Teaching The Boss

Chapter Three

By Friday, things were mostly back to normal. As the accountants worked to finish the three years' worth of audits in order to file with the SEC, it was a mad rush for April to get them all the documents they wanted. Whatever had bothered Sam earlier in the week, neither of them had enough time to let it get in the way of the audits.

Since she'd been with the company longer than half the HuntCorp accounting staff, April was in charge of pulling a lot of the invoices being requested. She was happier to help when the requests didn't come in at five o'clock on a Friday.

After spending an hour looking for the latest invoice, she gave up. If it wasn't in the archived files in the storage room or saved electronically, she had a bad feeling they didn't have any copies at all. And she became much less motivated to dig through dusty file cabinets at seven p.m. on a Friday.

As she trudged back to her desk, she brushed some lingering dust off her black and white patterned skirt. She sighed in relief when she glanced up to see light shining from under Sam's door. She'd dump this on him. If he couldn't figure it out within fifteen minutes, it would be a Monday problem.

"Sam," she called through the door. "You have a minute?"

"Yeah." His deep timbre had no problem penetrating the wood.

She twisted the knob and leaned in. "Are you sure? I know you and Oksana had something tonight." She halfway wanted him to say he was busy so they could both leave.

"Shit." He pulled his phone off the charger hooked up to his computer and glanced at the screen. "She would've text me if she was downstairs, so we have a few minutes. What's up?"

April mentally cursed. "You were supposed to say you were busy so we could both get out of here." She crossed the room.

He smiled at her, his blue eyes darker than normal with the nightscape behind him. "Come on. You know you're as much of a workaholic as me."

She grunted. "I refuse to believe that."

"Says the woman who's here instead of enjoying her weekend."

"I don't have a choice. Gavin will kill me if I don't get these pulled." She held up the list of invoices as proof.

"If he gives you more crap, tell him I said to go to hell. You're doing his job right now and he'd damn well better realize it."

April bit her lip to avoid grinning like an idiot. It was always nice to know he had her back. "Aww. I love it when you get sentimental."

He cocked his head in acknowledgement. "Anytime. Now what are we looking at?" He motioned to the paper in her hand.

"Right. Invoices." She moved around his desk and leaned a hip against the dark wood to give her aching feet a break. She'd mastered the art of wearing heels for the nine-to-five day, but they were a bit hard to handle during the late nights. She wistfully thought of her tennis shoes in her oversized purse at her desk. Heels at work were one thing, but wearing them on the train was too much for her feet to bear.

He held out a hand and she gave him the printout of the invoice request. "I was able to find everything on this list they sent over except for this one." She bent over his shoulder and pointed to the one item not crossed out. "It's the consulting that Edward Derbing did for us. Was there a contract or anything floating around that I don't know about?"

Sam set the paper down and rubbed his eyes. "I remember talking about the fee. I remember paying the fee. But I don't remember if we ever got it in writing."