Page 12 of The Playboy Meets His Match
Her brows arched while her gaze filled with curiosity. “Where did your mind wander?” she asked softly.
His pulse jumped. “To you. What you’re like, your soft hair—”
“Your attention better wander back to Dorian Brady.”
“That’s not nearly as much fun.”
“It’s safer.”
“Scared, Merry?”
She gave him a sultry look that sent his temperature soaring. “Not at all. I’m not your type, so let’s get back to facts. What were we talking about, Rob Cole?”
“Don’t be in such a rush to change the subject, now that it’s on us.”
“There is no ‘us.’ Tell me about Rob.”
He was tempted to keep flirting with her, but good sense took over, and he knew she was right.
“Rob Cole’s wife, Rebecca,” Jason continued, trying to disengage himself from a spell that Merry seemed to weave effortlessly, “found the body of Eric Chambers, a man who worked at Wescott Oil and was murdered.”
“How awful!”
“Eric had been strangled. Eric was Vice President of Accounting at Wescott. Money was missing at the company. When some of it was found in a private account of Sebastian’s, he was arrested and accused of the murder. There was a very incriminating e-mail that Sebastian supposedly sent to Eric.”
“That sounds terrible,” Merry said. “At the trial Sebastian must have walked, or I wouldn’t have met him at the club.” She shook her head, causing the locks wound in Jason’s fingers to slip free and he wondered if it really bothered her that he was touching her hair. The last thing he ever intended to do was force even the slightest unwanted attention on a woman. Yet, when they had locked gazes, Merry had been as immobile as he. And in the kitchen when he had moved close, she had been breathless. Just minutes ago, she had flirted with him. Curious about his effect on her, he ran his finger across her knuckles while he watched her face.
When he saw the faint flicker in her eyes, his pulse jumped. Maybe his attention wasn’t unwanted after all.
He took her hand in his gently, careful not to touch her scraped skin. “You have small, delicate hands, Merry.”
She yanked her hand away and balled it into a fist in her lap. “What happened after Sebastian was arrested?”
“The case was dismissed. He had an alibi that he couldn’t talk about, but his attorney found a way to prove that he couldn’t have committed the murder, so someone was obviously trying to frame him. Someone planted evidence in Sebastian’s office that indicated he was responsible for the missing money.”
“That’s dreadful!”
“Dorian might stand to gain a lot if Sebastian were out of the way. It’s one thing for a man to break your sister’s heart. It’s another to cross the line and steal her money.”
“The money isn’t as important as deceiving her.”
“Maybe not, but it tells me more about Dorian’s character.”
“It doesn’t say one thing more about him than what I’m telling you that he did in deceiving Holly.”
“All anyone knows about Dorian’s past is what he’s told us,” he said. “Tell me about the money.”
“All right. Holly let Dorian talk her into opening a joint account. He said that when they married everything would be jointly shared anyway. He told her he didn’t believe in keeping things separate. What was his was hers and vice versa. So she did.”
As Merry talked, Jason watched her. If he had good sense, he wouldn’t flirt with her or touch her. This was definitely not a woman he wanted to date. Not in the next million years. And yet—what was it about her that drew him? A few casual touches shouldn’t hurt anything. She was going to ignore them anyway.
“By your standards I’m sure she didn’t have a lot,” Merry continued. “Holly worked hard and went without things and saved. She had several thousand dollars, and he just cleaned it all out and was gone.”
“That’s an entirely different matter than running out after telling a woman he loved her.”
“It’s different if you think money is more important than love!” she snapped indignantly and he knew he had just lowered himself in her sight again, but he was lower than a snake already so another notch wouldn’t matter.
“Do you have records of this joint account and of the withdrawal?”
