Paws off the Boss - Casey Griffin (best books under 200 pages .TXT) 📗
- Author: Casey Griffin
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Book online «Paws off the Boss - Casey Griffin (best books under 200 pages .TXT) 📗». Author Casey Griffin
No biggie. She’d be fine. Fine, fine, fine …?
Unable to suppress the growing anxiety, she took out her phone and texted Aiden four little words that no one liked to hear. But how else could she put it?
We need to talk.
Colin sniffed about like Sherlock seeking clues. After uncovering nothing more than a dust bunny under the desk, which he took a moment to chew on, he curled up next to her chair.
Piper wanted to take this to be a good sign, an undeniable affirmation of Aiden’s innocence. Animals had a way of knowing these things, of sensing danger and evil. Right?
Colin’s danger radar was off the charts. And Colin had taken to Aiden right away. Whereas Holly Hart loved to stir up trouble. She was only toying with Piper’s emotions again.
Feeling ridiculously gullible, Piper grabbed her backpack and tried to coax Colin inside.
He stared up at her like, Do I look like a sucker to you?
“Come on, we gotta go.”
She reached out for him, but he took a couple of steps back, stubbornly digging in his paws. Pulling out a treat from the front pocket, she tossed it into the bottom of the main compartment.
And with that, Colin leapt in without another complaint, munching away happily.
Plopping the bag on Aiden’s desk to zip it up partway, she knocked a folder. The papers scattered across the floor and under the desk.
“Way to go, Watson,” she mumbled to herself.
Desperate to leave before anyone knew she was there, she scrambled to pick up the papers. She tapped them to align their edges and slid them back into their file. Once the folder rested on his desk, the label at the top caught her eye. It was an address. One that was all too familiar. The rescue center’s address.
Her hand hovered over the paperwork for a second as she battled with her conscience. It was wrong to snoop. Especially since it was important to Aiden to keep his business separate from his personal life. But hadn’t she come there to find out the truth? And if Holly was onto something, then Piper couldn’t trust Aiden to be forthright about it.
She cared for Aiden and wanted to trust him. But trust went both ways, and she’d found out that afternoon there were already things—major things—he’d kept from her. She’d promised Marilyn that she would protect the rescue dogs, and that was what she was going to do.
Flipping the folder open, she riffled through the forms. There were property assessments, graphs, contracts from builders. Finally, she came across conceptual drawings of condos. Multi-level, sky-rise condos right where the dachshund rescue center was. Just like Holly said.
Piper’s legs gave out, and she fell into the desk chair. Her stomach shriveled up like a raisin, and she wanted to throw up. She’d trusted Aiden. She’d opened up and let him into her life, and he’d taken advantage of her. Piper felt a complete fool for it.
That wasn’t the worst of it. If that was all, she could walk away angry, swearing and calling him every name in the book. But it wouldn’t be that easy because deep down she knew how she really felt about him. To avoid the looks of pity in their eyes, she’d deny it to Addison, to Zoe, even to Colin, but every time she would call Aiden a jerk, it would cut her. Underneath the nasty name-calling, what she’d really mean was that she’d loved Aiden.
Piper paused on a concept sketch of the front entrance of this new grand dwelling. A designer sign above the entrance doors displayed the name of the apartment building. It stung like a final slap in the face. It was the fake name she’d made up when he’d tried to convince her to move to one of his properties. Nottingham Lakeview Estates.
She wanted to laugh. Or cry. But before she could make any sound, the rhythmic beat of footsteps sounded in the hall. Slow, purposeful, and coming her way.
Piper dropped the file onto the desk and stared at the office door, willing it to remain closed. Don’t come in here. Don’t come in here.
Aiden’s muffled voice filtered through the door, and her heart lurched painfully in her chest. Colin recognized it too, because his tail wagged inside the backpack.
Piper swiped her bag off the desk, but there was nowhere to run. She considered hiding under the desk, but the sleek lines offered little cover. The same went for the rest of Aiden’s office.
Damned modern furniture, she cursed in her head. Her darting eyes fell on a tiny notch in the wall, and she remembered the hidden closet in the reception area.
Aiden’s voice drew closer. She dashed across the room, fiddling with the door latch until the door popped open. With shaking hands, she pushed coats and spare suits aside to cram herself into the space and shut the door.
Aiden’s voice became clearer. He was inside the room.
Colin’s tail still wagged frantically, swishing inside the canvas bag. His head snaked out of the opening in the zipper, and he searched for Aiden. Piper lowered herself to the floor, shifting as far back as the tiny space would allow. She drew Colin close to her chest and placed a hand on his snout.
“Shh,” she hushed next to his ear, hoping that, despite his lack of training or obedience or any sort of judgment at all, he might actually listen to her for once.
What had she been thinking? Hiding in Aiden’s office? But it was too late to leave now.
“… don’t know what you’re so worried about,” Aiden was saying.
“I just wish you wouldn’t run off and make your own plans without involving me.” Larry Williams’s voice was unmistakable, snide and condescending, even to the CEO.
“I wanted to keep the company out of it. This was a personal undertaking.”
“Personal. Right. A little too personal, if you ask me. You’ve let your attachment to that telegram girl cloud your judgment.”
“Keep Piper out of this. I feel bad enough hiding all this from her.”
At the mention of her name, Piper inched closer to the door. It occurred to her that if Holly was right, and Aiden’s company was up to no good, they’d hidden it well until now. She’d need proof of some sort.
Taking out her cell phone again, she opened the app she used for recording lectures and hit start. She placed it on the floor, sliding it closer to the gap at the base of the door.
“The admin assistant says she’s already come to sniff around,” Larry said. “Hopefully they find her before she discovers anything she shouldn’t.”
“Look, I’m a good businessman,” Aiden said. “I haven’t lost sight of what’s important.”
Larry snorted. “You’ve completely lost your objectivity. What’s important is getting rid of those damn dogs.”
There was a bang, and Piper imagined Aiden bringing a fist down on his desk.
“And I’ve done just that, haven’t I?” he snapped. “With them out of the way, we can move forward with the condos.”
Piper jolted. What was he saying? He didn’t mean …
She wished she could see his face, his expression. He sounded angry at Larry, but did he look regretful? Was he admitting to the fire? To getting rid of them so he could tear down the center?
Hoping she’d heard wrong, her arms slackened around Colin as she strained to listen. He stretched his snout toward the door, chest quivering as he sniffed rapidly.
Larry sighed. “Yes, but if you’d just left it to me—”
“I’m perfectly capable of making decisions for my own company.”
“But was it the right one?” Larry’s voice was loud, like he was standing in front of the closet or pacing the room. “Without the right planning, the right countermeasures in place … Once the media gets wind of this, they’ll start putting things together. All the evidence will point to us. Your timing couldn’t be worse.”
“They’ve got no proof,” Aiden stated.
Piper cringed at the lack of emotion in his voice.
“That doesn’t matter. You know better than anyone the damage this could do to our reputation, even if we somehow don’t get indicted for the crimes. A bad rep equals a huge downturn in profits. Look at the year one of our contractors had that accident on Market Street. The newspapers had a heyday with that.”
Aiden sighed. “You’re right about that. Holly Hart has been breathing down my neck. We’ll get PR involved. Head off any stories before they start.”
“Yes, we need to make sure we look like the good guys. Twist it to work in our favor and decrease the risk of accusations coming our way. I wish you would have just let me take care of all this.”
Something squeaked as though Aiden had fallen into his desk chair. “I can see
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