Page 63 of The Cinderella Secret
Angrily, she began to yank off her clothes. The shower was a multi-headed walk-in affair, which, she decided, left him plenty of room to share. His back was to her as she entered, exposing his ass and well-muscled back. She could see the scrapes from the fight in Jersey. How had she not known it was Aiden?
“You’re not being fair,” she said, snatching the soap out of his hand.
He turned around, confusion evident on his face. He made one gesture as if to cover himself, then stopped, folding his arms across his chest.
“In what way?”
“I did not steal that evidence. I was approached by a janitor from DevEntier. He said he had something I might want and showed me one page. It had my father’s name on it. I paid him for the rest. I expected a handful of papers that he’d fished out of the garbage. I did not know that he would steal an entire box from file storage.”
“But once you had it, you had to assume it was stolen!” he protested, flapping his hands in exasperation. He never flapped in court. Ella felt like she was getting somewhere. He was clearly very flustered. Maybe that was it. It had been a rather hard evening. Maybe he just needed a moment to wrap his head around everything.
“I had to assume nothing,” she said calmly.
“So, you decided to just break-in and get the rest?”
That accusation annoyed her. She scrubbed angrily at her hair and tried to ignore the way water was dripping off various parts of him. She watched his gaze drift down her body and then yank back up to her face.
“No,” she said sweetly. “You pointed out the Berdahl-Copeland report was a fake. Since I know I didn’t fake it, someone in DevEntier must have. We’ve been arguing over whether or not DevEntier even employed my father. I’ve always thought that the missing paperwork was suspicious. That’s why I pushed so hard for the bank records!”
“Wrap it up here, counselor.” Aiden’s eyes narrowed, and he took a step toward her. God, he was chiseled. “You’re not exactly helping your case.”
“Depends on which case I’m trying to win,” she said.
“What?” He looked confused again and Ella realized that if she wanted to win any of her cases with him, she was going to have walk him through it with her. He wasn’t usually this slow. She was putting it down to the bump on the head.
“Assume for a moment that DevEntier destroyed any records of my father’s employment.”
Aiden was silent, which made her think he’d already contemplated the thought.
“So why, if they did that, would someone go out of their way to prove not only his employment, but with the Berdahl-Copeland reports, that he’d been reviewed by the DOD? What do they gain? And was it only one year? If it was one year, then someone at DevEntier set me up with that one box. Give me the box, and I’d submit the evidence. Suddenly the evidence is spotted as a forgery and I’m discredited. I had to know if you were setting me up!”
“If I was setting you up, then why would I come to you in the first place?”
“Well, as you recently said to me, ‘I didn’t think it was you. I thought maybe it was someone on your team.’ As it turns out, it was not a set up. Those Berdahl-Copelands show up in multiple years.”
He hesitated. “I know. I looked before you came in. There was a DOD audit five years ago. That’s the last date on all of those boxes. I think whoever did it, must have done it for the audit.”
She frowned. “Dad wasn’t a citizen. He was going through the process, but he was in country on a marriage visa. Mom used to say that was the only reason they stayed married. I thought she was just being a bitch.”
“Even fifteen years after the fact, the DOD would care about a Chinese national working on one of their projects. Fake Berdahl-Copelands would make it look like he’d been vetted.”
“OK,” said Ella, “but who could do that?”
Aiden ran his hand through his hair, leaving it in damp shark fins that made him look sexy as hell.
“I don’t know,” he said.
She put the soap down and rinsed out her hair. The chunks of whatever seemed to be gone. She probably ought to switch to real shampoo and conditioner, but she had to focus on the more important facts—she was naked in a shower with Aiden. And, unfortunately, she had now gotten him to focus on the case. She needed to put his focus back where it was supposed to be: on her.
“I wouldn’t ever use yourhobbyagainst you,” she said, mad that she even had to be saying it.
“When did you know?” he demanded, still sounding gruff.
“Yesterday. At the bank.”
“Oh,” he said. His shoulders relaxed and he took a step closer to her. “I didn’t want to leave you, but your uncle…” He trailed off, his eyes intent on hers and she breathed a sigh of relief. He had felt it. Even if he hadn’t known who she was, he’d felt the moment the same way she had. “I kept telling myself it was the right thing to do. We’re on opposite sides. We’re supposed to hate each other.”
“I know we’re on opposite sides about DevEntier,” she said. “But you helped me when I needed it most. How could I use that against you? How could Ieverhate you?”
