Golden Lies - Barbara Freethy [43]
He thought for a moment, then said, "I wanted to."
"Well, you can't just do what you want like that— without asking."
"Do men always ask before they kiss you?"
"As a matter of fact, yes, they do."
"And what do you usually answer?"
"That depends on the situation and the man and everything else." She waved her hand in the air, not liking the grin spreading across his face. "It's not funny."
"Yes, it is."
"Well, don't do it again. Don't kiss me without any warning."
"So you didn't like it? I must have imagined your fingernails burrowing into my back, the little gasp you made when my tongue—"
"Would you stop?" she interrupted, feeling awkward and embarrassed. "It's bad enough that we kissed. We don't have to talk about it."
He laughed again. "God, you're funny. You're not a virgin, are you?"
She bristled in defense. "What I am or am not is none of your business."
"Maybe I'm making it my business."
"Why would you want to?"
"Because I want you, Miss Hathaway. What do you think about that?"
She caught her breath at his blunt words. She wasn't a virgin, but her experience wasn't all that extensive. In fact, she could count her lovers on the fingers of one hand, and she suspected Riley would need more than a few hands to total his conquests. He was cocky and confident, a man who knew he was attractive to women. That arrogance should have turned her off, but for some reason she found it oddly appealing, almost irresistible, in fact.
"You're just trying to get to me," she said finally. "And we're done here."
Sliding off the edge of the desk, she pushed him aside to look at the computer. Her eyes widened as she took in the details of the screen. Riley had somehow hacked his way into the accounting program— not just the company's financial records, but what looked to be her father's personal money program. "What is this?"
"Your father's electronic checkbook. Apparently, he does all his transactions online. He's very efficient that way. Probably because he's out of the country so much."
"You should not be looking at that. It's private."
He leaned over her shoulder and hit the scroll key, showing the check transactions for the past few years. "See anything interesting, Paige?"
"No. I don't want to see anything at all. This is none of our business." She moved to close the window on the computer, but Riley stopped her.
"Wait a second. There's something I noticed before you distracted me."
"I didn't distract you. I was merely asking a few questions."
"Whatever. Check this out—payments to Jasmine Chen, once a month like clockwork."
She saw the look in his eyes and knew what he was thinking. It was what she was thinking, too. "That probably confirms they were having some sort of an affair," she said slowly, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
"An expensive sort. We're talking several thousand a month. The number varies a bit." He scrolled through a few more screens, taking them back to the previous year and the year before that. "There are also several payments to UC Berkeley. Is that where you went?"
"I went to Stanford."
"Did you take classes at Berkeley?"
"No." She frowned, wondering why her father would have made payments to the university. "Maybe it was some sort of Hathaway grant, although that wouldn't have come out of my father's checkbook."
She moved aside as Riley sat back down in the chair, his fingers flying once again. She should stop him. This was going beyond the investigation of the dragon. Riley was delving into her father's business, his personal life, a life she was beginning to realize she knew very little about. She'd never given much thought to the possibility that there were other people who meant something to him, people besides her mother or her grandfather or herself. Friends never seemed to be that important to him. In fact, most of the couples her parents spent time with seemed to be her mother's friends, not her father's.
"Who is Alyssa Chen?" Riley asked, interrupting her thoughts.
"I don't know. Why?"
"She's the one who was going to Berkeley.