Craving Harper (The Aces’ Sons #15)

Chapter 1

Harper

My brother called me a brainiac. My parents liked to slide in little comments about grades, test scores, and eventually my career into any conversation they were having.

Even my grandparents liked to mention how the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree when first my grandpa, then my mom, and then I had shown an extraordinary acuity with numbers and patterns.

My intelligence was just a fact. Like my brown hair and my blue eyes.

Like the glasses I’d worn since I was nine and the way I could bend my thumbs back to touch my wrist.

“You’ll find something else,” I muttered breezily as I flew around the room, packing the few items that actually belonged to me. “This isn’t the end of the world. You’re a freaking rockstar. Companies will beg you to work for them. It’s not like Paige will fire you.”

The furnished corporate apartment was still available for the rest of the week, but now that I’d walked out on my project, I was anxious to get on the road. Well, to the airport, really. I was currently driving a company-provided rental car that I’d also have to give back.

While it was pretty generous of them to give me a week to return everything, we both knew that they were trying to keep me happy.

After the way they’d tried to get me to skew numbers and interpret data the way they wanted, they were lucky that all I’d done was quit.

I’d signed an NDA, but that didn’t apply to criminal investigations.

I’d been playing phone tag with my boss for the past four days, trying to update her on the situation, but eventually I hadn’t even felt comfortable inside their building anymore.

I’d worked for my firm for four years, but this was the first time they’d sent me to a business that didn’t actually want our help.

I was a problem solver. I studied a company’s records to find where they were excelling and where they were falling short, whether it was in sales or investments or a hundred other ways.

I didn’t tell them how to fix the situation, that was someone else’s job.

I just followed the patterns. Numbers didn’t lie, and while you could skew them to look a certain way, there was a limit to what I was willing to fudge.

There were far more noble ways to end up in prison.

The entire situation had left a bad taste in my mouth, and I couldn’t wait to get back to Eugene.

I missed my parents and my brother. I missed being able to go out for a drink with my cousins or stop by my grandparents’ house around dinnertime. I missed the fresh air and the way the trees smelled when it rained.

I’d traveled all over the United States, sometimes staying in one place for a week and sometimes for months, but nowhere had ever felt like home. Not like Oregon.

Hurrying to the bathroom, I scooped everything off the counter into my toiletry bag and glanced at myself in the mirror. My glasses had fallen down my nose, my hair was huge, and I’d spilled something down the front of my shirt.

Super professional and polished.

At least I hadn’t looked like that when I’d gone into the office that morning and told the CEO, “just call me Max” Graber, that I would no longer be working with his company.

To say he’d been pissed was an understatement.

He hadn’t yelled, if anything, he’d spoken more quietly than normal—but the look in his eyes had been awful.

That look had followed me back to my soulless apartment. I couldn’t seem to shake it.

He hadn’t implied any sort of retaliation. He hadn’t even tried to convince me to stay. He’d just pointed me to the HR department and shut his office door. It was all very civil.

So, there wasn’t any real reason that I’d changed into travel clothes and frantically started packing my bags the minute I’d walked through the door. It was just a feeling. An instinct. Something in my gut that said I needed to get the fuck out of there—even if I couldn’t explain it.

I knew better than to ignore it.

Within an hour of getting back to my apartment, I’d booked a flight, packed my things, and was pulling my large suitcase and carry-on to the elevator in my building. My flight wasn’t for a few hours still, but I’d feel better once I’d returned the rental car and made my way past security.

The drive to the airport was a nightmare.

Traffic didn’t seem to let up, no matter what time of day it was, so I was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for forty-five minutes.

The hair on the back of my neck was still tingling, and my sense of urgency felt like a living, breathing thing as I inched forward on the freeway.

I tried to listen to the radio, but that didn’t help.

I couldn’t follow an audiobook because I was too busy wondering why exactly I’d gotten so worked up.

I honestly couldn’t pinpoint the moment that my heart had begun to race or my breathing had gotten shallow.

I just knew that at some point between the office and my building, something in the air had shifted.

My mom always told me that biology was a funny thing—sometimes your body knew things that you didn’t.

She and my dad had told me and my brother Gray so many times over the years that we should never ignore a gut feeling that it was practically ingrained.

I let out a long breath of air when I finally pulled into the rental company’s parking lot at the airport. Returning the car went pretty seamlessly and I strode like a woman on a mission inside to check in.

My shoulders relaxed into their normal position as soon as I’d gotten past the security checkpoint, and I almost laughed at myself as I headed toward the coffee shop near my gate.

Now that I was behind that security, my anxiety mellowed to a light hum—and I was used to that level.

I was always a little anxious, but I figured that just came with being smart.

It was hard to be happy-go-lucky when you remembered nearly everything you’d ever read and knew the world was pretty much going to hell in a handbasket.

Shoving my purse higher on my shoulder, I reached for the phone ringing in the kangaroo pocket of the hoodie I’d thrown over my stained shirt.

“Paige, I’ve been calling you for days,” I answered, my voice filled with a mixture of relief and exasperation.

“What the hell is going on out there, Harper?” Paige snapped, making me stumble over my own feet. “I just got a call from Refordable’s CEO, and he said you walked out.”

“Well, yeah,” I replied, moving toward the wall like it would afford me some semblance of privacy.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. Something stinks at that company. They were trying to get me to—”

“I don’t give a single fuck,” Paige cut me off. “Go back in there and apologize. Grovel. Do whatever you have to do.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked dubiously.

I hadn’t applied for the position I was in—I’d been headhunted.

The job offers had come as soon as I’d graduated from college—and there had been a lot of them.

I’d chosen the company I worked for because I liked their mission statement.

I liked the camaraderie and the atmosphere they’d curated.

I liked Paige, even though she was an overbearing snob sometimes.

Never, not once, had Paige or anyone else spoken to me like she was now—it was startling.

“No, I’m not kidding. Do I sound like I’m kidding? Get your ass back in there.”

“I’m not going to lie for them,” I hissed into the phone, glancing around me at the people going about their day.

“Oh, please,” Paige scoffed. “You can make the numbers look however we need them to look—that’s why we frigging hired you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked dubiously. I had never cooked the books for anyone, and they sure as hell had never asked me to.

“Get back to Refordable,” Paige ordered. “And make this right.”

“I’m not going to help them commit fraud,” I ground out, stunned. “That’s what they were asking me to do—that’s what you’re asking me to do.”

“I cannot believe that now you’re deciding to act like Pollyanna,” Paige replied with an irritated sigh.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You really think you have some moral high ground here, Harper White? Do you know how deep our background checks go? I know exactly where you came from.”

I felt the blood draining from my cheeks as they called the first round of boarding for my flight.

That fucking cunt. How dare she?

“Get back to Refordable and fix this, or you’re fired. How about that? Is that clear enough for you, or should I send it to you in binary?” she said snidely.

I didn’t even bother to reply. My fingertips were numb as I lowered the phone from my ear and turned it off completely.

If she thought that talking shit and threatening to fire me would get her what she wanted, she hadn’t gone as deep in my background as she thought. In a long line of stubborn women, I was the shining example of those who’d gone before me.

Paige Brewer could go fuck herself.

I walked numbly to the coffee shop across from my gate, my mind racing.

“What can I get ya?” the barista asked, jolting me out of my stupor.

“You hiring?” I asked jokingly.

The older man smiled. “You can apply online.”

“Okay, can I just get a flat white, please?”

As soon as I’d wrapped my hand around the hot coffee cup, I crossed back over to my gate and got in line with the other people waiting to board.

One of my aunts said that coffee made everything better, and I was really hoping that was true.

When I’d woken up that morning with my stomach in knots, knowing that I had to go back in to Refordable and quit, I’d assumed that it would all work out.

I hated confrontation and knew they’d be irritated that I wouldn’t fall in line, but nothing else had gone the way I’d imagined it would.