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Page 44 of One Night in Glasgow (The Scottish Billionaires #15)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

BETH

The next day, I walked into the Hillsdale Foundation a different woman.

The whispers still followed me, the sideways glances still stung, but they no longer felt like assaults.

They felt like background noise. I had a mission, a real one, handed to me by Ms. Henderson herself.

She hadn’t just given me a new assignment; she had given me a weapon, and I intended to learn how to use it.

My desk, once a symbol of my envelope-stuffing purgatory, now felt like a command center.

Abigail had delivered three large document boxes filled with the “lapsed donor” files.

A graveyard of old correspondence and financial reports.

It was a puzzle, and I felt a flicker of my old, sharp-edged self from old days return.

The part of me that liked to figure things out, to see the patterns others missed.

I dove in, my focus absolute. For hours, it was a blur of data entry as I created a master spreadsheet, cross-referencing names, dates, and donation amounts. My first goal was to identify any common threads, and one name kept appearing on the most questionable files: Garrett.

I flagged every lapsed donor file he had personally managed.

There were seven. The pattern was immediate and glaring: lavish expenses for "donor cultivation" trips that resulted in precisely zero donations.

A five-star "retreat" in the Hamptons. A week-long "fact-finding" trip to Miami with two first-class tickets.

I pulled up the main department calendar from the month of the Miami trip, my access surprisingly unrestricted, and filtered for his schedule.

He had indeed been blocked out for "Miami Outreach.

" My fingers flew across the keyboard as I searched the same dates for anyone else.

Bingo.

Right next to his name, also blocked out for the exact same week with the exact same note, was another name: Kyra.

My internal bullshit detector, finely tuned from years of navigating high-society hypocrisy, was screaming. It wasn't enough, though. I needed context. I decided to pay a single, strategic visit to the office's unofficial historian.

I found Abigail in the break room, a teacup cradled in her hands.

“Me again,” I said with an apologetic smile.

“I’m noticing a pattern in these lapsed files, and I could use some of the office's historical context. Garrett and Kyra seem to have attended a lot of ‘conferences’ in the same cities at the same time.”

Abigail snorted into her tea. “Common? Love, their ‘fact-finding’ trip to Miami was the talk of the office for a month. A trip for two, in February, that resulted in precisely zero facts and one very lapsed donor. We all just assumed it was one of Kyra’s ‘special projects’.

” She made little air quotes with her fingers.

“Special projects?” I pressed, feigning innocence .

“Let’s just say Kyra guards her position as head of the gala committee like a dragon guards its treasure,” Abigail whispered. “She’s very… dedicated. And very close to certain people.”

That was all the confirmation I needed. I returned to my desk, the pieces clicking into place.

The expensive dinners for two, always expensed by Garrett, on nights when Kyra’s calendar showed a "late work meeting.

" The hotel rooms booked with "king bed" specifications. It wasn’t just sloppy; it was blatant. They weren’t even trying to hide it.

Why would they? Who would ever be given the access and the time to sift through this forgotten graveyard of files except… me.

The thought sent a chill down my spine. Was this a test from Ms. Henderson? Had she handed me a loaded gun just to see if I was smart enough to figure out which way to point it?

Just then, Kyra herself swept past my desk, her perfume a suffocating cloud of expensive floral notes.

She shot me a look of pure, unadulterated loathing.

But this time, I didn’t flinch. I just smiled, a small, secret smile, and gave her a polite little nod.

I watched as her own expression faltered, a flicker of confusion and unease in her eyes before she turned away.

Ah , I thought with a surge of triumphant adrenaline. So that’s what panic looks like on you.

I was packing up my bag, a current of triumphant energy still humming through me, when my desk phone chirped. It was Ms. Henderson’s extension.

“Elisabeth, could you pop into my office for a moment before you leave?” she asked, her voice its usual clipped, professional tone .

My stomach did a nervous flip, but I pushed it down. I had done good work today. This was probably just a standard check-in.

“Of course, Ms. Henderson. On my way.”

I walked to her office, my confidence buoyed by the day’s successes. She gestured for me to take a seat, her eyes on her computer screen.

“I just wanted to touch base on the lapsed donor project,” she began, all business. “Your initial approach seems sound. I’ll expect a preliminary report on your top ten prospects by the end of the week.”

“Absolutely,” I said, relieved. “I’ve already identified several promising leads based on some... spending inconsistencies in the old files.”

For the first time, she looked up from her screen and met my gaze. A flicker of something unreadable passed through her cool eyes. “I have no doubt you’ll be very thorough. That will be all for today.”

“Thank you,” I said, standing to leave, feeling a surge of pride. I was doing it. I was proving myself.

I was at the door when her voice, quiet and controlled, stopped me cold.

“Oh, and Elisabeth?”

I turned back. She was looking directly at me, and for a split second, I saw a glimmer of what looked suspiciously like amusement in her cool grey eyes. A tiny, almost imperceptible smile touched the corner of her lips before vanishing.

“Let’s try to keep the more... personal calls to a minimum during work hours, shall we? We wouldn’t want any distractions from this important project.”

The air left my lungs in a single, silent gasp.

FLUSH .

The sound popped back in memory; my mind instantly replaying a highlight reel of the phone call. Soaked. Touch yourself through your panties. Pound into me. My intimidatingly professional, impeccably polished boss had been in the next stall. She had heard all of it .

My carefully constructed composure, my triumph from the day, all evaporated in a cloud of pure, cringe-worthy humiliation. I stared at her, my mind a blank wall of horror, certain my face was the color of a ripe tomato.

“Yes, Ms. Henderson,” I managed to choke out, the words feeling like sand in my mouth.

I practically fled from her office, hoping for the floor to open up and swallow me whole. I grabbed my bag, my movements stiff and robotic. As I scurried out of the foundation, my triumphant adrenaline was gone, replaced by a single, looping, mortifying thought:

How am I ever going to look her in the eye again?

That evening, I met Sean for dinner at a cozy little Italian place in the West Village. The restaurant was a warm bubble of candlelight and the rich aroma of garlic and wine, a world away from the cold, hard data of my day.

“You seem different tonight,” Sean said, his green eyes searching mine across the table. “You’ve got a glint in your eye I haven’t seen before. What’s going on?”

I took a sip of my wine, a real smile playing on my lips. “Let’s just say my day was far more interesting than stuffing envelopes.” I leaned forward, lowering my voice conspiratorially. “I think I’m onto something at the foundation. A bit of a scandal, maybe. ”

I told him everything—the lapsed donor files, the suspicious expense reports, the overlapping trips between Garrett and Kyra. I didn’t draw any final conclusions, just laid out the facts, the patterns.

Sean listened intently, his expression growing more serious with every word. “My cousin Fury’s people are looking into him,” he said finally, his voice a low, protective growl. “But this is good. This is concrete. This is ammunition.”

“His ‘people’?” I asked, my brow furrowing. “What does that mean?”

“It means he has a team,” Sean said carefully. “Very discreet. They can find out things. One of them is a data specialist—a hacker, really—who is taking a look at Garrett’s digital footprint. Phone records, that sort of thing.”

A jolt of alarm went through me. “Sean, is that… legal?”

He reached across the table, taking my hand. “It’s a gray area,” he admitted. “But this isn’t for a court case, Beth. This is for you. It’s to find out exactly who we’re dealing with, who is sending you anonymous gifts, who is trying to get close to you, and why. It’s about keeping you safe.”

His sincerity, his fierce determination to protect me, sent a wave of warmth through me that had nothing to do with the wine. Still, the thought of having hired some shadowy hacker to dig through Garrett’s life, was a little unsettling.

Sensing my unease, Sean changed the subject. “On a lighter note, you’ll never guess what your landlord said to me when I dropped you off the other night.”

I laughed, the tension easing. “Oh god. What did Ziggy do now?”

“He told me my aura was a ‘rather aggressive shade of chartreuse’ and that I needed to meditate with a piece of amethyst to ‘balance my masculine energies.’” Sean did a perfect imitation of Ziggy’s earnest, spacey tone, making me giggle.

“He then tried to sell me a ‘karmically cleansed’ dreamcatcher for fifty dollars.”

“Did you buy it?” I asked, laughing.

“I told him my dreams were already plenty interesting, thanks to you,” he said, his eyes twinkling as he squeezed my hand.

The rest of dinner was like that. Easy, fun, and blessedly normal. We talked and laughed, the outside world and its complications fading away until it was just us in our little candlelit bubble.

Later, in the taxi heading back to my place, I leaned my head on his shoulder, the comfort between us feeling both wonderful and terrifying.

This was what it felt like to fall in love, I realized.

This effortless connection, this feeling of being completely, utterly seen. And it scared the hell out of me.

“What happens after this?” I asked quietly, the question slipping out before I could stop it.

Sean turned his head, his lips brushing against my hair. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… after this,” I said, gesturing vaguely. “After Garrett is dealt with, after… everything. You live in California, Sean. Your whole life is there. I’m just… a temporary project in New York, who’s really from Glasgow.”

He was quiet for a long moment. The only sound was the hum of the taxi’s engine. I felt my heart sink. I’d been right. This did have an expiration date.

Then he lifted my chin with his finger, forcing me to look at him.

His eyes were serious, intense. “You are not a project, Beth,” he said, his voice firm.

“And you are not temporary. I don’t know what will happen after this.

I don’t have a five-point plan. But I know this.

” He brought my hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to my palm.

“I’m staying close. We’ll figure it out. Together.”

I looked into his eyes, and I actually believed it might be true. But as the taxi pulled up to my Brooklyn brownstone, the fear still lingered, a quiet, insistent whisper: In my dreams.