Chapter 12

CHAPTER12

“Ilove road trips,” Andi said with a heartfelt sigh as she searched through the large bag of junk food that she’d taken her time selecting from the gas station that she’d convinced him to stop at so that she could get the snacks required for this trip.

“It’s only an hour and a half. I don’t think it counts as a road trip,” Devyn said, taking a sip of the Big Gulp that he’d tried refusing until she’d explained that without it, she wouldn’t be able to get two candy bars for the price of one.

“Anything over an hour is a road trip and requires you to buy junk food like you’re an unsupervised ten-year-old with a hundred dollars,” Andi pointed out with a solemn nod as she selected a candy bar before she shifted her attention to the notebook that she’d been working on for the past two weeks.

“And you did a really good job,” Devyn said, reaching over and plucked the candy bar out of her hand as he made his way around a slow driver.

“I take pride in my work,” Andi murmured absently as she grabbed another candy bar and settled back against the comfortable leather seat as she went over the notes that she’d made on Roman Palms Hotel.

For the past two weeks, she’d spent every waking moment searching through every file that she could get her hands on, hoping to find something that would clue them in to their mystery VP’s identity. Every day, she sat on the couch in Devyn’s office, going through Carta Hotels’ files and the files that Hillshire Hotels sent over before everything went to hell, slowly putting all the pieces together and figuring out just how much damage this project had caused.

While she did that, Devyn worked on running Carta Hotels, dealing with the board, and doing whatever it took to keep them happy and buy them more time. When it was time to call it a day, he grabbed her bag, waited patiently for her to realize that he was standing there, and once he had her attention, he grabbed the files that she was working on, took her hand and dragged her to the elevator before she could get distracted again, which happened more than she cared to admit. Then, he drove her home, where they continued working on the project until it was time to call it a night while she did her best to stop worrying about him.

“I still don’t understand why we couldn’t get real food for breakfast,” Devyn said, finishing off the candy bar before he reached into the bag and grabbed another one.

“I don’t make the rules,” Andi said with a heavy sigh as she took a bite out of her candy bar and went over the list of things that she needed answers to once they reached the hotel.

“There are rules?” Devyn asked, sounding amused.

“I really feel like you should know this,” Andi said with a sad shake of her head as she glanced up to find his lips twitching.

“And I really feel like you should take pity on me and tell me what you know about this hotel,” he said with a teasing smile that had her returning his smile as she glanced back down at her notes and found herself wondering about something.

“Roman Palms Hotel is one of Carta Hotels’ top-earning hotels, which is kind of weird because it would have been the perfect hotel for our mystery VP to hit, but so far, there’s been nothing. What makes you think that we missed something?” Andi asked, unable to feel like they were wasting their time with this. They had less than four months to fix this mess and she wasn’t sure that spending their time on a long shot was a good idea.

“Besides the fact that I have a hunch?” he asked as she felt the car slow down.

“Besides that,” Andi murmured in agreement as she looked back up only to frown when she saw that all the other cars were also slowing down.

“For the past two years, they’ve been hitting two of our hotels at a time, never the same hotel twice, and up until this point, they’ve been able to hide it. Now, either they’ve been really fucking lucky up until this point or…”

“They’ve done this before,” she said, worrying her bottom lip because that’s what had been bothering her.

There had been nothing and then suddenly two years ago, right after the Hillshire project started, the transfers started, moving money earmarked for the stock purchase through the hotels and back to dummy accounts and every single transfer had gone through so smoothly. There hadn’t been any red flags raised. As soon as the money was transferred to the hotel, the account manager for each hotel was contacted by Jamerson, letting them know that it was a mistake because of a glitch in their system and not to worry about it and just sign off on the transfer and it would all be taken care of before the end of the month. Once the authorization was secured, the transfer was scheduled to return and then the money would disappear like clockwork.

“Or they had practice,” Devyn explained, only to sigh heavily when traffic came to a standstill. “Shit.”

“That makes sense,” she murmured, taking a sip of the lovely chocolate milk that he bought for her as she thought that over. “And if they tried this before, then they might have left more than a fake name behind.”

“And then we can finally put an end to this nightmare.”

* * *

She was too fuckingadorable for her own good, Devyn thought as he watched the woman that had abandoned him as soon as she saw the dog give the large Golden Retriever one last kiss before she reluctantly headed back to the car, pouting every fucking step of the way.

“I love dogs,” Andi said with a heartfelt sigh as she climbed back into the car and-

“Where did you get more chocolate?” Devyn asked as he watched her take a bite of the large chocolate candy bar that they definitely didn’t buy at the gas station that she’d made him stop at this morning.

“Oh, ummm,” Andi said, taking a bite of the large chocolate candy bar as she absently gestured behind them, “John’s son is selling chocolate to raise money for new football uniforms.”

“Who the hell is John?” Devyn asked, leaning over to steal a bite of chocolate.

“He’s the nice man in the red Jeep five cars back,” Andi murmured with a sigh as she looked longingly at the Golden Retriever.

“If someone tried to lure you into an unmarked van with the promise of a puppy, you’d go, wouldn’t you?” Devyn found himself asking as he reached over and brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“I already did that. The puppies were adorable,” Andi said with a solemn nod, making him chuckle as she handed the chocolate bar over to him so that she could grab the notebook that he wasn’t allowed to touch after he’d made the mistake of marking a page by folding a corner so that he could come back to it later. That had been met with a horrified look and a slight trembling of her bottom lip that had him quickly promising never to touch her notebook again.

“I bet they were,” Devyn murmured absently as his attention shifted to the truck parked in front of him just as traffic started moving again. Relieved, Devyn put the car back into drive and-

“Tell me about yourself,” came the softly murmured request that had his gaze flickering back at Andi to find her watching him expectantly.

“What do you want to know?” Devyn found himself asking, wondering why he didn’t care that he was crossing a line with her.

He was her boss and she was a complication that he didn’t need right now, Devyn reminded himself only to realize that he didn’t care. Every time he thought that he would lose his fucking mind, she was there, making it difficult to care that he shouldn’t need her the way that he did. He’d never needed anyone before, but Christ, did he need her.

“Why are you so serious all the time?” Andi asked, taking a sip of the Big Gulp as she watched him.

“You think I’m too serious?” Devyn asked, shifting his attention back to the road, noting that the GPS had gone from telling him that they were two hours away from their destination back down to fifteen minutes.

Nodding, she said, “I really do.”

“Is that a bad thing?” he asked as they slowly made their way past the reason why they’d been stuck on the highway for the past two hours as the road crew pulled back the orange cones.

“No, but I’m curious,” Andi said, taking another bite of chocolate.

“I’ve been curious about something as well,” Devyn admitted as he merged into the right lane.

“What’s that?” she asked, holding up the candy bar so that he could steal another bite.

“Did you hear the rumors about me?” Devyn asked, trying to remember the last time that he ate this much junk food. Probably right after his mother died and he’d been forced to live off discounted Halloween candy for a month.

“Yes,” Andi said, not really sounding all that concerned, which only made him even more curious about her.

“Did you believe them?” he asked as he took the turnoff for their exit and headed towards the bridge that would take them to the small island off the coast of Florida that had once been used by pirates to avoid the British navy.

“I didn’t care,” Andi said, shrugging it off.

“Why is that?”

“Because I just assumed they were trying to scare me off,” Andi said, only to add, “That must be the hotel,” as the insanely large hotel that he was hoping would have the answers that he needed came into view as they made their way over the bridge that was a lot higher than he thought it would be.

“And that didn’t concern you?” Devyn asked, throwing her a questioning look as he turned onto the street lined with palm trees on one side and on the other, a breathtaking view of the ocean.

“It wasn’t the first time someone tried to scare me off,” she said only to sigh heavily and add, “It’s a long story,” at his questioning look.

“We’ve got time,” Devyn murmured with a pointed look at the long line of cars waiting for valet service as they pulled into the driveway leading to Roman Palms Hotel.

“When I was little, my uncle managed to get me into a private school that had this really great math program. They gave me a scholarship, skipped me a few grades, and I ended up sitting next to a group of girls who decided that they didn’t want to share a table with a six-year-old. So, they tried to scare me off by telling me about all the monsters and the ghosts in the school, how mean the teacher really was, all the gross things the cafeteria lady was putting in the food, and unfortunately, it worked. It got to the point that I was afraid to go to school. I started skipping school and when I couldn’t do that, I hid in the janitor’s closet.”

“What happened?” Devyn asked, pulling in behind a silver BMW.

“Drew took care of it,” Andi said with a warm smile as her expression softened, letting him know just how much Drew meant to her and realized that he’d never hated anyone more in his life.