Ava
When I opened my eyes, it took me a moment to remember where I was. The wall I was facing didn’t look anything like my apartment back home.
I rolled onto my back and it all crashed down on me again like waves on the shore.
Caleb, accounting, Tampa. James.
I turned my head to the side. The covers were peeled back, the sheets rumpled, the bed empty. I stretched my hands over the bed where James had slept next to me. The sheets were cold.
It was happening again, wasn’t it?
I covered my face with both hands and tried to grab hold of what I was feeling. James had left me the first time, years ago on that beach, with the promise that he would be there for me, that our story wouldn’t end.
It had ended. Not right then, but that didn’t matter.
Like a fool, I had let him in again. And he’d left me again. This time, right away. And never without promising that we would have a happy ending. I should have taken that as a sign. I should have learned my lesson. Was I doomed to fall over the same stumbling block every time? I was a fool.
I sat up. I was naked. Last night had been real. James and I had slept together. Made love, on my part. Fucked, on his.
There was no other way to see it.
I should have told him no. When he’d taken me upstairs instead of ordering food the way any other man had done for me, I should have told him that I couldn’t trust him, that I wouldn’t go with him again. Instead, I had been unable to push him away. I had been the girl on that beach and he had been the boy that had stolen my heart and I’d let him in all over again.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I walked to the bathroom naked and turned on the shower. I stepped under the spray, feeling the water run through my hair, over my body, and down the drain. I washed everything off my body, his scent, his touch, his sex. Everything he had left behind washed away. I stood under the spray until the water ran cold. I shivered, refusing to step out into reality.
I would still have to see him again. I still had a job to do.
I would be easy to do it now, right? Now that I knew that he hadn’t changed, that it wasn’t me that was the problem, but him.
My phone rang in the bedroom. I turned off the water and got out of the shower. I wrapped a giant towel around me, twisting my hair up into another one. The call rolled over to voicemail.
I padded into the bedroom leaving wet footprints on the floor. I opened the closet where I’d unpacked my clothes. I had known I would stay a while. Now, I wished it weren’t true. I wished I could just up and leave.
My phone started ringing again. I turned. It vibrated on the nightstand, the screen flashing. I stepped closer to read the name on the Caller ID.
James.
I swallowed. Was I going to answer it? What could he have to say to me? I didn’t have anything to say to him.
I watched the phone, waiting for the call to roll over to voicemail again. I couldn’t stand it. He was on the other side of the line. Damn him.
I snatched the phone from the nightstand and answered it.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said. “Morning. I was wondering if I was going to get your voicemail again. I thought for a moment you didn’t want to talk to me.”
I closed my eyes.
“You left.” I didn’t sound as accusing as I wanted to. Instead, my voice was thin. I didn’t want to sound vulnerable. I wanted to sound angry or indifferent.
“I had to get back home to change. I didn’t want to wake you, I had to leave so early.”
I swallowed hard. “I would have preferred if you told me that you were going.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “At least I’m seeing you in a bit? You’re coming with Caleb, right?”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “I think we’re on for nine.”
“Right. I’ll see you then.”
“Okay,” I said. I was about ready to hang up. He was ripping me apart and he wasn’t even doing anything. I had gone from bliss to terror to hope, all in the span of an hour.
“Hey,” he said, “before you go… last night was great. You are great.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. It felt like something inside me cracked.
“I’ll see you later,” I said in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper. I hung up before he could say anything else. I didn’t know what to make of what I was feeling. I didn’t know what he felt. The latter drove me mad.
I was in the office at nine on the dot. I announced myself to Lauren who told me I could go through. I liked her. I felt like I could relate to her, a woman who made a living for herself and only worked in the world that seemed so big and wide.
Amanda came out of her office when I approached James’s door. She looked me up and down and it wasn’t friendly. I fought the urge to squirm.
“Morning,” I said.
“Where’s Caleb?” she asked.
I shook my head. “He was held up. He asked me to come and pave the way for him.”
Amanda snorted.
“Don’t think I don’t see through you,” she said. Her voice was low and my stomach clenched with nerves. Her eyes reminded me of a predator. She was intimidating. She couldn’t do anything to me but I didn’t want to be alone with her anywhere. “I don’t want to see you around the offices again,” she added.
I opened my mouth to say something but James opened his door.
“Caleb called ahead,” he said to me. “Come on in while we wait for him.”
Amanda narrowed her eyes at me. I nodded at her and walked into the office, my head held high. When James closed his door, I let out a breath.
“Does she know?” I asked softly.
James shook his head. “She’s suspicious but I don’t think so.”
“She said she can see through me.”
“She thinks we’re sleeping together.” James grinned. “I thought it would be okay to let her think that.”
I shook my head but I couldn’t help but smile.
“Why would she think that?” I asked.
James shrugged. I felt the warmth that had spread through me slip away again. Why would she think that, indeed? I didn’t want to know the answer to that. James was charming. He’d had a whole life before I appeared again.
We didn’t need to go into his history. Or mine.
James walked around his desk and sat down. I sat down opposite him.
“Did Caleb call you?” I asked.
James nodded his head and leaned back, interlinking his fingers behind his head. He looked at ease, comfortable like he wasn’t in the office. His suit was a little messy, nothing like how I’d seen him that first day I’d walked into his office.
He looked more like he used to when we’d spent so much time together as kids.
I flashed on an image of him – his blond hair bleached lighter through hours in the sun, his eyes a deep green that matched the view of the ocean behind him.
I turned my head toward the window, toward the cityscape. The view behind him was different now, wasn’t it? This was where he belonged, after all. Back when we were kids… that was just a fantasy. I had to remember that. I had to remember that it might still be that – just a fantasy.
“Let me get started,” I said. It would be easier to focus on work.
James nodded and opened a drawer. “I got this from the bank for you,” he said. “I don’t know where Amanda keeps all her books but I thought this might help.”
He handed me a stack of papers. Payments, expenses, everything.
“This is great,” I said. “Thank you.”
I took it from him and sat down. I had a lot of work to do. This was what I was good at. Numbers spoke to me. Emotions were complicated and difficult to untangle and understand. Numbers were straight forward and easy to read.
James opened his laptop and started working on it. We sat in silence, working together. It was the strangest thing we’d ever done together. Once upon a time, I had thought about what we might be when I finished school and went to him in Tampa, but I had never imagined that this was where we would end up.
The numbers on the papers in front of me weren’t nearly that interesting. I focused, though, because this was what I was here for. Whatever went on between me and James had to happen outside of business hours.
I made notes of payments that had been made by various clients. It didn’t take me long before I started seeing a trend.
“James,” I said. He looked up at me. His eyes were impossibly green. I kept my mind on work – I couldn’t afford to get distracted. “What were these payments for?”
I slid the papers across the desk to him. He glanced at the figures I’d circled.
“We take on four-year contracts with some of our clients,” he said. “It looks like payments for those.”
I frowned. “Were they logged as contract payments or as once-off payments?” I asked.
James shrugged. “Amanda would be able to tell you that. I don’t know.”
I leaned back in my chair and sighed. “It’s inconvenient that you had so little to do with your company’s finances.”
James narrowed his eyes at me. “What are you trying to say?”
“Just that it’s hard to get all the information when we can’t speak to her directly.”
“What are you thinking? I mean, why are you asking?” James asked.
I reached for my bag and took out a bottle of water. I unscrewed the top and took a sip.
“Well, if these were logged as once-off payments it’s a fraud issue. It makes it look like the company has a bigger turnaround than it really does and it affects the stocks. If she knows about this, what else is she doing?”
James shook his head. “I don’t think this is her doing. We have an accountant that does all the books for us. I don’t like the guy at all – I can’t get rid of him because they’re friends. He can do all that without her knowledge, right?”
Ava nodded slowly. “It’s possible that she knows, though, even if she’s not the one writing it down.”
“Why are you so sure it’s her?” James asked. His tone was snappy. He was getting angry.
“You tell me, James,” I said. “If she’s really that trustworthy, why did you ask Caleb to find someone that can look through everything behind her back?”
James shook his head and turned away from me. He swiveled in his chair, his back almost completely turned to me. It looked like it was something he did more often. He was acting like a child, blocking his ears to shut me out.
“You can’t keep doing this,” I said. “If you want me to look into this properly you must consider that this is a possibility, at least. I said this before.”
James spun his chair back to me. “I don’t understand why you’re so eager to suggest that my partner is trying to sink my company.”
“I don’t think her intention is to sink it. I don’t think she’s planning on getting caught.
“No,” James said, shaking his head. “I hear what you’re saying, but this doesn’t have to be this way. Is there a chance that she isn’t involved in this?”
“When I look at how she’s acting, how you and Caleb are trying to keep it secret…”
“Is there a chance?” he asked again.
I shrugged. “A slim one.”
He nodded, satisfied with his answer. “Right. Then we’ll assume she’s not doing this until we have concrete proof.”
I was getting angry.
“Why are you so sure that she’s not the problem? Why are you sticking up for her?”
“Have you heard of loyalty before?” he asked.
His hands gripped the arms of his chair so hard his knuckles turned white. He was furious. I was right up there with him.
“The reason behind my inquisition is none of your business,” he said. “You’re hired to figure it out and nothing more.”
I gasped. “Oh, really? What was last night, then?”
James snapped his mouth shut. Yeah, I thought so.