Flash (9 page)

She tapped her fingers on her arms and shot a wary glance at the printout. “What do you mean?”

“I'm referring to the fact that these reports from accounting are out of date and somewhat less than accurate.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you accusing Melwood Gill of incompetence?”

“I'm not accusing him of anything.” Jasper decided not to mention the suspicions that were beginning to take shape in his mind. “I'm saying I need someone in charge down there in accounting who can give me more accurate information.”

“Did you talk to Melwood?”

Jasper dropped the report onto the desk. “Of course I did.”

“Well? What did he have to say for himself?”

“He says that the switch to the new accounting software a few months ago created a lot of problems for his staff. He says they're only now starting to recover.”

“So he had a good explanation.” Triumph sharpened Olivia's eyes. “Perfectly reasonable. There's always a
certain amount of confusion after a major software change, especially in an accounting department.”

“Is there?”

“Sure. Everyone knows that.” She unfolded her arms and leaned forward to flatten her palms on his desk. Her voice softened to a confidential tone. “Look, between you and me, poor Melwood had a brush with cancer a few months back. It really shook him. Aunt Rose says he hasn't been himself since.”

“Aunt Rose?”

Olivia angled her chin toward the closed door that led to the outer office. “Your secretary.”

“Is she the one who called to tell you about Gill's transfer?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” He propped his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers. “Out of curiosity, how many other Glow employees report to you instead of to me?”

The high color in her face intensified. “Aunt Rose is not one of my spies, if that's what you mean.”

“Who are your spies?” he asked with great interest.

She took her hands off his desk, straightened abruptly, and glared at him. “We're a little off the topic here.”

“Yes.” He exhaled slowly. “We are. Look, it isn't just the reports from that department that worry me. There are some basic management problems.”

“What kind?”

“The kind you get when the person in charge is not paying attention. Were you aware that both of the senior accountants handed in their resignations two months ago?”

Olivia frowned. “No. Uncle Rollie was still here at that time. No reason he would have told me.”

“Gill's obviously in over his head.” That was putting the nicest possible spin on it. The alternative explanation was far more sinister, but Jasper did not mention it. He did not yet have any proof of his darker suspicions. “If Rollie had not gone off on that monthlong photo safari, he would have realized by now that he had a problem in that department.”

Olivia sighed. “If he had not gone off on that safari, he'd still be here running Glow and none of us would be in this mess.”

Jasper hesitated. When it came to business, he relied on his innate sense of timing. But with this woman he was wary of trusting his instincts. They were giving him dumb instructions. For example, right now he wanted to sink his fingers into her hair to see if the buried red fire there actually gave off heat. Logic told him it would be an extremely bad move. But everything that was male in him was urging him forward to disaster.

There was too much going on beneath the surface of his own reactions. Stuff he did not yet understand. A potential firestorm. An accident waiting to happen.

For a heartbeat, instinct warred with common sense. Instinct won. Which only went to prove that modern man was not nearly as evolutionarily advanced as he liked to think, Jasper decided.

Still, some small portion of his brain was working well enough to search for safe camouflage.

“This is not a good place to talk about such a, uh, sensitive matter,” he said.

She slanted him a faintly derisive look. “Have you got a better place than the offices of Glow, Inc., in which to discuss Glow company business?”

He held onto his patience with an effort of will. “I've got a meeting with the R&D people in ten minutes. I'm sure you have a busy schedule today, too. Why don't we conduct the rest of this conversation over dinner tonight?”

She blinked a couple of times, as if he had just suggested that they take the next shuttle to the moon.

“Huh?”

Not the most flattering of responses, Jasper admitted. But for some reason it gave him hope. Maybe she was as unsure and cautious about what was going on between them as he was. Maybe she wanted to tread warily.

Then again, maybe she was totally unaware of the silent thunder and invisible lightning that he saw snapping in the air between them.

At least it was not an outright rejection, he told himself. He sensed that he had better move quickly.

“A business dinner. A restaurant won't work. We need some space. I've got a lot of paperwork you'll want to see. Reports and printouts. That kind of thing. How about my place on Bainbridge?”

“Your place?”

He was moving too fast. He could see the deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression in her eyes.

“No” He tried to appear as if he were mulling over the practical aspects of the situation. “Forget Bainbridge. Your office would probably be best. I'm going to be working a little late this evening.”

“So am I,” she said very quickly.

“Fine.” He nodded once. Another executive decision made and executed. “I'll pick up some take-out and meet you at your studio.”

“A working dinner?”

“You said you wanted to be kept in the loop, didn't you?”

“Yes, but—”

“In the meantime, I would appreciate it if you would keep your concerns about Melwood Gill's transfer to yourself. I'm sure you understand that it's absolutely essential that you and I present a united front to the employees of Glow, Inc.”

She blinked again. “A united front.”

He got to his feet and made a show of glancing at his watch. “Sorry to rush you out of here, but I can't put off the meeting with the R&D people.” He smiled. “You know how it is.”

“Oh, sure. Right.” Like an automaton, she turned toward the door.

“I'll be at Light Fantastic at seven,” he said again, very softly. “That will give us plenty of time to go over those reports.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder. He saw immediately that the disoriented look had vanished from her eyes. In its place was a sardonic gleam.

“I'll check my calendar when I get back to my office to see if I'm free this evening,” she said coolly. “I'll give you a call sometime this afternoon and let you know.”

She sauntered into the outer room and closed the door very quietly but very firmly behind her.

* * *

Dinner with Jasper Sloan. Her hand froze on the doorknob for an instant. For some reason she found the basic concept hard to grasp.

A working dinner.

Okay, she could handle that. She knew how to do a business dinner with a man. On a good night she could even do a social dinner with a man, although she did not do a great many of those these days.

She gave herself a small, mental shake.
Snap out of it. We're talking take-out here, not the end of civilization as we know it
. She made herself let go of the knob.

Rose looked up as Olivia went past her desk. “Well? How did it go? Is he really going to fire poor Melwood?”

Automatically, Olivia gave her aunt a reassuring smile. “Of course not.”

“Hmm.” Rose narrowed her eyes, not entirely convinced. She slanted a long glance at the closed door of Jasper's office.

Olivia had great respect for her aunt's instincts when it came to this sort of situation. Rose had commanded her desk for nearly a decade. She was fifty-three years old and attractive in the typical Chantry manner, with red-brown hair and smoky-green eyes.

There was a comfortable, maternal roundness about Rose. Olivia knew it often misled strangers. They tended to overlook her razor-sharp instinct for the rumors, gossip, and other forms of unofficial information that flowed through Glow. Rollie had called her his weathervane.
She could have made a fortune working for one of the tabloids
, he'd said.

He had explained to Olivia that he relied on Rose to give him early warning of everything from impending births, divorces, and office romances to low-level grumbling among the staff.

Never, ever underestimate the value of information
, Rollie had added.
You can never have too much of it
.

Rose sighed. “It's true that poor Melwood hasn't been himself lately. That brush with cancer, you know. He's going to be all right, but it gave him a terrible scare.”

Olivia hesitated. “What kind of cancer was it?”

“Basal cell carcinoma. A type of skin cancer.” Rose rattled off the diagnosis with the smooth precision of a dermatologist. “Rarely fatal if caught early. But Melwood was badly shaken.”

“The word
cancer
has that effect on people.”

“True. And Melwood is something of a hypochondriac.” Rose eyed the closed door again with a foreboding look. “I'm afraid his problems may be only the beginning around here.”

“What do you mean?”

“There's change in the wind,” Rose muttered ominously. “I can feel it.”

“Don't panic,” Olivia said crisply. “I'm still here, remember? And I own darn near half the company. I can handle Jasper Sloan.”

“I hope so,” Rose said.

“I've got to run.”

Rose's gaze sharpened. “By the way, I assume you've heard about your cousin Nina? Beth says it looks as if she and Sean Dane are getting very serious.”

Olivia was proud of herself. Her smile did not flicker by so much as a millimeter. “I heard.”

“Life is strange, isn't it?” Rose mused. “Who would have thought that Nina would have fallen in love with Logan Dane's brother?”

“Go figure. See you later, Aunt Rose.” Olivia fled past her and escaped into the relative safety of the hallway.

What in the world was the matter with her? she wondered as she walked swiftly toward the elevators. It certainly wasn't the gossip concerning her cousin Nina's growing relationship with Sean Dane that had produced this funny hot-cold feeling. She had heard the rumors days ago.

It was Jasper's invitation to dinner that shook her. She was acting as if he had suggested an affair instead of a working dinner.

An affair
. Now there was a concept.

If social dinners with interesting men were rare events in her life, the number of affairs she'd had fell into the vanishingly small category. There had been no serious relationships at all since Logan had died.

She refused to count those brief months with Crawford Lee Wilder a year and a half ago. That had been a mistake, she thought, but not an affair, thank God. Some sense of intuition had made her resist his slick, polished attempts to get her into bed.

She was aware that some of her relatives, Aunt Rose, for example, feared that she was secretly carrying a torch for Logan Dane. Olivia knew that was not the case, but she also knew that she did not want to look too closely at the real truth.

The harsh reality, she thought, was that she had lost her nerve when it came to love. Give her a good, convoluted,
complicated business crisis any day. Business she could handle.

Which was why it was imperative that the problem of Jasper Sloan stay under the heading of business.

It would be a
working
dinner, she thought. Just keep repeating that over and over. A working dinner.

She came to a halt in front of the elevators and stabbed the button.

“Hi, Olivia,” a cheerful voice called. “How's it hanging?”

“Hey, Olivia,” another voice said a little too loudly. “Come to save Glow from the big bad wolf?”

Olivia stifled a groan. She turned her head to see her cousins Quincy and Percy ambling toward her down the hall. The twins were attired in their usual jeans, short-sleeved, nerd-pack-equipped sport shirts, and running shoes. They both wore thick-framed glasses. As usual, they had soft drinks and candy bars in their hands. The geek look, they frequently assured her, was trendy.

“Hi, guys.” She glanced at the soda and snacks. “Break time?”

“You got it.” Quincy glanced past her down the hall toward the executive suite. His brows bounced above the frames of his glasses. “So, are the rumors true? Is Sloan really going to fire good old Melwood?”

“No,” Olivia said.

Percy cast a quick look around and then leaned in close. “What's all this stuff about a merger?”

“Nothing to it.” Olivia stabbed futilely at the stubborn elevator button. “Wish I could hang around and chat, but I'm really busy today.”

“Yeah, sure.” Quincy stuffed half a candy bar into his mouth. “Me and Percy have to get back to the lab. Sloan's putting the pressure on. He wants all kinds of task updates ready by five o'clock.”

“Guy doesn't cut any slack,” Percy said cheerfully. “You oughta see what's on the schedule for tomorrow's staff meeting. He wants all of us there, not just the managers.”

“Word is, he's going to push the new electroluminescent development project hard.”

Olivia took a close look at Percy and Quincy. Neither appeared offended or anxious by the shakeup in the tech labs where they worked. If anything, they seemed to be excited. There was an energetic enthusiasm about them that she had not noticed when Rollie had been in charge.

“That's great,” she said. She punched the elevator button a few more times.

Percy started past her. “Hey, you hear about cousin Nina and Sean Dane?”

Olivia tried not to stiffen. “Yes.”

“Somethin' else, huh?” Quincy took a huge bite out of his candy bar. “Who'd have guessed that she and Sean would get together? Mom says she thinks they're going to get engaged soon.”