Page 38 of On the Fly
“I agree. His waste was always one of my biggest struggles with him. He was a hard-headed old man. He never listened, and it drove a wedge between all of us and him.” Ander dropped the report he’d been reading. The thump of the heavy load hitting the table didn’t go unnoticed.
“I can see now why you were so willing to spend time with my family. They seem the lesser of two evils.” Over the last several days, she’d slowly watched Ander shift back into the hard, unyielding man she’d met on the plane. His smiles were fewer and farther between. The load of responsibility to save this airline weighed like boulders on his shoulders. But her snarky words got the desired result, when a slow-forming but thorough laugh escaped his lips and he looked at her, a gleam in his eyes. “Honestly, Ander, I feel like something’s missing. It’s hard to know what. It’s lost in here with no way to manipulate the information into telling a different story. And not being able to talk to the only other person involved in the accounting process isn’t helping either.”
“Agreed,” Ander said, dropping down into the office chair closest to him.
Her hands waved across the table, growing wide to encompass all the stacks of paper. “We’re going to have to dig in until we find it.”
“Agreed again.” This time he lifted his feet to the edge of the table and crossed his ankles to match his arms crossed at his chest.
“It’s too big of a job for two people,” she said and looked at her watch, not surprised to see it was past six in the evening. They’d put in ten to twelve hour days since Monday. And while the time together had seemed to fly by, they weren’t making rapid headway on deciphering the documents either. Usually the company had more money than they admitted to for tax purposes, using creative means to avoid giving the government their hard-earned income. But in this case, the documents she’d reviewed showed less money than had been reported as income. Why would they do that?
“I can’t risk letting the state of my father’s affairs leak. After meeting with the executive team last week, it seems no one has a clue of what’s really going on. Hell, every person in every department performs half-baked with little to no direction. I can’t figure out how the departments work so well together, except the whole damn company is too casual and friendly with one another. No checks and balances, just trusting that something gets done, but no follow-up on the matter.”
Emma waved her hand in the air. It was an old argument at this point. “You’re getting off topic. Focus here first. Your financials are dire, or so it seems. Ignore the leak worry for now. The only thing any creditor is going to be privy to are your tax return documents and possibly the balance sheets attached for those. They show a much better picture than the internal documents we’re looking over.” She tossed the weirdly over-inflated official documents to the center of the table. “The problem is that if you can’t find the capital, you can’t sustain the business. If we believe the internal documents, the airline’s over-extended. I don’t see how you’re meeting payroll, but I also don’t understand where the income is going or why we have such different information in every place.” She looked over at Ander and just shook her head. “I know this sounds dramatic, but you may seriously have an embezzlement issue or some sort of extortion pay-offs… I sound crazy. I know.”
His body tensed, but she saw no other outward reaction to her very concerning words. His steely gaze stayed trained on her. “It was my first thought and I checked things out but decided it doesn’t fit. The company’s chaos is right here in this office. My father ran this company. His executive team is made up of figure heads not thieves.”
Emma nodded, not in agreement necessarily, because she wasn’t sure the staff wouldn’t take advantage of the kind Mr. Jorgensen, but she also saw no proof of manipulating the books to hide money. She stared down at the paperwork as her stomach rumbled. The protest turned louder. She hadn’t eaten anything since a Danish that morning. “I think I’m hungry.”
Ander rose to his feet in the fluid, graceful way he had. “You immerse yourself in your work. They brought a chilled cold cuts tray around two.” He went for a covered tray on a table just inside the office door.
“Then let’s make a deal. You feed me—we can start with that and move to the pizza you’re going to order—and I’ll start with page one and go line by line. We need to find your money. It has to be somewhere.” He put the icy tray on top of a stack and lifted the lid. Her stomach grumbled its approval. She lifted a pickle slice and popped it in her mouth, moaning in delight as the tartness coated her tongue.
“That’s a deal.” Ander reached for her neck and pulled her forward, kissing her lips. Over the week, he’d taken to using that method to seal their deals, which meant he’d done that move several times over the last few days. Goose bumps sprang up on her arms and she kept her eyes closed a second or two longer than the kiss, savoring. When she opened them, Ander was heading to his desk, seemingly as unaffected as she was affected. Her gaze zeroed in on his backside, bringing a grin to her lips. He wore tailored clothing, outlining the perfect curve of his butt. If she were smart, she’d state the obvious and admit this was too big a job for her or really any lone person. If she’d been on a work assignment, she’d have had multiple accountants working alongside her. Instead of bringing up that concern, she reached for another pickle. She might be rusty at finding hidden money, but she wasn’t completely useless either. She was here as long as Ander wanted her to be.
~~~
Damn it, he needed to get his head in the game. For the twentieth time in the last five minutes, he’d had to force his thoughts, and his gaze, off Emma. She sat a few feet away with her hands in her lap, lost in the pages of yet another spreadsheet. Where he couldn’t stop thinking about her, she appeared to have no trouble concentrating on her task. She weirdly seemed to love this stuff. Ander couldn’t see why. Reviewing a company’s financial history ranked as his least favorite part of the work he did with his consulting firm. He liked putting a plan into action.
Having this beautiful, sexy woman next to him, smelling like sweet exotic flowers on a sunny afternoon made focusing that much harder.
“What did you find?” Emma lifted her gaze to his, the little crease between her brow—the one that appeared when she lost herself in thought—stayed intact, showing how seriously she took this job.
“Nothing.” He kept his gaze on her for so long that she narrowed her eyes. The crease disappeared. Good, now he had her whole attention. “I just realized I’ve oddly enjoyed this week.”
Now confusion splayed across her pretty face. Her expressive reactions sent a zing of lust down his spine, and Ander pushed back in his seat, getting to his feet. He reached out a hand to her. “Take a break with me. I need some Emma time.”
Of course, Emma shook her head. She didn’t understand how much he enjoyed that response. It allowed him to talk her into their sexy time together. He loved winning the battle, being inside her body, moving gently with her, making love with her. The orgasms they had at the end were made sweeter by how hard he worked to get her there.
“Not here. Are you ready to go?” She sat back in her seat, creating as much distance between them as she could—like that would stop him.
He came to her, lifting her hand in his, holding on tight as she tried to pull away. His foot pushed at the wheels on the bottom of the chair. Her startled yelp shifted to a gasp when he pulled her up and into his chest.
“Ander, no, not here.”
His grin brightened with her upturned face staring up at him while her hand rested against his chest. “You wear those tight clothes and short skirts… It does a man in.”
Emma frowned, and regretfully, he lost her attention as it shifted to her skirt. “It’s just above the knee. That’s not short.”
“But your sexy calf is on display.” He leaned her back to stretch his hand down to said calf and draw his fingers up the silky skin, not stopping until he had her skirt pushed up and his palm covering the back of her thigh. She moaned, then slapped a hand against his chest as a silly laugh burst out.
“Your clothes are tighter than mine,” she shot back, her hand caressing the front of his dress shirt over his taut nipple.
“See”—he nodded—“makes you want to have your way with me, doesn’t it?” He moved his hand to cup the back of her neck, his thumb tilting her head to where that pretty gaze returned to where it belonged—on him. “I’ve been eyeing my desk. I think you should have your way with me right there. Give me something to have once you leave me and go back to Georgia.”
“Oh really? Me have my way with you?”
“Perfect idea. You’re so smart.” He landed a quick kiss on her lips and walked her backward toward the desk. “Did you take my suggestion and forgo the panties today?”
