Chapter Twenty-Nine Reginald

TWENTY-NINE

From: John Richardson ([email protected])

To: Amelia Collins ([email protected])

Subject: Meeting

Dear Ms. Collins,

I look forward to meeting with you one final time to get everything in order for our fillings. I have a few questions for you before we meet.

First, would it be helpful to have other members of The Wyatt Foundation/The Collective attend the meeting with me in case they are able to remember details I cannot?

Second, were the documents I sent last week regarding our organization’s charitable activities in France during the first world war helpful?

Third (and I suspect you will say no to this, but it can’t hurt to ask again), are you quite certain we cannot hold this meeting at night?

All best,

John Richardson

Reginald

I felt a bit at loose ends in Amelia’s apartment as she finished preparing for the next day’s meeting with John Richardson. She’d asked me to come over to keep her company as she worked, and so that she could bounce ideas off me as we put our plan in place. And who was I to say no?

She was saving my ass here.

I also strongly suspected I was falling in love with her.

Scratch that.

I strongly suspected I had already fallen in love with her.

For centuries, I’d made fun of men who found it impossible to deny their significant others anything they asked of them. More the fool, me.

“Thank god The Wyatt Foundation is a more distinctive name than The Collective ,” Amelia mused out loud from her makeshift office at her kitchen table. She’d been working for the past three hours while I puttered around her apartment and made her pancakes. It was such a domestic scene, with her working and my caring for her, it made my chest ache. “If I hadn’t had a better name to search for in GuideStar, this work would have taken me days. Maybe weeks.”

Her fingers flew over her keyboard, her hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun to keep it out of her face as she worked. I had no idea how she typed so fast. I also didn’t know what GuideStar was, or why exactly The Wyatt Foundation was a better name for our purposes than The Collective . But Amelia was clearly happy about it, her eyes dancing as she jotted things down on a yellow notepad beside her keyboard.

I briefly considered asking more detailed questions about what she’d said but held my tongue. I probably wouldn’t have understood the answers anyway. Right now, she needed the pancakes I was attempting to make her more than she needed me slowing her down with my cluelessness about taxes. Fortunately, now that I knew it mattered how much baking soda went into the batter, this batch was going much better than the Wisconsin attempt had.

Nothing in her kitchen smelled like the Great Salt Lake had been set on fire, anyway.

“Wow,” Amelia said, then let out a low whistle. “Listen to this. Unless there’s some GuideStar glitch that prevented their tax returns from being uploaded, which never happens on this scale, it looks like neither the Wyatt Foundation nor The Collective has filed any federal tax returns in over fifty years.”

That I understood. Sort of. “That sounds really bad.”

Amelia nodded, her eyes bright. “It is. If the IRS finds out, these bozos will definitely lose their tax-exempt status. They will absolutely owe a Herculean amount of back taxes. And like I said the other day, some may even go to prison.”

I moved to where she was sitting and wrapped my arms around her from behind. I rested my cheek against the top of her head, peeking idly at her laptop monitor in the process. The numbers on the screen were gibberish to me. The fact that something so complicated, so utterly beyond me, made intuitive sense to Amelia was possibly the hottest thing I’d ever experienced.

Mine , I thought fiercely. I tightened my hold on her, closing my eyes as I savored the sweet, tender warmth of the woman in my arms. This brilliant woman is mine .

For as long as she’ll have me.

I shook myself a little, trying to snap out of it and focus on what she was saying. “Do you think they did it on purpose?” I managed. Her hair was so soft against my cheek, her scent driving me nearly to distraction. But now was not the moment to think about how much I wanted to take her hair out of its bun and run my fingers through it. “They’ll probably tell you they didn’t know what they were doing. Vampires don’t keep up with the modern world too well.”

“It doesn’t matter if it was unintentional or not,” she said, sternly.

“No?”

She turned in my arms, craning her neck a little so she could look up at me. “Failure to understand the law is not a defense to breaking it.”

Well, that seemed unfair. “What if you’re just a clueless vampire?”

She smiled. “I haven’t specifically checked, but I’m pretty sure being a vampire isn’t a defense, either. Especially if you’re a vampire availing yourself of the same federal tax breaks us mortals get.”

“Damn.” I shook my head. “Are you telling me that after centuries of being complete assholes, The Collective’s downfall might actually come from something as dumb as messing up on their taxes?” Thinking about it that way, the whole situation was almost funny.

“Taxes was how they got Al Capone,” she said. “There’s precedent.”

“Good old Al Capone,” I sighed, feeling suddenly wistful for the 1920s. “A bit of a dickhead, but he really did throw the best parties.”

Amelia grinned at me. “Who haven’t you met?” she teased.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve met everyone of consequence from the past few hundred years,” I lied, pompously. She raised a suspicious eyebrow, pulling a smile out of me. Having her see right through my boasts and my bluster, and wanting to spend time with me anyway…

It was almost too good to be true.

“Speaking of bullshit,” she said, grinning now, “can you help me figure out how to reply to this email I just got from John Richardson?”

“What I just said to you was not bullshit,” I said, pretending outrage. I doubted I pulled it off, though. I was grinning at her from ear to ear. “But yeah, of course I can help. If you think I can help. What does the email say?”

She pointed at her screen, and I leaned over her shoulder to get a closer look.

“This part where he asks if others from his group should come to the meeting,” I said, pointing. “Tell him no.”

Amelia frowned. “You don’t think if the whole group is there it would save time? Maybe they’d see reason faster this way.”

I shook my head. “Tell him whatever you need to keep him from bringing anyone else to this meeting. He may not suspect anything now, but he will when you start laying out your terms. He definitely will when he sees me there with you.” As soon as Amelia told me about her plan to confront Richardson in her offices, I’d insisted she bring me with her. For protection , I’d said. I’d have worried myself sick otherwise.

Fear over what might happen to Amelia welled up in me all over again at the thought of her being in the same room with more than one member of The Collective.

No.

Absolutely not.

“The last thing we need is for John Richardson to have ready backup,” I clarified. Most vampires wouldn’t be nearly as well-behaved in a building full of humans as Frederick and I were. If I had to guess, The Collective likely chose this John Richardson to be her interface because he was better mannered around humans than the others. He probably wouldn’t run amok in her building and start indiscriminately snacking on CPAs. But I had no idea if the other members of The Collective would be so self-contained.

I kept all this to myself. There was no need to frighten her. Especially since the rest of The Collective wouldn’t be coming.

“Okay,” Amelia said. “I’ll tell him we only need him to come tomorrow.”

“Good,” I said, satisfied.

“Any other thoughts before I type up this reply?” she asked, facing her computer again.

A thought occurred to me. “Yes. Tell him he’s an idiot and an asshole.”

“I’m not typing that.”

“Please?” I batted my eyelashes.

She laughed. “I wish I could, believe me. But I can’t. He’s still technically my client.”

“Can I do it, then?” I asked, pantomiming taking her laptop away and banging on keys while she swatted playfully at my shoulder.

“How about you serve me those pancakes you made instead?” she asked, her hand on my arm. “They smell delicious.”

I looked down to where she was touching me. Her soft, warm hand was pale against my dark shirt. I could feel the heat of her touch as though I were wearing nothing at all.

Was this what it would be like for us? Me taking care of Amelia by cooking for her and making her laugh whenever she needed a break? Amelia laughing at my jokes, gratefully accepting my company, and holding my hand whenever the world got to be too much?

I had to shut my eyes against the sudden blinding joy of it all.

We just had to get to the other side of tomorrow, and it could be ours.

“I’ll get the pancakes,” I said, when I found my voice. “I hope you like them.”