“I didn’t mean—” Sloan broke off. Did it matter? “Thank you. That’s very kind.”

  “Of course.”

  He gestured toward the phone. “Feel free to make your call.”

  She stood there, inside the wide, cavernous office that carried all the trappings of power, yet felt strangely empty. As if the man who worked there—the man she watched even now, while also trying not to gape at just how attractive he was—was somehow absent from the place.

  Like no matter how much time he spent here, it wasn’t quite his.

  Which, Sloan supposed, was why she was here, wasn’t it?

  “Mind if I close the door?”

  He nodded. “Be my guest.”

  She was closer to the exit, so she crossed the few feet to close the thick wood door, scanning the hallway to confirm it was empty. When she heard the firm snick of the latch catching, Sloan turned back to Mr. Sexy, her gaze direct.

  “Okay, Colton. I think we convinced them.”

  * * *

  Chase watched as the slim woman standing inside his now-closed office transformed before his very eyes. The haphazard, rushed form who’d collided with him inside the office conference room, running on adrenaline and the fear she’d missed a meeting, had vanished.

  In its place was a force of nature. That slim frame that looked willowy and soft grew, somehow, steel straightening her frame.

  “You think so?”

  “I know so. The entire room watched what was going on. You did a good job with the moony eyes, too.”

  For reasons he couldn’t name, that stung a bit. “You did a decent job yourself.”

  “Just like we planned.”

  And they had planned it, hadn’t they? In a series of calls he’d taken from his home office, on his own personal communications devices, unwilling to bring this anywhere near Colton Properties.

  The calls had left him frustrated at his next move, even as he knew it was inevitable. Which was why he’d hired one Sloan Presley, founder, owner and chief hacker at SecuritKey, who’d come highly recommended by his cousin Max. Max’s FBI work had put him in contact with Sloan on several different projects and she fit the bill for what Chase needed: an independent party who could do some discreet hacking into the Colton Properties network and servers to ensure no one else was doing anything nefarious.

  They’d hatched the meet-cute ruse because his bachelor status was widely known around Colton Properties and, even more widely, throughout Owl Creek. He’d never been great at relationships—a fact he’d proved spectacularly with his first wife—and after divorcing he’d sworn off ever attempting marriage again. But he’d also spent his adult life being told he only needed to find the right woman to fall head over heels.

  Hadn’t Sonja hinted at that very point in the conference room?

  Which made this the best approach to keep his questions about threats to Colton Properties under the radar. People would be so focused on the idea he’d found a girlfriend they’d have no reason to question her presence or the time she spent with him. Subterfuge, yes, but they’d never have pulled it off if he’d simply hired her as an employee.

  So when Sloan had questioned him about the job and whom he was trying to avoid—and the answer to that question was basically everyone, family included—they’d hatched the girlfriend plot. He hated lying to his loved ones, but since the news of his father’s double life, he’d come to realize there wasn’t anyone he could really trust.

  “So much for transparency, accountability and honesty,” Chase muttered. He thought he’d said it low enough, which made Sloan’s raised eyebrows that much more pointed.

  “You’re battling a hidden force, Chase. One who can destroy your business and all you’ve built. Root out that dishonesty and you can go back to running the business however you’d like.”

  She was right. He knew that and he knew what he had to do to preserve his company. But when had life gotten so complicated? And how, in a matter of months, had his father’s betrayals changed the way he thought about his family?

  Even as he recognized they had in every possible way.

  He was the oldest, damn it. It was his job to look out for his siblings. To protect his mother. And now, he was staring at a life of lies, churning through every conversation he could ever remember with his father, trying to find a shred of truth.

  All while the answers remained elusive.

  His mother’s sister, Jessie, had run off, leaving her husband and four children, vanishing as if she’d never been. His Uncle Buck and his cousins had been devastated, trying to rebuild their lives after that horrific betrayal. They’d done a decent job of it, only to find since Robert’s death that Jessie was not only very much alive, but also had been living a secret life with his father and the two children they’d had.

  It was mind-boggling, Chase acknowledged, with the additional layers of grief, anger and deep-seated betrayal fighting for top of the heap of the emotional damage at any given moment.

  It was that fact that continued to resonate deep within him, forcing his hand with the decision to reach out to SecuritKey’s owner. Sloan Presley was just what he needed. A neutral third party under a signed confidentiality agreement.

  He looked at her now, still positioned on the opposite side of his office. That spine of steel hadn’t wavered, but it was the rest of the woman that really drew him in. Long hair settled around her face in soft, curly waves, those compelling, deep brown eyes alert and sharp. Her skin was a pretty shade of light brown that his fingers itched to trace, her long arms drawing his gaze in the short-sleeved, conservative blouse.

  There was something about the woman that was captivating.

  Which was the very last thing he needed to worry about right now.

  So he’d ignore those sparks of attraction and force himself to forget the feel of her when she’d been wrapped tight in his arms.

  They had work to do.

  “We fooled them, Chase.”

  “No doubt about it.” He nodded. “That was an award-winning performance.”

  “Then let’s get to work.”

  Chapter 2

  Let’s get to work.

  The words still rang in his head an hour later, his staff meeting wrapped after he gave one more excuse to help the woman in his office, as he and Sloan mapped out a plan for the week.

  He had to give the woman credit—she came prepared.

  Their entire contact up to now had consisted of those calls, mostly on the phone and then the final one on video. He’d thought her competent before, but seeing her in action only ratcheted that feeling even higher.

  And then there was his reaction to her beauty.

  He was a man who appreciated an attractive woman, but he wasn’t normally this distracted. But Sloan was...

  Well, she was the whole package.

  Beautiful, yes, in a way that hit a man over the head. And then there were her computer skills.

  SecuritKey had come highly recommended, and he could see why. Its founder was a whiz with a computer.

  He would never have called himself a digital expert, but he knew how to navigate a laptop to do his work, program basic commands in their database and navigate through spreadsheets, all in service of running a successful business.

  Next to Sloan, though, he felt like a kindergartner with his first computer.

  The woman had some serious skills.

  “I recognize this is a difficult subject, but would you walk me through the financial implications of your father’s other family?”

  Chase had struggled with that himself—and based on the questions this morning, his staff were worried about the same—yet something about it coming from Sloan felt different.

  Up to now, he’d felt varying levels of shame, embarrassment and the sheer lingering fury of betrayal.

  But with her, it was...

  Well, it was okay, somehow. And he hadn’t felt that way since the discovery of his father’s secret life and the half brother and half sister he hadn’t known he had.

  Was it because he’d hired her to do a job?

  Or was it her?

  In the end, Chase realized it didn’t matter. What did matter was working with her to uncover the problems he suspected with the books and figure out where he had a snake in the garden of Colton Properties.

  “Financial implications is the polite term we’re using now for lying to your family for decades?”

  He’d meant the comment as a joke but didn’t miss how flat the words felt to his own ears.

  “I’m sure this is difficult. Monumentally so. But maybe we can take a slightly different tack. One that focuses on the finances and the records instead of the more scandalous aspects.”

  It was funny. If anyone else had framed it quite that way, Chase wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t have been offended.

  Scandalous aspects.

  The Colton family had become the hottest scandal in Owl Creek in decades.

  Yet even with that public embarrassment, Chase had to admit Sloan had a point. Because separating what was happening at Colton Properties from his personal upheaval was essential if he wanted to get underneath his very real problem.

  Something improper on the books was a fact.

  Records that didn’t add up were facts.

  Rooting out a problem that had everything to do with swindling Colton Properties and nothing to do with his father’s secret life was a fact.

  And facts were something he’d had precious little of for far too long.

  That first horrible blow of losing a parent had been crushing. But to then realize the man he’d loved and damn near revered for thirty-six years wasn’t whom he’d believed he was had been killing him these past months.

  On a hard exhale, he nodded. “Okay. Focus on the financials. What can I give you to move this along?”

  “Access to the books is a place to start. I can do a proper digital forensics audit on the work while also searching for irregularities.”

  “You can do that on spreadsheets.”

  Her grin was broad and the words behind it held a confidence that bordered on cocky. It was...endearing. In a way he’d never have expected.

  Here was a woman who knew her worth and didn’t question it.

  It was impressive. And deeply fascinating.

  “We’re also going to need to come up with excuses for me to be here. Reasons I have to log on to the network or something I need to do for my own job.”

  “Lie to my staff, you mean.”

  “Chase.” He saw real compassion in her gaze, even as her voice remained strong. Soft, but still steel-edged all the same. “We’ve been over that part. It’s lying if you do it indefinitely. I’m one person, here in a consultant capacity, to help you ferret out a highly confidential problem. When we find the problem, you can move on to running Colton Properties exactly as you want to.”

  “It still feels wrong. Especially with the realities of my father’s lifetime of lies.”

  “I wish there was another way.”

  Once again, Sloan was the competent voice of reason. Chase realized that if he continued hemming and hawing, he would be as much a problem and an impediment to her investigation as the person attempting to swindle the company.

  He sighed and looked up at her. “I’m usually far more decisive than this.”

  “You’re grieving. I’d be a bit surprised and—” She broke off, seeming to pull herself up short.

  “You’d be surprised at what?”

  She shook her head, her mouth a grim line. “I’m sorry. I speak my mind far too quickly.”

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  Once again, her gaze was direct when she spoke, even if the words came a bit slowly. “To be honest, I’d be disappointed if you weren’t struggling a bit. I’m deeply sorry you’re going through this, but you’re human. You’re entitled to a range of emotions and feelings that don’t all line up like numbers on a balance sheet.”

  “I thought the numbers on my balance sheet were the problem.”

  This joke hit far better than his earlier one and Chase felt a small moment of triumph when that thin line of her mouth turned up into a wide smile.

  “Touché.”

  “But thank you. I’ve spent my life being the decisive one, especially as the oldest child. My job here at Colton Properties has only reinforced that.”

  “Then that means your faith has been shaken the hardest by your father’s actions.”

  For someone who spent her life staring at a computer screen, Sloan Presley was pretty damn perceptive.

  And once again, Chase was right back to that list of attributes in his mind he seemed unable to stop thinking about for long.

  Yes, she was beautiful. But that beauty was matched by an inner calm and serenity, and a level of understanding, he’d really never seen before. Or certainly not in someone so young. He didn’t know her exact age, but at thirty-six himself, he figured he had at least six years on her, if not more.

  Was she even thirty yet?

  And did it really matter?

  He wasn’t dating her. And the fact that his mind kept veering back to attraction had no place in this discussion at all. The only reason they’d even hatched the dating angle was to have a reason for her to come and go in the office without anyone being the wiser.

  And yet...

  He kept circling around that simmering level of attraction, anyway.

  On his part at least.

  Since he had far bigger issues, he’d better start focusing on the task at hand and off the very beautiful Sloan Presley.

  The future of Colton Properties depended on it.

  * * *

  What was she thinking?

  Chase’s calm attitude and his even tone as they spoke of his business seemed to have seen them through that awkward moment, but Sloan couldn’t help but wonder what had possibly gotten into her.

  She never told a client what she actually thought.

  Hell, she never told anyone what she actually thought of their behavior.

  People claimed they wanted honesty, but no one truly did. They wanted a sanitized version of their behavior that was fed back to them, reinforcing all the things they wanted to hear.

  Not what they actually needed to be told.

  Wasn’t that why she had a job?

  Human beings were capable of any number of things and her ability to ferret out those things—especially the bad things—was why she had a successful business.

  They’d moved past those difficult moments when she’d analyzed the impact of his father’s death and moved right on to the files she’d ultimately need to review on the business. Chase Colton was the height of professionalism and accountability as they worked through a quick list of needs and how they’d go about setting her up to review the files.

  “I pulled down a few files just to give you a sense of the business. We’re privately held but still create the equivalent of an annual report for our records and to share with any potential investors on projects. I’ve also downloaded the monthly spreadsheets I work off with Finance. We do a soft close each month and then a formal close at the end of the quarter.”

  It was impressive, Sloan thought, as he walked her through the various aspects of the business. Although privately held, as CEO he ran Colton Properties like a publicly held business. The files were designed to show proper reporting on the work, their investments and overall cash flow in and out of the company.

  She was anxious to dig in to those monthly reports. No matter how well someone thought they had hidden their activity in the books, the month-by-month review would give her a strong sense of where to look.

  “That’s a really good start. I’ll begin there and then let you know what else I might need.”

  “Of course. I’ve got the files already downloaded for you.” He got up and crossed to his desk, then pulled a small drive out of his desk drawer. When he returned to her, he didn’t sit down again, even as he handed over the drive. “So we should probably work out the fake dating part of this, too. We’ll need to be seen around town a few times.”

  Sloan took the thumb drive, tucking it away into a small pouch she kept in her bag for work. It gave her the small moment of normalcy she needed as she considered how to play this.

  Yes, the idea of posing as a couple had made sense when they’d hatched it in their planning meetings.

  But now?

  Seeing Chase Colton in person and realizing the man was far more attractive than even their brief video call suggested—it was a bit like having her brains scrambled.

  She’d done her research, as she would for any other job, but nothing had fully prepared her for the impact of Chase Colton in the flesh.

  The man had a lethal sort of intelligence that, coupled with those amazing green eyes and that broad-shouldered swimmer’s build, was...well, it was sort of devastating.

  Which was a serious problem seeing as how they were going to be playacting a romantic relationship for the next few weeks.

  It was a new business strategy for her—she’d never even considered it before—and now that she’d committed to it, she had to be all in.

  But ever since she’d barreled into the Colton Properties conference room, Sloan had been wondering what, exactly, she’d gotten herself into.

  Or why a fake dating ruse had seemed like a good idea when they’d come up with it on their last call.

  “Where do you normally take your dates?”

  It was a casual question, and it matched his prompt perfectly. Yet even as she asked it, Sloan felt the heat creeping up her neck.

  “I have a few favorite restaurants. But there is another problem. I should have given it more thought but the talk today in the conference room made me realize I might have made a bit of an oversight.”