The Hostage Bride (8 page)

“I have a board meeting in the morning. It will probably run through lunchtime. They usually do,” he said grimly. “But I’ll … manage to see you sometime tomorrow.” The way she was obsessing him, he wouldn’t live through the day if he didn’t.

Tamara chewed at the inside of her lip as Bick drove away. She had let another opportunity escape her. Turning to the house, she resolved that, no matter what, she would tell him the truth tomorrow. He would understand. To a company the size of Taylor Business Machines, the amount of money she had “borrowed” would be a drop in the bucket. Besides, she was going to pay it back in full and with interest.

Restlessly, Bick prowled the rambling rooms of the large two-story house. The television set was turned on in the informal family room. A stereo was emitting mood music from the four speakers in the rec room. The notes for the morning board meeting were spread out over his desk in the library. A light was on in the kitchen, where the remains of his dinner waited on the countertop for the housekeeper’s arrival in the morning.

Pouring a drink from the crystal decanter in the living room, Bick set it down untouched to walk back to the library. He flipped through a Rolodex to the S’s and dialed the second number under Slater.

“Hello, Peggy. Bick Rutledge. I’d like to speak
to Adam,” he requested the instant he received an answer.

“He isn’t here. He’s working late … or so he told me,” was the laughing reply.

“He is?” Bick frowned. “Where? Finishing up the Signet books?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Did he give you a telephone number?” he asked, since the switchboard would be closed.

“Yes.” Peggy Slater gave it to him.

“Thanks.” He hung up and dialed the number she had given him. It rang a half dozen times before it was answered. It was Adam’s voice on the other end of the line. “Hello, Adam. This is Bick. I called the house and Peggy gave me the number.”

“Oh, hello, Bick. What can I do for you?” Recognition replaced the remoteness that had initially been in Adam’s voice.

“I want you to transfer Tamara … Miss James to the corporate headquarters. Find her a position on your staff,” Bick ordered. There was a long pause. “Adam? Are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” He sounded vague, preoccupied, and Bick’s gaze narrowed. “I’ll find a place for her.”

Bick detected a tone he didn’t like. “Don’t you feel she’s qualified?” he challenged.

“Miss James is highly intelligent, skilled, and very knowledgeable.” Adam seemed to choose his words with care.

“Then there is no problem,” Bick persisted.

“None that I can see at the moment,” Adam agreed.

“How come you’re working tonight? There isn’t any rush in finishing that audit.” Adam’s attitude troubled him.

“I had some questions. I thought I’d clear them up tonight when I wouldn’t have any interruptions.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“I don’t know,” came the sighing answer. “I’ve got this feeling, but I can’t put my finger on it. It’s probably nothing.”

A smile touched Bick’s mouth. Adam was definitely thorough, very definitely a company man. “Don’t stay late. Maybe you’d better give Peggy a call. I think I aroused her suspicions,” he joked.

“She’s already called me twice. So far I have to bring home a half gallon of milk and a loaf of bread.”

A low chuckle rolled from his throat. “Good night, Adam.”

“Bick?”

He had started to hang up the phone and stopped at the questioning use of his name.

“Yes.”

“What’s your schedule tomorrow?”

“I have a board meeting in the morning, but I’ll probably be free about the middle of the afternoon. Why?”

“No reason,” Adam hedged. “I just wondered. Good night.”

There was a click on the line. Bick frowned and replaced the receiver. He didn’t know what had got into Adam, but he’d probably find out tomorrow when he went over to the office to see
Tamara. That stirring ache in his loins returned and he wandered back into the living room to find his drink.

Old man Sharvert was droning on. Bick leaned back in his chair at the head of the table and let his pen doodle on the note pad balanced on his knee. He glanced at the words scattered in the margins and a smile twitched at his mouth. A psychiatrist would have a field day interpreting his absent word associations. Profit = tonight. Loss = last night. Liabilities = lack of patience.

The door to the boardroom was opened a discreet crack and a tall, slim elderly woman slipped in and tiptoed to his chair. Mrs. Davies had been his right arm and executive secretary since he had assumed the presidency of the corporation. He knew she would never interrupt a meeting unless she felt it was important. Like a self-conscious schoolboy, he covered his secret references to Tamara on the note pad and turned his swivel chair to listen to her whispered message.

“Adam Slater is on the telephone. He says he isn’t going to have another chance to call you this afternoon.”

That seemed strange, but Bick was willing to accept any excuse to end the boredom of the meeting. “Excuse me, Gil,” he interrupted the man issuing the latest, and longest, in a series of reports. “Let’s break for lunch. You can finish your report when we come back.”

There was a general nod of approval at his
suggestion. Bick didn’t wait around to take part in the conversation that broke out, but followed Mrs. Davies out of the room to the privacy of his big office.

“Line two,” she told him before closing the door.

“Hello, Adam. What’s the problem?” He ripped off the sheet of his note pad and crumpled it into a wad before tossing it in a nearby wastebasket.

“I’d rather not go into it over the phone. Were you planning to stop over here this afternoon?” Adam queried.

“Yes,” Bick admitted without actually stating that the purpose of his visit was to see Tamara. “Is something wrong?”

“I’ll talk to you about it when you get here.” Adam stalled again. “What time do you think it will be?”

Bick frowned and glanced at his slim gold watch. “I shouldn’t be any later than three thirty.”

“Okay. I’ll be waiting for you in Stein’s office.”

“Stein’s office? You are making this all sound very mysterious, Adam,” he accused with hesitant amusement.

“I don’t mean to, but it isn’t something I want to talk about on the phone. It’s something you definitely need to know about.”

“Does it have anything to do with Ta … Miss James’s transfer here?” Bick searched for a reason for his accountant’s peculiar secretive-ness. “Did you mention it to her?” Had she refused it? He’d wring her neck if she had. My
God, he couldn’t keep commuting back and forth between his office and hers. He wanted her close so he could have a glimpse of her once in a while, just to reassure himself she existed and wasn’t some figment of his imagination.

“No. No, I haven’t gotten around to mentioning it to her yet,” Adam replied as if he had forgotten all about it.

Bick released a breath of relief. “All right. I’ll see you at three thirty … in Stein’s office.”

“Right.”

But it was closer to fifteen till four before Bick walked through the main entrance. He had hoped to be a few minutes early so he could let Tamara know he was in the building, but not by any stretch of the imagination did her office lie on the direct route to that of the former owner’s. With an impatient grimace, he continued toward Stein’s private office, where Adam was waiting. He nodded curtly to the white-haired secretary sitting at the desk in the outer office.

“Mr. Slater is inside. He’s expecting you,” she informed him unnecessarily.

“Thank you.” Bick opened the door without knocking and walked in. Adam was standing at the window, his back to the door. He turned when Bick entered, a rather drawn and concerned expression on his face. “What’s this all about, Adam?” Bick came straight to the point.

Adam hesitated, then did likewise. “There’s a discrepancy in the books.” He walked from the window to the large desk, where two sets of ledgers were lying open. “There is roughly twenty thousand dollars that can’t be accounted for.”

“What?” It was a wary, one-word question that didn’t really ask for the explanation to be repeated. Bick walked to the desk to study the opened ledgers for himself.

“Now you understand why I didn’t want to talk to you about this over the telephone.” Adam thrust a hand in his slacks pocket, a certain grimness pulling down the corners of his mouth as he watched Bick. “I had a devil of a time proving to myself it was missing. It’s been very skillfully hidden.”

There was an icy coldness in the pit of his stomach as Bick followed the penciled notes Adam had made in the columnar margins, tracing the flow of the funds in question. “Who knows about this?” he demanded, fighting the growing feeling of dread.

“Just you and me. Nobody else … except the person who knows where the twenty thousand dollars is.” Adam qualified his answer.

“There must be a mistake,” Bick stated, groping desperately for an explanation.

“That’s what I thought … at first. But there it is—in black and white.” Adam gestured toward the account books. “Look for yourself. You can see—”

“Yes! I can see it!” Bick slammed the books shut with sudden violence and turned his back on them. “I can see it but I don’t want to believe it!” His hand curled into a tight fist, but there was nothing to strike at. “Maybe there’s an explanation,” he hoped aloud.

“Do you want me to get Stein in here?” Adam suggested. “Maybe he could clear it up.”

Bick released a harsh, laughing breath of scorn. “Don’t bother. You know as well as I do that the man probably doesn’t know a debit from a credit. He isn’t the one who made those entries.” Only one person could have—Tamara. He gritted his teeth, a muscle jerking in his cheek at the fierceness of his reaction.

Adam was aware of it, too. There was a long, heavy silence that Bick couldn’t break, unable to say what they were both thinking.

“Bick, I’ll … uh … talk to Miss James, if you want me to,” Adam offered finally.

Bick wanted to push the problem onto Adam’s shoulders. The truth was he was afraid of a confrontation with Tamara. He was afraid of what the result might be. Bick tried to rationalize his desire with the thought that Adam would be more objective. But, whatever the outcome, the problem would eventually land on his desk. He had to face it now or be torn apart by questions.

“No, I’ll handle it.” He forced the words out of his tightly clenched jaw and rubbed a hand over the bands of tension knotting the cords in his neck. “Have … Stein’s secretary—whatever her name is—call Miss James and tell her that I want to see her … here.”

“Do you … want me to stay or leave the two of you alone?”

“You’d better stay,” Bick said, sighing, because he wasn’t sure what his reaction was going to be. “At least until we get to the bottom of this.”

Mrs. Danby had said Bick wanted to see her right away, but Tamara didn’t need that admonition to hurry down the corridor to Mr. Stein’s office. Her stomach was fluttering with nervous excitement. She felt ridiculously like a schoolgirl and sternly reminded herself that she was an adult, not a giddy teenager. But it didn’t slow her racing pulse.

Darting a quick smile at the elderly secretary, Tamara walked directly to the door leading into the private office. She knocked once, and a voice that she recognized instantly as Bick’s gave permission to enter. Opening the door, Tamara couldn’t keep the suppressed joy at seeing him again from sparkling in her jewel-blue eyes. Bick was standing behind Mr. Stein’s desk, his attention focused on some papers on its top. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the movement of a second occupant in the room. She tore
her gaze from Bick to identify the second person.

“Hello, Adam.” She greeted him naturally and turned back to the man who had summoned her. “You wanted to see me … Mr. Rutledge.” She remembered, just in time, to address him formally.

Bick lifted his head and Tamara was frozen by the icy cold look of his green eyes. “Come in, Miss James,” he ordered.

As she walked toward the desk, her gaze darted from Bick to Adam to the ledger books on the desk. An alarm bell went off in her head and Bick’s next words confirmed what she feared. “Mr. Slater and I want you to tell us what you know about the missing twenty thousand dollars.”

“Y … You know about it.” Her legs started to turn to jelly.

“Yes.” Something savage flickered across Bick’s expression.

Unable to stand without support, Tamara slowly lowered herself into the armchair in front of the desk. A faint laugh bubbled from her throat, venting some of her tension.

“I actually feel … relieved that you know about it,” she said, a little surprised at that discovery.

Bick appeared unmoved by her admission. “What happened to the money?”

“I borrowed it.” Tamara would have followed that statement with an explanation, but she was interrupted by Bick.

“With whose permission?” he snarled, towering behind the desk to physically intimidate her.

There was a puckering frown on her forehead as she tried to defend herself. “With nobody’s permission—at least not officially.” At the gathering thunder in Bick’s features, Tamara hurried on with an explanation so he would understand. “I approached Mr. Stein several times with the intention of asking for the loan,” she assured him with a proud tilt to her chin. “But there was always some interruption, or else he was wrapped up in his current project. I needed the money desperately. Since I had borrowed money from him and his brother before, I knew he would loan it to me again. So I took it. I knew he wouldn’t mind.”

“No, I’ll bet he wouldn’t,” Bick jeered, his strong features cut into harshly contemptuous lines. “When a man is as old as Stein, I imagine he would consider a woman as young and beautiful as you a rare treat and be thoroughly compensated by the ‘pleasure’ of your company.”

“It wasn’t like that at all. You make him sound like a lecher,” Tamara protested in a stabbing breath. “Mr. Stein has been like an uncle to me. So was his brother before he died.”

“Yes, old men tend to adopt beautiful ‘nieces,’” he sneered.