The Last Groom on Earth (2 page)

“Mother had no right to tell you about it.”

Bryce shrugged. “She was concerned about you.”

Angela wanted to snap back that Marina was concerned because she thought that Angela couldn’t do anything, but she kept her lips shut tight against the words. Both she and Bryce might know that that was her mother’s opinion, but she wasn’t about to admit it to him.

“We’ll manage just fine without your help.”

“Wait a minute,” a voice said from the doorway.

Angela looked up to see a short, slightly balding man with a round face and a warm smile standing outside the doorway, peering in interestedly. Angela groaned inwardly.

“Who is’ this guy? What’s he talking about?” the man went on.

“Yeah.” A blond woman who had been standing just to the side of the door stuck her head inside, also. “I’m not sure we want to turn down help quite so quickly.”

Angela sighed. “Hello, Kelly. Tim. Can’t a person have a private conversation around here?”

Kelly cocked her head, looking judicious, then said, “It’s hard. Particularly when your door’s open.”

“And you started your argument downstairs in front of everyone,” Tim added.

“All right. Tim, Kelly, this is Bryce Richards. He’s a friend of my parents. Bryce, this is Timothy Allen, my partner, and Kelly Beeckman, our chief financial officer.”

Kelly grinned and amended, “Head bookkeeper, in other words.”

Tim smiled at Bryce and reached out to shake his hand. “Nice to meet you. You’ve known Angela a long time?”

“Since I was twelve,” Angela said shortly. “I was just telling Bryce that we can handle the IRS problem. We have the C.P.A. who did our taxes, and we hired a tax attorney.”

“And with their help, you’ve gone from an ordinary audit into a full-blown investigation.” Bryce pointed this out casually.

Angela shot him a fulminating glance. Tim’s round face grew worried, and Kelly began to chew at her lower lip.

“Look, Angela, if Mr. Richards thinks he can help…” Kelly began.

“My parents are interfering, that’s all.”

Tim ignored her and turned toward Bryce. “What makes Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt think you can help us?”

“Because I’m an auditor. I’ve worked for the IRS and as an auditor for the Feds. Now I have my own company in Charlotte, and our specialty is fiscal investigation.”

“Fiscal investigation?” Tim looked blank. “What’s that mean?”

“Well, basically, it’s that we find errors and fraud. We’re sort of a security company in the financial arena. We study corporate systems of accounting and set up ways to avoid theft and fraud. We find leaks and duplications of work. We outline plans to trim the fat.”

Tim’s eyes widened. “Why, that sounds like you could help us.” He turned to look inquiringly at Angela.

“We don’t need him.” Angela crossed her arms defensively. “Besides, it’ll cost a fortune, and we’re already paying for that expensive tax attorney—and the whole reason the IRS is suspicious is because they think we aren’t making enough money! How can we afford to hire him?”

“I’m not charging you.” Bryce interrupted quietly. “I’m doing this as a favor to your mother.”

“Oh.” Somehow Angela felt even more irritated by this fact. “I’m not a charity case,” she told him coldly. “If we need your services, we’ll pay for them.”

“Of course. It isn’t as if we haven’t made any money the past few years,” Tim said jovially. “We just had higher expenses the last year—more staff, more development costs, that sort of thing. But we’re still strong. We’re making good money. Angela’s just upset.”

Angela made a strangled noise in her throat, and Tim glanced over at her. “Well, it’s true, Angie. Everyone is. How could we not be with the government sniffing around like we’re some kind of criminals? I think we ought to let Mr. Richards try, see what he can come up with.”

“I don’t know…” Kelly said doubtfully, looking at Angela, then back at Tim. “If there’s something wrong, we would have found it already. Maybe the IRS is on a wild-goose chase. They haven’t told us what they expect to find, have they?”

“No. They’ve been frustratingly tight-lipped.” Angela was pleased that Kelly was supporting her. “They’re just poking into our records and making a nuisance of themselves. I don’t think they even know what they’re looking for.”

“Maybe they don’t,” Bryce agreed. “But if you think that the IRS is going to look at a few records, then shrug their shoulders and leave, you’re incredibly naive. Once they’re on your trail, they’ll be after you till they get you.”

“But there’s nothing to get!” Angela burst out. “We’ve paid our taxes every year. We reported all our income. Our deductions are legal.”

“That’s true.” Tim nodded. “I mean, everything we’ve done is aboveboard, so we really shouldn’t have anything to worry about. It’s a nuisance, but in the end they’re bound to find out that there’s no basis for their suspicions, and they’ll drop the investigation.”

Bryce turned his cool gray eyes on him for a moment, then began to shake his head. “I think all three of you are in for a rude awakening. The IRS is like a terrier with a rat. Sticking your head in the sand is not going to make them go away.”

He paused for a moment. All three of the others in the office stared back at him. Finally he shrugged and stood up. “All right. I can’t beat you over the head to make you do it. It’s your business.” He turned and looked directly at Angela. “I‘ll tell your mother you
prefer to go it on your own. Goodbye, Angela.” He nodded at them all. “Good luck.”

He didn’t need to add the next line. “You’ll need it.” His expression as he turned away from them made that opinion clear.

He closed the door behind him. Angela leaned back in her chair with a sigh and closed her eyes. “The past few months,” she said softly, “have been the worst of my life.”

The IRS had begun an audit of their company in January. At first it had seemed perfectly ordinary, and Angela had not been worried, as she was sure that their record-keeping would bear them out. But as the thing went on, it had seemed to mushroom, until Angela had begun to be afraid—so much so that she had divulged her worries to her mother last week on the telephone.

“Amen,” Kelly agreed, plopping down in the chair Bryce had just vacated.

Tim began to rub his chin in a familiar nervous habit. “Come on, you guys, cheer up. It’ll turn out okay. It has to.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Angela opened her eyes and looked at him. Tim was a sweet guy and a good friend, not to mention an absolute whiz at computers, but he was not a person who liked to face reality. He was more likely to deny an unwelcome truth and ignore it than to try to change it or adapt to it. “What if Bryce is right? What if we are being ostriches? We could lose our whole business.”

“Don’t say that!” Kelly squeaked.

Angela looked over at the blonde. They had been friends for over ten years. In fact, she had met Kelly before she even knew Tim. Kelly had lived in her dorm
at the University of North Carolina, and they had met in the cafeteria. Much to Angela’s amazement—she had never dreamed she could have anything in common with an accounting major—they had become fast friends. Three years later, when the tiny business of computer games that Angela and Tim had started had grown so big that they needed someone to handle the accounts full-time, Angela had pulled Kelly into the business. Her levelheadedness had proved to be the perfect complement to Angela’s and Tim’s dreamer tendencies. Over the years, as their business had grown, so had Kelly’s job; she presided over the entire business end of H & A Enterprises: orders, shipping, and accounting. Angela and Tim both agreed that whatever their creativity had produced, the business would never have boomed as it had without Kelly.

“Kelly…” Angela began thoughtfully, “why did you say you didn’t think we needed Bryce’s help?”

Kelly shrugged. “It seemed pretty clear to me that you didn’t like him. That you didn’t want him to be messing in our business records.”

“You’re right, I didn’t.” Angela got up and began to pace the room.

Her instinctive reaction had been to get rid of Bryce. But now she was beginning to wonder if she had acted in a hasty and childish manner. Her parents had been worried enough about her situation to send him&—and whatever else one might say about the elder Hewitts, they knew the business world. They were not likely to panic or act impulsively; they were logical and coolly analytical to a fault. They also knew exactly how good Bryce Richards was at his business. If, in their opinion, he could help H & A Enterprises out of this trouble, then he probably could.

“Maybe I was wrong to kick him out so quickly,” Angela admitted with a sigh. “Maybe I should have given him a chance to see if he could find anything.”

“Your opinion is good enough for me,” Tim responded, smiling at her reassuringly. “You know him better than Kelly and I do. I’m going to leave the decision up to you.”

“I agree.” Kelly chimed in.

“Thanks.” Angela smiled at her friends. It warmed her heart that they had such confidence in her. People had told her that it would be impossible to be partners with a friend, but time had proven those doom-sayers false. She had worked with Tim and Kelly for almost eight years, and both the business and their friendship had flourished.

Still, today was one time when she would have wished that they were not so quick to rely on her judgment. She was open-minded enough to admit that her dislike of Bryce was not rational, but emotional, and she worried now that she had made a mistake that might hurt their business.

Tim and Kelly returned to their offices, and Angela settled down behind her desk to work. But after several minutes of staring at her blank blue computer screen, she realized that working was impossible at the moment. Her mind was like a hamster on its wheel, circling endlessly.

With a sigh, she planted her elbows on the desk and sank her head onto her hands; she stared down at her desk, thinking. She disliked Bryce Richards, and she did not want him here at the office, poking his nose into everything. But, on the other hand, she would never forgive herself if he could have found the key to
their financial troubles, and she had not let him just because of an old childhood antagonism.

Finally she picked up the phone and dialed her mother’s number in Charlotte. A few minutes later, she was in her car heading toward the Radisson Hotel.

B
ryce leaned back in his chair and massaged his temples wearily. He had checked into his hotel and started work on his presentation for CompCon tomorrow, just as he had planned, but he found it difficult to concentrate on the numbers strung out across the sheets in front of him. His meeting with Angela had left him irritable and dissatisfied.

He made a noise of disgust and got to his feet.
That woman!
He got up and began to pace the room. Angela Hewitt was as great a pest as she had been as an adolescent. He could remember with great clarity the silly tricks she had played on him when he came to visit her mother. A slightly chubby girl with wild, curly red hair and a mouthful of braces, she had seemed to delight in making Bryce feel foolish and out of place. And, of course, he thought, remembering his own gawky, uncertain self, he had been the perfect foil for
her tricks. He had already felt ill at ease just being in the Hewitts’ house. It was gracious and obviously expensive, but without a breath of ostentation, a jewel of old-money taste. Being inside their house had been a glimpse into an entirely different sort of life for him, a life that he had wanted with every fiber of his being. At the same time, he had been terrified that he might break something in his awkwardness or that he might make some gauche mistake that would reveal his ignorance.

Angela seemed to have understood that with the instinct that children have, and she had played on it. Bryce had never been sure when he might find a whoopee cushion on his seat or a plastic bug in his drink. She was prone to tell him stories about her family, which he was never sure were true or not. He had believed the first one, that Angela’s aunt was a famous pianist, and had mentioned something about her to Marina, who had looked at him blankly, then told him that she didn’t have a sister. He had felt a fool and after that he was sure never to repeat anything Angela told him unless someone else had confirmed her story.

A reluctant smile twitched at Bryce’s lips as he remembered her wilder concoctions. No one could ever accuse Angela of lacking imagination. Looking back on it now, he could see that her tricks were merely adolescent buffoonery. Someone with more confidence than he had at the time would have shrugged them off. But he had been a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, with nothing going for him but his brain, and he had wanted desperately to fit in.

Of course, he was nothing like that boy now. He was powerful and confident, used to moving in circles
of great wealth. Coming down here, he had told himself that Angela had changed, too, that she would no longer get under his skin. After all, he simply would not allow it.

It had taken him less than five minutes to realize how wrong he had been. Angela Hewitt was as infuriating as ever. Oh, she had changed, all right-changed in a way that made his heart speed up and his loins begin to throb in a most annoying manner. The pudgy girl with a mouth of metal was gone; in her place was a curvaceous woman whose curling mass of red hair made a man want to sink his hands into it. Bryce had found that his eyes returned again and again to Angela’s soft, high breasts—all too visible in that ridiculous costume she had been wearing—and his palms had itched with a desire to follow the curve of her buttocks. Even now he couldn’t keep his mind off her full, soft mouth; his mind had drifted off his presentation figures several times to contemplate exactly how those lips would feel beneath his.

But that intense, vibrant desirability did not ease Bryce’s irritation with her; if anything, it made it even worse. He hated the fact that he had responded physically to a woman who grated so on his nerves. Bryce had never been one who let his hungers intrude on his professional life. It was his policy never to date anyone with whom he worked—employee, boss, or client—and it was a policy from which he had never strayed. Oh, he would notice when a woman in his office or in one of his client’s was exceptionally pretty or sexy. He was, after all, a man, and he was stirred by the sight of long, well-shaped legs or a deliciously curved figure. But it was never more than a passing thought. He noticed it, then dismissed it from his
mind. Nor was he ever interested in a woman whom he disliked or who irritated him, at least not for longer than it took for her to get on his nerves.

But today, standing there with Angela Hewitt, irritated as he was by her obstructive, naive attitude, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her, couldn’t help thinking how delightful it would feel to have those legs twined around his back. It was disturbing to have been so attracted yet so annoyed by her. Bryce Richards did not like anything illogical, and his wayward thoughts about Angela certainly did not make sense.

It was just as well, he told himself, that she had not wanted his expertise. It would have been difficult working with the woman, given his conflicting emotions. He would be better off not being in her office—yet it was thoroughly exasperating to have her deny his offer of aid.

There was a knock on the door, and Bryce turned, relieved, thinking that it was room service. He had called them and ordered dinner a few minutes earlier. No doubt much of his turmoil and lack of ability to concentrate was due to the fact that he was hungry. Once he had eaten, he would feel like his old self again.

He opened the door, smiling in anticipation, only to find that the person outside his door was Angela Hewitt. His face fell in disappointment.

“Oh. It’s you.”

“Why, thank you,” Angela returned sarcastically. “Nice to see you, too.”

Bryce grimaced and stepped aside, motioning for her to enter. “I was expecting room service. Besides,” he went on as she walked into the room, “our
last meeting did not leave me with a great deal of eagerness to see you again.”

“For Heaven’s sake…” Angela gave an airy wave of her hand and went to the window to look out at the view. “Can’t anyone disagree with you without your holding a grudge?”

Bryce found himself watching the action of her hips beneath her tight jeans as she walked, and that irritated him as much as her words. He closed the door with a snap. “I’m not holding a grudge, I simply hoped I wouldn’t have to see you again.”

Angela turned. “You’re so stuffy. You were stuffy even when you were nineteen.”

“Yes, and you were a pest. I’m sorry to say that you haven’t changed much, either.”

Angela lifted her chin in a defiant gesture. She hated apologizing—and to have to do it to this man, of all people! Gritting her teeth, she said, “I came to tell you that—that I was wrong. This afternoon when you were at our office, I was…”

“Rude?” Bryce suggested.

Angela flashed him a disgusted look and said, “Abrupt. I should not have dismissed your help so peremptorily.”

“Your partners ganged up on you to accept?”

“No. In fact, Tim told me to do whatever I think is best. He and Kelly trust me, you see. However, when I thought about it, I realized that I wasn’t acting in the company’s best interest. I was simply reacting to—” she made a vague gesture toward him “—the past. And my parents. I hate to accept help from them. It confirms their opinion of me.”

Bryce looked puzzled. “And what is their opinion of you?”

Angela gave him a look that indicated that she doubted his mental powers. “That I’m a flake. Ditzy and incompetent. All they see in any business is numbers, and they know how I am with those. So they figure that I’m bound to fail.”

“I don’t get that impression from them. I think they’re rather proud of you and your success, actually.”

Angela stared. “Are you sure you’re talking about
my
parents? Everett and Marina Hewitt?”

A faint smile touched Bryce’s lips. “Yes, I believe those are the ones.”

“I think you’re mistaken.”

“No. I imagine I know them a lot better than you. They may not understand you or what you do—”

Angela let out a dry chuckle. “That’s the understatement of all time.”

“—but they love you and are very proud of you. That’s why they’re concerned about this problem with the IRS.”

“Yes. My little problem.” Angela made a disgusted face and turned away to gaze out the window again.

When it appeared that she was going to say nothing else, Bryce prompted, “How did you find me?”

“I called Mother. She told me you always stayed here when you were in Raleigh, and she said you planned to spend the night because you had a presentation to CompCon in the morning. They’re a good company, by the way, but you have to handle Jason Willard with kid gloves.”

He gave her a stiff little bow of his head. “Thank you for the advice.”

“You’re welcome,” Angela replied, ignoring the note of sarcasm in his voice. She crossed her arms and looked at him.

Standing outside Bryce’s door, her stomach had been jittery with nerves. But now, seeing the mulish expression on his face, Angela felt, perversely, more relaxed. Bryce obviously did not like her being here. That fact made it easier for her to admit that she needed his help.

“Anyway,” she said, sitting down and crossing her legs, “I’m sorry. I thought about what you’d said, and Tim and Kelly and I talked it over. I decided I had been wrong to turn down your offer.” She gazed up at him a little defiantly, more as if she were being scolded than admitting that she had made a mistake. Bryce found it strangely appealing.

“I came to ask you if your offer still held,” she said. “Are you willing to find our problem?”

Angela could see from his face that he would have liked to turn her down, but she was counting on his promise to her mother to keep him from doing what he wanted.

Finally, grudgingly, he said, “Yes. I suppose I am—though, God knows, I’ll probably regret it. I can imagine what your records are like. You probably keep all your invoices in a shoe box.”

Angela grinned impishly. “I’d love to tell you that they were, just to see the smoke come out of your ears, but I can’t malign Kelly. She keeps excellent records. She’s not at all like me.”

“Obviously.”

Angela made a face at him. She watched him, more relaxed now that she had choked out her apology. She wondered why she had not remembered how handsome
he was. Even if he had filled out, surely the bare bones of his good looks had been there: the firm, well-cut lips, the strong bones of his face, the dark-lashed gray eyes.

Bryce walked over to the table and sat down across from her. Angela could see the wary look on his face, and she wondered what he thought she was going to do. She decided not to help him out. She gazed back at him with wide eyes, swinging her foot and waiting for him to make the first move.

“All right,” he said, taking out a yellow pad and pencil and settling down to take notes. “Let’s get some basics. I need to know about your business.”

“Mother didn’t tell you?”

“She said only that you made computer games.”

“That’s right. Fantasy sort of games, mostly, some flight and road simulation sort of things. We’re beginning to move into the CD-Rom area. Our mainstay and what we started out with are the Concordia games and others like them.”

“Concordia games?” Bryce raised his eyebrows.

“You’ve never heard of them?”

“I don’t play computer games. I use my computer for work.”

“Of course. How silly of me.” Angela’s smile flashed, creating a dimple in her cheek.

There was something definitely sexy, Angela thought, about Bryce’s serious, intense gaze. The silvery gray eyes seemed to go right through her. She wondered if he brought the same single-minded intensity to his lovemaking as he did to his work. The thought sent a shiver through her.

She glanced away from him quickly. She couldn’t believe that she was thinking about Bryce this way.
Bryce Richards, of all people!
It was crazy; they could hardly manage to string together three or four civil sentences to each other. The thought of ever going to bed with him was sheer insanity. He was not her type, and she felt sure that Bryce would run as fast as he could the other way if he thought that she was interested in him. He had made it very clear what he thought of her.

“The Concordia games are quest games,” she said quickly to get her mind off her strange thoughts. “They are set in a fictional kingdom, Concordia, in some past time, vaguely medieval. There’s a king and queen and their beautiful daughter, Princess Alicia. Their enemy is an evil sorceress, Maladora.”

“Ah!” Bryce’s brows flew up in a look of enlightenment. “That’s who you were dressed as this afternoon.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Oh. For Tim’s party…it’s a week from Friday. A big charity costume party he throws every year for this children’s charity he’s involved with.”

“Oh.” His face cleared. “Okay. So what does this Maladora do?”

“Anyway, Maladora is very powerful, and though, of course, she’s defeated in each game, she always finds some way of coming back. In a weird way, people are probably more attached to her than to the princess or even Sir Leopold. He’s the knight from another country who came to Concordia and released the royal family from the enchantment that Maladora had put them under. That was our first game,
Concordia.
Our second was
Concordia: Maladora Returns
and the third was
Concordia: Alicia’s Escape,
and so on. Right now I’m working on the seventh. I’m going to introduce a new villain and have Maladora on the same side as the royal family for once. The games are humorous, particularly the contemporary series. We always put in little tongue-in-cheek things. They’re not the violent ones where you kick and stab and shoot your way to the end—you win by figuring out clues and collecting things along the way, then using them at the right time.”

“I see.”

From the expression on his face, Angela doubted that he did, but she let it pass. Bryce, she suspected, simply didn’t understand games; they were beyond his scope. That was the way her parents were. Numbers made sense; fantasies and entertainment did not.

“And these games are successful?”

“Very.” Angela bit back a smile at the faint tone of amazement in his voice. “People love them. They’re interesting and complex—you can work on them for days. One gets fun and a sense of accomplishment out of them. That big open room downstairs in our office, the one that has all the little cubicles with people with headsets?”