the idea that Katie was going out with him on Friday night.
