Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 23753 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 119(@200wpm)___ 95(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 23753 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 119(@200wpm)___ 95(@250wpm)___ 79(@300wpm)
“I stopped getting close to staff and trusting people once I realized it was a weakness.”
“Liking colleagues is a good thing…”
“My father’s childhood friend was running the finances when I first started here,” I say. “He alerted me to the fraud by accident, and…” I shake my head, jaw tightening. “It didn’t take me long to discover that he was the one who was robbing my father blind.”
Her face pales. She folds the torn flower tag into smaller and smaller pieces in her hands. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be…But if you can’t trust someone like that in your company, how can you ever trust anyone?”
“I don’t know.” She steps back a little, putting distance between us. “Maybe it’ll come with time on your end then.”
I step closer, close enough that her perfume curls between us, close enough that one wrong move would have me kissing her instead of talking. “I trust you for some odd reason. Honestly.”
“Why?”
“Because according to an auditor Brian hired for me, you could’ve stolen from several of my accounts years ago like the ones who came before you,” I say. “And you didn’t.”
“Well, I would never.” She shakes her head. “That’s not where the missing three million went, though. That’s something different, but it’s not me.”
“I know.” I press my finger against her lips. “I know…”
I’m not sure what the hell the feeling in my chest is right now, or why I suddenly feel the urge to pull her close, but she must feel it too because she gasps and takes a step back.
“I need to pick up my daughter.”
“You have a daughter?”
“I mean niece…” She shakes her head, fumbling for her bag. “It feels like she’s my daughter at this point, though.”
“Where’s her mother, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I have no clue.” She tightens her grip on the bag strap. “My sister decided she couldn’t deal with motherhood anymore and left her with me, and I stopped waiting for her to come back.”
Wait a minute… My grip on my phone tightens, the glass creaking under my thumb. “Would her name happen to be Myra?”
“Yes.” She arches her brow. “How do you know her name?”
“We go way back.” I pull out my phone and tap the screen, holding it out to her. “She reached out to me last year & she sends me things every now and then.”
Myra (An employee’s daughter…)
You’re a MEAN ASS BULLY
No...A DEVILISH BULLY!
My Aunt K hates working for you. Actually, she hates YOU.
I hate you too.
I hope your company goes bankrupt.
“Oh my god…” Kendall’s cheeks redden. She presses a hand over her face. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“I had no idea she had your number. She must’ve gone through my phone.”
“It’s fine. Really. I’ve never texted her back, but I did like all her messages, and I think that’s what keeps her going.”
She laughs, brushing hair back from her face, still flushed. “I’ll tell her to stop.”
“It’s okay, Kendall.” I step in close again, press a kiss against her lips. “I’d be upset about sharing you, too.”
She blushes again, stumbling back a step. “Please stop being nice to me.”
“Stop being tempting and I will.” I open the door for her, watching the way she hesitates as if she might stay. “Leave before I try to keep you here.”
THE ACCOUNTANT
KENDALL
The next several days dissolve into contracts, kisses, and the sharp edge of deadlines—somewhere between the work and the sex, we’ve carved out a rhythm that makes no sense to me but feels dangerously natural.
We bury ourselves in reports until my eyes ache from staring at numbers, and then, in the space between signatures or in the middle of a phone call he puts on mute, his hands and his mouth are on me.
Sometimes he devours me against his desk, sometimes in that ridiculous side lounge with the glass walls, sometimes in the elevator before the doors even shut.
And I let him. Every time. Because no matter how many times I tell myself I should push back, I don’t want to.
It shocks me how easy the rest of it has become too. I used to think we were opposites, that his arrogance and my exhaustion couldn’t exist in the same orbit. But the longer I work beside him, the more I notice how much we have in common.
We both live for deadlines, we both despise inefficiency, and we both know what it feels like to be under immense pressure to succeed.
He doesn’t say it, of course. Lucian Pearson doesn’t confess things like that. But I see it in the way his jaw tightens when the board questions him, and I feel it when his hand lingers against mine long after the pretense of helping me with a file is gone.
It’s terrifying, realizing I might understand him.
And it’s worse knowing I might even like him.
But his end goal of the IPO is coming, faster every day, and with it comes the reminder that this… whatever this is… has an expiration date. Once the stock goes public, everything changes. His focus will shift, his priorities will rearrange, and I’ll be left outside the glow of it all, another employee he barely remembers.