Jimmy

“Jimmy Sheldon.”

“Morning, Jimmy,” Ashley said.

“Good morning, beautiful. To what do I owe this phone call? Are you in your office already?”

“No, that’s what I was calling about. I’m not really feeling well.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I need to book a doctor’s appointment. My doctor has walk-in hours this morning. I’ve just had this nagging migraine, and nothing I have around here is helping.”

“Then stay there. I’ll come get you and take you to the doctor.”

“It’s fine. Really. I’m going to take a cab. I wanted to call and let you know I probably won’t be in until after lunch.”

“Take the day. Or know you have the option. You can always remote into work with the laptop we gave you if you need to,” I said.

“I always forget I have that thing.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me to come take you? It’s been a slow morning.”

“I promise I’m okay. I think I need something stronger to get it to go away. Or maybe I should stop drinking so much coffee.”

“I’d hate to see the caffeine withdrawals.”

“I blame you. The stuff at your place is much more potent than what I usually drink,” she said.

“You seem to be in high spirits for someone with a migraine.”

“Sunglasses and a dark room do wonders,” she said.

“Well, get yourself to a doctor and call me to let me know what’s going on. Okay? And don’t come in here with a migraine. Stay home if you need to.”

“Thanks, Jimmy.”

I hung up the phone and sat back in my chair. I wanted to believe Ashley, but there had been moments recently when she had openly admitted to lying to me. I understood the reasons, and she had come clean about all of it, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling she wasn’t actually sick. Was she still worried about this money business? I mean, it had us all worried. But she did her job beautifully. She didn’t have to worry about it any longer. This wasn’t an issue she needed to deal with anymore.

Was she lying to me again? Or was she really sick?

I sat back in my chair and turned to look out over the Miami ocean. The options I had to tackle this issue were rolling around in my head. I agreed with Markus about keeping this as contained as possible, but not involving anyone seemed reckless. Twenty million dollars was easily enough money to take my company to the next level, and the fact that someone had toggled that kind of money underneath my nose made me burn with anger. Ross wanted me to branch out and involve as many people as possible, but that didn’t make sense to me either. More people knowing what was going on meant more of a chance it could get leaked to the media with a storm of bad press ensuing.

And that wasn’t going to be good, either.

I didn’t know what to do. I knew I could trust Markus’s opinion, even if our needs for a situation didn’t line up. I wanted to talk to him about security teams. Private detectives. I wanted to know what my best bet was going forward that didn’t involve me going to the police.

They already knew Nina had tried to burn down my damn files room. They didn’t need to know anymore.

I picked up the phone and called Markus. I knew he would help me out in a situation like this. He always had, no matter what type of advice I was asking him about. But his line kept ringing. I gave it a few minutes and tried him again, but it still shot me to voice mail. I decided to place a call to his secretary back in Alberta to see if she could get in touch with him, but all she could tell me was that he was in a few emergency meetings with his company.

Which I understood, given the reason he’d made his trip to Miami in the first place.

I drew in a deep breath before I reached over to my intercom. I pressed the button that led straight into Ross’s office and asked him to come in when he had a moment. He was the only other person I trusted to volley these types of ideas against. I needed someone who didn’t mind playing devil’s advocate so I could make sure I was making the best decision for my company.

“You rang?” Ross asked.

“Can you come in and shut the door?”

“Shit. What the hell else has happened?” he asked as he shut the door.

“I know you and Markus have differing opinions on this, but I want to get your feedback on hiring a private detective,” I said.

“You know I think you should involve the police,” he said.

“And Markus thinks I should do close to nothing, yes.”

“Is it a good move to have Markus know something this personal about our company?”

“I trust Markus with my life. It was the efforts he put in here for the first three or four years of Big Steps’ life that put us where we are today. Up until he moved his own headquarters to Canada, he was a massive player with us. Without the risks he coached us into taking, we’d have none of this. So yes, I trust him with something like this.”

“You don’t have to get all defensive, but finances are finances, and even married couples sink with them sometimes. I don’t want us making any hasty moves,” he said.

“Like involving the police?” I asked.

“That’s not a hasty move. Someone’s stealing from us, Jimmy.”

“And reallocating assets and all sorts of stuff. I’ve spent days digesting Ashley’s notes and findings.”

“Should we get her in here for this?” he asked.

“She called out sick today. Migraine.”

“Again? Hasn’t she been doing that a lot lately?”

“You have a very accusatory tone to that question. You wanna try that again?”

“I’m not accusing her of anything. All I’m saying is, even for a corporate employee—”

“You were the one who sanctioned a laptop for her to use so she could remote in. What did you expect her to do? Work here Monday through Friday and remote in on the weekends?” I asked.

“Jimmy. Back off. You’re already coming at this with wound up emotions. You’ll get nowhere this way.”

I drew in a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves. But honestly? They were fried. I raked my hands down my face and turned my chair to Ross. He was sitting in the chair across from my desk, his leg over his knee and his hands in his lap. Had it not been for his terrible habit of biting his lower lip when he got nervous, I would’ve said he looked too calm for a situation like the one we were in.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you ready for me to outline the reality to you?” Ross asked.

“Yes. Go.”

“If the investors find out about this, we could lose everything. With the media scandal we just had, they would surely bail, no matter what types of figures Ashley could throw at them. She was our only saving grace this time around, but we have no safety net.”

“Yet you want to involve the police?” I asked.

“Because if we don’t and the investors find out, they’re going to automatically assume it’s us taking the money.”

“Why? What would make them jump to that conclusion?”

“You’re not the only one who’s been digesting those balance sheets. The first three years of the company have those same weird reallocations and debits, but no initials are involved. The only logical assumption is that we were doing something. Remember, we didn’t get username or password attachments to anything until our fourth or fifth year. The investors will draw conclusions of their own before the police can even lift a finger—because they will get involved at that point underneath investor pressure—and we’re done. Screwed. Boiled in hot water because we didn’t want to involve them before the investors figured it out.”

“They haven’t figured it out up until this point,” I said. “There isn’t enough of a natural flag to do anything.”

“We went from no one knowing to four people knowing and panicking. It’s only a matter of time,” he said.

“Well, none of that is going to happen. I’m not losing my company over something like this. But in that scenario, Markus’s idea of keeping it low-key doesn’t work, either, which brings me back to the middle ground. What do you think about a private detective? Possibly a team?”

“Before we even get there, I want to ask something. And it’s redundant, so bear with me, because it needs to be revisited. Are we sure this isn’t Nina?”

“Why does this need to be revisited?” I asked.

“Because I got a call from our lawyer early this morning. Nina’s been bailed out of jail until her trial.”

“She what?” I asked. “This isn’t on the news, is it?”

Because that would be a damn good reason for Ashley to call in sick.

“No, it’s not. None of this is. I’ve kept on our PR department to make sure this stays out of the media.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, good.”

Maybe Ashley was sick after all.

“And routing back to your redundant question, Ashley said she chased that lead down. In fact, she told me it was the first one she tried, given all that’s happened. There was nothing that linked back to her at all.”

“I could try to give it a look-see, just for a second opinion,” Ross said.

“If you want to, that’s fine,” I said.

“And as far as your private detective or whatever goes, I think it’s a good idea. We need to involve someone who can help us figure out what the hell’s going on. I have no idea why in the world Markus would advise you to do nothing.”

“He didn’t say ‘do nothing.’ He said, ‘keep it as in-house as possible.’ As in, don’t let the media catch wind of it.”

“Then he’ll be on your side when we hire PIs who can sign an NDA and keep their mouths shut,” he said.

“You look into Nina one last time, and I’ll start research private investigators who could possibly help us out. I want to have one hired no later than tomorrow afternoon.”

“Sounds good, but you better hire one quickly. Even as we speak, these problems are probably still occurring. The newest balance sheet comes out in a few days, and I’m sure it’ll piss us off.”

“Did you get that packet from IT on the IP addresses we asked for?”

“I’m expecting it before lunch today,” he said.

“Send me a copy when you get it.”

“Will do.”

The day was long, and the IP document from our tech department didn’t yield any other answers. From the garbled jargon they used, it seemed like someone was rerouting their IP addresses all over the damn country. They said it would take some time to dig into what was going on, and even then, our IT department didn’t have anyone employed to look into this like we needed.

Which only fueled my desire to hire a professional who could keep quiet.

I locked everything away and turned my mind to Ashley. She had sent me a text message just after lunch with a picture of the prescription the doctor had written for her, a very high dose of migraine medication as well as something to help with nausea.

And it sparked a small fear in my chest.

I left work, hopped into my car, and made my driver stop at the flower shop as well as the deli. I picked up a beautiful bouquet of softly-scented flowers along with a quart of brothy vegetable soup. Even though I had seen the prescriptions, I still felt like Ashley was hiding something from me. That nausea medication kept scratching at my mind, and her sudden onset of such a severe migraine had me worried.

Was it possible Ashley was pregnant?

I told my driver to park in the garage and wait for me. I had a feeling Ashley wouldn’t want me to stay, and I didn’t want to put her in a position where she felt the need to offer. I took the elevator up to her floor and knocked on her door, listening as she shuffled behind it.

When she opened the door, she seemed relatively all right.

“I take it the medication’s working?” I asked.

“Are those for me?” she asked.

“Of course, they are. The soup as well,” I said.

“Jimmy, you’re so kind. Come on. I’ll get them in some water.”

I watched her walk and noted how stable she was on her feet. Minus the bags underneath her eyes and the light slump in her shoulders, she didn’t seem to be sick. That could’ve been the medication hard at work, but it didn’t do anything to abate the fears in my mind.

“I really wish you would’ve let me come with you this afternoon,” I said.

“No offense, but your car is loud. It practically roars down the road,” Ashley said.

“Is a cab quieter?”

“Immensely. It doesn’t have a souped-up engine,” she said. “No pun intended.”

Her eyes dropped to the soup I was carrying before a grin crawled across her cheeks.

“Well, whatever the doctor has you on, it seems to be working,” I said.

“It is. The medicine for the nausea was in case it was coming from a different source. But when I took the migraine medication, the nausea disappeared about an hour after the migraine did.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” I said.

“Are you staying for soup?”

“No. This all for you. I didn’t want to crowd you if you were still unwell once I arrived. My driver’s down in the garage.”

“Are you upset I chose not to come into work?” she asked.

“I was the one who gave you the day. I’m glad you took it. It seems to have done you some good.”

Her smile lit up her cheeks, and I couldn’t help the way my eyes danced down her body. She took the flowers and the soup from me and quickly arranged the flowers in a vase she had filled. My eyes kept dropping to her stomach. Was it possible she could still be pregnant? Had the doctor run any kind of test like that? Was that something I should ask her?

My eyes whipped up to hers as she turned to me, a mug of soup in her hands.

“I’ve only seen people on television drink soup that way,” I said.

“I eat cereal and milk from a cup too. Makes drinking the milk after easier,” Ashley said.

“In another lifetime, you were probably an inventor.”

“Or a connoisseur of pizza. I’ve eaten it so much in my lifetime that it only makes sense.”

The two of us shared a little laugh before I walked over to her. I wrapped my arm around her, pulled her close, and kissed the top of her head. She was warm, welcoming, and inviting, instinctively curling into me like she always did. I closed my eyes and envisioned what she would be like pregnant with her stomach round with child and her breasts full. Heat shoot up my spine as I let her go, my eyes raking along the curves that would grow if she was pregnant, the thighs that would thicken and the hips that would widen.

Holy hell, Ashley would be beautiful pregnant.

“I hope you enjoy the soup,” I said as I cleared my throat.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” she asked.

“If I do stay, I won’t be able to contain myself.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Because even when you’re sick, you’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

Her cheeks flushed, and I felt my legs go numb. The things this woman did to me with a simple smile were unimaginable. I bent down and pressed a kiss to her cheek, chancing one last intimate encounter before I took my leave.

But I couldn't stop that question from running through my mind.

Was Ashley pregnant? And if she was, why wasn’t she telling me?