Blackmailed By The Boss

‘Hello, darling,’ Charlotte cooed and touched one of the tiny hands that rested on the counterpane. ‘Hello.’

Jennifer was so lucky, Charlotte thought, so incredibly lucky to have two such gorgeous children.

‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ Jordan asked from the other end of the kitchen. ‘I opened a bottle of Chablis a little while ago.’

‘Thanks.’ Charlotte glanced down the modern white kitchen. He seemed very much at home here, she thought as she watched him open up the fridge and pour her the wine.

‘Won’t be a minute, Charlotte,’ Jennifer called down the stairs. ‘They are sending search parties out to find Steve at the golf club—he’s going to be dead meat when he gets home.’

Charlotte laughed. ‘Leave him alone, you bully,’ she called back.

‘No chance. Harriet, I can’t hear you practising your scales.’

The little girl pulled a face at her mother’s words but dutifully disappeared back towards the lounge to resume her discordant serenade.

‘Married bliss, eh?’ Jordan smiled as he brought her drink over and put it down on the table next to her. She almost smiled back at him, and then stopped herself. She really was going to have to keep a cool distance from Jordan. OK, he had notched her up on his bedpost, but he needn’t think she was a pushover.

‘I hope you don’t think that I asked Jen to invite you here today,’ she told him bluntly as she sat down. ‘Because I didn’t.’

‘The thought hadn’t occurred to me. I’m often here.’

‘So I believe.’

He took out one of the wrought-iron chairs from the kitchen table and put it down to sit facing her.

‘Can we go back to being friends, Charlie?’ he asked quietly.

She noticed how his knees were almost touching hers. Her eyes rested on his hands, which were large and capable-looking. She remembered how they had felt against her body, caressing her to a fever pitch of desire. Remembered how she had writhed and moaned and kissed him with a hunger that she had never known before.

‘Charlie?’ he prompted.

‘Of course,’ she replied quickly.

She looked at him and her eyes shimmered intensely green. But had they ever been just friends? she wondered suddenly. She had always been so acutely aware of him, always intensely careful to keep a distance. And with good reason, she realised now.

Charlotte’s words didn’t convince Jordan. It was as if she had just rolled down steel shutters on herself.

‘You could have fooled me,’ he said steadily. ‘Since our evening together there’s an occasional chill coming off you that feels as if it could be rolling in from Antarctica.’

‘Is there?’ She frowned. ‘Well, I’m sorry if that’s the case. I really don’t want to jeopardise our working relationship.’

She noticed how his lips twisted drily at those words. ‘No, neither do I.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘We need to stick together, Charlie, because we have a lot of…stuff to get through over the next few weeks.’

‘You mean with Dad being away and it being so busy in the office?’

‘Sort of…’ Jordan hesitated. ‘I think you should know that I offered to buy your father’s share of the business from him a while ago.’

Instantly Charlotte felt apprehensive. Her father was her only safety barrier between herself and Jordan. And after their night together she needed that protection more than ever.

He watched her reaction carefully as he spoke and saw the concern in her eyes. ‘He turned down my offer.’

‘Oh…’ There was relief in her look now. ‘Well, you can’t blame him, Jordan. The business has been in our family for two generations.’

‘And family is very important to the McCanns.’

‘Yes.’ She shrugged. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’

‘No, and I can understand your sentiments. Obviously you want to take over a share of the running of the company one day, and so you should. You’ve worked very hard to make the interior-design division a success.’

‘Why do I sense that the word “but” is going to creep into this?’ Charlotte reached for her glass of wine.

‘I don’t think your father can afford to turn down my offer,’ Jordan said bluntly.

‘Why ever not?’ She laughed at the absurdity of that remark. ‘He’s a wealthy man. He can afford to do whatever he likes.’

Jordan looked thoughtful. ‘But it isn’t only down to money. He has become forgetful and his business judgement isn’t as sharp as it has been in the past. I know he lost a lot of money on shares last year and…’ He hesitated and lowered his voice. ‘I really haven’t wanted to tell you this, Charlotte, but I feel I must. The auditors did a spot check and there is a substantial amount of money missing from the company accounts.’

It took a moment for what he was saying to sink in. ‘Are you saying my father is stealing from the company?’ Her words trembled alarmingly.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You might as well have!’ She cut across him. ‘My father is an honourable man—how can you suggest such a thing?’ She glared at him.

‘I’m just being honest with you, so there’s no point being angry.’ Jordan’s voice was calm. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I think your father is innocent and that Ruth is the culprit. I have a feeling she has taken the money without your father’s knowledge.’

‘This is preposterous.’ Charlotte shook her head. ‘Why would Ruth take money from the company?’

‘I don’t know. But I got a phone call from her last week and she was very agitated. At first I couldn’t make out what she was talking about. She was babbling on about the accounts and money but before she could explain she got cut off.’

Charlotte stared at him in distress. And a prickle of unease crept in to disturb her certainty. Her father had only been married to Ruth for two years and Charlotte had worried about the match at first, but her only concern had been their age difference. Her father was nearly sixty; Ruth was forty-six. However, they seemed so ideally happy together that Charlotte had stopped thinking about age as an issue at all. And she had grown extremely fond of Ruth. ‘I can’t imagine for one moment that Ruth would dip into company funds.’

‘Well, I’ve given the matter serious thought since the phone call,’ Jordan said. ‘And Ruth used to work in the accounts department, didn’t she?’

Charlotte nodded.

‘So she knows her way around the systems very well.’

‘I still can’t believe she would do such a thing,’ Charlotte said firmly. ‘Apart from anything else, Dad is a wealthy man. She wouldn’t need to do it.’

‘Well, the money is definitely missing. And, reading between the lines, that’s how it looks to me—’

‘There must be something more to this, something we don’t know.’ Charlotte’s voice was emphatic.

‘Don’t you think it speaks volumes that they haven’t come back from France?’ he asked quietly. ‘And since discovering the money has gone, I haven’t been able to make contact with them.’

Charlotte had to admit that was a bit odd. Her father was such a workaholic; he loved the office. But she had thought that Ruth was making him take an extra-long break. In fact she had even secretly applauded Ruth for the action, because her father had looked so tired before he left. But now…

‘How much money are we talking about?’ she asked curiously.