“Oh? What?”
Mitch shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Nothing much.” He shrugged his shoulders and reached inside of his jacket for a neatly folded piece of paper. “I was hoping that you could borrow a little information from the bank….”
“What?” she asked, perplexed, and ran a shaky hand through her sleekly restrained hair. “Information? What information?”
Mitch waved off her questions dismissively with the clean white envelope. “Well, it’s really not all that important, except that I can’t get my hands on the records, as I’m no longer employed with the bank.” He puffed furiously on his cigar, cloaking his head in a thin veil of blue smoke as he offered her the envelope.
Reluctantly she reached for the paper, as her uneasy stomach began to churn. “This information—what do you need it for?”
“I know it’s rather sudden,” Mitch rattled on, “but I need documents that would help clear my name. Bank records, trust documents, computer printouts on the dividend accounts, stock certificate registrations…nothing all that important….”
“You’re not serious!”
“Of course I’m serious. Everything I need is listed in there.” He pointed dramatically to the envelope that Erin was holding. She dropped it onto the table.
“Mitch!” Erin’s cool voice was tightly formal. “Are you suggesting that I confiscate private bank records and give them to you?”
“Not give…I just want to borrow the stuff, until I can get this embezzlement fiasco straightened out.”
“But you know that I can’t do that,” Erin exclaimed. “For one thing it’s against the law. All that information is confidential!”
“Erin!” Mitch interrupted her. “This is my life that we’re talking about. I face more years in prison than you’d want to count!” His eyes beseeched her, but she didn’t waver. She spread her hands against the linen-clad table, and looked him directly in the eyes.
“Mitch, you know I’d love to help you out, but you can’t expect me to do anything illegal, for God’s sake!”
He chewed on his cigar and rolled it from one side of his mouth to the other. All the while, his watery blue eyes impaled her.
“Can’t your attorney subpoena the information that you need? Why come to me?”
“It would be better for me this way, Erin. Otherwise I’d never put you on the spot. You know that. But any information that my attorney subpoenas will be sifted through by the prosecution. If they don’t know about the information until the time of the hearing, I could get the jump on them. You know, surprise the court, confuse the D.A., perhaps avoid the indictment!”
Erin began to shake her head in a negative sweep. “You’re just putting off the inevitable. You can’t expect me to take such a chance. I…can’t…”
“And I counted on you as a friend,” Mitch spat out with a bitterness that chilled the air.
“I—we are friends.”
“No, you’ve got that one wrong, Erin, dead wrong!” he snapped, waving an angry accusatory finger and his cigar within inches of her face. “We were friends when it was convenient for you—when I was your boss, and I could help you. Especially when that jerk of a husband dumped on you and you needed a shoulder to cry on. But now, when the tables have turned, our friendship seems to be wearing a little thin, doesn’t it?”
Erin drew in an unsteady and disbelieving breath. “You can’t possibly mean what you’re implying. You know that I care for you—I always have—but you’re asking the impossible!”
“Ha!”
“Mitch…don’t…”
“Don’t what, Erin?” he taunted, all of his hatred coming to the surface. “Don’t overextend your friendship? Don’t ask you to help me, after I helped pull you back together during your divorce? Don’t ask you to do anything that might endanger your fragile relationship with your new boss?”
“What?” she gasped, but the meaning of his words was clear.
“Don’t give me that wide-eyed shocked virgin routine, Erin. It won’t work. Besides, it’s demeaning. I know that you’re Kane Webster’s mistress, and that you’ve been hopping in and out of bed with him since he first set foot in this town!”
All of the color in Erin’s face washed away with Mitch’s cruel words, and little protesting, choking noises came from somewhere in her throat. But Mitch’s vicious tirade wasn’t finished.
“You’re surprised, aren’t you. Well let me tell you this—it’s all over town!”
“No!”
His eyes narrowed evilly. “I never thought you would stoop so low as to sleep with such despicable scum as Webster. But then you’ve never had very good taste when it came to men, have you?”