Chapter Eleven
Charlotte
It didn’t make any sense.
Three days later, I wiped the crumbs and egg particles off a table in the diner, frowning in thought. I’d been turning over the question of Hunter’s supposed embezzlement in my mind since the night he’d made love to me, and I still wasn’t any closer to a solution than when I’d started.
All I was certain of was that it didn’t make any sense.
Oh, the story Hunter had told me wasn’t hard to believe, on the surface at least. He’d been well-known as a bad boy in town, and I didn’t doubt he’d been guilty of some bad behavior as far away as Richmond and Washington. Besides, the Kensingtons were perpetually in the news, and I was sure a young man as handsome and charismatic as Hunter had been a target of the paparazzi for most of his life. His peccadilloes were doubtless well-known, and so it made sense that his father had asked him to take the fall for his brother. No one would have been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
And it wasn’t hard to believe that Au could have set his brother up, either. Since Hunter had pleaded no contest, there hadn’t been a need for a jury trial, but the guilty party still would have needed to cover their tracks enough that the police wouldn’t get suspicious. If Au was as intelligent as everyone said, he wouldn’t have had trouble accomplishing that.
And yet—I replayed the other night in my mind, remembering how Au had looked at his brother. Yes, he’d been snarky, but I was still certain I had seen respect and the desire for approval in his brown eyes when he’d looked at Hunter. Sending a family member to prison for years seemed like a shockingly vicious and cold-hearted maneuver. Somehow I just didn’t believe Au was capable of it.
I was tempted to pursue the straightforward, sensible course and simply go to Au and ask about it. But I could understand why Hunter had asked me to keep it to myself. The more people who knew about Hunter’s innocence, the more likely the secret would be unearthed by a reporter. And besides, if Au was in fact guilty and thought Hunter was about to betray him and possibly send him to jail—
Well, I imagined that the Kensington money could probably conceal murder too.
If Au was in fact the embezzler, I couldn’t risk putting Hunter into his brother’s crosshairs. No, I needed to work this out on my own somehow.
But how?
You wanted to be a journalist, I told myself, beginning to sweep the diner’s tile floor. Now’s your chance to dig up the dirt on the Kensingtons and find out the truth.
An hour later, I drove home. I’d opened the restaurant and only worked a rare short day, so it wasn’t even lunchtime yet, and Diana was still at daycare. I retreated downstairs to the basement, pulled up Google, and did a search for Hunter Kensington.
There were thousands upon thousands of hits, and a good many of them revolved around the embezzlement charges. There had been no trial and scarcely any drama involving the case, yet the notoriety of the Kensingtons and Hunter’s good looks had attracted national attention.
I’d followed the story avidly when it had happened, and the articles gave me little new information. Hunter Kensington, at the age of twenty-seven, had been charged with embezzlement from the family’s charity, the Kensington Foundation, of which he had been a member of the advisory board. Through manipulation of computer records, he’d made off with over three hundred thousand dollars—an amount so large that it was classified as a felony and could have sent him to jail for as much as twenty years.
Those were the supposed facts of the case. Some articles engaged in speculation, pointing out that he lived a lavish lifestyle, as did all the Kensingtons, and had no independent income. The theory was that the money he received from the family trust was insufficient to cover his excessive expenses. Others hypothesized that perhaps his well-known battles with his father had driven him to embarrass the old man and create a PR disaster for Kensington Media by stealing money from the family foundation.
In a way, it all sounded very plausible, and a faint sense of doubt started to stir in my brain. Suppose Hunter was lying? Suppose the embezzler hadn’t been Au at all, and Hunter was just trying to worm his way into my good graces so he could gain access to his daughter? What if Hunter was, after all, a criminal?
I came across a photo of a younger Hunter and looked at him long and hard, remembering the night we’d screwed in that alley back when he had still been young and wild and reckless. Then I thought of the other night, the way he’d touched me so tenderly, the way he’d made sure that I found my pleasure too, the way he’d kissed me at the end. He’d brought me to a peak of ecstasy I’d never experienced before, and yet the part of our lovemaking I’d loved the most was the way he’d held me afterward, hanging onto me like he’d never let me go.
I don’t believe you did this, I thought. I just don’t believe it.
The picture with the article showed Hunter at the opera in New York. He was with his family—I spotted Au in the crowd behind him, and an older, stately gentleman I recognized as Trevor Kensington. On his arm was a woman who looked faintly familiar.
I expanded the photo on my screen and studied her intently. She was an older woman whose neckline was cut too daringly low for her age. Her nails were too long and too red, her makeup too brash, for a woman over forty. A small fortune in diamonds rested on her amply displayed breasts, and even more gems dangled from her ears. Her hair was piled high on her head, and at last I recalled where I’d seen her, in a photo in the library as I’d looked through Hunter’s family pictures.
A rich widow who moved in the local social circles. What was her name again? Rose, I remembered. Rose Ambrose.
I clicked on more links, hoping to find more photos, and there were plenty of them. The Kensingtons had been photographed together frequently, but in virtually every picture, they all looked sour, as if they sincerely wished to be spending the evening with someone else. And I saw Rose hanging off Trevor’s arm in photo after photo after photo.
I think she had the optimistic belief that eventually Dad would make an honest woman out of her. He didn’t, of course. And eventually he started cheating on her, the same way he’d cheated on my mother, Hunter had said.
Rose had certainly been clinging tightly to Trevor in virtually every photo. She looked like she’d imagined he was hers already. Suppose, I thought slowly, she’d been trying to talk the elder Kensington into marriage, either because she loved him or she wanted his fortune. Or both. And then she’d walked in on him having sex with a younger woman. What would she do?
What would any woman do?
She’d get revenge, that’s what she’d do.
But no, that didn’t make a lick of sense. How could she possibly have had the opportunity to get her lacquered red claws on Kensington Foundation funds? Sure, she’d obviously spent much of her time with Trevor, but she likely hadn’t had access to his laptop.
Means, motive, and opportunity. Those three things, I remembered from a journalism class in college, had to be established before someone was judged guilty of a crime. Rose avenging herself on Trevor Kensington for his tomcatting ways might be a very believable motive, but how about means and opportunity? Hunting for more information, I ran a Google search on her name.
“SOCIALITE ROSE AMBROSE ACCEPTS JOB AT KENSINGTON MEDIA,” read a headline from, of all things, the Pinecone Gazette.
It was dated five years ago, and I read it through carefully. The article was worded in a calculatedly flattering way, but reading between the lines, it appeared that Rose had fallen on hard times, even to the extent of losing her family mansion. Trevor Kensington had taken pity on her and given her a middle management job at Kensington Media.
And thus, access to the company’s computer system.
That’s opportunity, I thought, and motive too. Maybe she’d wanted to avenge herself on Trevor, but maybe she’d just needed money. But what about means? Did Rose Ambrose have the knowledge and ability to embezzle those sorts of funds?
I searched some more, and after a good deal of hunting, I found that she’d earned a degree in accounting information systems from Virginia Tech back in the eighties.
Rose Ambrose knew computers.
Yes, I thought, leaning back in my chair with a feeling of satisfaction. I’d bet my new car battery that it was Rose.
***
Hunter
I hadn’t seen Char in three days, and I wanted to see her so badly my chest ached.
Our night together had been spectacular. But it had only rekindled my desire to prove to her that I wasn’t a criminal or a slacker, but a man who could be a valuable, functioning member of society. I’d gone to Au the moment he’d come back from his business trip and reminded him that I needed a job. He’d sighed, as if he really didn’t have time to deal with me, and coolly informed me that the Pinecone Gazette could use a new manager in its administrative department.
The Pinecone Gazette was an extremely minor holding, so far as Kensington Media was concerned, but it was one that we were all unwilling to give up on since it had been the family’s very first step into the media business decades ago. Unlike the main part of Kensington Media, which was headquartered in a modern glass skyscraper in Washington, DC, the Gazette still operated out of Pinecone in its original headquarters, several shabby one-story buildings in a still shabbier office park.
My father’s former office in the Kensington Media building, now Au’s office, was enormous, with deep, soft carpeting, a huge mahogany desk, and two walls of windows overlooking DC. My office had a peeling linoleum floor, the sort of particleboard desk usually acquired at OfficeMax, and a single, small window that overlooked the parking lot. Also, it was so small that I suspected it had once been used as a broom closet.
Nevertheless, it was an actual office with an actual door, and it represented my first real step into the business world. In short, it was a job, and right now that was enough for me. I was grateful for the chance to be part of the family business, even if only in a very small way.
My first two days on the job had been busy, and I hadn’t had time to see Char, although we’d texted back and forth frequently. I’d called her the first night and told her about the new position, and she’d told me how proud she was of me.
But getting a job through nepotism wasn’t a lot to be proud of really. I wanted to be truly proud of my work, and that meant actually making a mark on the Gazette. To that end, I’d spent two days studying the articles we produced and considering how we could become more relevant in the modern era and how we could expand past one small town into a regional paper. Digging further, I was shocked to discover the Gazette didn’t even have a website. Getting one up and running, I decided, had to be my first priority.
I was looking over some website mockups that the IT department had sent me when the door to my office burst open and Char came racing in.
“I know who did it!”
I blinked at her.
Clad in jeans and a gray hoodie, she was breathing heavily, as if she’d run the whole way here. Probably she had, as it wasn’t far from her house. She leaned over, put her hands on my desk, and sucked in several long breaths.
“I know who the embezzler is,” she wheezed at last.
I leaned back in my chair and studied her for a long moment. “Close the door and lock it.”
I didn’t have an assistant, so the odds of us being overheard were small, but after the incident in the park, I wasn’t taking any chances. She did as I instructed then turned back to me.
“It was Rose,” she burst out.
I frowned. “Cruella?”
“Your father gave her a job at Kensington Media, you know. But what you might not know is that he gave her the job because she was on the verge of bankruptcy.”
“Yes, but—“
“My theory is that she didn’t cover her tracks too well, and when people started catching on, she made it appear that Au was to blame instead.”
“And then my father decided I should be arrested in Au’s stead?” The thought made my heart clench painfully. She must have seen my hurt, because she reached out and ran a comforting hand through my hair.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “We may never know what your father’s reasoning was since he isn’t around to ask. But Rose is still alive and kicking—and working for a charity, as it happens. The Children’s Lymphoma Foundation. Want to bet they’re missing some funds?”
The thought that I’d gone to prison for two and a half years, while the real thief might still be out there stealing—stealing from kids with cancer, no less—lit a fire under me. I picked up the phone, dialed a number in Kensington Media’s accounting department, and explained the situation to Dave Norton, an old acquaintance from college, asking him to look into it. Then I put down the phone and looked up at Char, feeling a strange mixture of sensations in my chest.
On the one hand, the thought that my father had thrown me to the wolves to protect Au hurt like hell. But if I was going to be totally honest with myself, I’d always known he’d favored Au, and maybe with some justification. God knew I’d gone out of my way to embarrass the family and piss on our good name all the way through my youth.
On the other hand, the idea that Au might be entirely innocent made hope swell in me. All this time, for three whole years, I’d carried around the awful weight of thinking my little brother was a thief. Instead, he might be perfectly innocent. He might have no knowledge at all of what our father had done, and sincerely believe me to be a criminal.
The thought made my heart lift until I thought I might float up to the ugly, water-stained ceiling.
I stood up, went around the desk, and wrapped my arms around Char. “Thank you,” I said into the copper depths of her hair.
“Don’t thank me yet. We might not be able to prove any of this.”
“Yeah, but you—“ I drew in a long breath, breathing her sweet fragrance into my lungs. “You believed in me, Char, even when you didn’t have any reason to. Thank you for that. Thank you for believing in me.”
“You’re welcome.” She pressed her nose into my woolen suit coat and chuckled. “You know, I’m not used to seeing you in a suit and tie. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think I miss the leather jacket and jeans.”
“I’m trying to look like a responsible corporate citizen.”
“I know.” She looked up at me with a seductive smile. “I just think I like the bad boy better.”
Her words hit me right in the solar plexus, driving the breath from my body. “Char. We really shouldn’t—“
“Just a few minutes,” she said persuasively, running her hand down my chest. “A quickie on your desk. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”
In fact, it sounded like the best possible thing in the world. I was suddenly, acutely conscious that it had been three days, three whole days, since we’d made love. Which abruptly struck me as really, really dumb. Why hadn’t I just sent the limo over for her again the last three nights?
Well, because she’d put in long days working at the diner, and I’d been studying the circulation numbers and back editions of the Pinecone Gazette, that’s why. But I still felt like I’d been stupid.
You need to get your priorities in order, Kensington.
That wasn’t my father’s voice in my head but my own. And it was true. I was tired of living a meaningless, empty life of luxury or imprisonment, so work was important and I intended to dedicate myself to it fully. But that didn’t mean neglecting the woman I—
Well, the woman who meant so much to me.
I caught her hand just before it made its way over my belt buckle. Fuck, she was eager. “Let me at least put the blind down,” I said hoarsely.
I did so, then grabbed her and pulled her against me.
She was warm and soft, and my cock—which was already very much on board with this whole quickie idea—responded to her nearness, growing even harder. I groaned, pressing my face into her hair.
“What did you like best?” I mumbled into her hair. “Of everything we did the other night, what was your favorite?”
Her voice was very small against my shoulder. “The kissing.”
I drew back and looked at her, blinking. “The…kissing?”
She nodded, a blush beginning to spread over her fair skin. “I like kissing you, Hunter.”
Huh. I’d never been the kissing sort really, but I did remember sharing long, tender kisses with her as our bodies had become one. It had happened the first time we’d made love too. I’d hardly ever kissed a woman during intercourse, but something about Char just compelled me to seek out her mouth with my own.
“All right, then. Kissing it is.” I lowered my mouth and kissed her very gently.
She clung to me, and we shared soft, chaste kisses for long, uncounted moments. Eventually I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I swiped my tongue over her lips, asking for entrance. She granted it, and I slipped my tongue into her mouth, exploring, caressing. Hesitantly, she touched the tip of her tongue to mine, and heat exploded through me. My knees went weak, and I sat down heavily on top of the desk.
She seemed to like that because she promptly crawled into my lap. The two of us awkwardly tried to stretch out together on my desk, but it wasn’t easy because it wasn’t exactly a huge surface. Eventually I gave up in disgust and just sat on the edge with her in my lap straddling me.
She seemed to like the idea of being on top. Her kisses grew more heated, her caresses bolder, and her hips moved against mine.
“Shit.” I groaned. “You need to stop, right now, or I’m going to come in my pants. And this is a nice suit.”
“Okay. I’ll stop.” She drew back, and I immediately regretted telling her to stop. Who cared about a suit anyway? I was a billionaire, for fuck’s sake. I could buy all the suits I wanted.
But I regretted it a little less when she rose to her feet and began taking her clothes off like a stripper.
Well, not like a stripper, not exactly. There were no dance moves, no overly sultry looks. But unlike the other night, when she’d hesitated to let me see her, she seemed every bit as confident in her body and her own appeal as any dancer at a gentlemen’s club. She just peeled her t-shirt off, slowly and deliberately, while I watched. Then she shimmied out of her jeans, leaving her clad in two bits of silk. Today they were pale pink, barely darker than her fair skin. I swallowed hard.
“Want me to take off the rest?” Her voice was throaty, sensual, and I nodded, unable to tear my gaze away from her.
“Yes. Please.”
She slowly stripped them off, leaving her bare, clad in nothing but a cloud of sunset hair and a smile. I stared at her, aware that my mouth was hanging open but somehow unable to close it.
“You are beautiful,” I said at last, and she chuckled.
“So are you. Let’s get that suit off.”
“No.” I came out of my lust-induced coma and started unbuckling my belt. “I can’t wait that long.”
Seconds later, I had my slacks unzipped, my boxers shoved out of the way, and a condom rolled on. I pulled her back onto my lap, and she wrapped a hand around my cock and guided it into her silken sheath while I threw back my head and groaned.
“Don’t forget the kissing,” she reminded me.
One of my hands was engaged in keeping her steady on my lap, but I buried the other one in her hair, pulled her to me, and captured her mouth with mine. She got the hang of moving on me easily enough and began riding me while I kissed her, long, drugging kisses that made me weak. I hoped they did the same for her.
It felt wonderful, and somewhere faintly in the back of my mind, I wondered why I’d never liked kissing during sex before. It was incredible. It felt so intimate.
At that point I realized I’d answered my own question. Sex with other women had never been intimate. It had been fun, yes. Pleasurable, sure. But not intimate.
But with Char, sex wasn’t just sex. It wasn’t even just lovemaking. It was something so profound and, yes, intimate that I didn’t even have a name for it.
Even a noon quickie on my desk was a glimpse of Heaven.
In this position, I could feel her responses more clearly. I felt her inner muscles begin to flutter, felt her trembling, and I knew she was about to come. She moved harder on me, and I couldn’t hold back any longer. I came in a long, hot surge, and her body clenched on me as she climaxed too, our cries muffled in each other’s mouths.
Afterward I held her for a long, long time. I knew I had to get back to work, but somehow I didn’t want to let go of her.
I never wanted to let go.