Page 50 of His to Seduce
Chapter 16
Camden
I used to love my job. I worked for a small accounting firm, and the majority of my job entailed being a third-party administrator to small businesses. I handled their taxes and payroll, and even though a life of numbers and constant calculations and spreadsheets would bore most people to death, I found solace in knowing that when it came to numbers, every problem had a solution. There was the added benefit of knowing I was doing something to help small local businesses succeed. In Latham Hills, we didn’t have a lot of chain department stores and restaurants. The majority of the businesses were mom-and-pop shops, like Declan’s Fireside Grill, where owners struggled to provide a great service at a decent price while keeping their businesses in the black.
It was my job to see that it happened.
Unfortunately, last spring, the president of our company had promoted the largest sleazeball I’d ever met in my entire life, and that was saying a lot considering I’d known my fair share of assholes. Gordon Branzen was the president’s nephew. Nepotism at its finest. He couldn’t count even with the aid of a decent calculator, used a half bottle of gel in his hair daily, and smelled like he lived on a pig farm. His suits didn’t fit correctly and he slouched when he walked. When he talked to me, I had to pull away from the stench of his breath. I hated him.
He’d made my life a living hell for the last three months, when accounts he was supposed to be managing continued to have missing monies from the businesses’ general ledgers and profit-and-loss statements.
I had spent the entire day answering questions from clients who weren’t technically mine and becoming more and more frustrated, considering he was messing everything up for them and wasn’t being held accountable for it.
And because I was his manager, his disastrous attempts were falling on my shoulders.
It didn’t help that my own concentration had turned to shit. I’d slept fitfully last night, waking up every couple of hours, and twice I’d caught myself reaching for David next to me. Somehow, spending two nights with the man in Jamaica had programmed me to roll toward the heat of his strong body. I’d groaned, reminded myself that he’d been the one lying to me, and forced myself to go back to sleep. When I woke up, my eyes were still dry and red, my head pounded from a stress headache, and then I had to come to work and deal with this crap all day.
If I were more daring, braver, I’d quit. I’d been conservative with my income, saving religiously, and even in a bad economy, I still had enough in savings where I could live comfortably for months without having to cut back on anything.
When Gordon strolled up to my desk right as I returned from a lunch where I’d barely been able to stomach eating anything, a file in hand, his crooked smile showing his yellowed teeth, I quickly debated the merits of that thought.
“What’s this?” I asked when he held out the file.
“I need you to fix this for me.”
I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth to swallow an unprofessional retort. “What is it?”
His brown eyes narrowed. “A file. A client.” He waved it at me, and then tossed it to my desk. “Just fix it.”
Rage bubbled in my chest. “Gordon, I’m your manager. Perhaps you should treat me with a bit more respect?”
He leered at me, grinning in a way that made me cringe. “I’ll treat you good, Cammie—you’ll see.”
No one called me Cammie. I hated it. Hated him. Hated this job I used to love. Hated everything about the last forty-eight hours. I was losing control, anger beginning to sizzle and spark. “And I could have you reported for sexual harassment with that comment, Gordon. I suggest you be careful.”
He laughed and stepped back. “Just fix it. And good luck with that. Like Jameson is going to do anything to me. You report me and you’ll be the one out on your ass.”
He walked away, his slouch a bit less pronounced. I fought the urge to fling the file on the floor and walk out.
He was right, though. Jameson Peters was blind when it came to the wasted space of his nephew in our company. And for whatever reason, he protected Gordon, who was Peters’s only nephew.
But if he thought he’d be training Gordon to take over the business one day, as the only heir Peters had, then there wouldn’t be a company to work for much longer.
After Gordon turned the corner and disappeared, I picked up the file he’d carelessly tossed onto my desk and went to work.
It was just like the situation with all the other clients he handled. Missing money. Incorrectly input figures. Nothing made sense.
By the time the workday ended and I got in my car to drive home, I was exhausted and stressed, and all I wanted to do was curl up on my couch with a beer and a blanket and a good book and forget about my life for one more day.
That turned out to be impossible when I reached my driveway and saw the black Escalade sitting at my curb. My pulse ratcheted as I pulled into my garage and exited my dependable Malibu.
As soon as I walked to the back, David was rounding the back bumper of his SUV.
Figured. I should have known months ago when I’d seen him in his fancy Escalade leaving Fireside that he wasn’t just some bartender.
Despite my mom’s warnings the night before, despite her encouragement, I still crossed my arms over my chest and scowled. “What are you doing here?”
He walked up the driveway, hands in his pockets, as nonchalant and chilled as always. He was missing the light shining in his sexy blue eyes, although I took no joy in noticing it. “I came to talk.”
