She almost choked on her coffee. “You’re having problems refinancing?”
“Not problems, no. Issues. I’m figuring them out, but it doesn’t help to have out-of-context rumors circulating.”
Lex had only been the CEO of Jubilee Holdings for about eighteen months, since the unexpected death of his father from a heart attack. The company was a lumbering behemoth, with interests in hotels, resorts, and property management. They made millions of dollars in profit, and it seemed unthinkable that they would have refinancing issues. Plus, she knew Lex was a shrewd businessman. He hadn’t been promoted just because of his name; he’d been working in the company for years and proven himself by turning around several underperforming divisions. For someone as competent as him, it must be aggravating to have these false suggestions circulating. From his guarded expression, though, she sensed he wasn’t telling her the full story.
She cleared her throat. “And your competitors? Are they getting the same information?”
“No, it’s worse.” He frowned as he stirred his coffee. “They’re getting information about our bids for certain management projects and using it to underbid us. We’ve lost a number of big contracts already. I’m talking about millions of dollars of lost revenue here.”
No wonder he looked on edge. His shoulders were bunched tight, and the tendons in his neck stood out like steel cables. He needed to relax. He needed someone to massage his shoulders and neck, to ease out all the kinks. She’d done that for him in the past. She’d stroked and squeezed and turned him on until he’d forgotten all his problems for a while...
She pulled herself upright. Heck, she wasn’t feeling sorry for Lex, was she? He was strong and hardy, he could take the pressure.
“I’m assuming you’ve done all the usual checks, got your IT security guys to run the normal scans?”
“Yep. I’ve even had my offices and all the conference rooms checked for listening devices. Nothing suspicious so far. This mole isn’t high tech, I’m beginning to think.”
As he studied the dark depths of his espresso, a premonition came over her. “You have a suspect in mind.”
In answer, he shifted in his seat and tapped his spoon against his cup.
“Well?” she prompted.
He pushed aside his coffee to lace his fingers together on the tabletop, his thumbs pressing against each other. “You’ve never met my family, have you?”
“You know I haven’t.” In the four months they’d been together, she couldn’t remember Lex ever mentioning the other Rochesters. At the time, she hadn’t really noticed, but now it did seem odd, considering he was the head of the family company. “I know you have relatives who work at Jubilee too.”
Lex nodded. “There’s my uncle Ralph. He was our vice president in charge of branding, but now he spends most of his time running the Rochester Foundation. Kirk, his son, is in our finance division. We’re the same age. He’s had some personal problems in the last couple of years. His wife was sick for a while. She died six months ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she replied, uncertain how to react when Lex remained so impassive.
“He came back to work a couple of months ago. He has a younger sister, Holly, who also works at Jubilee.”
Jacinta waited for him to tell her more, but he fell silent. “Do they know anything about your security leaks?” she asked.
He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, a deep crease between his eyes. “I think one of them is the security leak.”
For a second or two she was speechless. “Your own family? That’s impossible.”
“Is it?” The ice in his eyes chilled her.
“Why would any of them want to jeopardize the company? They all own shares, don’t they?”
“Yes. Together with my grandmother’s shares, the family owns a controlling stake in Jubilee Holdings.”
“So why would any of them want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?”
His mouth flattened. “Personal reasons.”
She waited for him to elaborate, but instead he drained his coffee cup, his face flinty. With a pang she realized she barely knew Lex. This man had turned her life upside down. For four months he’d bewitched her, consumed her every thought, thrown all her priorities out the window. She’d shared the most physical intimacies with him, but she’d mistaken sexual familiarity for an emotional connection. He’d never talked to her about his family, never hinted at any tension.
The fact that he’d hidden so much from her triggered a fresh rush of hurt. He’d never confided in her because he hadn’t trusted her, hadn’t viewed their relationship as all that intimate or special. Well, she wouldn’t beg him to open up to her.
“You must have more than just personal reasons to suspect them of sabotage,” Jacinta said.
He set down his coffee cup with a thud. “Hell, of course I don’t want to suspect my own family, but I don’t seem to have any other choice. The last two leaks could only have come from one of them because they happened right after private meetings where only family members were present. We were discussing a possible sell-off, and those discussions were leaked. The meeting room we used had been scanned for listening devices, and we don’t allow cell phones in our meetings. The only way that info got out was through someone who was there—me, Kirk, Holly, Ralph.”
“Maybe one of them did leak the information, but only by accident. They could have mentioned it to their partner or to a friend in passing. It doesn’t have to be deliberate.”
“This was no accident. A day after the meeting, I had a reporter asking me about the sell-off. Everyone in the family knows all our meetings are confidential. And besides, none of us have partners of any kind.”
Jacinta let out a long breath, then took a sip of coffee to give her time to order her milling thoughts. “And how do you think I could help you? Seems like you’ve already narrowed down the suspects. Why don’t you simply confront them?”
“I can’t do that.”
“You? I don’t believe it. You thrive on confrontation.”
“This is different.” He studied the tabletop. “This is...my family. Things between us are tricky enough as it is.” For a second he seemed uncertain, vulnerable even. “I don’t want to stir up a hornet’s nest by coming out with my suspicions. They’d think I didn’t trust them.”
“But you don’t trust them.”
He sighed, still looking troubled. “I want to get my facts straight before I act. That’s where you come in. My IT security guys have already put in software to monitor the entire company’s network traffic. I have access to those logs. I want you to look at all the activity my relatives have been generating and analyze it for me, see if you can spot anything out of the ordinary. But no one can suspect what you’re doing. You can work from my home or my office any time of the day, but to the outside world, you’re just my girlfriend visiting or staying over at my place.”
“And I only have three weeks to catch this person. Why three weeks?”
His face became guarded. “I have my reasons.”
She toyed with a sugar packet as she wondered what she was letting herself in for, pretending to be Lex’s girlfriend. What would it do to her to be with him, receiving his attentions, knowing it was nothing but a sham? And what if she forgot herself and they ended up in bed again? Wouldn’t that hurt her twice over, knowing it meant nothing, yet unable to stop herself?
“Are you sure it’ll be so easy to fool people into thinking we’re back together?” she asked.
“Why not?” He shrugged his wide shoulders. “We’ll go to a few public engagements, some big, high-profile parties. We’ll be seen together as a couple, and people will assume we’ve reconciled. It’s not unusual.”
“Yeah but we’ll have to...you know, play a role.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “You don’t have to sleep with me...” His cool eyes glinted. “...if you don’t want.”
Her chest grew hot. “I wasn’t even considering that.”
Liar, his eyes flashed.
“You weren’t?”
Forcing herself to hold his gaze, she caught the amusement and heat mingling in his blue depths. Her breath shortened. Just one loaded stare from him was enough to send her into meltdown. The packet tore between her fingers and sugar spilled out.
“Don’t get any ideas, buster. I have standards. I could never sleep with a man I despised.” Yeah, keep telling yourself that and maybe it’ll hold true.
“Keep your panties on,” he drawled. “All you’ll have to do is suffer a few kisses and hugs from me in public. Think you can put up with that?”
A few kisses and hugs from Lex? Heavenly torture. But what if she wanted more after that? She busied herself sweeping up the spilled sugar and depositing the debris into her saucer. “I guess.”
“And no heavy petting without prior arrangement.” The glint in his eyes lingered.
“No heavy petting, period.”
“Why make such strict rules? You might enjoy it. I’m not a bad kisser, you have to admit.”