“Excuse me, I have to answer this,” Alice said. “Thurber Bookkeeping.”
“Oh, good, you’re not bound and gagged,” Natalie said. “How’s it going?”
“I’m making good progress on the issue.” Not really true. “Actually, I’m in a meeting. Maybe I could call you back later?”
“Now that I have proof of life, sure. Although if I don’t hear from you by four o’clock, I’m calling again. He could just be lulling you into a false sense of security before he pounces.”
“That might be the best outcome. I’ll talk with you after I’m done here.”
“You want to be pounced on?” Natalie asked in a teasing tone. “Now I’m really intrigued. Off to do a search for a picture of Derek Killion right now.” She disconnected.
That would get Alice into some hot water. All of her friends thought she dated the wrong kind of men, just because she chose safe, stable, and yes, slightly boring ones. But she didn’t trust the charming, handsome ones because growing up with her mother and her stepfather, she’d learned how destructive they could be. Of course, she hadn’t seen a lot of charm from Derek yet. He wouldn’t waste that on her. Nor should he. They were just trying to solve a business riddle together.
“You didn’t have to put off a client on my account,” Derek said, looking up from the papers he was examining with a frown of concern.
“You trekked all the way to New Jersey to help me.” She was disarmed by the fact that he didn’t expect her to focus entirely on his important presence. “That deserves my attention.”
He gave her a look that said he didn’t entirely believe her. “So far, I haven’t been very useful.”
“If nothing else, you’ve reassured me that I’m not losing my ability to handle numbers.”
“No worries about that. These records are flawless.”
“Except for—”
“I know, $2.59.” His rueful smile brought out a single dimple in his left cheek and softened the flint of his eyes. A sensation like warm honey flowing through her made Alice reach for a random stack of papers and start flicking through them. She wasn’t going to fall for a dimple. She knew better.
Halfway through his pile of hard copy, Derek pushed his chair away from the desk and stood up. When he laced his hands behind his neck to stretch, Alice tried very hard not to look, but she couldn’t resist watching the way his white cotton button-down shirt pulled across his shoulders and biceps.
He paced around the office once, the gray wool of his trousers outlining the muscles in his thighs with each stride. Raking his fingers through his perfect hair in a gesture of frustration, he came back to where she sat. “I don’t see any point to continuing this transaction-by-transaction analysis. Your methodology is impeccable. The records match up every time.”
His words lit a glow of pride in Alice, who ducked her head to hide an involuntary smile of gratification.
“We’re not going to find the problem here,” he continued.
Her smile died. “We’re not? Where will we find it?”
“It’s got to be a software problem,” he said, settling into his chair again. “I’ll get our tech expert, Leland Rockwell, to look at it.”
So she was being passed along to the next partner. She would never see Derek Killion again. The fizzing exhilaration she’d been fighting all morning got doused by a firehose of disappointment. “But this software is used by hundreds of small businesses. Don’t you think someone else would have found the problem by now? I checked all the user forums and there’s no mention of the issue.”
“You said that none of your clients cared about such small discrepancies, so other users might feel the same way. Also, you’re one bookkeeper handling multiple sites using the software. That might be unusual for what’s intended to be a single-business system. Not to mention that you are extraordinarily meticulous,” he said with a glinting smile that seemed to thin the air in the room so she had to inhale deeply to get enough oxygen.
“Thanks,” she managed to gasp.
“It was a statement of fact,” he said, but that smile indicated otherwise before it disappeared. “You mentioned that BalanceTrakR is relatively new. How far into the cycle did the first discrepancy appear?”
“Sparkle was the first to get up and running. I converted her boutique to the new software four months before anything went wrong. And there’s been nothing since. I’ve double-checked every month since.”
“How long did it take for the Work It Out issue to surface?”
Alice had to consult her calendar for the conversion date. “Five months.” She continued to check dates. “Nowak Plumbing was four months and the Mane Attraction was five.”
“So it clusters but isn’t exactly the same.” Derek stood up again, while Alice’s heart sank at this sign of his imminent departure. “Leland will run some structured test data through it to see what happens.”
“I don’t think I can let you use my clients’ copies of the software,” Alice said, rising as well.
“Not a problem. We can purchase our own copy, so everything is aboveboard.”
“But you’re not being paid to work on this.”
He flashed that arrogant smile she’d seen in his photos, with his even white teeth and upward-tilted chin. “I think we can afford it.”
But somehow the arrogance worked now, maybe because he was using it on her behalf.
He glanced at his watch. “Do you have time for a quick lunch?”
“Lunch? In Cofferwood?” she asked in shock. Why would he want to have lunch with her?
“It’s noon and I’m hungry. You know the area, so you can choose the restaurant.”
She continued to stare at him, while her mind spun in confused circles.
“Let me redeem myself,” he said, holding out his hands with fingers spread.
“What do you mean? There’s nothing to redeem. You’ve been great.” Alice waved at the papers on the table.
“I couldn’t solve your problem.” His eyes glinted with dry humor. “Maybe I can impress you with my conversation instead.”
So he was just making up for what he saw as his failure. She decided that she didn’t care about his reasons. She’d get to admire him from across a table for a little longer before he disappeared back to his corporate office in Manhattan. “I don’t need impressing but lunch sounds good.”
Satisfaction lit his face. “My driver is waiting outside.”
Of course he had a driver. But now she had to figure out where they should eat. He’d said “quick” so that was a factor. Was he a vegan or a carnivore? Did he like Italian or Chinese? As the questions rolled through her brain, she thought of the perfect place: one where he could get almost anything he might want.
“Let’s not make your driver wait any longer,” she said, grabbing her phone and heading for the door.
Chapter 3
When Alice told the driver to turn left into the parking lot of Nick’s Diner, with its neon motto flashing FAST AND FRESH, she glanced sideways to see Derek’s reaction as he ducked his head to look out the window.