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“I don’t want you to pay me. Can I just do you a favor?” She tilted her head, as if she were looking at a puzzle she couldn’t quite make sense of. “Is that against the rules? Having friends?”
Friends. His cock jumped. As if in protest? “Not against the rules,” he said. “Just not a lot of precedent. That Dax guy you met the other day is as close as I get, and he’s pretty much an asshole.”
She smiled then—a real one. “Well, we’ll muddle through.” When she turned back to pour cream in her coffee, she was all business. “Send me whatever information you think might be good for me to look at—don’t be picky, just send everything. I’ll start this afternoon. I’m at the bar tonight, but I’ll get back on it tomorrow.”
Chapter Ten
The rest of the suppliers looked legitimate to Cassie, but she did find a few cash withdrawals against the corporate credit card that seemed suspicious. Historically, the company had paid its invoices by check and charged expenses out in the world with corporate credit cards—but those expenses tended to be meals, plane tickets, that kind of thing. Why would someone withdraw two grand in cash, given the sky-high rates cards charged for cash advances? And the bigger question was, where was that cash going? Cassie worked all afternoon on the files Jack had couriered over on a memory stick, quitting only when it was time to head to Edward’s.
Setting up the bar was surreal. After the insane weekend she’d had, Edward’s felt like a fragment of the distant past, a place she’d been once when she was a different person entirely. Hopefully the evening would go fast, and she’d be able to call Jack tomorrow with a progress report. She wanted to get her hands on receipts to reconcile against the company’s credit card statements.
Her phone buzzed a few hours later, when the bar was in full swing.
Come over when you’re off.
A frisson of excitement drew goose pimples on her skin, even in the hot bar. After parting this morning—her cheeks heated at the memory—she had assumed they would talk tomorrow, since he never said anything to the contrary. Maybe he wanted to talk about whether she’d found anything. Glancing around, she huddled to type her response. Even though no one here knew anything about Winter Enterprises and its cheat of a CFO, she wanted to make sure her texts were not seen.
I don’t find any other questionable suppliers, but there are some cash withdrawals I want to ask you about.
I don’t care about the withdrawals. Come over. Take a cab.
She’d be lying if she didn’t admit his response was just a tiny bit gratifying. Though she hadn’t wanted to presume they would get it on every night, she was all too aware that their “to hell with the rules” time was slipping away. She paused. Did “no relationships” mean no flirting? Oh, screw it. If you couldn’t flirt with your friend-with-benefits-for-three-nights, what was the world coming to?
Is this a booty call?
Ah! She almost dropped the phone, flustered by her own boldness. The reply came almost immediately, and it made her gasp.
18 Linden Street
She’d been assuming he was texting from the office. The idea of going to his home seemed strangely intimate. And hugely exciting.
I get off in an hour.
I’ll try my best.
She was unable to hide her stupid grin at the innuendo, clicked off the phone, and proceeded to start counting the seconds until it was time to go.
When the taxi pulled onto Jack’s street a little over an hour later, Cassie was practically thrumming with tension—mixed up with a heck of a lot of curiosity. Jack lived in Corktown, a neighborhood tucked in between the high-rises of the city’s financial district and more solidly residential swaths to the east. Home to some of the oldest row houses in the city, the neighborhood was slowly gentrifying. Somehow, she’d pictured Jack in a penthouse condo. But then, he had the killer view at the office, so maybe he had the whole luxury-nest-in-the-sky thing covered there. Alternatively, she would have expected he’d live in one of the city’s swanky mansion-filled neighborhoods, at an address with status. The houses in his neighborhood were lovely in their own way, old bay-and-gable Victorians, but they perched on tiny postage stamp yards, and were in varying states of repair.
Unlike many of its neighbors, the narrow semi-detached house where they rolled to a stop was immaculately restored from its clean red brick to its bright white-painted trim, visible even in the dim glow of the streetlights. She didn’t even have a moment to marshal her courage before Jack, wearing a parka, came jogging down the walkway and opened her door. Handing the driver some cash, he waved off her attempt to pay. Figuring it was useless to argue, she made her way up the path and onto the porch. He must have been waiting for her outside, because she spied a tumbler of scotch and a lit cigar.
