Crude Heir (Billionaire Heirs #3)

Chapter 15

Derrick

The elevator doors open, but I hesitate, looking behind me to see if anyone else is heading in. What if the power goes out again? I could be stuck between floors for hours.

I blow out a breath. The alternative would be to take the stairs while carrying a box with two flat-screen monitors, two keyboards, a laptop, several cables, a mouse, a little something for Nicole, and breakfast. I smile to myself and step in, managing to hit the button for my floor without dropping anything.

It’s the food that pushed me to the decision. I don’t want to risk ruining the almond-crusted French toast and omelets from the hotel down the street, one of the few places open. Though I’m usually not one for sweets, the thick brioche bread covered in sliced almonds and sweet cream are my absolute best find in the area. They’re perfect for a weekend brunch when the downtown area isn’t as busy.

The doors open on the floor of the corporate apartment. I stride down the hall with purpose and let myself in. I set the box down on the kitchen table then unload the items I brought. Not knowing if she prefers sweet or savory, egg or bread, I chose a few options.

From the silence, I’d say I’m going to find Nicole still tucked in bed—in my bed. I grin at the thought. After that unexpected moment in the living area, I carried her back to the bedroom, set her in bed, then climbed in beside her.

With the power still out, it was only natural to stay naked. I didn’t expect to be tempted to keep touching her. But I was, and, truthfully, I still am. By the time the a/c came on, we were on the third round.

I turn the knob slowly sticking my head in to find she’s still in bed. The mask is still over her eyes, the covers pulled up to her chest. She’s got her arm over her breasts, and her hair is what she’d likely call a tangled mess. I enjoyed getting it that way.

Damn, I should really switch back to oral. It seemed like the safest way to keep going when we don’t have protection on hand. Taking a chance once was risky. Continuing to do it is just reckless.

Of course, I expected to pick up condoms this morning so it wouldn’t be a concern. But we weren’t the only ones with nothing to do during the storm. I went to four convenience stores, and they were all sold out. One had a sign on the door announcing No Beer and No Condoms . Guess some things are universal.

Just thinking about burying my cock in her, bareback, is enough to get me hard. It’s the most mind-blowing experience of my life.

I kick off my shoes and settle in next to her, dropping a kiss at her temple. She stirs, her muscles tense, then she turns her head. Ah, the joy of waking up and not knowing where you are. Another first for her, thanks to me.

But I’m ready for her, my hand at her thigh, then I’m slipping a finger inside her. “Where am I?” I murmur by her ear.

“You’re here beside me,” she replies, her body relaxing.

I smile at her temple. “That’s right, sweet girl.”

My cock is pushing against my zipper. We need to get up before I’m climbing on top of her again. I pull back my finger, bringing it to my mouth to taste her sweet cream again. “You can take the mask off.”

She brings her hands up, stripping off the mask. For a moment, she looks apprehensive and beautifully scattered. I only have a second to enjoy the candid image before she blinks then wrinkles her brow, her eyes shifting. “Morning.” She gives me a shy smile, pulling her hair back as her cheeks turn a pretty shade of pink.

“Good morning.” Technically, this is the third time or so she’s woken up. But it’s the first time it’s in daylight. I’m actually enjoying having Ms. Fuentes curled up in my bed. It’s a dangerous realization, considering this is her first time out and I’m not into stayovers. “You sleep okay?”

She nods, quirking her lips. “When I did sleep, I slept hard.” She rubs one eye while keeping an arm across her chest.

“Imagine that,” I reply, taking the lead on what she inadvertently set up. “When I woke up, I woke up rock-hard.”

This time, her cheeks bloom past the rosy pink to a bright red. She presses her legs together under the sheet. “Um, that’s not a bad thing, is it?”

I chuckle, enjoying the fact she’s wonderfully clueless at how tempting she is.

“Come on.” I place a hand at her hip, giving her a little squeeze. “I’m starving.”

“Mmm, breakfast sounds fantastic.” She scans the area, reaches out for the T-shirt she borrowed, and drags it over her head.

“Yup.” I sigh, disappointed to not even get a quick glimpse of her body. Maybe I’ll talk her out of the shirt after she has a chance to eat. “I went to the office earlier and grabbed a laptop for you. Then picked up breakfast on the way back.”

“Wait.” She pops her head through the collar, her eyes open wide. “You brought me a laptop?”

“Good grief.” I sit back, shaking my head while she pulls the shirt down over her hips. “You have a one-track mind.”

“Come on.” She pushes against my arm. “We have work to do.”

I stand, letting her get out of bed. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be since I don’t know the business.”

“That’s okay. I’ll walk you through what you need to look for,” she says, stepping around me on her way out the door.

* * *

Derrick

I lost Nicole after the spreadsheet exported. We’ve been at this for hours, with barely a break for pizza delivery at lunch. I’m already thinking steak for dinner, but the woman looks determined enough to keep going until she finishes. I guess I pegged her right when I said she had a one-track mind.

“This is so much easier to follow with a report. I didn’t need this kind of detail when I ran the other states.”

I look up from the screen. “Why is this one different?”

“South Texas is a rich find. If I recall correctly, it’s listed as the single largest hydrocarbon-producing geological formation in the world.”

“I didn’t realize that.” Not that I’ve ever had reason to take interest in anything to do with my mother’s side of the job.

“That’s why it seems so odd that the company started showing a steady decline in profits.”

I’m still baffled by the fact so much money can be missing, and nobody’s worked out something’s wrong. “So, what happened to all the work they did?”

She takes a bite of cold pizza. “If they had wells close to the production stage, they went ahead and finished. The DUCs, drilled-but-uncompleted wells, were put through a review process, and most were ultimately plugged and abandoned. Only a few made it through to completion.”

“Where were those?”

“Primarily on the new lease at the de Marco Ranch.”

The old man’s probably playing nice. Until recently, nobody’s had business with the de Marcos in decades. Regardless of how much they were offered, the de Marcos always turned it down. They stated they didn’t want people traipsing all over their land. When I brought up the fact Addler de Marco was my friend and interested in leasing, they jumped on the opportunity. “You didn’t find anything that looked wrong?”

“It’s hard to pinpoint because the company started changing billing codes in the middle of projects.”

That was detailed in the report Mom sent over. “That makes no sense to me. Why would you just start making such radical changes in the middle of a big project?”

She grimaces. “I don’t know that they meant to do it that way. Keep in mind that a lot of the consultants move from one location to another. Sometimes within the same lease, sometimes from one state to another. They kept using the codes they were familiar with.”

“Oh.” Again, something I wasn’t aware of.

She blows out a breath. “Add to that the fact these invoices can run months behind. Then one of the managers started recoding a ton of invoices. It created kind of a billing nightmare, but it’s something that can be fixed on the back end by adding a VLOOKUP in the spreadsheet.”

I’m getting how this could be missed. “I get the system is old, but why would you have so much trouble if it’s a spreadsheet?”

“It’s the number of line items in the report. Look at it this way, if you have someone who’s going to check wells in a certain area, the cost for that pumper has to be broken down per pad, and each pad could have six, ten, or twelve wells.”

“So that’s easily hundreds of lines.”

“That’s for just one person,” she points out, holding up a finger. “The new coding system makes it easier to track all the work being done but it adds a lot of invoices, and those invoices have a lot of line items. Each month can potentially have millions of entries.”

My jaw nearly drops. “You’re kidding, right?”

She chuckles. “Let’s go back to that example where a guy goes out to check the wells. In the end, you’ll have thousands of wells checked per day. Then you have the night crew, which doubles the number. And this happens 365 days a year,” she says, sounding all businesslike. “There are no holidays in the energy business.”

“Which is why it’s been so hard for you to track down this issue.”

“Bingo.” She winks and goes back to flipping through invoices. “It’s easier to drop all of this into a pivot table so I can narrow down the search area.”

“Why didn’t you run a report before?”

“The software is outdated to begin with,” she explains. “And with a minimum number of licenses, it’s usually overtaxed. Trying to compile the data in South Texas while everyone’s working is more than it can handle easily. It’s all or nothing with this thing.” She breaks off a piece of the hard crust from the pizza she had earlier. “Then I can’t get caught with it on my computer, and I’m not allowed to take anything from the system home.”

“And you aren’t allowed to work remotely,” I add.

“You see my problem. If I try and do this during the day, it’ll cause me an issue. You can either run reports or process invoices in the system but not both. The first time I tried this, it showed up in the productivity report. I didn’t do enough to justify the hours I submitted.”

“What?” I’ve never heard of anyone going to that kind of detail on payroll.

“The pay audit takes time cards and bumps them up against the key-card log. It was a practice started after someone was caught logging their time incorrectly ,” she says, adding air quotes.

“So how are you getting around the work you did the other night?”

“I plan to say I forgot to log off when I went to run errands then I went to lunch.” Her cheeks turn pink again.

The lengths she’s going to for…my father. “I can adjust your time card so you don’t have to lie.”

That finally got her attention. “You can do that?”

I shake my head, laughing at her wide-eyed reaction. “You mentioned having a manager recoding. Is that unusual?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “It’s more of the amount of recoding that caught my eye.”

“Could it be someone trying to cover up what they’re doing?”

“I haven’t found evidence of anything being wrong. In fact, it seems to be corrections.” She shrugs. “It’s just a lot of corrections.”

“Who are we talking about?”

“William Connors.”

“Bill?” The name takes me by surprise. The thought it could be him never crossed my mind.

She chews on her bottom lip. “You know him?”

“I met him when I was down there installing their system.” There’s no way I can go to Addler and tell him a man he introduced as family might be involved. “Are you sure ?”

“Like I said, he’s just making a lot of corrections the last few weeks. The coding seems to be correct, and he’s approved them himself.”

“Did you report it?”

“There’s nothing to report,” she exclaims. “He’s changed from the old coding to the new coding system, but sometimes it’s a totally different category. It’s just the volume that caught my attention.”

Or someone with his authority has approved them. “Can you focus on those?”

She nods. “That’s where I am now. But they’ve been doing a lot of work, so there’s a ton of invoices.”

I blow out a breath. “Okay. Let me know if you find anything.” I utter the words with a healthy dose of hesitation. “I’ll get dinner started.”

The overhead light flickers and her shoulders droop. Now I drag in a breath. Without power, there’s no electrical range, thus, no steak. “I’ll order something.” I pick up my phone. “You’d better do what you can, not sure how long the battery’s going to last.”

“Okay.” She glances toward the window, chewing on her bottom lip. With storm clouds surrounding us, it looks like evening outside. That means another dark night, which is what she dreads.

“Rib eye okay?” I ask, looking down at the app.

“Yes, if it’s not too big.” She shrugs. “I’m not a big eater.”

I smile, remembering how we destroyed breakfast. Then again, we’d burned a lot of calories. “You’re going to need a lot of energy.”

Her gaze shoots to me, her lips twitching in a shy smile. “Rib eye, steamed broccoli, and a baked potato.”

“Better.” I make my selections then send the order, adding a fat tip for the driver, then head to the bathroom. It’s as dark as I’d expected.

I turn on the phone’s flashlight so I have a backup. Once I set it on the counter, face up, I pull a shopping bag from under the cabinet, careful to keep quiet. The corner of the plastic bag tears away easily. I empty the contents onto the counter then do the same with the second pack.

Picking up some of the larger pieces, I turn and close the lid on the toilet.