Page 72 of Winning Bid

Until she smiles. It’s warm, inviting, and a little crooked, like God had to give her an imperfection to keep people from hating her. She swings around her desk on impossibly high heels and locks me into a hug. “You must be June. I am so happy to meet you!”

“Uh, you too.”

She holds me at arm’s length. “Well, you two sit, and we will figure out what the fuck is going on.” Then she tools back around her desk and pops her intercom on. “Mujo, coffee, and lunch.” She turns her attention to us. “First of all, June, please call me Dana. As much as I’d love to hear how you two met, Andy tells me you’re in a heap of trouble with a short time frame, so that will have to wait until we can make a social call. I’ve done some digging myself, but I’d like you two to tell me what is going on in your own words.”

As much as that sounds like a good plan, I still worry about telling anyone about what we’ve done. Unfortunately, I’m too tense to hang onto her calling him Andy. I begin with, “How much do you know about Andre Moeller?”

A curl of disgust reshapes her lips before she can shake it off. “He is a man with his fingers in many, many pies all over the world. Some legal, some questionable, some that would get him the death penalty, if the rumors are to be believed?—"

“They are,” I cut in.

She raises the most exquisitely formed brow in existence. “All this to say, I have a history with Andre. Not a pleasant one.”

“May I inquire as to the nature of this history? It’s important.”

“The bastard cheats at poker,” she hisses with seriousness.

I almost laugh. “That’s why you don’t like him?”

“Not entirely, but it would be enough for me to loathe him. I don’t take much seriously in life, but poker is sacrosanct.”

“Understood.” Not really. “Okay, so a few months back, Andre kidnapped me to annoy Elliot West.”

Her brow dances higher on her face as she turns to Anderson. “Andy, you said this was a break-in situation, not a kidnapping.”

“Oh, there’s more to it than I’d like to admit. June, please go on.”

“Right, well, Andre did that and returned me once he was done annoying Elliot. He treated me … okay, I guess. No violence—well, not much. After that, Elliot and I had a falling out of sorts, and he had me professionally blackballed. I lost my job, where I’d been since law school. Couldn’t get hired anywhere. Then Andre offered me a job, paying me way too much money for what he wanted done. I didn’t have much of a choice, so I took the job.”

She tips her head to the side a little. “From the man who kidnapped you?”

“It wasn’t personal. His goons only took me because I was on the street when they were around. If anyone else associated with Elliot had been an easy target, they would have taken them instead. So yeah, while I was totally freaked out at first, I didn’t have a lot of choices at the time.”

Anderson added, “And she knew taking a job with Andre would piss off my dad.”

That earned a smirk from her. “Well, that makes it all better, I suppose.”

“Right, well, that’s where this gets ugly.” I pass her a folder with the hard copies of the documents we printed. “This is a series of documents from companies Andre wants to buy and take over. Some are legal documents, some are affidavits from people who the board members have pissed off?—"

“This is the sort of kill file you put together when you’re looking to win a fight,” she says, perusing them.

We nod. Anderson says, “And my father is involved with these companies.” He points at a few of the names on various documents. “These are some of the aliases he uses to keep his name out of things.”

Dana glances up at him. “Andre is looking to oust your father from over a dozen different companies.”

“Yes, and he made June an unwitting accomplice by having her dig up the dirt.”

“I didn’t know Elliot was involved, thanks to his aliases. But now he’s trying to say I’ve been spying for Andre this whole time. He’s trying to make Anderson hate me?—"

“Why does Elliot have such a grudge against you?”

I sigh. “There’s a lot to it, but it all boils down to the fact that I would not be a good move for Anderson’s political career.”

He laughs. “You still think that’s it?”

“Well … yes. Why else?”

“Baby, it’s because you have a big mouth.”

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