Chapter 10 Desmond
DESMOND
The conference hall at our New York office had a twenty-foot-high ceiling, a large stage at the far end, and a great sound system.
It was twelve p.m., and the hall was packed with four hundred–odd employees.
I saw faces from various departments. Legal, accounting, engineering.
Every one of them looked worried. I didn’t see the auburn-haired woman I’d been surreptitiously looking out for.
Every six months, I hosted a town hall in the evenings to get feedback and understand the general attitude of my employees.
Today, because of a hectic schedule, I’d made the mistake of choosing the precious lunch hour to host the town hall, and people seemed restless already.
Unfortunately, the food wasn’t even here yet, and the empty counter on the side of the room was yet another reason that most employees were sighing and checking their watches.
I brought this meeting to a start. “Good evening—” I stopped when the doors opened.
Rita Hill, our fifty-three-year-old events coordinator, was huffing as walked into the room, a cart behind her. The cart was stacked with Pizza Hut boxes, and someone else was pushing the cart in. Someone with red-gold hair.
Ava. She was wearing a long navy-blue summer dress with a thin, faded cardigan and looking like she had just come in from the cold outside. I frowned. It was late January. Why didn’t she have the right winter jacket?
Ava brought the cart to a stop next to the empty counter and the two of them shared a laugh. Ava put her arms around herself at the same moment, rubbing her hands up and down. She was cold.
“Sorry for the delay,” Rita announced breathlessly. “The cart got stuck in the elevator doors, and I’d still be there if it was not for this fantastic woman here.”
“Thank you, ladies,” I said just as Ava turned around.
Her cheeks were bright, and her eyes were radiant, but I knew she always ran cold, even in milder weather. As I looked at her, it became apparent to me that her clothes seemed like they’d been worn for the better part of many years, and her shoes looked well worn.
Does she have money problems then? I thought while Ava searched the crowd for an empty seat. How could someone live in New York for three years and not have the right winter gear?
Henry Anderson, our head of billing, sat in the front row and went to great efforts to move his laptop satchel bag and Hydro Flask under his chair to make room for Ava. She flashed him a charming smile and sat down next to him.
That lucky bastard. Feeling a stab of jealousy, I gave Henry a scowl.
I nodded at Ava and then resumed my speech.
“Thank you for coming here. In the past week, we’ve seen a lot of derogatory articles published in the papers about Luxe Hotels.
We’ve seen allegations of accounting fraud, and embezzlement hit one of our subsidiary companies.
We’ve set up a separate committee to investigate the truth behind these allegations.
I want you to know that we will follow up on this diligently, and you will be the first to know the truth. ”
An interested buzz rose from the crowd as they registered the news.
“Until then,” I continued, “I ask that you don’t fuel rumors or add to the speculation going around.”
The meeting ran for another five minutes before I opened to questions.
“I have a question.” Ava spoke, and when I looked at her, I notice her hand shook a little as she walked up to the mike in front of her aisle. “If the allegations of embezzlement are true, how will you handle the fallout?”
I cleared my throat. “That’s a brilliant question, er, Ms. Hale.
At Luxe, we hold ourselves to the highest standards, and if our investigations reveal that these allegations are, in fact, true, then we will do everything necessary to fix the issue, starting with a public apology to our shareholders, followed by an internal audit and training to make sure this doesn’t happen again. ”
Her jaw slackened, as though she knew she had only gotten the sugarcoated version of an answer.
“And what about the staff that once worked at this company with an alleged claim of embezzlement?” she pressed.
She was sharp.
“Any staff colluding to keep details of embezzlement hidden will no longer be a part of the Luxe team.”
She kept that gaze on me.
“Thank you,” she said finally in a tone that implied anything but and sat down.
I walked out of the room ten minutes later after exchanging a few words with our CFO and our hiring manager.
The large lobby was mostly empty because most of the employees had stayed back for soda and pizza.
Thank goodness the fallout from the scandal hadn’t affected our list of clients or else we’d have to do away with free food as well.
In a minute, I took the elevator to the nineteenth floor.
I nodded at Zach, my executive assistant, when I got out and then walked under the vaulted ceiling to the mahogany doors at the end.
I had a stack of emails that were calling for my attention when, in reality, I wished I could go down to the conference hall and let Ava question me further.
If that’s the only way I can have a conversation with her, then I’ll take it.
Ten minutes later, I was in the midst of typing out a curt response to our marketing department head when I heard Ava’s voice speaking to my assistant outside.
“I’d like to speak to Mr. McKinley,” came her muffled voice through the closed doors.
The way my mood brightened on hearing that should have been a warning to me.
A warning that I was entering a territory I’d only gone to once before.
But it seemed I was a fool destined to make the same mistake again because I unthinkingly ended my curt email response on a warmer note and hit Send before I got up.
I walked up to my closed doors, through which I could hear Zach’s calm response. “Ms. Hale, Mr. McKinley’s calendar shows that he is due to meet you and your team this Friday. Give me some time to—”
“I need to discuss the recent changes he’s made at one of the restaurants he owns.
When he took over The Galley, he assured us nothing would change.
Well, a few days ago, he requested a design change to the restaurant’s floor plan, which delays the start of the construction work by a month.
That sounds like a change to me,” came Ava’s response.
I frowned for a moment. We hadn’t requested a design change. Which meant …
I burst out laughing. I had to give it to her. She was going to great ends to make sure nothing seemed suspicious about us meeting in my office.
I knew so much about this voice and the woman who spoke those words. I knew the needs and requirements of this woman. I even knew what she’d fake complain about next—I deserve better than this.
“We deserve to be treated better than this,” Ava said.
I was almost inclined to laugh again. Instead, I opened the door and leaned against the doorframe. There she was. A fired-up beauty, brandishing papers and her phone while trying to convince my assistant of her troubles.
She hadn’t noticed me yet.
“Zach,” I said, stepping away from the doorway and putting my hands in my pockets, “it’s okay. I can speak with her. Please clear my calendar for the next twenty minutes.”
Ava turned to me, and her mouth fell partly open. I remembered what it felt like, ages ago, to reach over and plant a kiss on them. Those full lips that were so busy giving my assistant an earful could also make a man feel heady and want to hear more.
“She’s Ava Hale,” Zach informed me, squinting at the computer, “an employee from one of our recent acquisitions, The Galle.”
“The Galley,” I corrected automatically just as Ava’s eyes met mine in surprise.
She looked away when I smiled at her, and she walked past Zach and into my office.
Zach looked dismayed, but I gave him a small smile and a nod to say it was okay before I stepped back inside and shut the door. I had a very welcome visitor in my office, and my day was getting better.
Ava stood by my desk as I approached her. She put her folder down before turning to face me.
“There’s something I need to ask you,” she began.
I nodded. “Likewise. Could you please let me go first?” I asked, noticing her clothes once again. The blue summer dress seemed like it had belonged to someone else before her.
Her eyes widened in surprise, and she nodded hesitantly.
“I couldn’t help but notice you were shivering when you pulled the food cart into our meeting earlier.”
Her face cleared up, and she laughed. “Oh, yes, the pizza delivery was late,” she began. “Rita and I were waiting outside for a good ten minutes.”
“Rita had a thick wool coat on,” I pointed out.
She flushed.
“Do you have money problems, Ava?” I asked.
Her face hardened. “No,” she said. “And I don’t want to discuss this anymore.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but I knew there was a simpler way of dealing with a stubborn woman like her.
“All right,” I said, mentally making a note to get my personal shopper to pick out and deliver a few coats to her. Ava would hate me for it, but I couldn’t do nothing. Not after I’d seen her so vulnerable back in the elevator.
I raised my eyebrows. “You took the elevator again,” I stated simply.
She nodded. “I was nervous, but I remembered my then-confident words about not writing things off, and so I made myself do it.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to not let my mind wander. All I wanted was to hold her hand again, like I’d done back at the elevator, to feel her soft body beside me, to have her vulnerable eyes turn to me for guidance one more time.
Focus. “I’m impressed. Well, go on. You wanted to speak to me about something?”
“Did Ray Murphy ever talk to you about an embezzlement at our restaurant?”
I froze, all thoughts of holding Ava to me stalling for a minute. “He did not.”
She turned away, but not before I saw her lower lip tremble.
“A year ago, we had an employee embezzle money from our company. Accounting fraud.”
My arms fell to my sides, and I mentally cursed. Damn. I couldn’t have another one of our businesses be caught in a scandal.
“What happened?”
She told me all she could. About an employee named Kyle Whitby. About most employees secretly believing that she might have had something to do with it too. And worst of all, they hadn’t pressed charges.
I groaned at the last one.
“I’m sorry for not telling you this earlier,” Ava said. “I was afraid that you’d refuse to hire any of my previous staff. Or prevent them from working there again.”
I threw my shoulders back and turned to face the windows. “Ray Murphy should have come clean, Ava. Not you. So, I won’t hold anything against you.”
She looked back at me, a picture of vulnerability. “But what about my staff?” she asked, her voice hollow.
I let go of a painful breath. “It’s not for me to decide, Ava. That’s a decision Thomas and his team will make.”
She sat down on the chair.
“How bad is it?” she asked, sounding worried.
“For Luxe Hotels?” I asked. “Not too bad since it happened a year ago. But we can’t cover it up anymore.”
Her lips parted in shock. “You mean—”
I nodded. “We need to conduct an internal investigation to confirm. Then, you need to press charges against whoever did it.”
She seemed to turn the matter over in her mind before she spoke again. “I have some evidence,” she began slowly. “Video recordings from our cameras and some screenshots of transactions out of our restaurant’s business account.”
I met her eyes. “That will help. Though, if you’ll humor me, why didn’t you press charges when you seem to have so much evidence against the man?”
Ava bit her lip, her expression one of sadness.
“Because Kyle and I were dating back then. And I couldn’t believe he could embezzle from my mom’s restaurant in the week after she passed.
In the week when I was too distraught to care about anything else really.
Even about Mom’s restaurant, which she always said was like her second child. ”
The hurt in her eyes went straight to my heart. As for the surge of anger I felt about her dating a man like that, well, that was a surprise to me too.
She deserves better.
“I’m really sorry to hear about your mom’s passing,” I said heavily. “I’ve experie—” I hesitated, and our gazes met.
She knew what I was going to say. That I was going to mention my mother’s death in the last year of high school, but it was unnecessary. She was intimately familiar with the details of that incident. We’d been dating back then after all.
I shook my head, trying to come out of the daze that Ava always had on me. I could breathe in her scent, and I could sense a hint of wood smoke in it.
“Our legal division has an office in Lower Manhattan. I’m driving over to that part of the town tomorrow afternoon, and I wonder if you’d like to join me.”
She bit her lower lip while she considered that. The contemplative look left her face, and she gave me a decisive nod. “Let’s do this.”
I didn’t stop to consider what it might look like. The CEO of Luxe Hotels picking up his employee in his car. I didn’t care. I wanted to make sure Ava got some sort of closure for her mom’s restaurant.
Because this much was as clear to me as the freckles on Ava’s nose: I couldn’t bear to see her hurting alone.