Betrayal by Danielle Steel Page B

since the charges still showed up on his statements right up to the present, and no longer on Tallie’s.
    “What local hotels?” Tallie asked in answer to what he’d said.
    “The ones where you stay with Hunt.” Victor was prepared to move on. He was meeting Brianna for lunch, and he had covered all the ground he wanted to with Tallie, particularly the cash.
    “I don’t stay at local hotels with Hunt,” she said simply. “I only stay at hotels out of town, when I’m traveling or on location, like right now in Palm Springs. I have a room booked there for a couple of months, but that’s a business expense.”
    Victor looked surprised. “You have a few charges at the Bel-Air, and quite a lot of them at the Chateau Marmont and the Sunset Marquis. I’ve got three years of charges there on your statements, although none for this year. And Hunt has them on his statement too. He says he rents rooms sometimes for meetings with foreign investors, and that he stayed there with you.”
    “He must have misunderstood. We’ve never stayed at any of those hotels, except once we stayed at the Bel-Air when I was having work done at the house. That has to be a mistake.” And then suddenly Tallie wondered if Brigitte had used their joint credit card for some of her racy little flings. She knew that Brigitte had a fairly active romantic life, and Tallie was sure that if she had used the card for that, maybe because she didn’t have her own card with her, she would have reimbursed it in some other way, which Victor might not be aware of. “Maybe it’s Brigitte. I’ll ask her about that too,” although she didn’t love the idea of Brigitte using the credit card for her romantic trysts.
    She was sure Brigitte wouldn’t let her pay for it in the long run, but she might have used the card initially, which she really shouldn’t. It didn’t sound like her. She was so diligent and businesslike, and so careful with Tallie’s accounts. There had never been any question about it before. It was the investor’s audit which had brought it to light. Tallie said she would get the explanation from Brigitte about the hotel charges and the cash. Victor dropped the subject of the hotel charges. He didn’t want to press it. Hunt had been absolutely clear that he had stayed at those hotels with Tallie, and she was saying they never had. It sounded like delicate ground to Victor. It wasn’t the first time that something like that had come to light in one of his clients’ accounts, and it could be extremely awkward. He didn’t want to insist, but he definitely wanted to know about the cash, which was of much greater concern to him and a far larger amount than the hotel stays. He reminded Tallie about the cash again before she left.
    She wasn’t worried about it as she drove back to the house, but she wanted to check it out to satisfy Victor. Brigitte would know, and she seriously wondered if Brigitte had been charging her little hotel stays to their joint credit card account. If not, Tallie wondered if it was a case of identify theft. That had happened to her before too, where someone got her credit card number and was running around to stores, and charging things to her account. She had had to change her credit card numbers several times because of that. At least there had been no local hotel charges on her bill for the past year, so they must have straightened it out. And she had no idea why Hunt had said he had stayed at those hotels with her, since they never had. She was sure that Victor was confused.
    Other than that, it sounded like everything was fine and her accounts were in good order.
    Hunt got home from his tennis game five minutes after she walked in. He was hot and sweaty, and she was making a big salad for lunch. Despite her lack of skills in the kitchen, even she could do that. He was in good spirits, he had won. He was very competitive on the tennis court, and at most games. He played hard, and usually took it badly when