The doorbell rang. Kerri rose. “You want me to get it?”
“Please,” Ethan said over a sizzling pan.
She opened the door to find a small, well-proportioned brunette with sharp eyes on the other side. High heels didn’t quite manage to bring her up to Kerri’s height, but a fashionable black raw-silk dress hugged the other woman’s hourglass body, and her posture was imperious. She tossed long curls over a shoulder and stared at Kerri like she would a bug.
Kerri straightened and put a hand on her hip.
“Who are you?” the woman said.
“Well, at the moment I’m the woman who’s going to decide whether or not to shut the door in your fa—”
Ethan appeared by Kerri’s side. “Catherine! What are you doing here?”
“What do you think?” She started marching into the penthouse. “I had to come here to see you. It’s not like my entire future is something we can talk about over the phone.”
Kerri stepped aside as the other woman swept past. So this was Catherine Fairchild Lloyd, member of the TLD Board and Ethan’s sister-in-law. Given Jacob’s bigamy, Kerri assumed the woman would be more…subdued. But no, she was strikingly good looking and obviously hyped up about something. Her golden brown eyes glittered like lasers, her cheeks flushed to a dark pink—and not from artful makeup.
The second the door closed Catherine wheeled around and said, “How could you, Ethan?” The fact that Kerri was standing there didn’t seem to faze her. “How could you tell everyone I’m an embezzler?”
Ethan sighed. “I guess Simon ran to you.”
?
?No. Jacob told me everything.”
He scowled. “You’re still talking to Jacob?”
“He called me this morning to rail at me about all the accounts and credit cards I closed. It’s the least he deserved considering what he’s done. But he had the last laugh in our little conversation, oh yes he did. He said you told everyone I stole from the company, and that’s why it’s doing so badly. I could hardly believe my ears when I heard it.”
“I said no such thing. The official audit isn’t finished yet, and there are quite a few other people who had access to the company’s funds besides you.”
“He said I was going to jail to pay for it.” Her lower lip trembled slightly.
Kerri winced. Jacob was the biggest ass ever.
“Catherine, listen to me. We don’t know what happened to the money yet,” Ethan said. “It might just not have been properly accounted for…which wouldn’t surprise me, given how sloppily the rest of the company has been run lately. So long as you aren’t responsible for the missing funds, you aren’t going to jail.”
“But he said—”
“Don’t you know your husband well enough to disregar—”
“He’s not my husband!”
“Okay, okay. The point is, you should know how Jacob can be when he’s angry.”
“I didn’t steal anything from the company. Or from Jacob.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
“You think?” Catherine didn’t seem sure. “Sometimes truth has nothing to do with how life turns out.” She turned to Kerri, studying her from head to toes.
Kerri arched an eyebrow and returned the favor. She wouldn’t let Catherine intimidate her.
“I suppose this is the Kerri who found the problems?” Catherine said finally.
“One and the same,” Kerri said.
“You really trust this woman?” Catherine said to Ethan. “Everyone knows she’s Barron Sterling’s granddaughter. Born right in the middle of the enemy camp.”