Wild Forces: A Friends to Lovers Romance (O-Town Book 2) by Karen Renee (summer reads .TXT) 📕

me like a trooper. After I emptied my bladder and brushed my teeth, I opened the bathroom door to see him waiting expectantly.

“Got a spare toothbrush, baby?”

I handed him a spare and by the time I came back into the bathroom with my work clothes he was done. Before I could ask him if he needed coffee, he tugged off his boxer briefs.

“What are you doing, Gabe?”

His thumbs slid into my panties. “Darlin’, thought you knew by now, the best part of wakin’ up is havin’ you for breakfast. Those coffee people got it all wrong.”

I wheezed out a laugh. “You are definitely good for my ego, G-Rock.”

A devilish glint hit his eyes. “I’m good for more than that, Daughtry.”

My shower took twice as long, seeing as Gabe hustled out of the shower to his pants and came back with a condom so he could finish us both off, ‘properly,’ as he put it. But I had to say, it was one of my favorite ways to wake up.

WHEN I TRAINED WITH Rhonda, I saw that someone else had a desk in the room-slash-office, but due to her being on vacation I didn’t get to meet Ryan’s assistant, Wendy, until after Rhonda had left.

Working earlier hours than I did, Wendy came into the office first and always had her radio blaring when I came in to work. This didn’t bother me since I loved music of all kinds.

Today, though, Wendy had a mid-morning dentist appointment and she left as soon as I walked in at nine o’clock.

She had left her radio on, and when it went to a break, there was a commercial for new bar opening this weekend. That forced me to think about how Ryan promoted the club. I saw an invoice for a radio station, but it wasn’t the station we were listening to because the call letters were all wrong. Normally I didn’t pay any attention to that, but this station drilled it home every third song by promoting themselves.

The commercials reminded me of the journal entries I had flagged yesterday. Looking for invoices we had paid to media vendors, I found ten. Eight of those invoices had either call letters or station numbers I recognized. The other two records had been flagged yesterday. Both were for stations I hadn’t heard of. That didn’t mean much, seeing as I didn’t normally pay attention when listening to the radio. However, my instincts told me I was on to something.

When I pulled the invoices in the software, they looked like copies of photocopies. The hard copies were kept in Ryan’s office, and Wendy had left. I wouldn’t find out what I needed to know by hiding in my office, so I went to check with Ryan.

I knocked on his open door, and he glanced over his shoulder. “You need something, Miss Daughtry?”

I had been on the job for over a month, and Ryan’s continued formality grated on my nerves.

“Yes, sir. Uh, you have hard copies of our past invoices, right?”

He swiveled his chair, so he faced me directly. “I do. Why do you ask?”

I smiled. “I wanted to look at invoices from WORL-FM. They look a little wonky on the software.”

“Really? Because the invoices ‘look a little wonky’ you need the hard copies?”

I sighed. “Well, I’ve also never heard of a station with those call letters.”

Ryan smiled, but I knew it was fake. “Miss Daughtry, radio stations change call letters every couple years. That station just did that. So, they used to be WADS and now they’re WORL to take advantage of the acronym for our airport.”

Everything about that screamed bullshit to me, but I gave into his condescending tone because I figured I had tipped my hand. “Yes, sir. I didn’t realize that.”

It might have been paranoia, but I didn’t trust the club internet or servers. I grabbed my cell from my desk and used it to run an internet search on call letter changes. The most recent listing of call letter changes had happened six months prior. I knew I couldn’t trust everything I found on the Internet, but I also knew changes to a radio station’s call letters were important enough to be filed with the FCC. All of that in mind, I found it hard to believe this switch hadn’t been reported. Or more to the point, hadn’t been picked up by Google’s search algorithm to find it for me.

To cut Google out of my search, I went to the FCC website. Even they didn’t list a call letter change.

I suspected this was a way for Ryan to divert money.

I reopened the digital copy of the invoice and looked at it a little more closely. There were little gray lines on it that made me think it wasn’t an original, and everything about that made me uncomfortable. The problem was, I didn’t know if I was giving into preconceived notions or if I was listening to my instincts. If this station was a fraud, then it provided an excellent vehicle for Ryan to siphon funds away from the club. Yet, I had to wonder why he would do that.

And if he was diverting funds... where was he diverting them to?

Gabe

THE DAY STARTED OUT great, waking up and showering with Cassandra, but it took a left turn when Pauline, my mother, called.

“Hello,” I answered.

“Gabe. Your father said you asked for my number. I hope you don’t mind, but I thought I’d call.”

I inhaled. “Yeah. That’s great. Did he say why I was asking for your number?”

Her voice sounded more upbeat, and I imagined she was smiling. “He did. You’re curious about the inheritance.”

I pressed my lips together because it sounded like she was thrilled I had reached for the proverbial carrot she dangled.

“More like I’m curious about whether I need a lawyer, or an accountant. And I wanted to know how the distribution was going to work.”

She sighed. “Yes. Those are all good questions. How about we meet for lunch today