Page 155 of Theirs to Desire (Club M: Boxed Set)

ERIC

I get to work early Monday morning and head straight to Dixie’s office. The door is open. She’s got her headphones on, and she’s engrossed in her work. I knock on the frame a couple of times, and she finally hears, lifting her head with a smile of greeting.

A smile of greeting that quickly fades. She takes off the headphones and surveys me warily. “Eric,” she says. “How can I help you?”

It’s half-past six. The place is empty except for the two of us. I’m not a morning person, but I got up at the ass crack of dawn because I didn’t want the entire office to hear me grovel.

I hold out the coffee I got her as a peace offering. “I owe you an apology. I behaved appallingly on Saturday. I said terrible things, I acted like a complete dick, and you have every reason to be furious with me.”

She takes the coffee from me. “You haven’t poisoned it?” she quips.

“It’s a caramel macchiato,” I reply. “There’s enough whipped cream on it to cause a coronary, if that’s what you mean.”

Her lips twitch. “The whipped cream is the best part.” She takes an experimental sip, and pleasure fills her face.

Fuck me, she’s beautiful, and I need to get my head out of my ass because she’s a coworker, and I’m not stupid enough to get involved with someone I work with.

Even if this gig at Xavier’s is temporary.

“Why did you say it then?” she asks me.

Ouch. I was really hoping she wouldn’t ask. “Do we have to get into it?”

“Let me quote you,” she says. “‘At the end of the day, what she wants is missionary with the lights dimmed.’ Yes. I want to know why you said that.”

“My last serious girlfriend…” Fuck. “I dated someone who thought she wanted to explore kink. Turns out she didn’t. It blew up in my face. You remind me of her.”

“Why, do I look like her?” she retorts. “You don’t know anything about me.” She takes another sip. “Thank you for the coffee. I didn’t know you knew how I took it.”

“I’ve heard you place your order during the afternoon coffee run.” I run my fingers through my hair. “Sorry again. I’ll leave you to your work.”

I turn to go. I’m a few steps away when I hear her voice. “Eric.”

“Yeah?”

“I screwed up the first time we met. You screwed up Saturday night. Call it even?”

Words escape me. She’s far nicer than I deserve. “I’d love to.”

She nods. “Okay. I’ll have the Fullerton contracts you asked for on your desk by ten. There are a lot of them. If you tell me what you’re looking for, I can probably narrow it down.”

My first instinct is to say something vague. I have a sense that something is amiss, but I don’t really know for sure, and I don’t want to commit to an answer.

But then I realize that’s not right. Dixie is a part of Xavier’s senior team. He trusts her enough that she’s in the running for the COO job. She’s been poring over every contract since she started, and she’s smart. “I don’t know what I’m looking for,” I confess. “But something doesn’t feel right.”

“No doubt. Pierre didn’t do his job for many years.”

“No, this is more than Pierre’s negligence. On the surface, everything looks fine, but I’m missing something. So far, all I have is an instinct, but I’ve learned to trust mine.”

“Instincts are patterns your subconscious recognizes,” she says. She takes another sip of her coffee. “Can I show you something?”

I move behind her so I can see her screen. Her hair smells like roses. No, not her hair. There’s a tube of hand lotion next to her.

She clicks around on her screen, minimizing the document she's in the process of reviewing. A printed contract is on the desk next to her keyboard. It must be displeasing her; her highlighter has been at work liberally, and the margins are covered with notes in her tiny, neat handwriting.

Everything about Dixie is neat and contained. For a second, I wonder what she would be like in bed. Would she be polite and well-behaved, or would she become someone else?

Stop lusting after your coworker, Kane.

I’ve got to straighten up. I need to put a stop to this attraction to Dixie. Xavier will take a very dim view of this. It’s the kind of thing that is liable to ruin a relationship with a very good friend.

“I was looking at this set of transactions from Unplug,” she says. “Take a look at these training expenses. Don’t they seem off to you?”

I scan the invoices she’s highlighted. “Remind me what Unplug is?”

“It’s a small non-profit,” she replies. “Carl Siregar started it ten years ago. He teaches people how to unplug from technology. Leforte Enterprises bought it four years ago. I don’t know why. It doesn’t really fit neatly into our portfolio.”

“Xavier probably thought it was a good idea, and he threw money at it.”

“In that case, he should have used his charitable foundation to fund them,” she responds.

She’s not wrong.

“Anyway,” she continues. “Unplug only has six employees. Notice anything?”

I look at the numbers again, and this time, I see what’s caught her eye. “A non-profit with just six employees pays two hundred thousand dollars for leadership training to a company called XPM?”

“Exactly,” she says. “Doesn’t make sense.”

“Shouldn’t this have been flagged?”

“You’d think, right?” She grimaces. “Pierre personally signed off on this training.”

“Is that suspicious?”

“Pierre didn’t read the things he signed, Eric.”

“Of course not,” I say dryly. “Why bother doing the job that Xavier’s paying you to do?

It’s a good thing Valade is in Montpelier.

I feel the urge to punch him.” It’s not even seven, and I’m already ready to call it a day.

“I’ll talk to Stone. His team needs to do a full-fledged audit of Unplug’s books.

” I move away from the maddeningly tempting scent of roses.

“Thank you, Dixie. This is extremely helpful. I’ll keep you posted on what I find. ”

She looks faintly surprised. “You will?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Something else occurs to me. “Hang on, you’re the General Counsel. Why are you looking at Unplug’s financial transactions?”

“I’ve told you I want the COO job, Eric. If I’m going to succeed at it, I’ll need to have a handle on all of Leforte Enterprises’ subsidiaries, big and small.”

“Is that why you come in early every morning? Do you ever take any time off?”

“I do okay.”

She’s bristling a little. “You don’t need to be defensive about your ambition,” I tell her. “I’m just wondering if you’re getting enough downtime, that’s all.”

Xavier should just give her the damn job right now. She’ll get some sleep, and I can get the hell out of here before I do something I regret. Like make a pass at Dixie Ketcham.

Ten hours later, I lean back in my chair and rub my eyes.

XPM is registered as a charity, but the transactions I’ve found paint a far more damning picture. They’re involved in money laundering and tax fraud.

Even worse? XPM is owned by a dummy company in the Bahamas, which in turn is owned by another dummy company in Liechtenstein, which in turn appears to be owned by Xavier Leforte.

Somebody is trying to frame my friend. Somebody is exploiting Pierre Valade's lack of attention to make it look like Leforte Enterprises is engaging in criminal activity.

I pick up my phone to call Xavier.

This isn’t good. This is very, very bad. This is a disaster.