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Chapter 7
Tuesday/Wednesday
“You have any ideas?” Julia swallowed, her head reeling. Carole? Stealing from her? Andra and Ruth, as well? Over the last several months, Madeline’s sales had steadily dropped. Now, they were down almost ten thousand dollars a month. She’d assumed the restaurant hadn’t been as busy, or people were eating elsewhere.
What if neither of those were true? What if Carole, Andra and Ruth were stealing that money from her?
She did some quick calculations in her head. Each of them could be taking home an extra hundred dollars or more every night. A lot of money.
Were there other servers who were stealing from her?
“Julia!” When Nico’s voice interrupted her swirling panic, she turned to him, grateful for the interruption.
“You with me?” he said, holding her gaze.
“Yeah,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Sorry. I got sucked down the rabbit hole of how much Madeline’s been losing.”
“We have no proof,” he said. “Just suspicion. But if they’re stealing, I’ll find out how. And we’ll fix it.” His voice was deadly. Scary, if you were one of his targets.
Reassuring for her. He was on her side. Nico sounded completely confident he’d succeed. She wished she could take comfort from that. But when Madeline’s might be hemorrhaging money because of theft?
No comfort anywhere.
“Hey,” Nico said sharply. “Don’t go down that rabbit hole. It won’t solve anything and will only make you crazy.”
Julia sighed as she tried to shove the thoughts out of her head. “Pretty obvious, huh?”
“Let’s just say, don’t get into any high-stakes poker games.”
He didn’t roll his eyes. But Julia guessed it was only because he had iron self-control. “So you have some ideas?” she asked after a long moment.
“Yeah,” Nico said. “I do. Ideally, we catch them in the act. But first I need to figure out how they’re doing it. Then I can set some traps.”
“That’s not part of your job,” she said, her voice just a little wobbly.
“Yeah, it is,” he said immediately. “Instead of you having two separate problems, the most logical answer is that everything’s connected. Which would mean the spyware on your computer is connected to possible thefts at Madeline’s. I can’t rule that out right now. They might be two separate things, but I don’t know that. And neither do you.”
“Oh, God,” Julia said faintly. The knot of her problems had just become bigger. Tighter. More tangled. Her stomach was twisted so tight, she wouldn’t be able to eat anytime soon.
“Don’t freak out,” Nico said, taking one hand off the steering wheel momentarily to touch hers. “We’ll figure it out, step by step. Maybe we can go into the restaurant early tomorrow so you can show me how the ordering system works.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “My grandparents didn’t have anything like that. The servers wrote their orders on little pads of paper, then handed the sheet to the cook.” He smiled, a tiny curl of his lip that transformed his face from warrior to sexy guy. “Their version of high tech.”
“Yeah, it’s a lot more sophisticated now,” Julia said. “Although when I bought my system for Madeline’s, I could only afford bare bones. There are better systems, and that’s on my list. After I figure out where to get the money for a new one.”
“For now, we’ll focus on the one you have. You teach me how to use it, and I’ll try to figure out if it can be gamed.”
“Tomorrow,” she said, nodding as Nico pulled into her driveway.
She’d left the back porch light on, and it illuminated a wide cone of her backyard. Nothing disturbed or out of place. Thank God. Because she was ready to drop into bed.
As they exited the garage and walked toward the porch, Nico put himself in front of her. But he wrapped his fingers lightly around her wrist. His fingers were warm and a little callused. The glide of those callused fingers over her skin made her shiver.
“You cold?” he asked, his voice rougher than it had been a minute ago.
“A little,” she lied.
He walked silently up the stairs, and she tried to tread just as lightly. When they reached the door, he held out his hand for her keys. She set them in his palm, being careful not to touch him. She didn’t want any more accidental shivers to alert Nico that he was having an effect on her.
Nico fit the key into the lock and opened the door, then stepped inside. Stilled. He turned and put his fingers to his lips. Motioned for her to stay where she was. Leave the door open.
