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“I’ve spoken with Michael and have the update about the theft.” She held up a piece of paper. “I also have the proposal jacket mock-up for your review.”
“Thank you. If you could just set them on my desk, I’ll review them later.” He didn’t move from the window. He couldn’t get close to her. Hell, he could smell the floral scent of her shampoo from here. The damn plane and limo had been full of it.
Rowan put the neat pile in the center of his desk and backed up. “Will there be anything else?”
“How’s the fund investigation going?”
She bit her lower lip, and his body responded, damn it. The last time she’d done that, he’d been deep inside her. Fuck. With extreme difficulty, Gerard quelled the fire growing inside him, stood still, and waited for her to respond.
“Slowly. But I’ll keep at it.”
He gave her a curt nod.
“Will that be all?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” she said and turned to leave. By the time she got to the door, Gerard couldn’t stand it anymore. “Rowan?”
She stopped, hand on doorknob, and didn’t turn around.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s just too much at stake right now.”
Now she turned, her eyes glistening with unshed tears, holding her head up with a pride he knew ran deep in her. Behind the mist in her eyes, a fire glowed. An angry fire. “I get it,” Rowan said.
“I’m not sure you do.”
“Barrett Investment Group is the baby you took over from your father. You’re still trying to prove to the board you can run this company, so your position with them is precarious. A workplace romance, even the hint of one, could destroy that. I’m guessing there’s a provision in the board’s governance documents that allows them to unseat you if they can prove gross negligence. Did I miss anything?”
“No. You have it exactly right. Maybe, down the road—”
She cut him off with a slash of her hand. “Don’t make promises you may not be able to keep. I understood this was a one night stand. I signed on willingly. If I got my heart a little more involved than I should have, that’s on me. You’re off the hook.”
Without waiting for him to answer, and keeping her movements deliberate, proud, and dignified, she walked out of his office, leaving the door open. He watched her walk, not to the elevator, but to the stairs. She disappeared, swallowed by the walls of his empire, leaving a huge hole in his heart.
He was such an asshole.
Chapter Fourteen
By noon on Monday, Rowan was as close to pulling her hair out as she’d ever been. Everything was off at work. Almost every fund was down, damn near catastrophically. It didn’t help that she’d gotten very little sleep during what remained of her Sunday after leaving work.
Nope. Not going to think about that. Him. Shoving him out of her mind with a visual of him closing the box on their time together, she focused on what she was looking at.
The numbers on the report Linda had sent her did not add up at all. Nothing made sense, and the only way to figure this out was to go back to the beginning, one fund at a time. Rowan pulled up their flagship fund and printed detailed reports for the past six months. She did the same on the other funds that were now solidly in negative territory.
After ordering lunch delivered, she took the printed sheets, her laptop, and three legal pads to the conference room, spread out, and dug in. Numbers had always been her strength, and she lost track of time as she mapped out every aspect of each fund over the next several hours.
By the time she sat back and stretched, she looked out into a darkened office. Her phone explained why. It was after eight at night. A glance outside showed the edge of dusk settling in.
She’d lost an entire afternoon to the numbers, but at least she’d finally found a pattern, though she wasn’t yet sure what it meant.
A tap at the door startled her. “Come in.”
Why did it have to be Gerard walking through the door? Rowan looked skyward for a quick moment, then back at the man who stood at the end of the table, looking at the papers covering most of the dark wood.
“When we spoke about this, I said I’d wait until Monday evening to get involved. Have you found anything out?”
“Not that I’m ready to report.”
