Bad Boy of Wall Street: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance (10 page)

For a moment, I thought that Rob might get angry with me for snapping back at him, but he just smiled and stuck one pinkie into an ear. "That must be the problem," he said, after removing the finger. "Glad you diagnosed me, doctor."

My frown melted away. I couldn't stay mad at him, not in this cute little kitchen with warm coffee suffusing up from my stomach to give me a warm internal hug. I was probably setting feminism back by a hundred years, but this little domestic moment felt worth it.

"Besides, even if it doesn't make for a great story, this is probably the only vacation in the Hamptons that I'll be taking at any time soon," I went on. "So I ought to enjoy it and make it last! What's the hurry in getting back to writing up sex tips, anyway?"

Hoo boy. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned sex tips, not around sexy Rob. Did his eyes flicker for a moment with interest when I said those words? I tried to convince myself that it was just my imagination, telling myself in vain that I wasn't thinking back to the feeling of leaning in against his body last night, out on the beach.

"After some of the work today, you might want to get back to writing sex tips," Rob said, after a pause that felt like it was just a fraction of a second too long. Of course, he had to use the words, too. They sounded like a liquid invitation to disaster as they slipped out from between his lips.

"What do you mean?"

He gestured over his shoulder. "Remember that study full of papers? The answer is in there somewhere, and we need to find it. That means reading, reading, and then a break for some more reading."

Ugh. Okay, that didn't sound nearly as sexy. "And what are we looking for?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Honestly, I couldn't tell you. Something that discusses where this money came from, or its purpose. We need to find out who's the real mastermind behind this, who's orchestrating everything from the shadows. But it's not going to be anywhere obvious. Hence the huge stacks of paper."

"You couldn't have just copied everything onto a flash drive?" I asked with a slight glimmer of hope.

"We'd still need to read through it all," he answered, shooting down that hope with his next breath. "And besides, it's not like I know what I'm looking for, so I can't go searching through digital files."

"Oh, the two of you are up!"

We both paused and turned to smile at Diana as she tottered in, beaming up at both of us. Today, the old lady had chosen a bright purple sundress with a yellow cardigan over it, and she looked like she belonged in an AARP ad, or maybe on the set of a geriatric Pottery Barn photo shoot. Of course, the shotgun-turned-cane slightly spoiled the illusion as she came into the kitchen, thumping along on the hardwood floors.

"And what are you two planning for today?" Diana asked, moving over to her grandson. Rob bent down and gave her a little peck on the cheek along with his hug, and she smiled contentedly back at him. "Something fun?"

"Afraid not, Granny," Rob replied. "More digging through those papers that are clogging up your study."

"Well, at least maybe you can get rid of some of them after you've gone through them," Diana said. "So much paper. And then, maybe the two of you can take a break and go out to get some ice cream or something together! You'll deserve a break, after working so hard!"

Rob sighed again, but he couldn't keep from smiling a little at his grandmother's exuberance. "We'll try and find some time to take a break, Granny," he promised.

Diana nodded, as if she'd been after this promise all along. "Good. Well, I'm headed off to the shops."

"What are you shopping for?" I asked, curious despite myself.

"Oh, I'm not buying anything," she corrected me, turning her wrinkled, happy little smile on me. "But my friend Edna runs one of the downtown clothing boutiques, and I always make sure to drop in and say hello to her." She lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Edna's son works out on the west coast as some sort of programmer person with computers, and she never gets to see him. I think she'd be quite lonely, if I didn't keep her company!"

Glancing up over the top of Diana's head, I saw Rob struggling to hold back a smile. "That's very noble of you, Granny," he managed to get out without bursting into laughter.

Diana nodded. "Yes, it is, isn't it?" she said. "But I'd better get going, or I'll miss my bus! You two have fun together - but don't get up to too much trouble, okay?" She turned back and wagged her finger at us, like a parent warning her child to be good on Prom night.

"We'll be good," we both promised her, and now Rob wasn't the only one fighting back laughter.

Once Diana had left the little cottage, however, Rob's smile slipped sideways and dropped off his face. "I couldn't possibly imagine how she'd take it if she found out that she might lose the house," he confessed to me. "That's one of the reasons why I'm trying to work so hard and get this figured out. If I wait too long, someone at my firm might decide that they want me out of the way for good, and they'll pull the loan. Her heart would break to lose this place. All of her friends are around here, and I couldn't bear to see her in a retirement home."

I nodded, understanding exactly what he meant. Something about Diana just seemed full of life, an internal spark, and I couldn't see that trait hanging on in a senior center or retirement community. She was still able to get around fine on her own, and didn't need any assistance.

"So, papers?" I asked, nodding in the direction of the study.

Rob nodded, and led the way out to the room in question. "Yup. Remember, we're looking for anything unusual, some name that you see coming up a lot, or something that seems like it doesn't make sense. Anything that doesn't belong."

"That's pretty vague," I pointed out.

He sighed. "Yes, it is. I wish that I could be specific, but-"

"-but you don't know what you're looking for," I finished. "Right. I remember."

The study looked just as messy as the last time I'd seen it. "Do you have any sort of order to this place?" I asked, looking around. I couldn't even see enough open space to set down my cup of coffee without having to balance it on a box that could contain vital documents.

Rob grimaced. "Kind of? See that stack over there?" He indicated a pile of papers that looked absolutely no different from its fellows on either side. "Those are ones that I've looked through already."

"Both of those piles?"

"Uh, no. Well, yes, but the one on the right is the papers that might be important, and the ones on the left-"

"These two?"

"No, those other two. Those ones are ones that I don't think are important. But I'm not sure, so I don't want to throw them out yet."

I sighed, reaching up and pressing my non-coffee-cup-holding hand against my forehead. "Okay. Step one? Organizational system. That's what we need first."

I was already starting to suspect that I'd taken on a much bigger challenge than I'd first expected.

Chapter Twelve

*

The next couple days were a blur of paper. So, so many papers, all of which had to be tracked and organized. I felt like Rob ought to be paying me wages as his secretary.

The first step, I quickly realized, was getting some method of tracking in place. After a quick visit to a small office supply store, Rob grumpily in tow, I arrived back in the study with piles of folders, sticky notes, and pens, and began organizing the papers that Rob had already examined.

"Essentially, my organization comes down to the two piles that you had, but we're actually going to put them someplace different, so we won't end up looking at the same ones twice," I explained to Rob, as he peered over my shoulder. He smelled amazing as always, so close to me, but I ignored that tantalizing scent. With an effort. "These blue folders are going to have the papers that we probably aren't interested in, so we can stuff them full of papers. We'll put them in this stack, over here."

"What about the important ones?" he asked.

"Red folders," I answered, tapping the corresponding stack. "I've got more of them, because each one will probably be less full. And we can mark important passages or names that jump out at us with the sticky notes."

Rob looked like he wanted to shoot down the whole thing, but then Diana poked her head in. "There was a knock at the door - some gentleman looking for you," she told Rob.

He frowned. "What did you tell him?"

Diana grinned, and her voice grew fainter and more quivery. "Why, I haven't seen my dear, sweet grandson in months, but I can pass a message on if you'd like?"

Rob grinned back at her. "Nice. He get frustrated?"

"Oh, you bet." Diana chuckled to herself as she pulled her head back. "Oh, this is so exciting. I feel like a spy in an old time movie."

Rob didn't spend any time wondering about who might have been at the door, so I tried to ignore it as well. Probably just another reporter searching for a scoop, I told myself.

Instead, I focused on the system of folders. At first, he didn't seem especially thrilled with my system of organization, in part because it probably wasn't helping him get through the actual papers any faster. But I pressed on, and even he had to admit that the level of clutter in the study soon began to decrease as I dumped already-read papers into folders.

"See? Already, it's looking better," I said, when we took a break for lunch, standing up and stretching our sore legs.

"It's just an illusion - we're not really making a lot of progress," he countered, but he still sounded satisfied, not annoyed with how little had been removed from the study.

Indeed, I did think that the mess of papers looked a bit better. Rob ran out and brought back some delicious paper-wrapped deli sandwiches, which we wolfed down with some of his grandmother's sparkling water. Afterwards, however, we returned back to the study, Rob reading as I organized alongside him.

By the second day, I'd started reading through some of the papers as I filed them, and I was noticing a name that popped up a lot. "So, who's this Chad Cartmann guy?" I asked Rob as we sat side by side, shuffling papers around.

He paused, lowering the heavy document that he'd been holding close to his face so that he could read the fine print. "Chad is my boss, the head of Cartmann Securities," he answered. "He's the one who founded the trading group, about a decade ago."

"Oh." I frowned. "So I guess that it makes sense for his name to be on everything."

"Well, yes and no." Rob tossed his current document aside and rubbed his eyes. "On one hand, yes, it makes sense for his name to be on everything. But at the same time, it's crazy that this could have happened under his nose and he wouldn't have known anything about it. Given that the trading group is so small, just about everything goes in front of him for inspection."

It took a moment to click for me. "So he could be responsible himself, you're saying?"

"Maybe. It seems like it would be obvious, but maybe he pulled the whole insider trading thing for his own benefit. Or maybe he had some other reason, something that I don't know about Cartmann Securities." Rob groaned. "Or maybe he's not responsible at all, and I'm barking up the wrong tree."

"More reading?" I asked after a minute.

He nodded. "Yup. More reading."

I looked over at Rob's drawn face, the dark circles under his eyes. "I'll go get another pot of coffee brewing for you."

"Thanks, April," he said, and he really did sound grateful. For a moment, as I left the room, I thought that I caught him looking after me.

By that afternoon, however, Rob was up on his feet, pacing back and forth. "I can't just sit there and read documents any longer," he insisted, moving in a small circle in the little pathway that he'd cleared in the papers covering the floor. "Besides, if this was because of something that Cartmann himself did, there won't be records in here."

"Why not?" I asked.

"He's too smart to leave a trail like that. If he's got any sort of illegal dealings or shady activities going on, he's going to keep the papers tracking that stuff in his own house, somewhere he can check on it whenever he wants, where he knows that no one else can get their hands on it."

I nodded. It made sense. "So what, back in his apartment in Manhattan, or wherever he lives?"

Rob started to nod, but then frowned and changed the motion to a negative head shake. "Actually, no," he said, sounding slightly surprised, as if he'd forgotten something until now. "I was over at his apartment just a few weeks ago, and there's nowhere there for him to stow papers. He always bragged about how it was just his hookup and bachelor pad in the city, anyway. He said that he kept everything he really cared about at his house..."

Rob trailed off, looking up and staring off into the distance. I tried to follow his gaze, but gave up when it became apparent that he was seeing through the wall, off into his own mind's eye.

"What?" I asked. "What about his house?"

"It's right over there," he replied back, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, still gazing off into nothingness.

I started. That wasn't the answer I'd been expecting! "What, like up in the Hamptons? Right near us?"