Her Unexpected Admirer Page 0,48
days, he’d fly into Seattle for the night, take her out to dinner and make her laugh. At the end of the night, he would kiss her senseless, but then rush off again to finish out whatever he was working on.
She suspected that she knew what was going on, but he couldn’t talk about it. At least not yet. Kate tried to respect that privacy and not question him or say anything that might prompt an answer he couldn’t give her.
And while Davis appeared to be vitalized by whatever was happening, she was becoming exhausted and discouraged. She’d worked long hours trying to figure out some of the details. She’d suspected something wasn’t right three days ago, but she hadn’t been able to find exactly what was wrong. Things just didn’t…well, they didn’t match up. They weren’t right. But they weren’t exactly wrong either.
Darn it, she wanted to see Davis. Every time she was around him, she felt a shot of confidence. There was just something about him that inspired her. Or maybe he just said things that were kind. There was the added benefit that he made her laugh. Goodness he was so wonderful.
Kate mentally slapped herself. This flirtation with Davis was not good. He was a busy man and she had trust issues. She couldn’t even admit to him what she really craved even though she went back to her hotel room and painted every single night. Her frustration over not discovering the embezzlement, or even a hint of wrongdoing, had galvanized her creativity. She’d almost finished one large painting and was pretty proud of the crazy emotions that had been worked out on that canvas. It contained all of her frustrations with the job, her confusion over Davis and her anger with her father whenever she called to update him on her investigations.
Taking another sip of lukewarm coffee, she forced herself to focus on the task. Something just wasn’t right, she thought again. She pulled up another report, looking at the columns with the same information. Sure enough, they didn’t add up. The numbers on the tax submission were different from the data sent to Davis and the information that had been reported to investors.
She blinked and looked again, doing the math over again. Sure enough, the numbers came up to the exact same number she’d originally calculated, which were different from what was on the books. Had she really found the discrepancy that would lead to the identity of the embezzler?
Kate sat back in the stiff chair, looking at the numbers again. It occurred to her that there might be more discrepancies. This one issue only added up to a little over one hundred thousand dollars but Davis thinks that millions have gone missing over the past year.
She dug down, going through the information again, checking and cross referencing the information against invoices and supplies. Three hours later, she found three more instances, all over half a million dollars. She glanced through other evidence, seeing the same signature on each of the invoices. All the same name, all the same signature. But when she came upon another invoice, the signature was different, but the same name.
Someone was not only embezzling the money, they were forging someone’s signature as well.
But what if she was wrong? What if she was missing something? She couldn’t accuse the wrong person. That would be horrible. Even if the person were able to prove that they weren’t the culprit, their reputation would forever be stained.
Picking up her cell phone, she dialed her father’s extension.
“What’s wrong now, Kate?” her father practically snarled into the phone. “And I certainly hope you’re finally finishing up with Mr. Alfieri. He’s an important client, but I would have completed this business by now and fixed the problem. I told him that you weren’t a competent enough accountant to deal with this kind of investigation but he ignored my warnings.”
Kate hesitated, feeling her father’s scorn through the phone lines. She hadn’t felt like this since…well, since her last conversation with her father. Being in Davis’ company had a significant impact on her. Or was it just the absence of her father’s harsh words?
Davis was much more encouraging. She suddenly realized that her father thrived on making other people feel bad about themselves. And since she worked with him and was closer to him than the others in the office, she took the brunt of his abuse. In essence, her father was a bully.
She lifted her chin, striving to