Saving the CEO (49th Floor #1)(39)
Once he was gone, she’d waited five minutes to be safe, then hightailed it out of his house, wanting nothing more than to get to her own little apartment and try to shower away what had clearly been a huge mistake. She’d thought she could do this f*ck-buddy-number-cruncher thing, but obviously she’d been wrong. It wasn’t like she expected they’d ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after, but she had learned one thing about herself. She needed a f*ck buddy to actually be a buddy. To be friendly. The confusing thing was that he had been that—to her if not to the rest of the world. Up until this morning, they’d enjoyed fun, flirtatious banter—in addition to the scorching sex.
But obviously she’d misunderstood. Done something wrong. Including inadvertently keeping his key.
Which he couldn’t know about. She couldn’t risk him thinking she’d held on to it in some kind of desperate, clinging move. If he thought she was trying to manipulate her way into a relationship, well, she’d have no dignity left. So she’d just have to swing by his house on the way to Edward’s—he would still be at work. His precious key would be there when he got home, and he would be none the wiser.
An hour later she hopped off the King streetcar at the top of his street. What a ridiculous day. Thanks to her own stupidity, she was right back where she started. And what had she done in between? More homework in service of Winter Enterprises. She was pretty sure she’d gone back far enough that she could say with confidence there were no dummy suppliers other than A-plus Construction. And she’d flagged all the fishy cash withdrawals against the company’s credit card. She’d been able to reconcile only a small number of them against expense claims, and from what she could tell there was about a hundred grand in cash unaccounted for—in addition to just under four hundred grand that A-plus had invoiced. She was going to recommend that Jack call in a forensic accounting firm to check her work. It’s possible there were other things going on that she hadn’t even thought of. She was good with numbers, yes, but she didn’t have a criminal mind.
She sighed in frustration as she approached his house. Not only had she spent the whole day thinking about Jack and his problems, she was still at it. She’d done what he was paying her to do, and she was ready for the Wexler trip, so she needed to just turn her brain off until they left. Turning up the path to his house, she resolved to drop the key and be done. She’d wasted enough mental energy on Jack Winter and his…
Barely legal jailbait?
“Hi! Are you a friend of Jack’s?”
A tall blonde was draping pine garlands along Jack’s porch railing and looking, with her rosy cheeks and her pink fur-lined parka, like the spawn of L.L. Bean and Victoria’s Secret. The girl didn’t even look like she was twenty. Even as tears—stupid, juvenile tears—prickled in Cassie’s eyes, her brain kicked into high gear. This was none of her business. She had no claim on him, so what—or who—he did in his spare time was none of her concern. He didn’t do relationships. He’d told her that explicitly from the beginning. What he hadn’t said was what he really meant. He didn’t do relationships with girls like her.
Pink Parka Girl laughed as she tried to disentangle herself from a garland.
Cassie struggled for words. She could hardly explain that she was here to return Jack’s house key. “Ah, actually, I think I have the wrong house.”
“This stupid thing looks awful!” said the girl, finally extricating her glove from the pine bough and trotting down the steps to stand beside Cassie. “Jack is going to hate this! He has his house professionally decorated, and then I come and add this crap.”
She had to get out of here. Cassie took a step, backing away like she was trying to ease her way out of the path of an animal poised to attack. Her heart was pounding accordingly, too. The key would have to wait until she could—
“Cassie?”
Jack. Stepping onto the porch. Holding a mug of coffee, as if it was totally normal for his stunning blonde hopefully eighteen-plus girlfriend to meet his plump, nearly thirty math nerd temporary-friend-with-benefits accounting helper in his front yard.
“Cassie?” the girl squealed. “As in Cassidy? The Cassidy my dad told me about?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “OMG! Cassie, I’m Britney. My dad works with Jack. He’s my godfather. Jack, I mean, not my dad. Because that would be stupid.”
Another peal of laughter, laughter that suddenly seemed obviously of the teenage variety. The girl with the hockey game Jack had asked Carl about. Jack’s goddaughter. Relief flooded Cassie. But only because it was good that Jack wasn’t secretly the poster boy for statutory rape. Not because it mattered to Cassie whether Jack was seeing someone else.
“Cassie,” said Jack, from his perch above them. “This is Britney Larsen, my CFO Carl’s daughter. You remember Carl?”
She could only nod mutely.
“Britney and I have a little tradition where we make a gingerbread house for the company party.”
“Oh, Cassie! You’re going to stay, right? Jack said you had to work, but please won’t you come tonight?”
“Um. I do have to work.” Cassie eyed Jack. “I just came because I forgot to…leave this.” She couldn’t make herself utter the words “your key” in front of Britney. She might as well paint a scarlet A on her forehead. She stepped onto the first step and opened her palm in Jack’s direction.