Killer Summer, Lynda Curnyn [books suggested by bill gates .txt] 📗

ever really been in love. I had loved Vince mostly because of the way he loved me.

And now I didn’t even have that.

Chapter Forty-nine

Sage

Not your everyday skin flick.

If I felt like the wanton mistress when Vince came home and ravaged me right there on the back deck, I was starting to feel like the little wife as I stood in the kitchen, draped in his button-down shirt, watching him slice garlic for the sauce he was making. He even looked like the handsome husband in a T-shirt and jeans, his dark hair tousled and his face shadowed and sexy with stubble.

Correction: the hot husband. Which, really, was the only husband I wanted, if any.

Now, as he made us dinner, he even shared tidbits of his day.

Which meant his day at the office, thank God. I didn’t really need to hear any more about the wife and kid. Not tonight anyway.

But 1 liked listening to him talk about Edge. It felt like we were sharing a dream.

“So the short of it is,” he continued, sliding the freshly sliced garlic into a saute pan, “it looks like we’ll have the styles we did in crocodile finished in time for the fall launch.”

I smiled. “That’s a relief. I would hate to go out into the market half-assed.”

He raised an eyebrow at me.“Well, we’d hardly be going in half-assed, but I’m glad to be able to provide the variety. It’ll be a nice boost for the brand. Besides, I think we already used one of the crocodile jackets in our advertising.“

“That’s right,” I replied, popping a freshly washed cherry tomato into my mouth.“I’d like to have the inventory on hand once the orders start rolling in.” I tossed the remaining tomatoes into the salad I had prepared, my mind moving to the other inventory problem I had discovered earlier today. Yes, I had promised Zoe I would wait to talk to Tom, but now that I was with Vince, wrapped in the intimacy I felt whenever I was in his presence, I realized that Zoe’s worries were just that: worries. There was no reason why I shouldn’t find answers to the questions that had scratched at my mind ever since I’d found those invoices. And since Vince was the VP of manufacturing, I was sure he could at least shed some light on the situation. “Vince, I wanted to ask you about something strange I noticed in some of the invoices for Edge.”

“What invoices?” he asked, turning to tend to the garlic in the pan, which had already begun to perfume the room with its heavenly scent.

“Receivables. You know, for jackets received by the warehouse,” I said. “We just started to get some of our shipments in for fall, and I found some discrepancies between them and some payment orders I came across.”

I saw his shoulders stiffen momentarily, his head rising slightly before he resumed his sauteing. “Oh, that kind of thing happens all the time. Sometimes we lose skins due to quality control.” laughed. “Quality control? That’s an awful lot of skin to lose to quality control. One of those payment orders was for double the amount of skin needed for the jackets we received. Then I looked at the purchase orders for our future ships and realized some of those skin orders looked pretty high, too. Anyway, I was going to talk to Tom about it tomorrow, but I wondered—”

Vince shook his head. “Don’t worry yourself about it, Sage. Or Tom for that matter. He’s got enough to think about. I can talk directly to the tannery. I think I told you I’m on good terms with the Lorenzo family. I’ll give Gianna a call on Monday, see what’s what.”

Now I was the one who stiffened. And not just because he brought up “Miss-Tell-Vince-I’ll-Meet-Him-at-the-Hotel,” but because I hadn’t even told him which tannery was concerned. Mostly because 1 had assumed shipping was to blame. It hadn’t occurred to me that the errors had come from the tannery end. But now that I thought about it, most of those payment orders had come from one tannery.

“What makes you so sure it was the Lorenzo tannery?” 1 asked lightly, watching his face as he turned to the island again and began to slice mushrooms.

He shrugged, turning to slide the mushrooms into the pan.“Just a guess. We do most of our high-end business with them.”

“With Gianna, you mean.”

He glanced back at me, as if sensing my sudden tension. “1 deal mostly with her, but it’s her family’s tannery.” His gaze moved to my drink. “Looks like you’re empty. Can I make you another?”

“No, that’s fine. I’ll get it,” 1 said, swiping up my glass. “How about you? Another drink?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” he said, turning to the stove once more.

I walked to the bar. Filling my glass with ice, I tried to sort the thoughts spinning through my head. If the Lorenzo tannery was putting through payment orders for more skin, then where was all that skin going?

As 1 poured the tequila, I wondered if maybe Vince’s little pal Gianna was ripping us off.

“So, Vince,” I said, stepping into the kitchen again.“You know I’m still a neophyte in this business,” I continued, leaning up on the counter beside him so I could see his profile as he stood at the stove. “I’m just wondering how it all works. How do you decide how much skin to order for a particular style?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “The amount of skin ordered is based on the number of units the sales manager gives me for the style.” He smiled. “I would have thought you would know that, Sage, seeing as you’ll be the one making those unit projections in the future.”

And Maggie was the one making those projections in the past. Maybe my first assumption had been right. Maybe Maggie had been ripping off her husband. But something didn’t make sense.

“Does she—that is, the sales manager—consult with the