Chapter One
Jade Jardine stood her ground as her boss, Creepy Curtis, gave her a challenging look. “We know about the embezzling, Jade,” he said.
“Excuse me?” Icy pinpricks danced along her spine. Embezzling?
“You’ve been a great employee,” he continued. “If you’ll help me recover the money, and go away quietly, I think I can convince Joshua Jewel to not press charges.”
Jade leaned against the leather couch of the luxury suite that overlooked Condado Beach, Puerto Rico. As a bonus for work, she’d been brought on a trip to the Jewels’ all-inclusive resort, which would be followed by a weeklong cruise of the Caribbean. She’d thought it would be a dream trip. Now she prayed she was living in some alternate reality. “You’d better back down,” she commanded, instantly on the defensive. Who would accuse her of something like this? Why? “I have never embezzled, and I never would. How dare you try to blame me?”
Curtis’s dark eyes studied her like the cat who’d captured a particularly nasty rat. She despised rats and didn’t have any plans to be one. “It’s going to go much easier on you if you just admit the truth.”
“The truth? You wouldn’t know truth if it bit you in the butt.” She pointed a finger at him. “You’re always giving me these creepy looks. I bet you’re the one who’s embezzling.”
He shook his dark gray hair as if she were a simpleton. “I’ve been watching you and everybody who might have access to do something like this. I trusted you, Jade.”
He trusted her. Yeah, right. “How did I supposedly embezzle?”
“I think I’ve given you enough information. Why don’t you tell me how you accomplished it?”
Jade arched an eyebrow, indignant fury racing through her. She should be more scared than angry, but that wasn’t really her nature. Her mother had always loathed her “impetuous personality.” “You have to have some kind of proof before you can accuse me of something like this.”
Curtis nodded, his dark eyes serious. “Do you support a charity called Health for All?”
He was referring to her favorite charity, which had been founded by Avalyn Shaman Hawk, one of Jade’s heroes in life. Jade donated most of the proceeds from herCream the Celebrityblog to Health for All; she also had a page of her site dedicated to the charity and urging others to help children throughout the world with clean water, immunizations, healthy food, and more.
“You know I do,” she said. She’d suggested in several meetings that they donate the proceeds of a recent charity auction hosted by Jewel Enterprises to Health for All. “What does that matter?”
Curtis swallowed and met her gaze steadily. “Our accounting department has only recently discovered that a significant amount of money has been embezzled over the past year. The investigators haven’t been able to track the money to a person yet, as most of it has gone to untraceable offshore accounts, but a good chunk was donated to Health for All.”
Jade felt the fear she’d been successful in suppressing thus far rise up to choke her. Someone was setting her up. “You have to see that someone is framing me,” she protested.
Curtis spread his hands. “I came to you because I hoped you’d admit the truth and work with us to recover the money. If you don’t, you will be prosecuted, Jade, and there’s nothing I can do to help you.”
“I don’t want your help. As far as I know, you could be the one embezzling.”
He rolled his eyes.
Fire rose in Jade. “I have worked my butt off the past three years for you, you claimed I had a shot at CEO when you retired next year, and now you dare accuse me of something like this?” She paused, but he didn’t say anything. “You don’t have to fire me, because I quit. And I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen now. I’ll hire my own lawyer and go on the offensive.”
“It will go much better for you if you help us recover the money and show some humility.”
“Humility? I have done nothing wrong, and I’m going to act exactly like an innocent, wrongly accused person would act. I’m going to enjoy my time at the Jewels’ resort and go on that cruise and not even worry about your lies.” That was a bluff. She was horrified by the accusations. “When your investigators find out the truth, don’t worry about apologizing to me, because I never want to see you again.”
“If you would be reasonable, we could avoid you serving jail time.”
“Get out!”
He pushed out a heavy, disgusted breath and walked out, the door falling closed behind him.
Jade deadbolted the door and then paced the luxurious suite overlooking the beach and the ocean beyond. Even as big as this suite was, there wasn’t enough room to get rid of her frustrations, and she hated the dirty feeling Curtis had left in the room. He’d claimed that he was coming over to discuss the agenda for the next ten days: three here at the Jewels’ resort, and then a week on the cruise, where Joshua Jewel was supposed to join them. Instead, Curtis tried to claim she was embezzling? She chewed at a fingernail. Was its Curtis who was really embezzling, or one of the other members of their team? Peter, Trevor, and Gabe were just as close to Curtis and the top as she was. Any one of them could easily have stolen funds and hidden it well. They were all brilliant and hard-working.
Pausing in her pacing, she called a lawyer friend and laid out the whole story. He advised her to be calm and let him start investigating and allow the investigators from Jewel Enterprises to keep working. No one could prosecute her simply because the embezzler donated money to her favorite charity. He kept reassuring her that all would be well, and he suggested that she do exactly like she’d said: go on the trip, show how innocent she was, and call human resources immediately.
She did just that and told the human resources director exactly what Curtis had accused her of. She demanded that they look into it and let her talk to Joshua Jewel, the reclusive billionaire owner of Jewel Enterprises, who Jade had been happily anticipating meeting on this trip. The director was very professional and assured her they’d get to the bottom of the problem, but she absolutely could not give out Joshua Jewel’s number. Jade doubted she even had it.
Jade hung up, not feeling very reassured. She slipped into flip-flops and grabbed her room key. She didn’t even want her cell phone. Her sister, Teal, was the only one she’d want to talk to right now, and she was busy with her new man, Stetson Strong. Jade walked down the hallway and to the closest elevator. She loved alliteration and thought Stetson’s name was perfect. She wondered if that was why she had been so obsessed with meeting Joshua Jewel. She hadn’t even admitted it to Teal, but there was something ultra-appealing about a mysterious billionaire who shared the letter J with her.
Growling in frustration, she wished she knew which room Creepy Curtis was in so she could kick his door, at the very least. Now she really needed to talk to Joshua Jewel, and not to interview him for her blog or see if he was as amazing as she’d hoped he’d be. She needed to plead her case. Her breath shortened, and she felt cold sweats break out as the implications of what was happening washed over her. She’d not only quit her job, but if they could somehow frame her for embezzling, she might go to jail. Her lawyer had been very encouraging, but this was a nightmare, and she’d done nothing wrong.