Page 36 of Accidentally Mine

Roselynn

I woke up with a start on the couch in my aunt’s living room, surrounded by a sea of paper. Some of which I’d drooled on. Fantastic.

Wiping my bleary eyes, I looked up at the television screen.

The movie I’d popped into my aunt’s DVD player had ended who knows when.

I wasn’t sure why I’d chosen it. It’d started out as an interesting legal drama and then dissolved into a soft-porn flick about a ridiculously horny lawyer who falls in love with—and nails every chance she gets—all of her clients. Sigh. I should’ve known.

I grabbed my phone and looked at the time.

I’d fallen asleep at around four a.m., and now, here it was, nine in the morning.

The papers around me were still in complete disarray.

I’d come up with nothing but a ton more questions, and I’d promised Steve I’d have my answer by today.

Most of the paper trail, unfortunately, I didn’t understand.

I went into the bathroom and took a shower. As I was brushing my hair before heading downstairs to dive into the mountain of papers again, my phone rang.

Brent’s name showed up on the screen.

I took a deep breath. I’d practiced how I should behave when I next spoke to him. I needed to be calm and even, pretend like nothing was wrong while keeping my distance. “Hello?”

“Hey, stranger. I’m amazed to be talking to you. Thought it’d go right to voicemail again.”

I closed my eyes. Even his deep, low voice made me want him. I’d known that would happen, which was why I hadn’t answered his last four calls. I gritted my teeth. “Just been busy.”

“Yeah. I imagine. But I’ve got to talk to you, Roselynn.”

I needed to talk to him too. I wanted desperately to crawl into his arms and never leave them, but as I went down the narrow staircase, I looked over the railing at the piles of paper. The mess looked even more terrible from above. “I’m so sorry. I’ve just got so much to do right now.”

There was a pause, and in that pause, I felt my resolve crumbling. I was putting him off, putting off the job of ending things with him.

I needed to do it.

If I cared about him, it had to be done.

And I did care.

“Maybe later? Dinner?” I suggested.

“Yeah. Dinner. It’s a date,” he said. “I’ll come by with Ernest to pick you up at seven?”

A date. What was I thinking? I couldn’t have a date with him.

If I let myself be sweet-talked into a whole meal with him, I’d end up naked in his bed again.

I shivered in anticipation at the thought.

My whole body wanted that. Except my head.

My head knew that simply being in his presence would only make things worse.

“Actually, just call me later. Okay? I’m not sure when I’ll be able to cut loose.”

“Roselynn. Listen to me. Don’t put me off. I know what you’re afraid of, and I’m not turning away.”

My heart squeezed, then sped up, pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just busy. I’ve got to go.”

He started to speak, but I ended the call and sat down on the sofa, willing myself not to cry. Now, it was just me and four million sheets of paper to go through.

I hadn’t felt this alone since that day two and a half years ago, when I’d crossed into New York and seen the “You Are Leaving Massachusetts” sign. Back then, I’d felt so terrible that I’d had to pull over to the side of the road until I’d stopped crying.

This time, I willed myself to stay strong. I picked up another past-due bill and put it in a pile, then logged it on my laptop. A lot of the information I was missing was probably still at my father’s office. I needed to go there, again. Just for a few minutes.

As I contemplated that, I got another call. This time, from Claudia.

“Hey, girl!” she said before I could get a word in edgewise. “There’s a new deli in Southie that has sandwiches to die for. I was going to head there for lunch, and since it’s in your neck of the woods, I wondered if you’d want to join me?”

“Oh, thanks,” I said, scanning yet another bill. What was worse than lying to a man you cared about? Lying to him and his sweet sister, who actually kind of felt like she could easily be the sister I never had. “But I’m a little busy here.”

“Hello? Busy or not, you’ve got to eat!”

I smiled. I was actually starving, since dinner had been a long time ago and I hadn’t had breakfast. With my aunt away, I hadn’t done anything to replenish the fridge, so it was pretty bare.

But no. I needed to cut ties. Kill the roots I could feel forming before they became too settled in the Boston ground.

Be strong.

“Thanks, but—”

“Aw, come on! What can be so urgent that you can’t take a half-hour to grab a sandwich?”

“I really can’t.” I looked down at my aunt’s threadbare carpet covered completely with papers and stabbed at one with my toe. “I have so many papers from my father’s company to go through that I can’t possibly.”

“Your father’s company?”

I threw my hand over my mouth. Why the hell did I tell her that?

Great going, Roselynn. Way to cut ties and keep things under wraps.

“Yeah. You know. Not a big deal,” I said, trying to play it off.

“He died, and I’m probably going to sell it.

But it will take most of my time, so I’m afraid I can’t leave just now. ”

“Brent told me you were dealing with something like this,” she said as I tried to remember whether I’d told him about my father. “You know that’s what I live for, right? Paperwork. I can help you.”

Right. Brent had mentioned his sister was an accountant. I sighed. I was never going to get done with this on my own. I didn’t understand half of it. I wasn’t even sure a team of accountants could help. But Claudia could get me much closer.

“Come on,” she probed. “I’ll bring the sandwiches to you, and then you and I can go through the stuff. You want it done fast, don’t you?”

No, I needed it done fast.

I swallowed, feeling a noose tightening around my neck. But it wasn’t because of Claudia. She was a friend. And right now, I needed all the friends I could get. But this was the last time I’d accept her kindness. It wasn’t fair to let her go out of her way for me when I couldn’t ever repay her.

“All right,” I finally agreed reluctantly. “But I’m heading to my father’s office right now. Can you meet me there?”

She agreed. I gave her the company address at Red Line Village and told her I’d see her around noon. Then I spent the whole time boxing up the papers and wishing I hadn’t agreed to meet her. This could only be bad. Maybe I should’ve just let Steve handle it and split.

I got into my father’s office around eleven and started going through more and more papers. It seemed insurmountable. And not only that, when I booted up his computer to look through the financials he kept there, it seemed pretty obvious that the company’s accounting had fallen apart.

My father had been successfully running Reece Associates for over twenty-five years, and back when I handled the accounts, he was pulling in money like crazy, and had a place for everything.

The numbers looked wonky. How had my father let the company fall apart like this in such a short time? What had happened?

As I was sitting at my dad’s desk with my head buried in my hands, Claudia showed up, toting a paper bag. I wandered out as I heard the door to her car slam and met her in the front office area.

“Hi!” she said brightly, coming in and setting the bag on the counter. She pulled out sandwiches and a couple of bottled waters. “I got us turkey and cheese subs. Hope that’s okay, and holy shit, this place is a mess!”

She dropped the sandwiches on the counter and stopped in the doorway to my dad’s office, horrified. She picked up a piece of paper. “What was your father’s accounting department doing?”

I shrugged. “I don’t exactly know. Not much of anything, obviously.”

“All right.” She dropped her Michael Kors purse on the floor, peeled the blazer off her shoulders, and rolled up her sleeves.

“Believe me. I love stuff like this. Have you been organizing? What I need for you to do is give me everything in date order. Doesn’t matter what it is: receipts, bills, invoices.

Oldest stuff first. Where on the computer is the accounting kept? ”

“Quickbooks,” I said, motioning her to my father’s office computer.

She opened it up, and we got to work, digging through the mess. We ate our sandwiches as we worked, and the only time she spoke was when she asked questions about the business. From the smile on her face, though, I could tell she was enjoying it.

After a few hours of digging, she sat back in my father’s chair and stretched. “Wow,” she said, sounding a little shell-shocked.

I didn’t want to ask her if she’d ever seen a company’s books that were this out of whack, because I knew the answer. “Is it fixable?”

“Everything’s fixable,” she said, lacing her fingers behind her head. “But what I’m seeing here is gross mismanagement, and not only that, massive debt.”

“Debt?” I repeated, confused. I shook my head. “No. My father’s company was doing really well.”

She pointed at the computer. “Sometimes debt can creep up on people. Over a hundred million dollars.”

“A hundred million ?” My mouth dropped open.

That wasn’t possible. I lifted a pile of contracts off of the table.

“Look at this one. This one is sixty million for a school. And here’s another for three-hundred million for the hotel in the Back Bay.

This one for Red Line Village was a billion-dollar project.

These are for this year alone. How could there be debt? ”

She sighed. “I’m sorry, Roselynn. Sometimes…” She looked down at something on the screen and frowned.

I tiptoed over the piles of paper and went to her side of the desk to see what she was looking at. Large negative numbers in the red column. “What? What are those?”

“Do you know why your father would’ve been withdrawing millions of dollars at a time for a company called SJM Holdings? I can’t seem to find any paperwork on that, and when I googled them, I couldn’t find them.”

“SJM Holdings?” I shook my head. I couldn’t recall such a company from before.

She pointed it out to me on the screen. Sure enough, SJM Holdings was the recipient of at least twenty large withdrawals in the most recent months. “I think something strange might be going on here,” she said. “I need to look into it further. Will you let me?”

I nodded, feeling the pull of guilt. She’d already done so much for me, like the big sister I’d always wanted. And here I was, about to screw over her and the brother she loved. “Thank you,” I managed, right before my eyes pricked with tears.

“Hey,” she said, resting a hand on my forearm. “I understand. It’s hard when a family company’s books are all crazy like this. There’s so much uncertainty. But don’t worry, I’ll sort it out.”

I shook my head and wiped at my eyes. “It’s not that.” I pulled away and slumped into a chair next to her. “It’s just that you’ve been so nice.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” she asked with a raise of her eyebrow.

“And…I think I’m falling in love with your brother.” With the admission, I burst into tears. Big, heavy sobs wracked my body, and tears streamed down my face.

She reached a hand over to me, rubbing my shoulder. “Aw. Roselynn. That sounds like something you actually shouldn’t be crying about. Because you know, he’s batshit crazy about you too.”

Knowing that should’ve made me happy, but the knowledge just made me cry harder.

I knew I looked like I must’ve been insane.

But maybe I could explain to her. She and her brother were the only people in my life who could maybe understand.

I shouldn’t have to constantly hold back around them.

Maybe, even, they could help me out of this hole I’d dug myself into.

Maybe they could help me find a way to make things right so I wouldn’t have to run anymore.

I opened my mouth, ready to spill it all, when a car’s brakes squealed outside.

Skin prickling, I stood and went out to the main floor of the trailer, tilted the blinds in the door open, and peered out the small window. A black Mercedes SUV had pulled up in front of my father’s trailer. I watched as the passenger-side door opened, and Steve stepped out.

Claudia came out of the office behind me. “Everything okay?”

“Um. Yes. My father’s business partner is here, and…

” I squinted as another door opened and a familiar figure stepped out.

The other man had abundant gray hair, a pudgy, wrinkled face, thin lips flattened into a frown.

He was built like a square, strong and solid.

It was a face I’d seen about a thousand times in the past two years, every time I googled his last name.

Malcolm Markin.

Anthony’s father.

My heart seized in my chest.

I thought I must surely be having a heart attack when yet another door opened.

“No,” I whispered and took a step back, raising my hands to my face.

He was thinner now, the lines of his face cut and severe, his dark hair clipped close. But everything else about Anthony Markin was exactly the same.