“No!” I scream. “No huggles! Please, no huggle!” It’s too late. My sisters are smothering me with hugs and kisses already. It’s one of those family traditions that you love to hate, or hate to love, or whatever it is when it’s wonderful but also might kill you from literal lack of air.
“I love huggles!” yells Sammy as she jumps right on top.
I’m laughing and laughing, and I love them so much, and then I just burst into tears. Again.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Rae
GRANT’S DESK IS EMPTYwhen I get to work on Monday.
This is no surprise. He spent most of last week either in Dorothy’s office or in meetings. Sam apparently spent half the day with the two of them yesterday. And with the police… which is wild.
Literally, his side of the room looks like no one ever occupied it, much less sat there and watched me like a horny hawk. I hate it.
Unable to stand being in this office for one more second, I hurry out into the lobby and become aware of how chaotic everything is.
I turn as a smug Dane Wabash saunters into the lobby from the front entrance, chatting with a group of people who, it turns out, are the investors. Holy shit. What’s happening? Is that Dorothy’s daughter, Rachel?
“Rae!” Dorothy comes out of her office. “I’d love for you to sit in on this. We might need your input.”
“Oh. Of course. Sure. Sure.”
From the moment we file into the conference room and sit down, Dane lords it over Dorothy.
“Dotty’s the best,” he tells the three men and two women who make up the group of investors while his wife looks on. “She’s beenbegging us to give her grandkids.” He reaches out to chuck his wife under the chin but stops when he catches Dorothy’s death glare, instead smoothing his hand over his fresh-looking haircut. “Can’t wait to retire and be the doting granny she was meant to be, right, Dotty?”
“Let’s begin.” There is not an ounce of bonhomie in Dorothy’s expression as she looks around the conference table.
“Right. Well, we all know Sugar has been in a downward spiral for the last few years.”
What? This is patently untrue. The company’s profits have steadily grown. He’s flat-out lying now?
Dorothy, usually not one to keep her mouth shut, folds her arms across her chest and settles deeper into her chair to watch.
He attacks her leadership skills, her lack of innovation, her limited capacity as manager, and then he attacks her character. When he mentions that she’s an old-fashioned matchmaker with the heart of a homemaker, the rage pushes me up to standing, ready to protest, like someone in an old courtroom drama. That’s when the door opens.
I’m literally half standing when Grant walks in, followed by two women in suits. He nods at Dane.
“Mr. Dane Wabash?”
“What is this? What’s going on?”
“I’m Detective Rosa Ortíz, Richmond Police, Cyber Crimes Division. This is Forensic Accountant Bethanne Wilson. We’d like to ask you a few questions, sir.”
Dane’s smug, corporate a-hole golfer tan turns a sickly gray. “Can’t you see I’m in a meeting?”
“I’m afraid it can’t wait, sir. We are in the middle of a serious criminal investigation.” I squint at the woman she introduced as Bethanne. Forensic accountant? Have I seen her before? I swear she looks familiar.
“Well, I’m not going. This is bullshit. You can’t make me. This is an extremely important meeting. My investors have come all the way from—”
“I’m sure we can answer all your questions here, Detective,” says Dorothy, wearing her first smile of the day. “The investors won’t mind, will they?”
Everyone shakes their head aside from Rachel Gold—or is it Wabash?—who pushes her chair slightly back from her husband’s.
“Thank you.” Ortíz turns to Dane. “Please tell us where you were, sir, last Wednesday night, September eighteenth, between the hours of ten p.m. and two a.m.”
“What? Why? No. I want an attorney.”
