Chapter 12

An hour later, Piper sat back from her computer, which was perched on the edge of the massive desk opposite Chase. “I have a phone number.”

“For the housekeeper?”

“Yeah.”

“Perfect. See if she’ll come back.”

Piper took the house phone with her as she stepped away from the desk.

The call was answered in two rings.

“Hello?”

Piper smiled, as she often did when she was on the phone with someone she needed something from. “Karina Skinner?”

“Yes? Who is this?”

Piper stepped out of the office and into the hall. “I’m Piper Maddox. I work with Chase Stone, Aaron Stone’s son. I understand you used to work for Mr. and Mrs. Stone at their home.”

“I did. Mrs. Stone fired me.”

“I understand that. She wasn’t really in a position to do that. Mr. Stone’s children inherited the house. She should never have let you go.”

“I don’t really know them.”

“Are you saying you’ve met them? Chase didn’t let on,” Piper said.

“I saw them at the funeral. I wouldn’t expect them to remember me. They never came around when I was there.”

That made more sense. “Be that as it may, they’d like you to come back.”

Karina sighed. “I don’t know. I dislike instability. Mrs. Stone wasn’t an easy person to work for.”

“I can promise you Chase and his sister, Alex, are nothing like their father or stepmother.”

“I don’t know . . .”

Not the answer Piper wanted. She poked her head back in the office, hand over the receiver, and asked Chase, “She wants a five percent raise.”

“Fine.”

Back on the phone and away from the office, Piper returned her attention to the call. “They’re giving you a five percent raise.”

“W-what?”

Her tone was much more hopeful. “Five percent, and can you come today? No one has been here since you were let go, and someone is bound to water a fake plant if left to themselves.”

“Five percent?”

Shit, maybe Piper should have asked for more.

“Yes.”

“I can be there in two hours,” Karina spat out.

“Perfect.”

“Except,” Karina said.

“Except what?”

“My uniform isn’t clean.”

Piper winced. “Uniform? Does that help you keep a home clean?”

Karina laughed. “No.”

“Skip the uniform. Just get here. Please.”

“I’m on my way.”

Piper hung up the phone with a spring in her step. “Housekeeper will be here in two hours,” she announced as she walked back into the office.

“That’s a relief.”

It was, yet it sparked another thought. “I wonder if Melissa fired any of the other staff?”

“If she did, they’re still getting paid. All the bills here are on autopilot.”

Piper crossed to one of the windows overlooking the back of the house. Things didn’t look out of place, but there wasn’t anyone walking around doing any work. “Getting paid and not doing the work is a good gig if you can get it.”

“Let’s hope the housekeeper knows who works here and how to get ahold of them.”

“In all the mystery movies, the housekeeper always knows everything.”

Chase pulled his attention off the computer screen. “I bet she does.”

“Eyes open, mouth shut . . . you learn a lot.”

He unfolded from his chair and moved to the shelves. “I wonder if she knows where the safe is.”

Piper’s eyes lit up. “Safe?”

“Yeah. There has to be one.”

“Your father kept more than a million dollars in his personal checking account. Why would he need a safe?”

“Cash, passport, legal documents, birth certificates . . . things you don’t want lost to a fire.”

All of those things were in the bottom drawer in her bedroom, completely surrounded by combustible materials. “Maybe he had a safety deposit box for that stuff.”

“I’m sure he had those, too. But you wouldn’t keep a passport and needed cash in a bank vault when you traveled as much as he did.”

Piper couldn’t help but think Chase was looking for something specific. Even with all the exploring he’d been doing on his father’s computer, Chase seemed more frustrated an hour after getting into the thing than he had when he sat down.

“What are you looking for?”

He glanced at her briefly, then looked away. “I just want to know where everything is.”

“Okay, sure!” She wasn’t buying that and made certain her tone reflected her feelings.

“No, really.”

She stopped him with a roll of her eyes. “You don’t have to tell me, but don’t pretend there’s not something. You’ve been scrolling through emails and bank statements for over an hour, getting more frustrated as the minutes tick by. I just gave the housekeeper, who you don’t know, a five percent raise, which could have been fifty percent for as much attention as you gave any of that. I’ve seen you rummage through this desk in the same manner you did at the office. You’re looking for something and not finding it.”

He opened his mouth, but Piper didn’t give him room to deny it again.

“You don’t have to tell me. But remember . . . I did my job. Head down, ears open.”

Chase sucked in a breath and released it just as fast. “You’re right.”

Two of her favorite words. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“I’m . . . we’re looking for a woman our father had an affair with.”

“So, he was a sugar daddy.”

Chase shook his head. “He could have been, but this one was a while ago.”

“Your father had a lot of women.”

“Somewhere around thirty years ago. Give or take,” Chase added.

That news slapped Piper’s confidence down. “That’s a long time.”

“I know.”

“You think he was still seeing her? Your dad didn’t keep things going for long, from what I could tell.”

“No. But we believe he was sending her money.”

Now the bank statements and email search made sense. “Sending her money after the affair was over? For how long?”

“Twenty years . . . give or take. Who knows, he might have still been sending her money.”

“She must have had something really good on him. I’m guessing this is hush money.”

“You could call it that.”

“If it’s hush money, no one knows about it, and you didn’t want to tell me.”

Chase shrugged. “I don’t know you well enough . . . yet.”

Fair. “Let me give you a clue. If I wanted to out your father, I would have done it while he was alive. And like I told you before, ratting out your boss is professional suicide unless you have a bigger boss in the wings. And since your last name is Stone, these rules still apply.”

She walked around him and took the chair in front of Aaron Stone’s computer.

Chase stood staring.

“Was this hush money for something illegal?”

Chase cleared his throat.

“Wait! Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. Corporate espionage always results in the low men on the ladder doing time.” Wouldn’t that be her luck. Pregnant and in jail because of her shitty dead boss.

It had been two whole hours since Piper thought about her situation, and that removed the smile from her face.

She glanced up at Chase and forged a smile. He was staring at her, a half grin on his lips. The kind that warmed her body and made her wonder what he was thinking.

“I would never let you go to jail for something my father did.”

Piper ignored her rising pulse and moved back to the most recent bank statement and hit the print button. “To use your own words, I don’t know you well enough yet to believe that statement.” But she was starting to want that to change.

“Let me give you a clue,” he repeated her words as he removed the printed statement from the printer behind the desk and placed it in front of her. With one hand on the desk and the other on the back of the chair, he paused.

She looked up, found his face dangerously close to hers.

He smelled like spice and something else she couldn’t name but wanted to bury herself in.

“I’m not the kind of man that says things I don’t mean.” He stood straight and released the trance he held her in.

Now that sounded like a promise she could believe.

“I feel like we’re getting somewhere,” Chase said into the phone as he stood in the backyard of his father’s estate, far away from anyone who could hear him.

Piper had taken to the task of finding the mystery woman like she had when she completed the board meeting minutes before clocking out for the weekend.

“Did you find anything?” Alex asked.

“No, but Piper is eliminating names quicker than you and I can since she knows them.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Only what she needed to know. That we’re looking for a woman our father was having an affair with, and he was sending checks to. She concluded the money was to keep her quiet but didn’t press for more answers.”

“And you didn’t elaborate.”

“No.” Chase looked up at the house behind him. “She’s amazing. Maybe it’s because she’s not emotionally connected, but damn, she’s smart. She all but hacked into the computer and pulled up almost all of Dad’s sensitive information within minutes.”

“How long do you think this is going to take?”

“No idea. But I know it will be faster with her working on it. She knew our father better than we did.”

“The gardener knew him better.”

Chase sighed. “Speaking of . . . Melissa fired the entire staff. Piper found the housekeeper’s number, and I hired her back.”

“Who cares, let the place rot.”

His sister’s bite had a sting. “That only hurts us, not him.”

Alex growled.

“How are things there?”

“Not going to lie . . . I have a lot to learn.”

It was nice to hear what he’d been feeling since the first day he walked into that office. “Your skill set is more equipped than mine.”

“That talent is focusing on the vulnerability of this company, not profitability. I’m having a hard time seeing past the problems.”

“That could be a good thing.”

“Right now, it’s frustrating.”

Chase found himself pacing on a footpath surrounded by flower beds. “Don’t let on to anyone watching.”

“Oh, please. My poker face beats yours every day of the week.”

He liked his sister’s banter.

“Are you going to be okay without Piper for a couple of days? This is likely going to take a while.”

“I got it here. Dee needs direction, but she’s capable.”

Chase kicked a pebble from the path. “Good. I have to get over to CMS. I had my own merger in the works before Dad died.”

“Oh, that’s right. Is it even needed now?” Alex asked.

The Beverly Hills house loomed over him; his father’s personal bank balance flashed in his head. “Probably not.”

“Want my advice?”

“Always.”

“Keep as many hands out of your business as possible. If you want to buy out a competitor, do it. But avoid a merger. They’re messy, people get fired, emotions run high. It’s stressful for everyone.”

Those had been his prevailing thoughts over the past week. “Thanks, Alex.”

“Anytime.”

“If it’s all good on your end, I’ll spend tomorrow at CMS and give a key to Piper so she can continue her search here.”

“I’ll call if something changes. Finding ‘you know who’ is our top priority.”

After hanging up with Alex, Chase did a quick lap around the grounds and poked his head into the pool house, which doubled as a guest house. Two stories, two bedrooms, kitchen . . . an entire home that was likely used once a year at most.

Chase pushed his thoughts of massive homes and swimming pools that were never used away and walked back into the main house.

He heard Piper talking and followed her voice into the kitchen.

There, she and Karina were chatting.

Karina’s arrival gave him and Piper the break they needed from his father’s depressing office.

The mystery of the gate was revealed without any further research. Karina wrote down all the details, from how to open the thing to talking to someone at the gate who may not have pressed the button. She also showed them the monitor controls for the cameras around the estate. She dug through a catchall drawer in the kitchen to find a notebook with the names and phone numbers of everyone she would call to fix household problems. On that list were the groundskeepers and pool maintenance company.

Chase almost felt guilty when Karina and Piper launched into the list and called the household employees to get them to take their jobs back. A home was personal, and even though a third of the house he was standing in belonged to him, he felt no real connection to it. Yet Piper seemed determined to put into place everything needed to keep the home maintained. “You either maintain a house or fix big issues from neglect.”

“The pool guy will be here tomorrow and then once a week on Thursdays. Said that if you have any big parties to let him know and he’ll come the day after to treat the water,” Piper told him.

“No risk of that happening anytime soon.”

Karina finished her call and reported that the groundskeepers were more than happy to come back, but they’d filled their Friday slot since that was sought after. Chase quickly accepted whatever day that staff wanted to come.

Karina tapped the phone she still held in her hand after her last call and asked, “What about the cook? Should I call her back in?”

“A cook?” Chase asked.

“Yes. Mr. and Mrs. Stone had meals prepared for them four days a week, sometimes more.”

Piper started to laugh. “My God, did they hire someone to change a light bulb for them?”

Karina, who was in her early fifties, all of five foot two and weighing under a hundred pounds, pointed to her chest. “Anything I can reach, I take care of. Otherwise, I have a handyman I call.”

“I was joking,” Piper told her.

Karina shrugged.

“We won’t need a cook,” Chase said.

“What about the handyman?” Karina asked.

“Keep his number handy.” Chase didn’t want to reveal to someone he just met that there was no intention of anyone living in the house. At least not at this point.

Piper moved around the giant kitchen island to retrieve her phone from where she’d left it. “We don’t need a cook, but we do need food. Should we Uber something?”

Chase looked at the clock and cussed under his breath. It was after one thirty, and they’d skipped lunch. “I wasn’t watching the time.”

“It’s all good,” Piper told him.

Chase moved to the refrigerator and opened it. “Can we put something together?”

“I don’t mind my assistant duties bringing me here, but I draw the line at cooking for my boss,” Piper told him.

“I’m not my dad. I’m capable of putting a sandwich together for us.”

Piper dropped her phone on the counter and lifted her hands in the air. “Well, now . . . that’s a different story. If my boss wants to cook for me, I’m in,” she teased.

Karina moved around them and started opening cupboards. “I’ll do it. I know where things are. If you make a list, I’ll order what you need through a delivery service.”

Piper rolled her eyes. “Because rich people don’t go to the grocery store.”

Even though Chase agreed with Piper, he saw the practicality of what Karina offered. And considering he’d hardly had time to put a load of laundry in since his father’s death, the domestic help she provided sounded very appealing.

Twenty minutes later, he and Piper sat on the massive back patio eating tuna wraps and slightly stale crackers and carrots that were salvageable from the refrigerator. Karina stayed back and was in the process of purging all the perishable goods from the kitchen.

“So, which one of you is moving into the house?” Piper asked him between bites.

“Neither. At least not at this point.”

“Are you going to sell it?”

“Don’t know yet. It’s not a priority.”

Piper looked around at a fully furnished outside patio, complete with a fireplace, a big-screen television, heat lamps for cold nights, and fans for the hot ones. “Seems a waste.”

“This was his,” Chase said as if there was no further reason needed for his decision.

“You really didn’t care for him, did you?”

Chase washed his bite down with a gulp of water. “I didn’t know him. He stopped being a father when he divorced my mother. His choice, not the court’s.”

“That sucks.”

“Does it? What you told me alone proves he wasn’t an honorable man. That’s important.”

“It is.”

“Alex and I are both hoping that his lack of integrity in his personal life didn’t morph into the company.”

“It was his business to bleed into.”

“True, but there’re a lot of employees that depend on Stone Enterprises.”

When she didn’t respond, Chase glanced Piper’s way, to find her staring at him. “You don’t know any of those people. And you don’t owe us anything.”

“Are you suggesting we walk away?”

She shook her head slightly. “It’s fascinating that you would jump into the company your father built with such conviction, given how little you thought of the man.”

Chase considered her observation and tried to explain his actions. “Less than a month ago, I was happy running my own company. Building my own . . . enterprise. Alexandrea had a job she enjoyed and did well. Then you wake up one morning, and this is sitting in your lap. Overnight, you’re thrust into someone else’s world. Only this life is too big to just pass through and then go back to your own. Alex can’t return to her world any more than I can ignore this one. While I feel no loyalty to my father, I do to my sister.” And strangely, to a brother he had yet to meet.

“Wow.”

“What?” Chase felt like he’d said too much, but at the same time, he knew Piper wasn’t the kind of person to use his words against him.

“I didn’t think it was possible to feel sorry for someone who turned into a gazillionaire overnight. I was wrong.” She picked up her wrap and took a bite.

“You don’t need to feel sorry for either of us. We’ll be fine.”

Piper dipped her head, wiped a drizzle of sauce from her lips. “Oh, I’m sure. Hard not to be with gazillions,” she said around the food in her mouth.

The way she kept saying gazillions made him smile. “I don’t think a gazillion is a thing.”

“More money than I’ll ever see.”

“I don’t know. You’re a smart person.”

She laughed. A single huff of a laugh that said she didn’t agree. “Not as smart as you think.”

“What does that mean?”

Piper shook her head. “Nothing. I, ah . . . as long as I’m in the assistant chair and not the corner office, I won’t be packing away tons of money anytime soon.”

“Perhaps. Your help has been vital. We appreciate it.”

Piper picked up her glass of water and pointed it in his direction. “Feel free to appreciate it with any of those pesky gazillions you don’t know what to do with.”

Damn, she made him laugh. Her straight-up approach was refreshing. “I’ll put that under advisement.”

She rolled her eyes.

Chase laughed harder.

It was close to five in the evening when they called it quits.

Aaron Stone’s home office was slowly being unearthed. Old paper files sat in stacks, most of which Chase had picked through.

Piper had traced several transactions out of his father’s personal account. The amounts were small enough to not flag the IRS, but large enough to capture their attention. While neither of them was a forensic accountant, they were doing a slow but steady job of finding inconsistencies.

They still had a long way to go.

Chase sat back on the sofa, stretching his back and rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s getting late,” he announced.

Piper looked up from the computer. “This is not a fast process. You sure we can’t hire an investigator?”

Chase shook his head. “We can’t risk it.”

Even without the whole truth, Piper nodded her agreement.

“I need you to come back tomorrow,” he told her.

“This isn’t in my job description, Stone.”

He kind of liked how she bit his last name out at him.

“Everyone has a price.”

“Fine,” she huffed. “A gazillion will do.”

“I’ll get right on that.”

Piper rolled her shoulders and pushed away from the desk. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll come at nine and avoid some of that traffic . . . stay a little later.”

“This isn’t the office, get here when you can. I have to spend time tomorrow with my staff. I’ll try and come in the afternoon, if not, I’ll call.”

Piper’s eyes lit up. “You want me here alone?”

“Is that okay?” he asked.

“Yeah . . . I just . . . Yeah, no. That’s fine.”

“Good.”

“You don’t mind me snooping in all of this without you?”

“We’re combing through my father’s files to find anything that might harm the company. That’s not snooping, it’s reverse filing.”

Piper narrowed her gaze. “I didn’t think of it that way.”

Chase cleared his throat. “Your Honor, I wasn’t looking for Aaron Stone’s lifetime subscription to Playboy, I simply found it while purging his files after his death at the request of Chase Stone.”

It was Piper’s turn to smile. “Maybe your dad had a fetish.”

“I’m not looking to find sex toys.”

Piper sucked her lips in and bit them. “That would be funny, though.”

“I don’t want to know.”

She chuckled and grabbed her purse. Before walking away from the desk, she powered down the computer.

Leaving everything in chaos, they left the office and backtracked through the house.

In the kitchen, Chase handed Piper a remote control for the gate and keys to the front door, along with the code for the house alarm. “Make yourself at home.”

She palmed the keys. “Great, I’ll bring my swimsuit.”

And just like that, Chase found himself envisioning her in a bikini. The thought alone made his mouth dry.

“Kidding, Stone.”

Chase closed his eyes, knowing they betrayed him. “Right. Sorry.”

“But I’m not dressing for the office.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

Piper lifted her chin to look up at him. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“We’ll talk at the very least.”

He walked her to the front door and watched as she got into her car. Chase tore his gaze away only when her taillights faded from his sight.

He needed to nip this attraction in the bud, he just wasn’t sure how.