Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(55)

“I need your accounting prowess to sort out a problem. Or maybe it’s not a problem; I don’t have a head for numbers. Can you come over and take a look?”

“I’d be happy to, but what about David? Isn’t that his domain?”

“Well,” Julian said, “I think the problem may be David.”

“You do?”

“But I don’t know. I need someone who understands these things to take a look.”

Natalie bit her lip. “I’ll be right there.”

#

Julian kissed her at the door. “It’s okay. He’s not here. He had some family emergency and I told him to take the day off.”

Natalie relaxed a bit without showing Julian that she had. “What’s the problem?” “I’m not sure if there is one,” he reminded her, ushering her into the office.

Natalie had never been in the office before; it was unofficially David’s area and he had made it more than clear that he preferred to keep it private, always closing the door behind him when she was over. The first thing she noticed was that it was decorated with the same sleek, austere sensibility as the rest of the apartment but looked much more lived-in.

Framed movie posters from old films such as “Double Indemnity” and “The Maltese Falcon” hung from the walls. The small sofa was draped with a pillow and afghan, looking like an unmade bed, the glass coffee table was strewn with old newspapers and mugs half-filled with old coffee. A small closet faced the entry door and inside were several shirts still in plastic from the dry cleaner’s and three pairs of dress shoes tossed haphazardly inside. Natalie glanced at Julian but if he was bothered by his employee treating the office like a guest room, he didn’t show it.

“Here,” Julian said, indicating the desk where a state-of-the art computer rested on polished cherry wood. The monitor was on and Natalie could see account statements from different banks open. From where she was standing, she couldn’t see the actual figures but it wasn’t hard to see strings of numbers broken by commas on each statement. She looked away.

“Julian…”

“Is it too soon?”

“No, I…I don’t know.” She looked at him. “You trust me this much?”

“I trust you to treat this as a job. As a professional.”

“I can do that,” she said but hesitated again. The entire room was rife with David Thompson’s energy, as if he were a ghost thickening the air with his presence.

“It’s all right,” Julian said. “They’re just numbers.”

Natalie sat down in the chair before the computer and focused her attention on the task at hand. Up close, the figures that were “just numbers” to Julian were staggeringly large to her; larger than she could have guessed. She kept her face neutral, however, and ignored the way her skin tingled unpleasantly when she had sat down in David’s chair.

“All right,” she said. “Where is the issue?”

“You once told me about a terrible company, EllisIntel, that you’re following for your accounting studies.”

“What about it?”

“Well, I sort of forgot about it, even after you warned me off it. Until this.”

He handed Natalie a business-looking letter, already open. In it was a check for $61,365.

“It’s a dividend check,” Natalie said. “A huge one.”

Julian rubbed the back of his neck. “David invested some of my money in EllisIntel for me—”

“Some? Honey, to get a check this big, the company not only has to be insanely profitable—which it is—but you have to have a ton of money invested. A lot more than ‘some.’” She met his eye. “Is that the problem?”

“No. Well, maybe. I thought David told me EllisIntel didn’t pay out dividends. I could be wrong on that, but I believe that’s what he said. It’s pretty clear they do.”

“They always have.”

Julian’s expression darkened. “I’ve been invested for about a year. The problem then, is where are the other checks?” He indicated the open accounts on the computer screen. “I’ve looked and I can’t see where they might have been deposited.”

“And you want me to look for them?”

“Yes.” He rubbed his jaw. “Looking at it like this…It doesn’t look good, does it?”

“I don’t know yet,” Natalie said. The part of her that twitched at the mere sight of David hoped it was what it looked like: plain old thievery. He’d get fired, maybe go to jail, and be out of their life. But the part of her that loved Julian—a much larger, deeper well of emotion—hoped he hadn’t been betrayed by someone he considered a friend.

“It might turn out to be nothing.” She smiled up at him. “I’ll see what I can find.”

“Thanks, love.” He kissed her cheek. “I’ll make you some tea and leave you to it.”

#

The mug of steaming chamomile hadn’t even begun to cool when Natalie sat back in the chair, her heart hammering in her chest and her fists clenched.

“Damn him,” she muttered at the computer screen, and called Julian in. It wasn’t easy to hurt him but he had to know. “I think he’s been stealing from you.”