So Tough to Tame (Jackson Hole 3)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IT WAS A good day at work. Finally. Despite the way it had started, Charlie was eight hours in and she was still in a good mood.

Part of it was that she’d gotten out of her office and done a little physical work, coming up with camera locations and angles for the last of the banquet room areas.

She’d felt so energized by scrambling around on ladders for two hours that she’d gathered up her senior security people and walked the perimeter of the entire resort. First the lodge itself, then the outbuildings, then the lines of the actual property. A lot more thought went into security than people knew. Or at least, a lot more thought went into it when Charlie was in charge. People were vulnerable on vacations. They let their guards down, made foolish choices they’d never make at home. Charlie watched out for them, even if they had no idea she was there.

As they’d toured the resort, she’d pushed her employees to discuss weaknesses in the planned security and areas that needed improvement. It had started to feel a little bit more like a team, as if she actually had friends and support in this place. Despite her aching finances, she’d ordered pizza for everyone and commandeered one of the meeting rooms to discuss her plans for the opening weeks.

Her mood also hadn’t been hurt by the relief she’d felt after talking to Walker this morning. He hadn’t gone out and met up with some other woman. And he’d apologized for getting angry the night before. They were still friends. Things would be okay.

And now that she no longer felt sick over the way they’d left it, she could enjoy the fact that she was sore and weak and a little raw from the way Walker had used her the day before. Charlie smiled as she strode down the hallway toward her office.

God. That had been...extraordinary. Just the thought of it made her feel giddy. Walker was like catnip for pussy.

“You look happy.”

Charlie’s heart sank at the sound of Dawn’s voice, but Dawn just shot her a wry look and brushed past her. Maybe after their discussion at the party, Dawn had decided to lay off. Maybe they really had called a truce.

If so, Charlie was relieved. So relieved that when she opened her email and found the background report on Dawn waiting in her in-box, she actually felt a twinge of guilt. But just a twinge. By the time she opened the file, Charlie’s heart was quickening with anticipation.

What would she find in here? A secret drug problem? An addiction to shoplifting? Maybe a series of involuntary commitments to mental health hospitals? Really, the possibilities were endless.

Or...actually, they were pretty limited, because a quick scan of the pages left her slumped in her chair and pouting at the screen. Dawn Taggert was as pure as the driven snow. Certainly purer than Charlie, just as she’d been asserting, and purer than most of the public. No citations for underage drinking, no speeding tickets. Not even a failure to provide proof of insurance at a traffic stop.

“Annoying,” she muttered as she read the report more closely.

Still, there were a few nuggets of information. Her first child had either been conceived before her wedding or been born a few weeks early. “Scandal!” Charlie crowed, desperate for anything.

More important, though Dawn’s credit was good, there had been ups and downs. Keith’s fortunes hadn’t been a steady climb, apparently. He’d filed for bankruptcy seven years before, and there’d been a few defaulted car payments a year ago, and then a lawsuit filed by some sort of real estate holding company. Charlie would have to look into that.

She wrote down the dates of the financial problems, then closed the document and hid it in a folder with an innocuous name. Just in case.

The evidence seemed to indicate that Dawn wasn’t quite as crazy as she seemed. It was a temporary affliction, brought on by...what? Maybe she was just going through the occasional bout of depression and anxiety, like everyone else Charlie knew. Certainly, Dawn wouldn’t be the type willing to go to a therapist and expose her vulnerabilities. She probably thought of that as something “other people” did. Like picking up big cowboys for a friendly sex romp. Or two.

Oh, well. Her loss.

Just as Charlie was about to pack up and go, an email from Keith chimed into her box. He needed her expense reports and budget sign-off tonight.

She glanced at the clock. Almost six. “Crap,” she groaned. She’d taken a full day when she needed to do budget work at her last job, and he wanted this done in a few minutes?

What the hell was the hurry? If this hadn’t been her first month on the job, she’d just matter-of-factly tell him she couldn’t get it back to him until tomorrow. But it was her first month, and she had to make a good impression.

Damn it. I’ll be sure to get that to you this evening, she wrote back with a grimace at the clock.

All she had to do was sign off on it and say yes to the expenses. Keith had told her it was all pretty much automated. She’d known a few managers who did that, but it wasn’t her style.

A little anxious, she opened up the spreadsheet. The numbers appeared in rows and columns of black and red that meant absolutely nothing without context. Thousands of dollars in hourly and salaried wages. Benefits. Contractor costs. Equipment. Even the cost of office space within the resort itself.

She clicked on the Wages tab, and it opened to reveal a list of half-blacked-out Social Security numbers with the hourly pay for each employee. None of them made very much, unfortunately. She closed that and opened the Equipment tab.

“Holy shit.” Was that how much the extra cameras had cost to order and install? No wonder she’d had to exchange half a dozen emails with Keith and the construction manager about it. She closed that tab, too.

She didn’t bother clicking on the Salaried Employees tab. She was planning to hire an assistant manager before ski season, but for now, Charlie was the only one on salary in her department, and she was more than familiar with the pitifully low total at the end of the column.

But the whole thing, altogether? It added up to her being in charge of a ridiculous amount of money. Considering how small her security department was, she was shocked, but this was the opening phase. There were start-up costs, and some of those equipment expenses had been accrued before she’d even been hired.

Shit. She didn’t even have anything to compare this to. Scowling, she fired off another email asking Keith if he had the numbers from the month before, then clicked through the spreadsheet again several times before her computer chimed.