The Billionaire Athlete’s Christmas Fling - Leslie North Page 0,43
tennis bracelet in question when he overheard the man discussing it with someone else in the lobby. According to the father, it was worth five thousand dollars. What kind of guy bought a six-year-old a five-thousand-dollar bracelet? The type of guy who’d go ballistic if it went missing, apparently.
“Sir, I—which ski instructor?” Jonas, who had looked tense before, now appeared ready to explode. “I can assure you, we—”
“Tana Birch. She must have known how much the bracelet was worth.” The man puffed up, looking torn between bragging about how much he’d spent on the jewelry and furious on his daughter’s behalf. “There’s no one else who would have taken it—it was on my daughter’s wrist this morning before her lesson, and now it’s not. She says she took one minor fall out on the slopes. Your instructor took it.”
“Absolutely not,” Chase cut in. “She wouldn’t do that.” Take a bracelet off a child who’d fallen during a ski lesson? No. It was an outrageous proposition. The last thing Tana would have been paying attention to was a bracelet, especially one hidden under snow clothes and mittens.
“Oh, she would.” The man dug something out of his pocket and slammed it down on Jonas’s desk. “I have proof. Right there. Go ahead. Read it.”
Chase and Jonas exchanged a look, and Jonas nodded at him. Chase picked up the paper like it was radioactive. The man had printed out a newspaper article. An article about Tana. Chase felt like he was falling through the floor to the center of the earth. An arrest?
“It names her as a person of interest,” the client spat. “For theft. I expected better from you. I really did. Hiring criminals to work at your resort with no concern for the safety of your guests? Unbelievable.”
The angry dad was right about one thing—the newspaper did mention Tana. It even went so far as to mention her married name and her maiden name. Why hadn’t she told him the ex hadn’t just left her, but that he’d dragged her into something illegal?
What if she hadn’t been dragged?
Think, Chase. Think.
Chase had his share of stalkers in the past and knew from working with private investigators that a “person of interest” was just someone connected in some way with the criminal. It usually just meant they’d interviewed the person, not that they’d committed a crime.
His brain was filled with a riot of conflicting thoughts. He trusted Tana—she would never steal, not from a client or anyone else. He had to keep his grandmother insulated from stresses like this. They needed to calm the client down—and they had to protect his family’s reputation.
But above all, he had to protect Tana. Wait, no. Not above all. He couldn’t throw his family under the bus for Tana. His only option was to stick with the truth. But he didn’t have the full truth.
“Sir, I assure you, we will look into this. But Tana is trustworthy,” Chase tried to reassure the man. How had he gotten the newspaper clipping? It was strange, wasn’t it? If the tennis bracelet had been stolen during a morning lesson, that didn’t leave a lot of time for this guy to do research in the hotel’s business center. Chase didn’t ask any of those questions. “Please, let us handle this.”
“I’ll be back in an hour. And if it’s not resolved, then I’m going to the police...and the press.” The man delivered this last threat with deadly confidence, and Chase’s heart sank. That was the last thing any of them needed.
“Sir—”
“Don’t bother.” The client headed for the door. “Do the right thing, and don’t screw it up. One hour.”
Chase turned slowly back to Jonas, expecting to find him staring after the man in utter disbelief. Instead, he found Jonas with the handset of his phone already to his ear, dialing a number.
“What are you doing?” Chase gripped the printout. “We need to talk about this.”
“I’m calling security.”
Chase reached over and pushed the button to disconnect the call.
Jonas glared at him.
“Don’t do that,” Chase said. They needed to sort this out before they jumped to conclusions.
“I’m doing it.” Jonas moved the handset out of Chase’s reach and dialed again.
“Will you at least tell me who you’re calling?” Outside, a group of kids ran by the window, cheering and screaming. “Jonas, tell me.”
“I’m calling our lawyer. I need him down here right now to deal with this.” Jonas murmured something into the phone, then hung up and dialed again. Another muffled conversation.
“That’s two phone