Chapter 12
TWELVE
The prize was an all-expenses paid trip to Vienna. When Amelia heard that, she regretted her brief (failed) foray as an amateur detective, even if it had ended with her in a position she’d remember for the rest of her life. She gaped at Fred as he shook Robert Lafontaine’s hand, then whirled to face Leo. “I thought the prize was going to be a slow cooker or a twenty-dollar gift card to Starbucks,” she hissed. “The prize is a two-week vacation ? What the hell!”
Leo winced. “Yeah. Sorry. The prizes are always pretty good.”
She blew out a breath. That was an understatement.
Amelia picked up the discarded golden envelope that had held Robert’s and his wife Trudy’s prize. It was beautiful stationery, embossed with gold lettering.
“There’ll be more games,” Leo promised. “It’s a whole thing with this retreat. It’s why people love being invited.”
“No kidding,” Amelia grumbled. She gave the envelope to a passing staff member, scowling. They’d gone snooping for nothing.
The whole group was herded to lunch, where a generous buffet of sandwiches and a few hot dishes were laid out. Everyone exchanged notes about the scavenger hunt and checked out each other’s pictures. As she munched on an absolutely delicious falafel wrap, Amelia realized she was enjoying herself.
Leo’s arm brushed hers as he angled his phone toward Cora.
“Look at your face!” Cora laughed as she looked at the picture of Amelia under the powder room painting. “You look like you’ve just done the hundred-meter dash.”
“Something like that,” Amelia mumbled, then took another bite of her food.
Leo laughed beside her, which made Amelia scowl at him, which made Leo laugh harder. She elbowed him in the ribs.
Cora’s brown eyes twinkled. “Young love,” she mused. “Are you enjoying yourself, dear?”
Amelia chewed while she thought of her answer. “Yes,” she finally answered. “I am.”
As far as team-building went, this retreat was actually really effective. That nagging feeling of loneliness had almost totally fled, and Amelia found herself wrapped up in the easy companionship of Leo and his coworkers and their families.
She loved her friends and her family, but for the past couple of years, Amelia had felt space growing between them. Here, in the presence of relative strangers and with Leo by her side, it was like her soul let out a deep sigh, and she could relax.
There were no expectations. People didn’t ask her when she’d start dating again (“Hasn’t it been over six years since Josh broke up with you?”), or wince at her tales of romantic woe (“You’ll find someone. You just have to keep trying!”). She wasn’t some loveless freak; she was Leo’s fiancée. It was accepted without question that she belonged by his side.
Amelia glanced at the man beside her, whose eyes crinkled. He winked, then slung an arm across her shoulders and pulled her closer. These were easy looks and touches, like they’d done it a thousand times.
Maybe if Amelia got out of her own way, she could have this for real. The problem was, whenever she thought about a man slinging his arm around her shoulders or squeezing her hand, she couldn’t picture anyone but Leo. And that was a problem, because she barely knew the man, and also because this was all supposed to be fake.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Fred chided, coming up to Amelia, Cora, and Leo. “Leo did tell you this retreat would be fun, didn’t he?”
“Of course!” Amelia smiled. “It’s just that—” She stopped herself right before she said, It’s just that my idea of fun is figuring out a thorny problem with various sets of data. It’s just that this was all some silly deal we worked out, and I didn’t expect to actually enjoy it.
“It’s just that…?” Fred prompted.
Horrified that she’d almost just outed herself as a fraud and a liar, Amelia’s face went hot. “It’s just that I don’t associate ‘company retreat’ and ‘team building’ with fun. But that’s more a reflection on me than you, Fred.”
His eyes were sharp as he nodded. The older man studied her for a beat, his lips flattening ever so slightly.
He knew she was lying. A man like Fred, who’d built a huge company and steered it to success year after year after year was good at reading people. That was a given. His eyes were too shrewd.
“Amelia isn’t exactly a paragon of Corporate America,” Leo inserted smoothly. He grinned at her, but his eyes were a bit desperate, and Amelia thought he was trying to communicate something along the lines of, Get it the hell together, girl.
“No,” Fred replied, still watching her, probably noting the redness sweeping across her cheeks. “I suppose touring with a band doesn’t involve company retreats and scavenger hunts.”
Seized with the fear that they were about to be discovered, accused, and locked up, Amelia could only manage an awkward laugh.
They needed to find that ring—and fast.
Before they could go up to their room and study Ari’s papers, Leo was disappointed to discover they had to play giant Jenga with the rest of the guests. The huge pieces were stacked on the back patio. There were ten sets, which meant the game was to be played in teams of four.
Leo and Amelia were paired with Robert and his wife. Ari, the guy he’d done the scavenger hunt with, Vanessa, and her boyfriend Mark were working on the set to their left.
While Leo set up the pieces, Amelia glanced at the other team, then schooled her features and smiled at Robert. “Are you sure you want to play? Maybe you should leave some of the prizes for the rest of us.”
Robert winked. “Maybe I want a clean sweep this year.”
“Have you been to Vienna before?”
“No,” he admitted and glanced at his wife, “but Trudy already has our itinerary planned out.”
“Schonbrunn Palace on Day One.” Trudy ticked off on one of her fingers. “Then we’ll hit up a couple of Mozart concerts, maybe tour some churches…”
Robert pretended to grumble, but Leo could tell he loved his wife and looked forward to the trip. Amelia smiled at the two of them, then glanced at Leo. He couldn’t read her gaze.
For a brief moment—a mere handful of seconds—Leo allowed himself to imagine taking Amelia on a trip like that. He wanted to see her face brighten. He wanted to watch her lean over to read placards in museums. He wanted to slip his hand into hers and tug her toward an ice cream shop at ten in the morning, just to see the bliss take over her features when the sweet treat touched her tongue.
He wanted all that and a whole lot more.
But she didn’t want him. Even though she’d kissed him today, it was only to save them from uncomfortable explanations.
A sour taste coated his tongue as the thought settled into his mind.
Reeling himself back in, Leo turned his attention to the Jenga blocks. “What’s the strategy here?”
“Well, we have fifteen minutes to make the tallest possible tower. If it falls over, we’re disqualified.” Amelia’s brows tugged together as she considered the problem. He could almost see the calculations going on behind her eyes, and he discovered that he loved this expression on her face almost as much as all the others.
Amelia nodded, like she was a human computer that had just completed a complicated computation. She glanced at Leo, Trudy, then Robert. “We should play it safe for the bottom half, only taking out the middle blocks. Then when we get closer to the top, we can start taking out edge pieces. That way we have a good balance between stability and height.”
Trudy whistled. “Not only can she sing, but she can also Jenga. You’d better hold onto her, Leo.”
If only. Leo smiled at Trudy, just in time to hear Fred’s voice count down the start of the competition. As soon as the buzzer went off, every team started working to build their towers.
With no chance to slip away to do more snooping, Leo was stuck here. He might as well mine the company fixer for information.
“What do you think about Nadia’s ring going missing?” Leo asked quietly, leaning toward Robert to make sure they couldn’t be overheard.
The surprise on Robert’s face looked genuine. “They haven’t found it yet?”
Leo shook his head. “I heard they think someone took it.”
A frown tugged the other man’s brows. “Off her finger? How?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know if anyone here is in trouble financially?” Leo asked, even more quietly.
Robert grunted, but it was his turn to take a block out of the tower and place it on top. Then it was Leo’s turn. By the time he stood next to the other man again, Robert’s expression looked troubled. He glanced at the team next to them, and Leo held his breath.
“Since Vanessa broke up with her boyfriend last year, she’s asked for an advance on her paycheck three times. I only know because Cora said it to me yesterday when we were discussing the MacMillan party I had to clean up.”
The MacMillan party was a sweet sixteen thrown for a very wealthy family in California. A two-hundred-thousand-dollar car ended up smashed into the MacMillans’ living room, and they tried to blame Goodhew. Robert had to spend two months dealing with the fallout. Vanessa had been the event director for that party, and she’d forgotten to get the clients’ signatures on the release forms. It was a crazy oversight; no one would forget to get the client to sign the most important piece of paper in the contract.
Leo glanced at the team next to them. Ari and Vanessa were watching Mark pull out a block of wood from their growing tower before placing it on top. They were speaking urgently to each other, and neither of them looked happy.
Amelia followed his gaze, then glanced back at Leo. She frowned.
Something was going on between Ari and Vanessa—but would he have stolen the ring to help her financial issues? What was the list of names he’d found under Ari’s laptop? Buyers for the ring and other stolen goods, maybe?
By the time the Jenga game was over, Leo’s mind was spinning. The four winners—George, Gregory, and a couple who worked in the company’s finance department—each won a top-of-the-line smartwatch.
Amelia let out a dramatic sigh as she clapped for the winners, and Leo wanted to wrap her in his arms and kiss her stupid. Instead, he just led her up to their room when the group broke up.
“We have two hours until dinner,” Amelia said as she locked the door behind them and spun around to look over their suite. “Should we check out those papers?”
Leo nodded and grabbed the stack of papers from under the couch cushion. He grabbed a couple of waters before sitting down, then shifted over to give Amelia enough space to slump down beside him. She picked up her tablet and pulled open the browser, fingers hovering over the keyboard as her eyes scanned the paper.
She googled the first name on the list, and a number of listings from various social media sites came up. “You recognize any of these people?”
Leo looked over the list, trying to ignore the heat of her arm against his. He shook his head. “No.”
They scanned the list and looked up a few names, but it wasn’t until the third page that Leo saw something he recognized. “Paul Walters,” he said. “He’s a multi-millionaire who made his money from a gaming app. He threw a huge party for his thirtieth birthday last year.” Then another name jumped out at him. “Barbara Hulme. She and her husband had an engagement party in Barbados.” He flicked through the pages. “These must be clients of Goodhew.”
Amelia leaned back, hands around her tablet. She stared off into space, frowning. “Are they all clients that Ari worked with?”
Leo shrugged. “I’m not sure, but it’s a reasonable assumption.”
“Well, there goes our theory that they’re buyers for the ring. If they’re already wealthy, they probably don’t need to buy stolen goods.”
“Unless they’re criminals. But it’s a pretty long list, and I doubt all of our clients engage in illegal activity.”
“The money must be the budget they spent on the parties Ari planned,” Amelia said, then glanced at Leo. “Don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” he conceded. Sighing, he tossed the papers away. Why would Ari have a list of old clients at the retreat? “He’s got some sort of shorthand notes in front of some of the names.”
“And some of them are crossed out,” Amelia added, peeking at the fourth page. “Is it just record-keeping? Does he just keep track of his projects this way? If so, I’d like to introduce him to a computer sometime.”
Leo shook his head. “There are proprietary systems in the company for that. Besides, the accounts department does the reckoning for the final budget and all the payments. Once the contract is signed, the event directors no longer handle the finances directly. We only get roped in if clients are refusing to pay and the finance department isn’t getting anywhere with follow-ups.”
“So you don’t usually have this information?”
Leo frowned. “I’d be able to access it on the system, but I’d have to go looking.”
“Why would Ari collect it like this? And why would he bring it here?”
Leo shook his head. He was at a loss. It didn’t make any sense.
“Vanessa seemed angry when she showed up in the hallway with Ari. She said something like, ‘I’m not getting involved with this. I’m not messing my job up for you.’” Amelia glanced at him. “Remember?”
Leo hummed. He slumped down on the sofa beside Amelia, which brought his whole side in contact with hers. She didn’t shift away.
Instead, Amelia turned her head to face him. They were both leaning their heads on the back of the sofa, and the pose was oddly intimate. “What if Ari is selling the contact information for all these rich people? I bet their phone numbers aren’t public knowledge.”
Her white-blond hair was in delicious disarray, and her silver eyes looked darker in the dim light of their room. Leo wanted to kiss her. “Who would he sell their phone numbers to? And why? And what does that have to do with the ring?”
Amelia bunched her lips to the side, and that made Leo want to kiss them more, just to feel her mouth relax against his. She sighed. “Well…maybe he’s in financial trouble. Both he and Vanessa,” she amended, because they’d discussed what Leo had found out from Robert earlier. Her eyes brightened, and she put her hand on Leo’s thigh. “He’s scrambling to make money. Maybe he’s selling this information to a competitor?”
She was so beautiful and clever and magnetic. Leo stared into her eyes and felt an uncomfortable tightness in his chest. In this moment, despite the conversation they were having, he couldn’t give two shakes about a missing ring. He wanted to haul Amelia over his lap and kiss her until she made those delicious little moans again, and then he wanted to do it again a hundred times over.
“That’s a good theory,” he grated, trying to keep a handle on what she’d said.
“Because Vanessa would be angry that he’s compromising her,” Amelia said, excited. “She’s already in some kind of financial trouble, and now he’s risking her job, so she’s mad.”
“Doesn’t mean they took the ring.”
Amelia slumped. She bit her lip. “Right. Selling contact information isn’t exactly the same as stealing a crazy-expensive piece of jewelry.”
Needing to shake off the tightness in his chest and the odd heaviness of his emotions, Leo shifted his gaze to Amelia’s tablet. “What’s next on your spreadsheet?” He cleared his throat and forced himself to say, “We have to get you a date by the end of the week.”
She looked down at her lap and swiped the tablet to unlock it. Deft fingers tapped on the screen, and Leo shifted to grab a bottle of water he’d left on the coffee table. He needed to cool himself down. Being this close to Amelia was rattling him in a way he wasn’t accustomed to.
But she didn’t want him, not the way he wanted her. She only wanted him for his expertise in sex and seduction, which was all he was good for in the first place. The only reason she was enjoying herself right now was because she was curious about the ring. Amelia liked problem-solving, and he’d brought her here and handed her a thorny one.
She didn’t actually like him , and why should she? Besides his job at Goodhew, seduction was the only thing he’d really applied himself to mastering in the past decade. He wasn’t good at anything else.
Cool water ran down Leo’s throat as he took a long drink. Meanwhile, Amelia tip-tapped on her screen. Half his water was gone by the time she spoke again.
“Next,” Amelia proclaimed, “is blowjobs.”