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Of all the stupid things. How superficial were these people? “I don’t—”
“Look, I’m the general merchandise manager for Dylan’s Department Store, the most luxurious store for the fashion-conscious in the country. That means I head a team of fashion buyers, merchandisers, and senior executives focused only on finding the most on-trend and profitable clothing and accessories to sell to our customers. I can’t have my assistant looking like the runway from two years ago. Fashion is these people’s passion and my bread and butter.”
Damn, she hated it when he made sense. But unfortunately, he did.
“I still don’t like it.” She crossed her arms.
“Lucky for you, fashion doesn’t require you to actually like it.” He stormed off to the cream leather chairs opposite the dressing rooms. “Kailer, she’s all yours.”
Thirty minutes and sixteen dress arguments later, the stylist’s face had taken on the determined devotional sheen of a high-priestess of fashion intent on making Ryder a convert.
“I think I found the one!” Kailer removed a royal blue dress from a stuffed garment rack near the three-way mirror. “It’s a matte jersey from the St. John Collection. It will move with you and be very comfortable. The asymmetrical collar gives it a touch of drama. What do you think?”
Ryder held it up and looked in the mirror. Of all the choices so far, it came the closest, but the color was so not black.
“Right dress.” Devin got up from the couch where he’d been glued to his phone and strolled over to the garment rack. He pulled out the same dress in darkest ebony. “Wrong color.”
Ryder traded the blue for the black, glanced down at the price tag. One dress or groceries for the foreseeable future? An easy choice. “I can’t.”
“You can.” Devin hung the blue dress on the rack. “Or we’ll be down here all day. Consider it a gift.”
God, it was soft—she held it against her frame—and so pretty. “It’s too expensive.”
“It’s yours. Kailer, wrap it up and include the others in black as well.” He turned toward the elevator. “Come on, Ryder, we have work to do.”
Chapter Three
“Fashion is like a revolving door. Sometimes you get stuck in it.”
— Milana May
Storm clouds had gathered outside Devin’s windows when Ryder barreled into his office, her hair a wild, wavy mane around her shoulders. As always, she was dressed in head-to-toe black, this time the Armani, sleeveless sheath dress from the spring collection that showed off her toned arms and her muscled calves.
He shook his head. Fifteen years ago, all he would have noticed was her firm ass, not the clothes, and for sure not what they were called or when they’d debuted. Of course, back then he would have been too hung over at nine in the morning to even crack his eyes open.
All five-foot-ten-inches of blue-ball-inducing sexiness of her pulled to a stop in front of his desk.
For the past two days, she’d all but ignored him as she went through page after page of the store’s financials. He’d had a desk installed for her in the corner of his office so she could do her job without worrying about prying eyes. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Talk about theory versus reality. It had turned his office into a level of hell even Dante hadn’t considered.
Seeing Ryder twist her long hair around one finger only reminded him of how smooth the dark strands had felt on his stomach as she’d kissed her way south during their one night together. And then there was the way she mumbled to herself as she ran numbers in a low voice that vibrated down to his balls. The result being that he hadn’t sported this much useless wood since he’d been a teenager.
“We’ve got a problem.” Ryder held a manila folder in her hand. “There’s a lot more than ju
st a million dollars gone.”
Visions of her spread out beneath him on his bed fled in a heartbeat. His gut bounced against the floor. Shit, he needed to pull it together. “What are you talking about?”
“Four point seven million.”
White noise buzzed in his ears as he tried to process the bomb she’d just tossed into his lap. “That’s impossible.”
“Not really.” She paced in front of his desk. “Embezzlers don’t act like bank robbers—at least, not the good ones. They don’t run in, stuff as much cash in a bag as they can, and then split. They’re like car salesmen. They want to take some money from you this year and the next and the year after that. The smart embezzlers are in it for the long haul. I’ve spent the past few days going through your books with a fine-tooth comb. What I noticed was that one particular account had consistent growth. The more I looked, the more it looked off. So I dug into the records and discovered vendor invoices from businesses that never existed.”
“How do you know they don’t exist?” Anxiety pulled every muscle in his body tight. If this was true, the MultiCorp deal could collapse. Everything he’d worked to make happen for the last three years would be gone. The international market would be closed to Dylan’s for the foreseeable future.
“I’m an investigator. It’s what I do.” She stopped in front of his desk with her hands planted on her hips. “There’s more. The bogus invoices go back fifteen years. That equates to more than three-hundred-thousand dollars a year.”
Anger ripped through him, leaving him raw and hurting from the inside out. He turned on the messenger, ready to blast her out into the thunderstorm brewing outside his window.
