Show Her The Money. Stephanie Feagan

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СКАЧАТЬ “Don’t be so dramatic. You’ll like Ed. Trust me.”

      After dragging my exhausted, half-drunk ass out of the pool, I showered and dressed in a loose, cotton sundress, one of my better Target finds, and went to the kitchen to help Mom get supper on the table. She was just pulling the fajitas out of the oven, saying, “I love Rosario’s fajitas, but I guess maybe they’re better when you eat them there.”

      A deep voice responded, “They’ll be okay.”

      I moved farther into the kitchen and spotted a tall guy leaning against the opposite counter. In a faded red T-shirt, he was buff, with longish, dark hair that didn’t look like he wore it long on purpose. It looked like he either forgot to go get a haircut, or blew it off. Glancing at the hole in his jeans, I voted for blew it off. Ed was not a guy who cared what he looked like.

      He definitely looked like the type of guy I’d love to have hot sex with, then send home right after. Not relationship material. Bad boy material. And I knew all about bad boys. I married one.

      Mom spotted me and said, “Pink, this is Ed.”

      I stuck my hand out to shake his and smiled politely. At least I think it was polite. Feeling his huge, warm hand wrap around mine was very stimulating. I may have leered at him, but I’m not sure. The hot sun and the Coronas and my complete lack of a love life over the past year and a half all added up to a few lightning-bolt zings in the vicinity of my hootus. So maybe I did leer at him and probably held his hand too long. He smiled back and mumbled something like, “Nice t’ meet you.”

      I finally let go of his hand and we stood there, eyeing each other like moose in mating season. Hmm. Nice body. Good teeth. Smells awesome. For a minute, I wished I was a moose. Then we could go get it on and no one would think anything about it.

      But alas, I wasn’t a moose. And Mom was right there, noticing all the animal attraction and clearing her throat, as if to say, Back off you two and save the drooling for later.

      I turned to glance at her and noticed her eyes, those dark, flashing Mom eyes, said, See, I told you so.

      Mom loves to say “I told you so.” Most times, I don’t care. It gives her a charge, so why not? Other times, it really ticks me. This was one of those times. I decided not to like Ed, just to show her she wasn’t always right. Looking up at him, I asked casually, “So, Ed, what’s with you not paying your taxes?” I ignored Mom’s sharp breath.

      He never so much as blinked. “I forgot.”

      “And the IRS bought that?”

      “No. They bought that I’ve never made that much money before and didn’t realize I needed to pay in quarterly.”

      “So, how much did you make?”

      “Whitney Ann!” Mom said in a take-no-prisoners voice, “Stop asking such personal questions and behave yourself!”

      Ed still didn’t look away, or appear one bit concerned. “A little over five million.”

      “Musta been a good case. Who’d you sue?”

      “Marvel Energy.”

      Just like that, he got me, right between the eyes. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

      He smiled then. Grinned, actually. “Loved it. Wanna go for round two?”

      “Maybe later. I’m starving.”

      Mom looked ready to wring my neck, but she didn’t say anything else, or call me Whitney Ann! again. We sat down in her elegant dining room and ate fajitas out of a foil pan and talked about the Midland school board and their latest attempts to pass a gigantic school bond. Ed wasn’t as dumb as he was a slob. In fact, he seemed very intelligent.

      By the end of supper, I knew I needed to steer clear of him. He was an accident waiting to happen, and I was doomed to be the sole casualty. My ex-husband, George, was just like Ed. Well, except that George was a mechanic and Ed was a lawyer. But other than that…And I suppose Ed did have better manners. George would never have asked if Mom and I would like more iced tea as he got up to pour himself another glass. George would have grunted, pointed his fork at his glass and waited for me to jump up and get it. He got away with that exactly once. After that, he waited so long, his ice melted.

      Ed poured more tea into my glass, then Mom’s, and retook his chair. “Tell me about Marvel Energy and the senate finance committee.”

      “What? Don’t you watch CNN? I’m the flavor of the week. Me and Senator Santorelli. They’ve got me sleeping with him.”

      “Well, he is very attractive,” Mom said. “And he’s single now, since his wife passed away. You know the media loves him, and they really get off on pairing him up with single women.”

      “I don’t even know the man. And I don’t think he’s the least bit attractive.”

      “Why?” Mom frowned at me over her fajita stuffed tortilla.

      “Gee, let me count the ways. Could it be because he made me tell the entire United States about Mister Bob?”

      “He meant well. How could he have known about Mister Bob?”

      She had a point, but I was not in the mood to be understanding. I refocused on Ed’s face. His very attractive, manly face, with a five-o’clock shadow and really nice brown eyes. “What do you want to know that isn’t already out there?”

      He swallowed his drink of tea, set the glass down and said easily, “I want to know how you knew about the memos and how you got them.”

      Sitting back in my chair, I stared at him for a long time.

      “You’re going to have to trust me,” Ed said.

      I took a long drink of tea. Would he believe me? Or would he be like Mr. Dryer and Barbara Clemmons and assume I was as guilty as the partners at the firm? I supposed there was only one way to find out. “When I discovered the enormous amount of debt Marvel carries off the books, and how close the company was to defaulting on those loans, I went to Lowell and told him. He said I should forget the loans, that I should just conduct the audit and make sure I had workpapers to back up clean financials.”

      “He told you to lie?”

      “Only a lot. That’s when I knew he’d set me up. He promoted me and put me in charge of the audit so when the news broke that Marvel is basically bankrupt, I’d be in the hot seat. I’d get my license jerked for gross negligence while Lowell stood back and acted like he had no clue. The firm would stay in business and my career would be history. I was the sacrificial lamb.”

      “He didn’t count on you blowing the whistle.”

      “Not hardly. Or maybe he just thought I wasn’t smart enough to figure it all out. The day I suggested we should go to the SEC with what I’d found, he went ballistic. I told him I was gonna do it, and he fired me. The next day, I turned over copies of Marvel’s debt instruments to the SEC, thinking they’d investigate, fine the company and demand they clean up their act. Instead, they asked me a lot of questions about how we’d conducted the audit in the past, about how much debt Marvel had during those years and how we missed it. That’s when it dawned on me, Marvel had been hiding debt at least СКАЧАТЬ