"You can't open your resort on the shore?"
"I could. But a private island has a certain cachet. We'll ferry people over. It's a big island, so there'll be hiking, fishing, swimming, fine dining, the whole deal. But tucked away on an island, away from it all-literally."
He was about to tell her that he was going to develop luxury condos on the shoreline, when she got a distinctly dreamy look on her face and said, "I bet you can see a lot of stars from this island."
"Uh, yeah, I bet you can."
"You could have stargazing parties."
The idea of the wealthy guests he planned to woo signing up for stargazing parties was a little comical but, hey, at least she was getting into the idea. "I could. Anyway, the point is, I've been cultivating Wexler forever. We have a weekend of meetings coming up-I think he's close to deciding-and I have no CFO."
"And you want me to pose as your CFO!" She let loose a great big peal of laughter, throwing her head back and exposing her throat. For some reason the sight of her like that went straight to his dick. He crossed his legs. When she got control of herself and took in his non-answer, she jerked upright, "Holy ravioli, you do want me to pose as your CFO!"
"No, but I need someone to come. Someone with a head for the financials. Wexler is going to want to talk details."
"Surely, if you've been working on this deal for so long, you can handle it without your in-house white collar criminal by your side?"
Jack's skin began to prickle. He downed the rest of his drink in one gulp.
"You want another?"
He nodded, then waited until her back was turned and she was pouring the drink to say, "The thing is, I can't handle it by myself. I have dyscalculia." She froze, immobilized with one hand holding the water bottle and the other unscrewing the lid. "It's a learning disability," he added. "Like dyslexia for numbers."
She resumed her task, and when she came back bearing his drink, she didn't look disgusted. She didn't look any different than she ever did. "I see the problem."
"So will you do it?"
"I can't just impersonate a CFO."
"First of all, it's not like it's a job that comes with a regulatory stamp-it's not like impersonating a cop. If I say you're my CFO, you're my CFO." When she started to argue, he held up his hand. "But anyway, we won't use that title. Wexler knows Carl-the betraying asshole is named Carl, by the way-so he'll expect to see him. I'll concoct an excuse for Carl and call you my senior director of finance or something. I just need someone to pinch hit on the financial side of things. But just as important, Wexler can't know there's anything untoward happening at my company or he'll never sell to me. So I can't just have no one on the finance side there, or he'll get suspicious."
"So this explains why you haven't called the cops on him yet. CFO swindling Winter Enterprises. That would be big news, right?"
That was certainly part of it-he wasn't going to do anything to jeopardize the Wexler deal, even if it meant letting Carl rip him off a little longer than was strictly necessary. "In part. But also, I've been trying to figure out exactly what he did before I call in the cavalry. I don't want a swarm of accountants and cops descending and asking me all this stuff that I … "
"That you have trouble understanding."
He nodded. Not sure how he was going to solve that. He probably wasn't-more likely that he was just going to have to call the cops and admit that he had no idea what kind of damage Carl had done. But one problem at a time. First, the Wexler deal.
She looked thoughtful. "Why would I do this? It seems kind of dishonest somehow."
"It's not! I'm free to hire whomever I want to do whatever tasks I want them to do. I want to hire you to do this. And you would do this because I will pay you-well."
"How much?"
"Well, I figure I'd pay a consultant, say, five hundred bucks an hour. The trip will take seventy-two hours, so that's roughly thirty-six grand." She choked in the middle of a sip, and he grinned. "You can either invoice based on that hourly rate, or we can agree on a flat thirty-six."
"If I'm going to do this, I have to know what I'm talking about. I'll want to look at your financials. I'll want to know what you know about Wexler. I'll need to learn everything I can about both companies to get up to speed."
Ha! Smart girl. "Fifty grand."
She did a poor job masking her shock. "You are going to pay me fifty thousand dollars to pose as your director of finance, or whatever, and try to get this guy Wexler to sell you his company? That doesn't make any sense."
"This is how capitalism works. I have money. I want to buy something-in this case, it's a set of skills that I don't possess. I pay what the seller and I agree it's worth. It's no different than someone buying a drink at Edward's." He refrained from telling her that it wasn't a lot of money to him. "And I'll tell you what, if we get the deal done, there will be a bonus." She waved off the idea, which annoyed him. "This deal is worth a lot of money, Cassie. Don't sell yourself short."
"Does your CFO know about your dyscalculia?"
He blinked, taking a moment to catch up to the unexpected question. He wasn't sure why it mattered, but given how intensely she was studying his face, she seemed to really care about the answer. "Yes," he said, swallowing the bitter saliva that flooded his mouth. "We were friends from university. I was a literature major, if you can believe it. Carl was a friend of my roommate. He was always playing the stock market, but he never did very well. I gave him some advice one day, and we figured out pretty quickly that we made a good team. I could pick the companies, and he was good with the logistics of the money. Things kind of snowballed from there. He always covered for me-or so I thought. He and my VP are the only ones at the company who know about me."
"Right." Cassie nodded, and her eyes narrowed. "And this is all happening in Muskoka. Up north. On an island."
Another abrupt change of topic that made him a beat late in answering. "Yeah. Next Thursday through Saturday-too close to Christmas?" They'd be back in Toronto just under a week before the holiday. He hoped she didn't have travel plans. Normal people spent holidays with people they loved. It was the one thing he didn't really have an argument for.
She ignored the question. "So there will be stars."
"I guess-assuming it's clear."
She stuck her hand out. "It's a deal."
Chapter Five
Fifty thousand dollars. Holy … shit. Fifty grand was enough to justify a non-pasta curse. Cassie couldn't stop replaying that evening as she prepared garnishes the next night at Edward's. The trip, his bombshell revelation of dyscalculia, the fact that she was going to help him. But mostly the crazy surge of electricity between them when they shook hands on the deal. He'd been in her apartment for nearly thirty minutes before that handshake, enough time for her body to tune in to his every move. It started in earnest when she was mixing his second drink. When he'd told her about the dyscalculia, it felt like she was getting her first glimpse of something real about him-something about who he was, not just what he did or how much money he had. She'd had to stop in her tracks and take a sustaining breath, because in a split second she'd gone from wary over having a near stranger in her apartment to desperately wanting that near stranger to throw her down on the bed and have his way with her. So by the time they'd finally touched, even a simple handshake had the power to set off a five-alarm fire inside her.
A fire that had been doused when the handshake was followed by a speech about how they had to keep things professional. How he didn't screw around with employees. He didn't do relationships at all, actually, he'd said. And he was right. It wasn't a good idea to spend their working relationship sneaking off into alleys-or forests, or whatever the Muskoka equivalent was. Still, she'd be lying if she didn't cop to a tiny bit of disappointment. He didn't screw around with employees. Yet she got the feeling that Jack Winter did whatever the heck he wanted to do.
And if he "didn't screw around with employees," it meant he was done with her. Her cheeks heated. Had he not liked what he … encountered last time? Ugh. It didn't bear thinking about because all that would happen is she would die from embarrassment. Meanwhile, there were limes to zest. And fifty thousand dollars to earn.