Ava
I didn’t know what to think. Until now, I had been sure that Amanda was involved. James was the one that needed someone to look at the book. I assumed that he wouldn’t be the one to do anything like this. It hadn’t made sense to me that he would be the one to be involved with fraud like this.
I didn’t know him though. Even as kids I hadn’t known him, not like this. Not in a way that mattered. His soul had spoken to mind and I had believed in the kind of love where that was the only thing mattered.
Everything was different now. It was important who he was morally, as well.
When he’d told me he loved me, I had felt like I had waited my whole life to hear that. I had thought it wouldn’t be possible, that I would never hear those words over his lips again.
But now? The company books revealed thing that shocked me. I didn’t know what to make of it.
I texted Caleb when I left James’s office and left right away to speak to him in his lunch hour. He had been away for the weekend on a quick business trip. I was relieved this had only come out after he’d returned.
When I walked into his building he met me in the lobby. I followed him to his office.
It was the kind of office you expected to see when you went to a financial advisor. It was a little more elaborate than mine – bigger and more luxurious, with a plush carpet stretching wall to wall and full-length shelves. I sat down opposite Caleb and retrieved the pages I’d found. I handed it to them and watched his face as he read over it.
He looked surprised, shocked, and then reserved. When he finally looked up at me again, his face was filled with concern.
“This can’t be right,” he said. “Where did you get this?”
“James said he requested pages from Burgess.”
Caleb nodded slowly, looking at the papers again. “The documents I found also came from Burgess. I’m almost a hundred percent sure he’s the one facilitating this, but he can’t be the only one. I was sure Amanda would be involved, too, but James?” He shook his head in disbelief.
“He said he doesn’t know about the paper, that he never signed it.”
“And you believe him?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s my job to look at facts.”
My head told me that it was true – black on white said a lot. My heart didn’t want to believe it, though. This was James, the man that had haunted me for more than a decade.
“Do you think she could have forged his signature?”
I shrugged. “It’s possible.”
Caleb sat in silence, thinking.
“He’s already touchy about Amanda possibly being involved,” he finally said. “It can either be because he’s too trusting, or he’s sticking up for her because they’re in cahoots and it’s all true.”
“I had considered the same thing. I can’t stay to get to the very bottom of this, though. My flight leaves at the end of the week.”
Caleb nodded. “I know. You’re doing exactly what I asked. You’re helping me find out what’s going on. Do what you can with the time you have left and I’ll take it from there.”
I nodded and got up. Caleb got up, too, and walked me back to the lobby.
“Thank you, for this,” Caleb said. “It’s good to know someone with a clear mind is on it.”
I smiled and said my goodbyes before walking out into the sunshine. Was my mind as clear as Caleb thought? I knew that I could separate my work life from my personal life, even in a case like this, but my feelings about James being involved were a lot stronger than I expected they would be.
I was disappointed. If he had done something like this it felt like a betrayal on a personal level. Somehow, I had gone from business to personal without realizing I’d crossed the line.
Having sex with the client should have been a giant red flag, but it was James and my judgment was always clouded with him. Something about the way he looked at me, touched me, the way he made me feel, made me forget myself.
My phone rang.
“Can you meet me for lunch?” James asked.
“I just finished with Caleb,” I said. I had some time.
“I’ll meet you at First Watch.”
I wasn’t very far from the café. I waited at a table for fifteen minutes before James joined me.
“What did Caleb say?” he asked when he sat down.
I shook my head. “Not much. He thanked me for bringing it to his attention.”
James nodded. He looked nervous.
“You know I would never do something like that,” he said.
“I want to go through the pages more thoroughly – the ones I had only glanced at – and see if I can find anything else.”
James narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re not responding to what I just said. I would never do something like that.”
I looked down at the table. We had only just sat down and already things were going in the wrong direction.
“All I’m saying is that it would be good if we see what else we can find. Right now, it’s a puzzle and we don’t have all the pieces.”
James frowned. “Why are you being evasive?” he asked.
“James, I’m not here to say what is and what isn’t. I was brought in to do the books and that’s what I’m doing. What the client ends up deciding, whatever course of action you end up taking, has nothing to do with me.”
James shook his head and looked around the café, irritated.
“That’s not what this is about and you know it,” he said.
“What is it about, then?”
“This is about what you think of me. Do you think I did it?”
I blinked at him. He cared a lot about what I thought of him. Why did he care so much? Part of me had believed that his affection for me, back in the day and now, was only a line to get what he wanted. It had been in the back of my mind all the time and now that it was a conscious thought, I realized it was true.
“I don’t know,” I finally said.
James looked surprised. “You mean, it’s a maybe?”
“Don’t do this,” I said. “Like I said, we don’t have all the facts and I can’t make a snap judgment…”
“But you’ve made one about me already.”
I shook my head and folded my arms over my chest. “I don’t care how much you’re going to push this, I can’t tell you yes or no. This isn’t about you, it’s about your company.”
“That’s what you don’t seem to get,” James said. He was angry now. “It is about me. It’s about us. You think that it’s possible, that I could have done something like that.”
“The facts are there, aren’t they?” I was getting upset now. He was pushing me into a corner, asking me to confess things I wasn’t sure I was feeling.
“So, this is how it’s going to be? You’re just going to assume that I’m capable of doing something like that?”
“I don’t know, James. I said I don’t know. You’re the one that’s pushing for an accusation. I don’t know you well enough to know what you’re capable of.”
He snapped his mouth shut. It was true – we didn’t know each other at all and he couldn’t argue with that.
“I thought we had something,” he said.
“We do have something. But that has nothing to do with the company and the papers, James. You know that. I can’t tell you that I think everything is fine and it’s probably a fake because we’re sleeping together. It’s still my job to go through everything and tell it as it is.”
“It’s not how it is!” James slammed his hand down on the table. The other diners all looked at us.
“You can get upset about it as much as you like,” I said calmly. “I can’t change that I found the evidence of something that’s wrong. I’m sorry you’re taking it so badly. I can’t do anything about that but having a temper fit in public is the last thing you want to be doing.”
“Don’t lecture me.”
I shook my head. “I’m not lecturing you. I’m telling you how things are. You’re so used to getting everything you want you to think you can force the words you want to hear out of my mouth, too. I’m not going to give them to you.”
“You weren’t going to give me anything, were you? This is all just a game to you.”
I couldn’t believe he just played that card.
“I’m not the one that walked away, James,” I said. “You have your reasons but if anyone was playing games, it was you.”
He was furious. His eyes were evergreen, he breathed hard through his nose and his fists were clenched on the table like he wanted to punch something.
I got up.
“I’m not going to sit here and let you dictate what’s supposed to happen.”
“So, you’re just leaving?”
“You’re not paying me to stay,” I said and I left him behind. I marched solemnly to the hotel. I was angry. I was irritated. I couldn’t do this. This was never my game to play.
The further I walked the more my anger subsided and it gave way to the other emotions that had been held back. I was upset. I felt betrayed. I felt attacked by James who had decided that I had condemned him. I wanted to cry. I didn’t want to do any of this anymore. What had felt like a dream had turned into a nightmare, a repetition of the past. The events were different but the emotions were the same.
I had never had James and it was just an illusion that I had some claim to his affection at all. I had known at the back of my mind that this was just good fun and nothing more. And still, I’d let myself believe that something of our past had remained, that he felt something.
I was such an idiot.
My phone rang. It wasn’t James – I wouldn’t have answered if it was. Caleb’s name flashed on my screen. I swallowed hard and forced a smile so I would sound happy when I answered.
“Yeah?”
“I was wondering if you had some time later this afternoon. I want to go through those papers and anything else you can find, together. I think it’s good to have two heads thinking about this, rather than one. I’m going to call James as well.”
“Please don’t,” I said before thinking about it. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Why?”
I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “James and I got stuck about it and I don’t think a meeting with him will go down well today.” My voice cracked at the end of the sentence.
“Are you okay?” Caleb asked.
How was I supposed to answer that? “I just want to get this job over and done with, with as little difficulty as possible.”
“Okay. Why don’t you come over to my place a bit later and we’ll go through everything? If you tell me how he’s been acting it might help us. I’ll make sure we have food as well.”
“That sounds good,” I said. “A change of scenery might be just the thing.”
When we hung up I felt a little better. At least I could go over the facts without the emotional drama behind it. Caleb had always had his head screwed on right.
I needed a little bit of sense