Harlequin Nocturne March 2016 Box Set Read online

  Wallowing.

  In the bed that had been theirs? With another groan, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and got himself moving. Carol had been gone only a week, not even long enough for the scent of her to vanish from the sheets, although he’d washed them. Twice.

  In the shower, Kent bent his head beneath the spray and let the hot water pound away at the knots in his shoulders. In the kitchen, he made himself a cup of terrible instant coffee because Carol had always been the one to get the first pot brewing. He grabbed a frozen egg sandwich, nuked it and burned his tongue.

  “Shit!” He spit the mess into the sink and stayed there for a long moment with both hands on the stainless steel, head bowed. Waiting to...

  What? Grieve? Mourn? Celebrate?

  Whatever he was supposed to feel about the end of his four-year relationship, he wasn’t feeling any of it. All Carol’s leaving had done was point out to him how empty he’d been for a long time, and probably how empty he was going to stay for a lot longer.

  It was not the best way to start the day, that was for sure, but a glance at his calendar when he got into work made it a little better. He had an appointment with Stephanie in about twenty minutes. Just enough time to grab a cup of marginally better coffee and a stale doughnut from the break room before getting back to his desk and pretending as if he wasn’t just waiting for her to walk through his door.

  He’d been working, on and off, with Stephanie Adams for the past six months. She was one of the investigators on the fraud cases that had been plaguing Member’s Best for close to a year now. It had started with a few random account issues. Unauthorized withdrawals or transfers. Charges to the credit union’s debit or credit cards, stuff like that. The incidences had started becoming closer together and for greater amounts, which was when the board had called in an outside team to check for security breaches. They’d found no evidence of hackers. Nothing could be traced. It was becoming a real problem for the credit union, which had more than twenty branches throughout Pennsylvania.

  Kent was not technically supposed to deal with stuff like this. His job was to oversee the general management of all the credit union’s branches. The board had decided that also meant liaising with the investigator to coordinate data regarding the thefts. Which meant he’d spent a lot of time with Ms. Adams over the past six months...and spent a lot of time ignoring that he liked her. Because, Carol.

  Who’d left him.

  Today Stephanie wore a pair of slim-fitting dark jeans topped with a black mesh sweater that hung off one shoulder. Black Docs on her feet, accented with a set of sparkly pink shoelaces. She slung her thick parka over the back of one chair and took a seat in the other, already pulling out a notepad from her shoulder bag.

  “Morning,” Kent said mildly.

  She looked up, a small crease in her brow fading as she smiled. “Hi. Morning. Sorry, I’m a little distracted. Got some news.”

  “Bad news?”

  She paused, then settled her notepad on one knee while she looked at him. “No. Why would you think...?”

  “Sorry.” He shook his head, feeling dumb. “You meant news about the fraud. Not personal.”

  “Oh. No. Nothing personal. But thanks for asking, in case it was.” Again she paused to look him over. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Kent forced a smile and leaned back in his chair.

  Stephanie shook her head. “You don’t seem okay. Did something else happen? Another account hacked?”

  “Not so far today,” he said. Then he blurted out, “My girlfriend left me.”

  “Oh, good! I mean, goodness,” Stephanie said. “Goodness me.”

  It was such an odd thing for her to say, spoken in such a brightly robotic tone, that Kent laughed. Loudly. “What?”

  “Oh, I just... That sucks, Kent. I’m sorry. Um...” She coughed, not meeting his gaze.

  For a long few seconds of awkward silence, he simply stared at her while she fussed with her notepad. Good, she’d said. Good...as in...she was happy he was single, or what?

  There’d been more than a few times in his life when Kent wished he was not so easily led by the ideas his little head got, despite what the one on his shoulders tried to tell it. Today was one of those times, and he cursed himself for it—he’d been single for, like, six freaking days, and even though it had been more like six weeks since he’d last gotten laid, that was no excuse.

  Even if Stephanie did have the biggest, bluest eyes he’d ever seen. And that great laugh, coupled with a smile that would’ve made a priest say hallelujah and not because of a sermon. She was smart, too, on point with everything they’d ever worked on, even if she hadn’t yet been able to figure out who was stealing from the Member’s Best accounts.

  “Right,” he said slowly. “So...should we talk about your updates, or...?”

  “Right, right.” She coughed again, still not meeting his gaze as she fiddled with the notepad. When she did look up, she seemed uncomfortable to find him staring at her.

  It of course made Kent feel like an ass to have been caught, so he looked away and it was a comedy of awkward silences and half-started sentences for the next minute until finally Stephanie laughed and shook her head. She cleared her throat.

  She slid the notepad across his desk. “I’ve put together some possibilities of what’s been going on. See, at first, the perp was just taking small amounts out of accounts here and there. Nobody even noticed, or they chalked it up to some glitch, right?”

  “Yeah.” He leaned to look at the names, dates and numbers on the pad.

  An hour passed while they talked and Stephanie outlined what she’d been working on. How she’d been trying to connect the dots. She’d scooted her chair around to his side of the desk and was pointing at the notepad.

  “Find the pattern,” she said. “If we can do that, we’ll find the douchecanoe who’s doing this, and hopefully before he really hits anyone hard.”

  We, she’d said, and Kent hadn’t missed that. Not that it meant anything beyond the work relationship, of course. But still. It was nice to hear.

  “Hey, I’m going out to grab some lunch,” he said with a glance at her. Sitting this close, he imagined for a moment he could feel the brush of her hair on his cheek. “You want to come out with me? We can keep looking for patterns.”

  She tucked a strand of her dark hair behind one ear as she looked at him now, a small smile curving her lips. “Sure. I have some time. Where should we go?”

  “How about The Gold Monkey?” It was a quiet little Middle Eastern place around the corner.

  “Perfect.” She grinned at him, not moving away. Their eyes met. “I’m starving.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “It wasn’t a date,” Stephanie told her friend Denise on the phone as she got out of her car and headed into the Morningstar Mocha to pick up a couple bags of their specially blended herbal tea. She was a coffee fiend, no doubt, except when she was working a case that meant she had to spend more of her time sleeping than any one person should’ve been able to.

  Denise handled scheduling and travel arrangements for Crew members who needed, as Stephanie had, to relocate in order to pursue cases. Stephanie had known her for years, though this was the first time she’d ever been assigned close enough to hang out with her in person. It had made the Pennsylvania winter a little more bearable for California girl Stephanie.

  “He told you his girlfriend left him, then he asked you to an intimate little venue for fondue. Fondue is not work-related material, Stephanie.” Denise’s voice dipped low for a second, crackling, before getting clear again. “Sorry, I’ve got someone on the line waiting for hotel reservations in Moscow. My Russian’s pretty rusty. If I break off with you, it’s to deal with that.”

  “I can let you go. I don’t have any updates or anything. I mean,