Her Man Friday(62)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

This time he was the one to shrug, but there wasn’t an ounce of unconcern in his action. He gestured toward a pile of diskettes on the desk that Lily realized didn’t belong to her. "I have every bit of evidence I need right there," he announced with absolute conviction. "All I have to do is take that to Kimball’s board of directors tomorrow, and they’ll have all the ammunition they need to fuel an investigation that will ultimately put you behind bars. I hope you look good in prison orange, sweetheart. ‘Cause you’re gonna be wearing it for a loooong time."

Lily shook her head incredulously, but all she could manage by way of a response was to repeat, more forcefully this time, "You think I stole all that money? From Schuyler?"

"No, I know you stole it," Leo stated without a bit of doubt. "And I have all the evidence I need to prove it right here."

She expelled a soft sound of distress. "Leo, you have no idea what you hold evidence of there. Just how far did you get while you were violating my personal files? Not far enough, apparently. If you’d just—"

"Lily, I have an extremely good idea of what I have evidence of," he interrupted. "Ferreting out this kind of criminal activity is what I do for a living. And hell, you didn’t even bother to try and hide your tracks, that’s how cocky you’ve been during this whole thing. You might as well have bookmarked it all into your favorite places on the Internet."

She expelled another soft sound of irritation, and tried again to explain something to someone who had clearly already made up his mind to convict her. "It was easy to find, because I wasn’t trying to hide my activities," she told him. "There was never any reason to."

"Because you were so confident that you’d never be caught," he said. "Man, your ego must be right up there with your IQ."

She shook her head again, trying to ignore the sting of pain that knifed through her at his jab. "No, I never tried to hide what I was doing because—"

"Because," he interrupted her again, "you know your boss is in love with you, and that he would never suspect you, should the theft, by some wild miracle, be discovered by some troubleshooter who was really good at his job."

"No. You’ve got it all wrong. Schuyler isn’t in love with me. He’s never been in love with me, any more than I’ve ever been in love with him. Leo, listen to me. It was because—"

"Because, dammit, you knew I trusted you. And that I… I cared about you, and you knew you could use that to your advantage."

Lily snapped her mouth shut, wondering why she’d even bothered to try and explain. Leo had made up his mind about her, and obviously thought she was more than capable of stealing money from her boss, her friend. He was also clearly of the opinion that she was the kind of woman who would exploit a man’s affections for her without caring at all how he felt.

And here she’d been thinking he might be falling in love with her the way she had fallen in love with him.

Honestly. She should have known something like this would happen. She should have realized from the start that, eventually, it would all blow up in her face. How had she not seen this coming? And she thought she was so smart.

"You honestly think I’ve been embezzling money from Schuyler all these years and keeping it for myself," she said again, surprised that she managed to keep the bitter edge out of her voice.

"Yes, that’s what I think. It’s what I know," Leo concurred readily.

Too readily, Lily thought. He was going to accept the fact, utterly and resoundingly, that what he had uncovered in her computer was a network of embezzled funds that spanned nearly a decade. Embezzled funds that she’d kept for herself, because she was a greedy little pig who wanted more. He was going to accept without question that she was a thief and a cheat and a liar. That she wasn’t to be trusted. That she cared only about herself.

In spite of the fact that he’d already drawn his conclusions, she said softly, "Think about this for a minute, Leo. Think about what you’ve found. You’re obviously still in the middle of things there, and believe it or not, I am sorry I interrupted you before you were able to finish."

"Yeah, I bet you are."

"Think about it," she instructed him again. "If I’d embezzled fifty million dollars for myself this year alone, do you honestly think I’d still be here working for Schuyler? Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to be down in South America doing my ‘Girl from Ipanema’ impression? There are infinitely more appealing places to live than Ashling, in spite of its beauty and luxury. And there are infinitely more appealing people that I’d like to surround myself with. Read my lips, Leo. If I were a greedy, superficial bitch who had fifty million dollars to call my own, regardless of how I’d come by it, I wouldn’t be here."

Leo did read her lips. He couldn’t help himself. He kept thinking about the erotic words those lips had whispered the night before, recalled the way those lips had felt skimming over every body part he possessed, over and over again. In spite of everything he’d learned about her that afternoon, he still wanted Lily Rigby. He still cared about Lily Rigby. God help him, he still loved Lily Rigby. He just wished like hell she were a different Lily Rigby. One who hadn’t, oh, say… stolen fifty million bucks from her employer this year alone and lied her head off about God only knew what else.

"No, I haven’t completed the investigation I’d like to complete," he agreed. "But I have more than enough here now to take to Kimball’s board of directors and get things rolling. I’ve got nearly three years’ worth of records that show where and how you’ve stolen the money—and you’re damned good when it comes to stealing, Lily, I’ll give you that—along with records of the banks where you put the money, once you had it in your greedy little hands.

"Of course," he continued, feeling his gut tighten when she made no effort to deny anything he said, "the money didn’t stay in those accounts for long, and I haven’t figured out yet what you did with it once it left. But a district attorney shouldn’t have any problem at all getting the proper subpoenas to search the bank records for more concrete, more specific evidence.

"And now that I know what I’m doing," he continued relentlessly, "I’ll be able to figure out everything I need to know, everything I’ve been hired to find out. I backed up quite a few of your files on my diskettes, and when I get home tonight, I’ll get to the bottom of the rest of this. I promise you that."

"Someone hired you?" she asked, her voice lacking all life, all hope. Wearily, she added, "Will you at least tell me who?"