Page 2 of Forbidden Temptations

“Where’s your wife? I haven’t seen her. Is everything alright between you two?”

“Oh…” His eyes flickered towards the door leading out of the hall to the building’s main foyer, hoping against hope to see his wife sashaying towards them. “Alice just stepped out for a minute. She had to take a call but couldn’t hear herself over the music.”

His tongue darted out to moisten his dry lips. “She should be back any minute now.” And he hoped that was true.

The words sounded hollow to his ears, sounding foreign and unfamiliar and he suddenly had the feeling of being trapped as he realised just how close they were, her curvaceous body all but pinning him against the table.

“So-so, how’s your father? He looks like he’s…enjoying himself.”

He gestured with a nod over her shoulder and Scarlet twisted to a look back across the hall to where her father was telling a very animated story.

At the sight of a short and portly man with thinning red-grey hair Richard had seen around the office a few times but had never been introduced to, standing a few paces away, she made only a token effort to cover her laugh with a cough. With a face such a deep shade of red it was almost purple and watching the inside of his cup so intently, clearly determined to look anywhere but at his immediate superior, the tomfoolery could only have been at his expense.

“Well, you know Daddy, always happy so long as there is a drink in his glass and minions to torment.” It was meant as a joke and Richard tried to match her gleeful chuckle, but his heart just wasn’t in it and he could tell she saw through the façade.

Suddenly, her playfulness evaporated.

When she turned back, the stern mask that so often watched him like a hawk whenever he handed in his reports suddenly glared up at him with eyes as cold and hard as diamonds.

The shift was so abrupt it almost gave him vertigo. “He has his eye on you.”

“Me?” Swallowing the knot suddenly rising in his throat, he forced himself to hold her gaze, fighting the impulse to glance towards the Director. The urge was like burning fishing lures hooked into his eyes, tugging insistently, and he fully expected to spy the Managing Director shooting him a glare, the mirror image of his daughter’s.

But why? What the hell would walrus face want with him?

“The Prometheus Account.” Scarlet supplied by way of explanation, arching one perfectly plucked eyebrow. Full pink lips pulled tight into an almost indefinable line.

Prometheus was a London based construction and land developments company that had several branches throughout the continent and, according to their books, also had contracts in parts of Central America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Though it was not exactly an uncommon practice for big organisations to outsource their accounts, indeed Holmes & Raine had more than a dozen such contracts, there was no question that the Prometheus Account was a big deal. Rumour had it that Derik Holmes had superseded two department heads to ensure his daughter received the account.

With explicit instructions, it was to be given top priority. Whether that was true or not, she, in turn, had called Richard into her office and instructed him to delegate his workload around the rest of the team.

She wanted Prometheus to be his sole concern.

Everything else was to go on the back burner.

So he had.

She’d also told him to have it done ASAP. That had been three weeks ago, and the reports were still stashed on the flash drive he kept locked away in his desk drawer.

“Ahhh...” He swallowed, the knot in his stomach leaping sickeningly into his throat. He should have known. Hell, he should have given her the damn USB last week.

Withholding it had been stupid.

For all the weight laid on his shoulders, it hadn’t taken him long at all to sort and organise and check Prometheus’ accounts. It was such easy work; a trained chimp would have been up to the task.

Their records were meticulous and immaculate. The numbers perfect.

And, what with the pressure to finish the job, the importance of the contract to the company and the fact his performance review was upcoming; withholding the data was more trouble than his job’s worth. Withholding it had been very stupid, but Richard couldn’t help himself.

In his twelve years in accounting, he had never seen anything like it, and that irked him. He couldn’t put his finger on what, the numbers were just…too perfect.

Or too perfect to be genuine.

Of course, it wasn’t any concern of his. He wasn’t an analyst. It wasn’t his job to sort out conundrums. He just kept the client’s books. When he was done, he sent reports to Scarlet with notes about his concerns and recommendations, if any; but in this, he couldn’t help himself.

It almost felt like there was a challenge hidden amidst the sheer mass of paper and data, of piles of receipts, invoices and spreadsheets. Something secret only he could see.

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