Page 13 of The Heiress Masquerade (Dollar Princess #2)

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, I’m not a spy!” Aimee replied. “And what are you doing here anyway? It’s a Sunday. No one should be here.”

Harrison straightened from where he’d been leaning against the doorjamb of Robert’s office, curiously watching as Evie rifled around on the man’s desk. “I’m here every day. Surely, the better question is what are you doing here?”

Her brows drew together in a frown. “If I’d known you’d be here, I wouldn’t have come in.”

“You’re not still upset about yesterday, are you?”

“Please,” she scoffed. “It matters little to me what you say, given I have such little ideas.”

Yes, Harrison was going to pay for that remark; he’d known it as soon as he’d said it. Though it had served its purpose in giving him much-needed breathing space. “Look, I apologize for what I said yesterday. Can we move past it?”

She gave a half shrug, but she didn’t seem overly congenial to the idea. “How about we see how you go today with what you say.”

“How kind of you,” he replied with a reluctant grin. The fact that she wasn’t intimidated by him was refreshing. “And don’t think I haven’t forgotten you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

“What does it look like I’m doing? Clearly, I’m here to work.”

There was an indignant expression on her face that Harrison found oddly endearing. “By rifling through Robert’s desk?”

She sighed. “I suppose it appears nefarious.”

“What, like you’re spying for another company by coming into the office when everyone isn’t here, clearly looking for something?”

“I’m not a spy.” She huffed, blowing away a strand of hair that had fallen loose over her face. “I was hoping to find the other accounts ledgers Robert was showing me yesterday. I’ve detected several anomalies in the few that I borrowed to read, and I wanted to see if the others also contained the same discrepancies.”

Harrison frowned as he walked into the room. “What anomalies?” Anomalies in accounts ledgers were never a good thing, and certainly not something he expected to see in the ledgers for the London company he ran.

She pulled out several ledgers from a satchel over her shoulder and opened one, pointing out several incidents where it appeared the figures had been doctored and changed to other numbers than what had originally been written.

“It looks like someone’s changed the last month’s worth of figures to make it appear as though the company’s started to run at a loss,” she said.

“You detected that by just looking through the ledgers?”

“I told you I was good at numbers,” she replied. “Though I can’t work out why someone would want to do that, at least not someone within the company. Certainly, a competitor would, and perhaps they paid someone here to do so, but why would somebody risk going to jail to forge some numbers in our company books? Especially when they’re discrepancies that would be picked up at the next quarterly audit?”

“The damage might’ve already been done by then, particularly in light of the Wilheimer deal we’re working on,” Harrison said, picking up one of the ledgers and scanning through its contents for the last month. She was right. Somebody had doctored the books. The question now was who? “Have you mentioned this to anyone yet?”

She shook her head. “No. I thought I’d come in today to see if any of the other ledgers also showed evidence of tampering before I mentioned it to anyone. But I can’t find any of the ledgers, even though Robert said he usually keeps them on his desk.”

“They’re in the company safe,” Harrison replied. “They’re kept there overnight, then retrieved in the morning to be left on Robert’s desk for the day, for easy access.”

“Then why did he let me borrow these ones?”

“Guess.”

“Because of my uncle.”

“I think it more likely because the man is besotted with you.”

“Nonsense,” she declared, her hands fisting on her hips. “He only just met me.”

“I saw how he was looking at you.” And he hadn’t bloody liked it at all. Not that he should care. And he didn’t, not really… “In any event, let’s go and retrieve the other ledgers. I’ll be interested to see if they also reflect any discrepancies.”

“Me, too,” she said, following as he headed up to his office, where the safe was.

“You really do like numbers, don’t you?”

“I told you I did,” came her rather indignant reply. “Men are all the same, you never listen.”

“Oh, we listen, we just don’t know if you ladies are telling the truth.” He glanced across at her as she kept pace with him as they walked to his office, and he could have sworn for an instant she looked guilty. He wondered if she’d been lying about what the man she’d sent the telegram to meant to her? The thought was surprisingly upsetting.

“Who do you think might be behind the alterations?”

“It could be a number of people,” he replied. “Robert, obviously, comes to mind, given he’s in charge of the ledgers and is the only one authorized to write in them.”

“But you don’t think he’s guilty, do you,” she said perceptively as they walked through the outer room before entering Harrison’s office.

“No.” Perhaps he shouldn’t have brought her here with him, especially as they were literally the only two people in the entire building. Not the smartest move, Stone, he chastised himself.

“I don’t think he’s responsible, either,” Evie replied, walking over to the back of the room where a picture of her uncle hung on the wall, the safe nestled behind it. “He seems far too honorable and nice.”

“Nice people commit crimes,” he said, then frowned. “How do you know that’s where the safe is?”

“I’m a cat burglar in my spare time,” she replied with a completely straight face, before laughing. “How do you think? It’s the only picture frame on the wall, so where else would a concealed safe be? Honestly. You men are so suspicious of everything.”

“And you women love to pigeonhole us,” he grumbled, walking next to her and pulling on the hinged picture frame to swing it open.

“That very statement is itself pigeonholing women,” she replied with a smug smile.

Harrison turned his eyes away from her and stared straight at the safe in front of him. Perhaps if he focused on it, and not on the woman beside him, he might have a chance of getting out of the situation without compromising her or his morals.

He pulled out a set of keys from his pocket and opened the safe, retrieving the ledgers inside.

“Does anyone else have access to this safe?” Evie asked.

“No. Just me,” he replied. “Which is why the books are kept on Robert’s desk through the day. Though he hasn’t previously loaned any of the ledgers out like he did with you. However, no one who wants to look through them is as pretty as you.” He mumbled the last part under his breath.

“You think I’m pretty?”

“Yes,” he admitted, frowning as she smiled. “Pretty annoying, that is.”

Her smile turned into a scowl. “As are you. In any event, if Robert was the one responsible for doctoring the entries, it’s doubtful he would’ve allowed me to borrow some to look through. Though it’s lucky I did, isn’t it?”

“You’ve saved me about a week until I check them again as I do every fortnight,” he conceded.

“My…uncle does the same thing…checking them fortnightly, that is.”

“Who do you think I learned the habit from?”

“Does everyone know you look over the ledgers fortnightly?” she asked.

“Robert and Ben do,” he replied. “But no, that fact isn’t generally known.”

“So whoever did this would have assumed the anomalies wouldn’t have been discovered until the quarterly audits in about one month’s time.”

“Yes. When the figures would’ve been posted for the shareholders.”

“And if kept as is, would have been detrimental to the share price of the company,” she replied.

He was reluctantly impressed by her quick grasp of the situation. “You know, for someone who apparently doesn’t like business, you’re taking to it like a duck to water.”

She smiled; however, it seemed slightly forced. “I’ve told you I’ve decided to embrace this opportunity, so embrace it, I am.”

“Well, you’re certainly doing that.” He still couldn’t quite work her out, but she was a fascinating puzzle. One that he wanted to unravel and solve. Unravel to the point of her being naked and in his bed.

“Are you all right?” She was staring at him in concern. “You look a bit flushed suddenly. You’re not coming down with something, are you?”

“I probably am,” he barely managed to say, as images of her naked, soft curves wrapped only in the silk sheets of his bed dominated his thoughts to the point where he could think of little else. He kept trying to tell himself that this was Thomas’s niece, but even that didn’t seem to sway his imagination. “You better go, right now.” Because he was coming down with a case of foolish idiocy.

She ignored him and instead raised her hand to his forehead. “You feel a little warm, but not fevered.”

He pressed his eyes tightly together, trying to ignore the softness of her fingers against his skin. He was fighting a losing battle with himself, and he knew it. “If you don’t leave right now, I’m not going to be able to help myself and I’ll kiss you, right here and right now.”

She gulped. “You will?”

“Yes,” he said, opening his eyes and staring down into her wide ones. “Which we both know is a terrible idea.”

“It is a terrible idea,” she said, though she made no effort to move away from him.

There were so many problems with kissing her, but right at that moment he couldn’t articulate any of them, and his body began swaying toward hers with a mind of its own.

“Though we are adults and can kiss whomever we want,” she whispered, her body also moving in toward his, her lips now only inches from his.

“But you’re Thomas’s niece…” Harrison tried to clear his suddenly foggy head, the voice warning him that this was a bad idea getting very distant, until it was nothing but a far-off echo. “And you’re an employee…”

“A temporary employee,” she reminded him, her mouth getting precariously closer to his. “Don’t you want to kiss me, Harrison Stone?”

“I thought I was your enemy?” Surely, if they could both remember how much they disliked each other, this madness would end?

“Don’t they say to keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”

“They do,” he said in a gruff whisper, breathing in the sweet scent of jasmine on her neck.

“Then kiss me.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.” Harrison’s voice was a choked groan, as he stared at her with desperation in his gaze.

“A simple kiss is all I’m asking for.”

“There’s nothing simple about kissing you,” he groaned. She was Thomas’s niece, and nothing would change that.

But then she boldly grabbed the lapels of his jacket and before he could protest, she pulled his lips down onto hers.

The touch of them against his was like an explosion, and he couldn’t help but groan at the sweet taste of her. Heat burned through his body as she moaned when he opened his mouth against hers, kissing her with a thoroughness bordering on obsession. She tasted so good; he never wanted the kiss to end.

The thought stopped him cold and abruptly he dragged his mouth away and took a step back. “I’m sorry, that should never have happened,” he said, resisting the temptation to kiss her again.

For a moment, she looked flustered as she pressed her fingers up to her lips, an almost confused expression in her eyes. “It was just a kiss,” she replied, hastily dropping her hand from her mouth, and spinning on her heels, striding to the door. “Nothing worth apologizing over.”

And then before he could say another word, she left, without a backward glance, and he was the one to feel confused. What had just happened? She’d been urging him to kiss her and then was acting as if it was nothing when Harrison’s whole world felt rocked.

Damn it, women were confusing. This was why he didn’t get too involved in his relationships—not that this was a relationship, God, nothing of the sort. Thomas would kill him if he began a relationship with his niece.

No. Evie Jenkins was off-limits, and he’d just have to remind himself of that when he saw her next. She wasn’t worth risking his dreams over. Dreams that had been his constant companion since he was a boy and had given him hope in what had been a bleak and barren existence.

Dreams he wouldn’t abandon for anyone. Intuitively, part of him knew she had the power to possibly mean something to him, and the last people who meant something to him had died and left him all alone.

He wouldn’t suffer through that pain again, even if his body was urging him to. No. She was a temptation that could ruin everything he’d worked for, ultimately leading to heartache and loss. Two things he refused to ever go through again.

Not ever.