An Unexpected Christmas Baby. Tara Taylor Quinn

much more, she had to find out.

      “Owens Investments was audited this past spring.”

      Her relief was so heady she almost saw stars. It was business. Not health. “You’ve got some misplaced files?” she asked him. “You need me to do a paper trail to satisfy them?” Her Master’s in Business Administration had been a formal acknowledgment of her ability, but Tamara’s true skills, organization and thoroughness, were what had catapulted her to success in her field. If a paper trail existed, she’d find it. And then know how to better organize the process by which documents were collated so nothing got lost again.

      Her father’s chin jutted out as he shook his head. “I wish it was missing files. Turns out that someone’s been siphoning money from the company for over a year. And I’m not sure it’s stopped. If it continues, I could lose everything.”

      Okay. So, not good news. Also not imminent death. Anything that wasn’t death was fixable.

      “I need your help, Tam,” Howard said, folding his hands on the desk as he faced her. “Money is a vulnerable business. A lucrative one, but vulnerable. If our investors hear there’s money missing, they’ll get nervous. There could be a massive move out...”

      She could see that. Was more or less a novice about the ins and outs of what he did, but she knew how companies worked. And the importance of consumer trust.

      “I was hoping I’d be able to figure out what’s going on myself, no need to alarm you or bring you home, but I haven’t been able to find the leak. I need you to come in and do what you do. To give us a once-over, presumably to see if you can save us money. In reality, I’m hoping that you can give everything more of a thorough study without raising suspicions the way it would if I was taking a deeper look.”

      She nodded, recognizing how hard it was for her father to have to ask for help. Thinking ahead. Focusing on the job.

      “People are going to know I’m your daughter. They might be less comfortable speaking with me.”

      He shook his head again. “I’ve thought of that. A few will know, of course. Roger. Emily. And Bill. For the rest, it works in our favor that you kept your married name because it was the name you became known under in the business world. People will have no reason to suspect.”

      Roger Standish, Emily Porter and Bill Coniff. CFO, VP and Director of Operations, respectively. Her father’s very first employees when he’d first started out. She’d met them all but it wasn’t as if he’d been close friends with his business associates. He was closer to his clients. Many of those she knew better than her own aunts and uncle. Still, none of his top three people would rat her out to the employees. Unless...

      “What if the problem rests with one of those three?”

      “I guess we’ll find that out,” he said, raising a hand and then running it over his face. Clearly he’d been dealing with the problem for a while. Longer than he should have without saying anything. She was thirty-two, not thirteen.

      “Does Mom know?”

      “Of course. She wanted me to call you home immediately.”

      “You should have.”

      “Your happiness and emotional health mean more to me than going bankrupt.”

      Feeling her skin go cold again, she stared at him. Was it that bad?

      “Your well-being is one of the top factors that affects my emotional health,” she couldn’t help pointing out to him.

      With a nod, he conceded that.

      He was asking for her help. Nothing else mattered.

      “How soon can I start?” she asked.

      “That was going to be my question.”

      “When you finally got around to telling me you needed something...” The slight dig didn’t escape him.

      “I was going to tell you today. I was just having a bit of trouble getting to it. You’ve been through so much and I don’t like putting more on you...”

      “I make my living by having companies put more on me. It’s what I do, what I strive for.” She grinned at him. He grinned back.

      Her world felt right again.

      “So...is now too soon?”

      “Now would be great. But...there’s one other thing.”

      The knot was back in her stomach. Please, not his health. Had he waited until the stress had taken a physical toll before calling her? “What?”

      “I don’t want to prejudice or influence your findings, but there’s one employee in particular who I think could be the one we’re after. Although I wasn’t able to find anything concrete that says it’s him.”

      Pulling the tablet she always kept in her bag onto her lap, she turned it on. Opened a new file. “Who is he? And why do you suspect him?”

      “His name’s Flint Collins. I took him on eight years ago when he was let go by his firm and no one else would hire him. He’d only been in the business a year, but had good instincts. He was up-front about the issues facing him and looked me straight in the eye as we talked. He was... He kind of reminded me of myself. I liked him.”

      Enough to have been blinded by him? “Have I ever met him? Flint Collins?”

      “No.” Her father didn’t have office parties at home. And rarely ever attended the ones he financed at the office.

      “So what were his issues eight years ago?”

      Not really an efficiency matter, she knew, unless, of course, he was wasteful to the point of being a detriment to the company. But then, this wasn’t just an efficiency case.

      This was her father. And she was out for more than saving his firm a few dollars.

      “His mother was indicted on multiple drug charges. She’d been running a fairly sophisticated meth lab from her home and was dealing on a large enough scale to get her ten years in prison.”

      Had to be tough. But... “What did that have to do with him, specifically?”

      “The trailer she lived in was in his name. As were all the utilities. Paid by him every month. He had regular contact with his mother. He’d already begun to make decent money and was investing it, so he was worth far more than average for a twenty-two-year-old just out of college. Investigators assumed that part of his wealth came from his cut of his mother’s business and named him as a suspect. They froze his assets. Any investors he had at the firm where he worked got scared and moved their accounts. It was a bad deal all the way around.”

      “Was he ever formally charged?” She figured she knew the answer to that. He wouldn’t be working for her father as an investment broker if he had been. But she had to ask.

      “No. He says he had no idea what his mother had been doing. Seemed to be in shock about the whole thing, to tell you the truth. A warrant for all his accounts and assets turned up no proof at all that he’d ever taken a dime from anyone for anything. All deposits were easily corroborated with legitimate earnings.”

      “How’d he do for you?”

      “Phenomenal. As well as I thought he might. He’s one of our top producers. Until recently, I never suspected him of anything but being one of the best business decisions I’d ever made.”

      “What happened recently?”

      “He hooked up with a fancy lawyer. His spending habits changed. He bought a luxury SUV, started taking exotic vacations, generally living high. I’m not saying he couldn’t afford it, just that a guy who’s always appeared to be conservative with his own spending was suddenly flashing his wealth.”

      As in...he’d come into new wealth? Or felt like he’d tapped into a bottomless well? Or was running with a faster crowd and needed