"Not that kind of proposition."
"Oh." Was that a ping of disappointment? She moved aside to let him in. Her apartment seemed to have shrunk. He filled it with his imposing golden presence. Stripping off his coat, he sat, long legs and sharp masculine angles incongruent against her turquoise art deco sofa.
"You're wearing jeans," she said, demonstrating a talent for stating the obvious as she sat on the armchair perpendicular to the sofa. It was just that he looked so different when he wasn't wearing one of his bazillionaire suits. The fitted dark jeans and gray Henley, together with the Sorel boots he'd kicked off in her entryway, made him look more like an L.L. Bean model than Canada's thirty-fifth richest person.
"Yes. Unlike you, I'm very pro-pant." He shot her a look. "Though I do make exceptions under certain circumstances."
She popped up. "Do you want a scotch? Scotch would be good, right?" A scotch approximately the size of Lake Ontario, perhaps?
"Thanks."
She could feel him checking out the place as she prepared the drinks in the small kitchen tucked into one corner of the room. Her home, she reminded herself. Her affordable, calm, hard-won home. Nothing to be ashamed of.
"Cute place. You have an eye for décor."
A flush of pride followed, but she beat it back with self-deprecation. "It's a bit girlie, though, no?" Drinks in hand, she headed back to the sitting area.
"You are a girl." He grinned and accepted the outstretched glass. "Last time I checked."
…
Damn. Listen to him. It sounded like he was flirting. It was just too easy with her. Already blushing, she was way too teasable. Their fingers brushed as she handed him his drink, and he had a flash in his mind's eye of her scrambling to put her pants on when he buzzed. But no, if this was going to work, they were done fooling around.
"It's just Johnnie Walker, and Red Label at that. Sorry, no fifty-year-old Glenfarclas here."
"A perfectly reliable brand." He clinked his glass against hers. Time to start thinking with his brain. "So, math, huh?"
Again, she sat on the armchair, the farthest from him she could put herself in the little apartment. "Pardon me?"
"You're majoring in math."
"I thought you had a proposition."
"I do, but I want to hear about the whole math thing first."
She shrugged. "Well, yeah, math. I've only got a semester's worth of credits left until I graduate, but at the rate I'm going, that will take me a year and a half."
"You must do all right at Edward's." Not that it was any of his business, but hey, why let that stop him? He'd meant it when he said her apartment was cute, but it was tiny. It couldn't cost that much.
She shifted and looked away. "Yeah, I have … other expenses."
"Cocaine habit?" he teased.
She looked up sharply, her eyes wounded for a second before she recovered. Shit. Did she have a cocaine habit? Well, that was the point of this little interrogation, wasn't it? Find out if she was the man for the job. In a manner of speaking.
"I support my mother. She's very … expensive."
"Where does she live?"
"She moves around a lot." Her tone had grown clipped. Clearly mom was not a topic she wanted to discuss. Fair enough. He could relate.
"So, anyway, what I was really wondering is, why math? You're a natural? It's always been easy? Child prodigy? What?"
She tilted her head, considering. "I don't know. No, it hasn't always been easy. But at a certain point, after calculus, it kind of starts to get easier."
He couldn't contain the disbelieving guffaw.
"It does!" she insisted. "Anyway, I always liked it. A math problem is like a puzzle. It's something you can solve. It's finite, and there's a certain kind of … " She trailed off, looking at the ceiling as she searched for the right word. "Satisfaction there. You solve the problem, and then it's done."
"So what will you do when you graduate? That will be it for Edward's, I imagine? You said you weren't a lifer."
"Yeah. Though I'm lucky to have the job at Edward's."
"You're good at it-they're lucky to have you."
She rolled her eyes. "Edward was my father's best friend. He's dead-my father, I mean." She delivered the news with a detached matter-of-factness. "Edward feels responsible for me. I wouldn't take his money, but I would take his job. I never would have gotten hired at a place like that otherwise."
"Why not?"
"Let's just say I don't look the part."
"What are you talking about?"
"Ha!" She did her Vanna White thing again, this time gesturing over her own body. "You're nice. But high-end places like Edward's hire beautiful girls. There's a certain look. A type."
He wanted to protest that she was beautiful, that she put all those paper dolls to shame. But that wasn't the kind of thing he did, so instead he supplied, "Ballerinas."
"Yes!" She looked delighted with this description. "And don't worry, I don't feel bad about it. Ballerinas are always hungry, I imagine, and I'd rather be happy than hungry.
"Anyway, the plan is to quit when I'm done with school." She was talking faster now, warming to her tale. "I'm planning to take the actuarial exam."
"An actuary!" He was surprised, though he shouldn't have been. It was an obvious career move for a math major. "That seems kind of … boring."
"It will be. But as far as I can tell, it's the way I can make the most money the fastest."
"That's one expensive mother."
The ice came back into her eyes. "I have other ambitions beyond the financial sinkhole that is my mother."
He took his cue from her tone. That would be the end of this line of questioning. All right, so she seemed perfect for the job. And more importantly, he felt like he could trust her. Jack might not be a numbers guy, but he hadn't become a self-made multimillionaire without being able to read people. Well, most people-apparently he'd been deluding himself for decades about Carl.
"I want to hire you."
She looked like he'd shoved a lemon in her mouth.
"I need some … math help," he added.
"What kind of math help?"
He raked his hands through his hair as the familiar rage started to swirl in his gut. Fucking Carl. Even promising himself that Carl was going down didn't calm the fury. Probably because he was equally angry at himself for getting played. It felt like a personal failing. It was a personal failing. "My CFO-my longtime CFO-is ripping me off."
Her mouth rounded in surprise.
"Yeah. That's why I came into the bar that first night I met you. He and I had a longstanding Tuesday night dinner tradition. We'd go over numbers, talk about upcoming projects. But that was before I found out he was defrauding me."
She whistled. "Hard to eat dinner with someone who's been stealing from you, I guess. How much are we talking about?"
"I don't know yet-I'm afraid it could be in the range of hundreds of thousands." Fuck, it rankled to say it out loud. "I also don't know how long it's been going on. Years, maybe."
"You don't need me. You need cops or forensic accountants or something."
He blew out a frustrated breath. "I know. And believe me, I will be nailing this guy's ass to the wall. But that's not what I need you for-that's just the context. I have a big deal in the works-a potential purchase of this company called Wexler Construction. I've been working on this for more than a year."
"Is this a hostile takeover? Like in the movies?"
Damn, she was cute, her legs tucked up under her, curled into her chair.
"No. It's a private company, so it's all about convincing Wexler-Wexler Senior, who's about to retire, to sell to me instead of handing the reins over to Wexler Junior, otherwise known as the Idiot Son."
"Why do you want this company?"
The question took him aback. It was a good question. But not the kind a business insider would ever ask. Why did anyone want any company? "Most of the company's assets I'll probably sell. But Wexler owns a lot of potentially useful land, stuff he hasn't sold or developed yet-including a private island in Lake Muskoka," he said, speaking slowly as he thought about how to explain it. "I bought up some property on the shoreline nearby years ago. I want to open a resort, and I've been waiting for an island just like his to come up."