Love Beyond Words (City Lights: San Francisco Book 1) (24 page)

Natalie relaxed a bit without showing Julian that she had. “What’s the problem?” “I’m not sure if there is one,” he reminded her, ushering her into the office.

Natalie had never been in the office before; it was unofficially David’s area and he had made it more than clear that he preferred to keep it private, always closing the door behind him when she was over. The first thing she noticed was that it was decorated with the same sleek, austere sensibility as the rest of the apartment but looked much more lived-in.

Framed movie posters from old films such as “Double Indemnity” and “The Maltese Falcon” hung from the walls. The small sofa was draped with a pillow and afghan, looking like an unmade bed, the glass coffee table was strewn with old newspapers and mugs half-filled with old coffee. A small closet faced the entry door and inside were several shirts still in plastic from the dry cleaner’s and three pairs of dress shoes tossed haphazardly inside. Natalie glanced at Julian but if he was bothered by his employee treating the office like a guest room, he didn’t show it.

“Here,” Julian said, indicating the desk where a state-of-the art computer rested on polished cherry wood. The monitor was on and Natalie could see account statements from different banks open. From where she was standing, she couldn’t see the actual figures but it wasn’t hard to see strings of numbers broken by commas on each statement. She looked away.

“Julian…”

“Is it too soon?”

“No, I…I don’t know.” She looked at him. “You trust me this much?”

“I trust you to treat this as a job. As a professional.”

“I can do that,” she said but hesitated again. The entire room was rife with David Thompson’s energy, as if he were a ghost thickening the air with his presence.

“It’s all right,” Julian said. “They’re just numbers.”

Natalie sat down in the chair before the computer and focused her attention on the task at hand. Up close, the figures that were “just numbers” to Julian were staggeringly large to her; larger than she could have guessed. She kept her face neutral, however, and ignored the way her skin tingled unpleasantly when she had sat down in David’s chair.

“All right,” she said. “Where is the issue?”

“You once told me about a terrible company, EllisIntel, that you’re following for your accounting studies.”

“What about it?”

“Well, I sort of forgot about it, even after you warned me off it. Until this.”

He handed Natalie a business-looking letter, already open. In it was a check for $61,365.

“It’s a dividend check,” Natalie said. “A huge one.”

Julian rubbed the back of his neck. “David invested some of my money in EllisIntel for me—”

“
Some
? Honey, to get a check this big, the company not only has to be insanely profitable—which it is—but you have to have
a ton
of money invested. A lot more than ‘some.’” She met his eye. “Is that the problem?”

“No. Well, maybe. I thought David told me EllisIntel didn’t pay out dividends. I could be wrong on that, but I believe that’s what he said. It’s pretty clear they do.”

“They always have.”

Julian’s expression darkened. “I’ve been invested for about a year. The problem then, is where are the other checks?” He indicated the open accounts on the computer screen. “I’ve looked and I can’t see where they might have been deposited.”

“And you want me to look for them?”

“Yes.” He rubbed his jaw. “Looking at it like this…It doesn’t look good, does it?”

“I don’t know yet,” Natalie said. The part of her that twitched at the mere sight of David hoped it was what it looked like: plain old thievery. He’d get fired, maybe go to jail, and be out of their life. But the part of her that loved Julian—a much larger, deeper well of emotion—hoped he hadn’t been betrayed by someone he considered a friend.

“It might turn out to be nothing.” She smiled up at him. “I’ll see what I can find.”

“Thanks, love.” He kissed her cheek. “I’ll make you some tea and leave you to it.”

#

The mug of steaming chamomile hadn’t even begun to cool when Natalie sat back in the chair, her heart hammering in her chest and her fists clenched.

“Damn him,” she muttered at the computer screen, and called Julian in. It wasn’t easy to hurt him but he had to know. “I think he’s been stealing from you.”

Julian pressed his lips together. “Are you sure?”

Natalie showed him the evidence, neatly compiled. “I’ve found your investment portfolio from Ellis and it clearly reveals that you’ve been receiving quarterly dividend checks for the last year. Because of the size of your investment they’re all roughly as large as this one: about sixty-five thousand dollars. But there’s no sign of the others. That’s about $200,000 missing. I can’t find where that money been deposited…or if it has been at all. There’s no record.”

Julian stiffened. “What else?”

Natalie took a breath. “In order to get quarterly dividend checks that large you’d have to have a lot of money invested. A lot.”

“How much?”

“$2.2 million.”

He said nothing, but stood ram-rod straight, his arms crossed over his chest.

Natalie cleared her throat. “Your net worth, near as I can tell, is uh… close to thirty million. To have that much tied up in one company is…well, it’s pretty huge. Even if you wanted to sell the stock, you’d get a huge payout, but also an immediate tax liability. The bigger concern, of course, is the missing money.”

Julian uncrossed his arms; a thought occurred to him that blunted the sharp expression on his face. “Hold on. Maybe there’s some expense that I’m not aware of. Something he’s using that money to pay off.”

“I’ve looked.” She indicated the computer screen and a small filing cabinet next to the desk. “All of your expenses are accounted for. And even if it’s something I’ve missed, where are the invoices?”

“That’s easy enough to remedy. I’ll just ask David.”

“Ask me what?”

Natalie jumped out of the chair, her heart clanging madly.

David stood in the doorway, his arms laden with his briefcase and a small sack of groceries from a convenience store. His hair stood on end even more than usual and his eyes were wide as they went between Natalie and Julian.

“What are you doing in here?” he demanded after his venomous gaze landed on Natalie. “What are you…? This is my office. My workspace…” He dumped his belongings on the coffee table; Natalie heard a clank of glass-on-glass from something in his bag striking the table. He whirled on Julian. “What is going on here?”

“David, I wanted Natalie to look at some of my accounts,” he said. “I found some discrepancies and I thought I’d ask her about them, given that she’s an accountant. Or will be soon. That’s all.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me? I could have told you! I could have explained everything!”

“Then why don’t you?” Natalie said, surprised at her own boldness. David appeared as though his head would explode. It was almost comical, if it hadn’t been so frightening.

Julian’s voice was tight. “Natalie, will you wait in the living room while I speak privately with David?”

“Of course.” She swept past David without a word. The office door closed behind her and she breathed a sigh of relief. Natalie had the heart for honest confrontation but not the stomach. Julian would handle it—hopefully by firing David—and that would be the end of it. The end of him in their lives for good.

#

David watched the smug little bitch walk out the door, twitching her ass in her tight skirt, mocking him. She thought she was so smart. She thought she could get rid of him that easily. His lip curled in disgust.

Julian was staring at him with those astonishing blue eyes. But now they were like chips of ice instead of the sparkling sapphires David loved so much. He shivered under that penetrating stare.

“The dividend money goes to expenses,” he told him, echoing Julian’s words he’d been eavesdropping on moments before the outrage had been too much and he’d been forced to speak. “It goes to all those charity donations you insist I make for you. Since they’re not an official expense, I didn’t want to take them from your regular account. Much easier to just use the dividend money, which isn’t like regular earnings. It’s like a bonus. I thought it was pretty clever actually, but I guess not.”

“I thought you told me Ellis didn’t pay dividends.”

David’s mind raced. “No, it’s Tesla Motors that doesn’t pay dividends. Remember? You wanted me to invest in them because you liked their business philosophy? And I kind of tried to talk out you out it because I want to make sure your money is working its hardest for you. Remember?”

David could see Julian’s memory going back more than a year. It was all true, what he’d said about Tesla, and David watched with relief as that truth worked to cover the lie about EllisIntel.

“Okay,” Julian said. “But if the dividend money is going to charity, which ones? Where’s the documentation?”

David blinked. “Anonymous,” he said, a split second before his hesitation would have cost him everything. “You want to keep your donations anonymous so it’s not like I can write a check from an account with your name on it. I pull out cash and put it right in the hands of the charity directly. They give me the donation statements for your tax deductions and that’s it. I’ve got those around here somewhere. Or maybe at my office at home...”

Julian rubbed his chin, a good sign. He may be some sort of genius in the literary world, but the man had no head for numbers and he trusted David. He wouldn’t delve deep enough to parse that David’s rationale was utter bullshit, but Natalie would.
Damn her.

David sat down and went through the accounts on
his
computer. Natalie had meddled thoroughly. He closed all the files she’d stuck her pointy little nose in and vowed to change the passwords to something Julian didn’t know; something he should have done months ago. The most careless of all mistakes, left over from the days when he hadn’t been stealing from Julian. From when he had nothing to hide. He felt a hand on his shoulder and nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Thank you for clearing that up.”

David eased a sigh of relief. But Julian had betrayed him, had hurt him. And David hadn’t done a thing to deserve it.

“You should have asked me first,” he said. “After six years…I thought you would have asked me first.”

“Next time, I will.”

“There won’t be a next time,” David said. “I’ll make sure I keep you updated on everything more closely. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do before I do it…”

“No, no, that won’t be necessary. I’m not going to start policing you.”

David was inwardly satisfied. Outwardly, he shook his head morosely. “She’s turning you against me. Can’t you see it?”

“To what end? I’m the one who called her over.”

“Likely because she’s planted the seed in you that I’m not trustworthy. She’s never liked me. From Day One.” He pretended to straighten his desk and muttered just loud enough to hear, “She’s probably after your money.”

“That is patently untrue,” Julian said, “and I don’t appreciate the insinuation.”

“I’m sorry, but all this talk of you revealing yourself? That wasn’t happening until she came around. We…
You
were perfectly happy until her.”

“Perfectly happy?” Julian barked a harsh laugh. “
Tú me estás jodiendo!
I was miserable. I don’t want to get into this right now. I have a lot to think about. In the meantime, please don’t undo all the progress you two made over lunch the other day. I’d hate to think I set you back.”

David restrained a snort of disgust.
Don’t stress yourself, sweetheart. There was no ‘progress’ and there never will be.
But if an empty promise was what it would take to make Julian forget about this business with the dividends, so be it.

“I’ll do my best, Julian. For your sake.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it. And if you would just show me the donation statements from the charities, I’ll consider it a closed matter, all right?” He patted him on the shoulder a final time and started out. “Oh, and I want you to sell all my stock of EllisIntel. Immediately.”

David swallowed a laugh so it sounded like a gurgle. “Of course. I’ll get right on that.”

He stared aimlessly about his office until he found the brown paper bag on the table. He’d almost forgotten about the little flask he’d allowed himself to buy at the 7-11. It wasn’t a good idea to let it become a habit again. Julian’s employment, friendship and love—yes, love; he knew Julian loved him, loved him enough to buy his stupid lies—had set him straight. But the pressure of Cliff’s threats and the pain of Natalie’s very existence were like huge, jagged boulders, crushing him between them.

He twisted off the cap off the fifth of Jack and took a pull. It burned sweetly but a few more and he’d hardly notice. But not here. He had to get out of here. No doubt Julian was fucking that Natalie woman at that moment. He considered taking a peek as he had in the past when Samantha was the nuisance to be weathered. But as he approached the bedroom door, he heard their voices. They most definitely weren’t fucking; they were talking about him. Arguing. He heard Natalie say his name. She made it sound like a dirty word.