Their waitress appeared beside the table, her pen poised over her order pad. “Can I get you anything else?”
“Just the check, please,” Derek said.
Disappointment jabbed at Alice. She’d thought Derek was enjoying their conversation, yet he wasn’t going to linger over a cup of coffee. She should have known that he would need to be skilled socially as well as professionally to succeed at high levels in business.
The woman scribbled on her pad, tore off the slip, and slid it across the table to him, saying, “Thanks, hon. Pay up front.”
Alice reached for the bill. “The least I can do is pay for your lunch since you’re doing me a favor.”
He laid his large hand on top of the paper. “I have an expense account.”
His hand was just inches away from hers. She wanted to put her hand over it, to feel the texture and warmth of his skin. She whisked her hand off the table and into her lap to grip the crumpled napkin again.
Thank goodness he was handing off her problem to his partner. Otherwise she’d be worried about her state of mind.
After seeing Alice to her door, Derek settled into the back seat of the car. He’d shaken hands with her in an entirely businesslike way but her touch seemed to linger on his palm. He glanced down at his hand where it lay on the leather seat beside him before lifting it to see if any hint of her fragrance had transferred itself to his skin. But only a faint aroma of grease from the french fries remained.
What the hell was the scent she wore? A flower of some sort, he thought. Something sweet, woodsy, and elusive, which seemed at odds with her no-nonsense personality. Something that made him speculate about the color of her panties and what her glossy hair would feel like twined around his fingers.
He snapped his fingers. Violets. That’s what her perfume was.
Maybe it was a good thing he was handing her off to Leland. He needed to focus all his attention on Argon International. Alice would be a distraction.
The thought reminded him of his last argument with Courtney. Courtney, who was hell-bent on making partner in her big law firm but who couldn’t understand Derek’s equal commitment to his own work. She had the misconception that being the boss meant he could take time off whenever she needed his presence at her corporate social events or to taste potential wedding cakes. It had taken a broken engagement, but he had learned his lesson about the pitfalls of mixing work with romance. And he wasn’t going to forget it.
On the other hand, he wanted to prove to Alice that he wasn’t the arrogant ass he’d sounded like in their phone conversation or when he’d first arrived at her home. Even though his brusqueness was caused by the time pressure he was feeling, that didn’t excuse his treatment of the first request for assistance that the SBI had received.
The whole reason he’d proposed the Small Business Initiative was to remind them all of how thin the line was between success and failure . . . as his father never missed a chance to point out. He and his partners had been lucky to have supporters in high places who’d given them wise advice—and once even an infusion of cash—to pull them back from disaster when they teetered on the brink. They needed to remember the days when they didn’t travel on private jets, or have a tailor come to their offices to measure them for suits, or eat at the finest restaurants in New York, London, and Paris while barely noticing the food. He smiled as he remembered his hamburger at Nick’s. That he had noticed.
He’d nearly failed at his own project. Thank God Alice had the honesty to call him on it.
He respected that almost as much as he respected her talent for numbers. Working with her—trading ideas about the problem, watching the way her mind operated—had been an unexpected pleasure.
In fact, everything about her had been unexpected, and he considered himself hard to surprise. To discover that she was young, smart, and—he had to admit it—attractive in a sexy-librarian kind of way had knocked him off-balance. At least he had the sense to recalibrate his ideas about her swiftly.
And then his ideas had gone beyond the professional as his attention wandered to the glimpse of cleavage visible when she bent over the desk to gather up papers. He’d wanted to brush his nose against the tantalizing upper curves of her breasts to see if her perfume lingered there.
He definitely needed to let Leland handle this. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Rockwell, I’ve got a special project for you.”
“Because I don’t already have four special projects going.” Leland’s Georgia drawl was pronounced.
Derek smiled. Leland’s drawl hadn’t fooled him in years. His partner could handle twelve special projects without blinking. “Makes you feel needed.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in New Jersey, fixing that bookkeeper’s problem?”
“I am in New Jersey, but I couldn’t fix the problem. I couldn’t even find the problem. That’s where you come in. It’s got to be a software glitch.”
“That’s what all you financial geniuses claim when you screw up. That it’s the programmer’s fault,” Leland said, but Derek could hear the interest in his voice. His partner loved a computer challenge.
“You wouldn’t sound so dubious if you’d met Alice Thurber. She’s got a mind for numbers and is conscientious as hell. That’s the only reason she caught the issue. Most bookkeepers would have just written it off as within the bounds of acceptable human error.”
“How many times has the error occurred?”
“Once for each of four clients. That’s the other reason she noticed it. She handles multiple small businesses who use the same software. The developer did a dog and pony show with free booze at a local hotel to entice people to buy it.”
“Now you’re beginning to interest me. What’s the software?”
“BalanceTrakR.” He spelled it out and heard the click of keyboard keys from Leland’s end of the conversation.
“Nice website. Looks legit, but we know any idiot can make a good-looking website these days.” More clicking. “Buying a copy of it now for my personal use. No point in raising red flags with the KRG name.”
“I’ll send you my notes on the problem. How soon can you take a look at it?” Derek pushed.
“Because you’ve got me curious, I’ll do it now. After all, it’s the weekend so I’ve just been lounging around the pool, drinking margaritas.”
“Two hundred dollars says you’re at the office.” Everyone at KRG was highly motivated, but Leland worked more hours than anyone else in the company.
A slight growl came through the phone. “Your two hundred dollars are safe. And no, I’m not going to a charity ball or a hockey game with a client tonight.”
Derek was pretty sure that his partner hadn’t lounged around a pool in years. Leland swam, all right, but only in the lap pool on the top floor of their building. He said the repetitiveness freed his mind to unravel problems. So even that wasn’t time off for him.
In fact, Derek and Tully worried about their partner’s obsessive dedication to work and had tried to lure him away from his computer screens. The first few times they dragged him out to a bar or a shooting range or a car show, Leland was polite and participated because that’s what his southern upbringing required. Soon, though, he dropped the pretense of civility and told them where to go in no uncertain terms before returning to the work that absorbed him. Leland had put KRG on the map with his devotion to technological wizardry, but it wasn’t healthy for him on a personal level.