definitely hairless skin between her mouth and her nose. “Perhaps I’m the one who should be asking about your undesirable attributes.”
“I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours,” he wheedled. Despite herself, Holly smiled.
Jared blinked. Holly’s lips, no longer tight with disapproval, emerged as full and perfectly shaped. The somber eyes he’d dismissed as unremarkable gray proved to have hints of forget-me-not blue when humor lit them. Which just went to show his male instincts—the ones that had been shocked at that handshake—were in full working order.
“You need to know,” she said, “that as of last Monday I’m under investigation by the FBI for theft and fraud.”
His shout of laughter was the last reaction Holly expected. Still, Harding was notoriously unpredictable. “You think it’s funny?”
“Look at you.” With a wave of his large hand he indicated her face, hair, clothes, demeanor. “You’re the picture of innocence. You’re even blushing, for Pete’s sake. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain there’s not a dishonest bone in your body.”
He made it an insult.
“What about Babyface Malone?” she demanded, stung.
“Who?”
“Malone was one of the most heinous mobsters around, and he looked every bit as innocent as I do.”
Jared snorted. “If you’re trying to tell me you’re with the Mob I’m not buying it. You’re nothing but an honest accountant who’s been wrongly accused.” To his evident horror, tears sprang to her eyes. “Now what?”
“I…appreciate your judgment of me,” Holly said, and added scrupulously, “however underin-formed it may be.” She meant it. News of her troubles had traveled fast within Seattle’s accounting community, and two of the peers she’d phoned for advice before she turned to AnnaMae had made it clear they were assuming the worst. “You’re right, I am innocent. So if you want to tell me about this job…”
He grinned. “I can think of nothing I’d like more than having the FBI’s latest target handle the fine print on this deal.”
Holly hated his smart-aleck attitude, but right now she couldn’t argue. And this could be worse. Despite Jared’s casual clothes, his office didn’t appear to be a den of iniquity. The spacious corner suite wasn’t as tidy as she’d have liked, but its high-tech equipment and minimalist furnishings exuded professionalism. Give him the benefit of the doubt. Besides, she had to admire his business acumen as he told her the bare bones of the acquisitions he planned to make with her help. It was a complex deal, involving asset swaps, share swaps and meaty taxation issues.
Fascinating, professionally speaking.
“So,” he concluded, “do you want the job?”
Jared could hardly believe he was holding his breath as he waited for her reply. But accountants of Holly’s ability, her creativity, weren’t that common. The only reason her business wasn’t ten times its size was that many chief executives were too fuddy-duddy to accept that a woman her age could be the best in her field. And most of the rest couldn’t afford her. But Jared fit neither of those categories. He trusted her ability, and he could pay whatever she demanded.
He needed the integrity Holly brought to her work, the gold standard against which she would measure this deal. So what if she was under investigation for fraud—everyone who mattered knew she could spot a flaky contract a mile off and wouldn’t allow anything remotely marginal in the eyes of the law.
Unlike her, Jared had been known to push the boundaries of legality. He hadn’t overstepped them, but he’d done things others would consider unethical, if not illegal.
Because sometimes the end justified the means.
“I won’t do anything illegal,” she said. “And by that I mean anything that I personally consider to breach the spirit or the letter of the law.”
He couldn’t help smiling at the irony, given her current circumstances. “What you say goes,” he assured her.
He couldn’t afford to have it any other way. This was his chance to avenge the wrong done to his family, and it had been twenty years coming. This deal was big enough to attract the scrutiny of the IRS, the stock market and his competitors. And one person in particular would be watching closely. It had to look squeaky clean.
“I charge plenty, and I need a partial payment next week.” Holly named a sum that startled Jared. He suppressed a grin—not many people would have the effrontery to demand that kind of fee when they were desperate—and agreed to pay.
But he wouldn’t let her think she could walk all over him. So he said, “I still have one concern about you.”
She bristled. “You said the investigation didn’t bother you.”
“Not that. I read an article about you last week.”
For the first time since she’d stalked into his office Holly looked less than one hundred percent sure of herself. “I—You can’t believe everything you read.”
“So the glowing account of your illustrious career wasn’t true?”
“Of course it was.”
“But the other stuff—the control freak part—wasn’t? I have to tell you, Holly, I don’t work well with control freaks.”
“I’m not—well, I guess I am a bit. That article was all my fault,” she said in a rush.
Jared quirked an eyebrow.
“I should never have let that journalist trail me around. It was one of those days when nothing went right and I had to…well…take control of my staff and my clients more than usual. I got off on the wrong foot with the guy. Right at the start he asked how I’d achieved so much in just a few years.”
“And you said?” Jared had a feeling he would enjoy her answer.
“I said…” Holly squared her shoulders and looked Jared in the eye. “I told him first impressions are important. That early in my career I could never have gotten away with dressing like he did, with his shoes all scuffed, his hair too long and his shirt hanging out. That no matter how good you are at your job, people will always judge you by appearance.”
Jared made a point of inspecting his own shoes. They passed muster, by his standards at least. Who knew what level of shine Holly expected? “My shirt is hanging out,” he said.
“Yours appears designed that way,” Holly said stiffly. “In hindsight, it wasn’t a clever thing to say, but he did ask. I gave him an honest answer.”
“And you think he took such offence that he went back to his office and labeled you a control freak?”
“No-o,” she said slowly. “I think he did that because I suggested he could write faster if he held his pen with the proper grip—I was only trying to help. And when it became clear the interview wasn’t going well, I asked to see his copy before it went to press and threatened to sue if he wrote anything I didn’t like. Which, of course, I have no grounds to do,
