Page 87 of All Bets Are Off

TWENTY-ONE

“Hey, Poptart,” Zach trilled as he walked into the penthouse and found me cross-legged on the living room floor. I had papers spread out all around me.

In the month since our camping trip—which had been glorious—we’d fallen into a routine. Actually, we’d fallen into a relationship. It felt real. I was too nervous to ask if it was real, though. I didn’t want to rock the boat and ruin things.

Sometimes, it felt as if I was good at that. Ruining things. This was too important to ruin, because if I pushed him before he was ready, then he would push me too. The only difference was he would be pushing me away. I wasn’t certain how I knew that, but I did.

He wasn’t ready for too much truth. I had to ease him into it.

At least he had stopped calling me Shortypants. He went with a variation of cutesy names now, which didn’t bother me half as much as they probably should have.

“What’s this?” Zach stood over the papers, his brow creasing. “I thought you guys were getting somewhere with the negotiations for the dancers.”

I was still hanging with Halley and the other dancers several times a week. They’d made great progress with the negotiation team that had been put in place. It wasn’t just the bar owners involved. The casino owners were including representatives too. Both sides seemed serious, and I was glad for it. That wasn’t what I was working on, though.

“This is not for the dancers,” I replied as I drew my knees up to my chest and looked around the piles. “This is for you.”

“Me?” His brow furrowed in confusion, and he carefully weaved his way through the piles. Once at my side, he stripped out of his suit coat, threw it on the couch, and then lowered himself so his legs were on either side of me and my back was pressed to his chest. “Hey.” He kissed my neck, sending a shiver through me, then wrapped his arms around me and stared at my piles of paper. “I don’t know what this is, babe,” he said after a beat.

“It’s your department reports,” I replied.

He stilled. “I didn’t realize you were still going through them. I thought you gave up.”

Oh, if only. “I can’t give up.” It was as if he didn’t know me at all. “There’s a mystery here, and it has to be solved.”

“A mystery, huh?” His chuckle was light. “What sort of mystery?”

“That’s what I can’t figure out.” I pointed toward the piles. “Each one of these piles belongs to a different department. I’ve been through the numbers backwards and forwards and they all add up.”

He nodded, allowing me to continue.

“This pile here is the numbers for the entire casino. It’s all the department head numbers and the audit from the accountants. The cover letter you gave me two weeks ago says that everything is copacetic, with money going out to various consulting firms like Infinity Group and Hook Productions.”

“But?” he prodded.

“But it’s not. The numbers don’t add up. I mean … they do. They’ve sent numbers that totally add up.”

“And yet you don’t think they add up,” he said.

“They don’t.” That was the only thing I knew for certain. “The reason I like numbers is because theyhaveto add up. Technically, for show, these add up.”

“And yet they’re wrong,” he said. “How?”

“I don’t know.”

“And yet you know they’re wrong.”

“Yes.”

He didn’t question me. If I said they were wrong, they were wrong. He just believed me because I said it. Finding a solution seemed like the best way to go, and yet he looked overwhelmed at the prospect. “So, what do we do?” he asked finally.

“I keep at it,” was my simple reply.

“You don’t have to,” he argued. “You’re driving yourself crazy with this. My father said he would handle it, and I trust him to handle it. It’s his problem.”

“I know, but here’s a little something you might not know about me,” I said. “I can’t just quit something. If there’s a mystery, I have to solve it.”

“Basically, you’re saying you’re Nancy Drew.”

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