Page 2 of Carter's Battle

The curvy woman shook her head ruefully. “I’d love to. I haven’t heard Moana sing in a long time and it would be great to hang with you guys, but I have to go home and fix my plumbing.”

The bartender smirked. “Is that a euphemism?”

Carter smiled. He’d been thinking the same thing. Now, this was the type of distraction he needed. The beautiful woman with the sexy smile was exactly the kind of woman he’d like occupy his time.

“I wish,” Mia snorted. Then she let out a big sigh. “Sadly, it’s the truth. I don’t know why I thought buying a house was a good idea. My shower went kablooey this morning so now I have to go home and see what the hell is wrong with it.”

“Your shower can wait,” Emery cajoled.

Mia bit her lip and Carter took notice.Yeah, stay, Mia. He willed the mental instruction to her from across the room.

“Sorry, can’t tonight. But we’ll do it soon. Promise.” She waved to her friends and then moved toward the exit. She glanced in their direction and her gaze locked with Carter’s.

He knew two things instantly. One, she was even sexier than he thought with dark haunting eyes, and two, she was worried about something.

The woman disappeared through the doorway of the bar. A vague sense of unease crept up Carter’s spine. With his thumbnail, he scraped at the label on his beer bottle as he tried to shake the feeling, but he knew trying to dispel the sensationwas useless. He’d been feeling this way for a while now and somehow that woman, Mia, had just kicked the feeling into overdrive.

He glanced around the table at his friends. To him, it felt like there was a storm coming and they were all out of shelter.

CHAPTER 2

Mia Ryan staredat the screen in front of her. The numbers didn’t make sense. Thinking maybe she was just tired and not seeing things correctly, she rubbed her eyes, to no avail. Half the previous night had been spent tinkering with her shower before finally getting it to work but she’d soaked herself in the process. She was running on little sleep and limited food. The three stops before this one, the last one on her docket for today, had all turned up accounting issues that she’d had to take extra time to solve so she’d been late coming to Lono’s Coffee House.

Mia opened her eyes again and stared at the screen. Nothing had changed. The numbers on the spreadsheet remained the same, goading her into questioning her own sanity. There was no way the line items could be this far off the mark. It had to be a typo somewhere or maybe even a lot of typos. Errors she knew she hadn’t made.

Scrolling back to the top of the sheet, Mia started down the columns of numbers one more time. She’d already double-checked the figures once, but she was willing to give it another try. Maybe she was just seeing things. Never hurts to triple-check things. And wasn’t that the definition of insanity? Doing something again and again and hoping for a different outcome?

Ten minutes later, her heart hammered against her ribcage. Mia leaned back in the chair and stared open-mouthed at the screen. She wasn’t wrong. The numbers weren’t wrong. Lono’s Coffee House was broke. More than broke. With these numbers, it was going under. But how could they be so different from last month? Numbers were her jam, and there was no scenario in which she could have been this far off.

Mia clicked on the screen and brought up last month’s spreadsheet. Staring at the screen, her mouth dropped open again as all the air left her lungs. “No…” these were not the numbers from last month. They couldn’t be. She’d balanced the books last month and Lono’s had made a healthy profit. Where had that almost ten percent growth gone? These numbers said the coffee house was…bankrupt. There wasn’t enough money in the accounts to pay the baristas salaries.

She frantically clicked back for several months. All these numbers were wrong. An unnerving queasiness rose in her stomach. No, not wrong. The numbers were right. But they were different to what she’d been shown. A thought suddenly dawned; this was a different set, a second set, of books. Akela, the owner of Lono’s was cooking the books. Mia’s stomach churned. She wanted to puke. Hiding the real numbers on these spread sheets while showing Mia something else entirely. But why bother? Obviously, she had someone doing her real books so why hire Mia at all?

Mia’s head spun. Akela was using Mia to legitimize the business. Mia had a good rep as the island’s go-to accountant for small businesses. Businesses sought her out to do their books. If Mia was working on the accounts then they couldn’t be falsified. Mia, as Akela’s accountant, helped keep up the front that the client wasn’t doing anything shady.

She stared at the screen as she contemplated her friendship with Akela Kahue. They’d come up together in the surfing world.Both had turned pro the same year, but then Mia blew out her knee. Akela had gone on to win some competitions. They hadn’t run into each other again until a couple of years ago, but the bonds formed during their teen years were strong. Especially since Mia had lost her parents.

Stunned, Mia just couldn’t accept this. Why would Akela do this? It certainly explained why she’d been so jumpy and out of sorts for the last while.

A bang against the shared wall with the front end of the shop brought her back to her current situation with a thump. The queasy sensation hadn’t eased, and now she broke out in a sweat. Mia wasn’t even supposed to be here at this moment. Thanks to all the other stuff she’d come across in her other clients’ books, she was running late. She should’ve been at Lono’s Coffee House a couple of hours ago. Instead, she’d walked in late and come right back to the office by herself. The computer was already up and running and didn’t require a password, so Mia had just opened the file. Or, rather, what she thought was the file. She glanced now at the name and realized it was slightly different from the file she usually worked on. “Son of a bitch,” she mumbled.

Clicking the other file, her usual spreadsheet opened in front of her. Okay, these were the numbers she was used to working with. She bit her lip. This was a huge problem. That would teach her to worry about her plumbing. Now leaky pipes seemed like the least of her worries.

Another thump made Mia jump. “Shit,” she mumbled as she quickly went through the fake spreadsheet. She wasn’t ready to confront her friend just yet, if ever. The repercussions could be severe, even to the extent of jeopardizing Mia’s reputation. She needed time to play the whole thing out in her mind. Pulling a thumb drive out of her bag, she quickly stuck it in the computer and copied the alternate files. Were these the real numbers?Shaking her head, she dropped the small drive into her pocket and closed the file just as the door to the office burst open.

“Mia!” Akela Kahue stared at her friend in surprise. “When did you get here?” Her gaze quickly lit on the computer and then back to Mia.

That was all the confirmation she needed. The panic in her friend’s eyes make Mia’s stomach drop. She’d known Akela for way too many years not to recognize the look for what it was.

Guilt.

Deflect and deny were the two words at the top of her head. “A little bit ago. You weren’t around so I just came back here and got to work.” Mia gathered her things. “I’m finished, actually,” she said, standing up. “Everything looks great.” She prayed that the hollow feeling roiling her stomach wasn’t written across her face. “Any big plans for the weekend?” Anything to distract from the situation.

Akela glanced at the computer once again and frowned. “This weekend? No. No big plans. My little brother has football practice, so I need to take him to that.”

“How is Kai doing? Is his knee on the mend?” Mia came out from around the desk and started toward the door.

“He’s doing much better. The surgery was a success and he’s excited to be back on the field.” Akela’s eyes narrowed slightly, and Mia knew she was being watched closely for any sign that she had a clue about what was going on. Her grip on her bag slipped a bit, thanks to her sweaty palms.

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