Sam shook her head, leaned against the counter, and focused on Gabi. “You must be Miss Masini.”

Gabi moved forward and shook Sam’s hand. “Gabi, please.”

Meg made the introductions while she made a pot of coffee.

“I hope you don’t mind me invading,” Sam told them.

“It’s your house,” Meg reminded her boss. Not that Sam ever took advantage of the fact that Meg lived there for nearly nothing.

Sam moved from the kitchen into the office off the living room. “I was searching the mainframe for a program I know I used at one point.”

Sam sat behind the massive computer that held the data files and contacts of their many clients through the years. The security software included voice recognition and retina mapping.

Meg thought it was overkill until she gripped the magnitude of the information inside the guts of Sam’s files.

Standing behind her boss, and aware that Gabi stood close by, she asked, “What program are you trying to find? Maybe I can help.”

Sam cleared her throat and kept clicking around. “Income-to-debt program. It helped me crunch numbers for businesses I know very little about.”

“I’m pretty good with numbers,” Gabi said from the doorway.

Sam kept clicking. “I’m talking gross income from reported profit, to manufacturing cost and client expenditure. Complicated stuff that I’d rather not have my husband’s accountant look into.”

“Yeah, numbers. My brother called me a mathematical savant growing up. It took me some time to realize he was putting me down. Then he realized it wasn’t a bad thing when he went into business.”

Sam slowly turned in her chair at the same time Meg realized she was staring at Gabi.

Sam folded one leg over the other and sat back. “OK. Let’s say I have an eight million six hundred and fifty thousand dollar loan on a house at an interest rate of four and a half percent . . . what are my monthly payments?”

Gabi tapped her fingers in the air as if it held a calculator. “Fifteen-or thirty-year loan?”

“Fifteen,” Meg said.

“Thirty,” Sam managed at the same time.

Gabi rolled her eyes. “Sixty-six thousand one hundred seventy two, rounded up for the fifteen and . . .” she paused. “Forty-three eight hundred and twenty-eight per month for thirty years.” She pushed away from the wall. “But the national average right now is what? Two and three-quarter percent . . . a little higher, actually. Let’s say two point seven nine. That would be about thirty-five thousand five hundred a month. Rounded up.”

Meg didn’t stop staring. “Is she right?”

Instead of answering, Sam twisted in her chair and started typing numbers into the calculator sitting on the desk. “Holy crap.”

A peep from the kitchen diverted Gabi’s attention. “How do you like your coffee, Samantha?”

“With cream.”

Gabi turned from the room and slid away.

“She was right, wasn’t she?”

“Wow.”

“I guess she can help you crunch numbers,” Meg said.

“On her man?”

Meg hadn’t considered that. “Keep it generic. Might be best for her to discover what this guy is on her own anyway.”

Sam swiveled toward the computer. “I don’t like what I’m seeing. I would have passed up his application long before now if he were looking at us to hook him up.”

“Anything concrete?”

“That’s what I’m working on.”

Meg patted Sam on the back. “Thanks. She needs us looking out for her.”

Gabi walked in the room with two cups of coffee in her hand and sat beside the desk. “Here you go.”

Gabi tipped the cup back and sipped.

“What?” Meg managed. “None for me?”

Gabi laughed. “You said you avoided coffee to sleep at night.”

Meg shook her head. “I said I tried to avoid it.”

The women laughed, and when Meg returned the conversation was already over her head. Sam read off a notepad and scribbled numbers in her margins. “So if the profit potential for the warehouse is twenty thousand per, let’s say one thousand square feet of operating space. And the cost to produce the product is four grand, that’s labor, supplies, the basics, there’s a substantial profit.”

“Depending on the space, but yeah. Are you considering mortgage, insurance, taxes?”

Sam shook her head. “That’s what I needed the program for. Seems to me this prospective client is spending a lot more than he can possibly make, and I can’t find an additional source of income.”

“Family money?”

“Can’t find it. But maybe I have something wrong. At first glance the income is several million a year, but I feel I’m missing something.”

While Sam and Gabi pushed their heads together, Meg did something she rarely did. She left the office and called a boy.

Chapter Eighteen

A charge of excitement fueled Val’s energy level when he saw Meg’s number light up his cell phone. “Hi,” he answered with a smile splashed over his face. He felt like a kid again, even with all the stress in his day.

“Hey, Moneybags.”

“Hello, Margaret.”

She laughed. “One of these days I’ll have to give you permission to use Meg.”

Val moved away from the video monitors he was watching and leaned against one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Perhaps you will, cara, but I might not use it.” Her laughter was contagious. “How are you feeling?”