"I need you to look into something for me," I said. I pulled out the envelope of photos. "Do you think you can find out who this woman is?"
She studied the pictures for a moment. "Where is this?"
"The address is on the back of the first one," I said. She flipped it over and looked at the location that Gen had scrawled there.
"All right," she said. "Do you have any suspicions?"
"Yes," I said. "But not much to go on."
"Well, tell me what you know." She interlaced her fingers and leaned forward.
"Her name is Florence Allen. We used to work together, over at the main office of Plum Tech. Then I married my boss." I hesitated, and looked up at her. "Daniel Thorne."
"I know," she said. "I know who you are."
"Ugh," I said. "That stupid blog."
"That stupid blog," she agreed, smirking. "So, you married your boss."
"I married my boss, and then I found out that he used to date her. She went completely apeshit and tried to ruin our lives. Stalking, threats, the whole nine yards. Then she sort of disappeared, and now…other things are happening. Well, I’m sure you know."
"And you think she’s behind it." Kelly looked down at the pictures. "Interesting."
"I know I sound crazy," I said. "Paranoid, even."
Kelly was silent for a long, long time. Finally, she looked up at me.
"You don’t sound crazy," she said. "But, I’ll have to track her down. She might be staying somewhere under a fake name."
"Can you even do that anymore?" I glanced at the half-empty bottle Johnnie Walker on the desk. "Doesn’t every place want, like…a credit card on file?"
Kelly gave me a withering look.
"Okay," I said. "So I don’t know the criminal underworld. I’m sorry. But I can pay you. That’s not an issue. How much do you need to get started?"
She raised her eyebrows about half a centimeter. "It’s three hundred dollars a day, plus expenses. But I don’t usually take anything up front."
"Well," I said, taking one of the hundreds out of my pocket. "Let’s get you off to a good start, huh?"
"Thank you," she said, taking it and giving me a slightly amused look. "You’re not used to being rich, are you? I can always tell."
"Hate it," I said, without thinking. "Well - I mean - I don’t hate having money. But, you know."
"Sure," said Kelly. "How can I contact you?"
"Oh, right - I’ll give you my number." She handed me a pen, and I scribbled it quickly on the back of the one of the photos. "I don’t think Daniel answers my phone, but on the off chance he does…"
"…I’m your yoga instructor. Got it."
"It’s just…" I hesitated. "I…he doesn’t think it’s her, he thinks I’m just seeing what I want to see. But I know I’m right. I can just…I can smell it."
"Sure," said Kelly. "You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve looked into something like this." She sniffed, rubbing her finger under her nose briskly. "God damn allergies. Sorry. I mean, not exactly like this. But you know - when people have suspicions like this, there’s usually a reason."
"That’s what I thought," I said, standing up. "Thank you, Kelly."
She accepted my hand to shake, looking slightly confused by the gesture. After she’d showed me to the door, and I was halfway out into the hall, she reached out and grabbed my arm.
I froze.
"Yes?" I said, gingerly twisting free of her grasp.
"I’m sorry," she said. "I should have told you earlier. But I couldn’t decide if I should say anything or not."
"…Yeah?" I stared at her, apprehensive.
"Just, uh…" she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "God, I shouldn’t have said anything. Just…don’t look at any of the newspaper boxes on your way home, okay?"
"Oh, please." I smiled at her, reassuringly. "I promise you it’s nothing I haven’t seen before."
Her mouth was twisted into a sort of grimace. "Trust me," she said. "Just keep walking."
Of course, as she’d feared, she had only ignited my curiosity. As I left, down the creaky stairs, I turned back to see her still standing outside her open door with a worried look on her face. I gave her a reassuring smile and little wave, as if to say, don’t worry, I won’t look.
I was totally going to look.
The man in the lobby stared at me balefully as I left, and after I’d finally stepped out onto the sidewalk, I took a deep breath. Even the faint smell of garbage and burning tires passed for "fresh air" after what I’d just been breathing.
There was a newspaper box just a few blocks up. As soon as I saw it, my throat constricted. If I had an ounce of good sense in my head, I’d take her advice and just walk right past, never thinking twice about it.
But I’d never been one for good sense.
Before, I’d been so focused on finding the place that I hadn’t let my eyes wander to any of the headlines in the dilapidated boxes. Outdated mode of news reporting that they might be, I still found myself looking at them on occasion - as a kid, I’d gotten used to them being a primary form of information delivery, even if all I got to see was the front page.
I planned to keep my head high as I walked past the first box; at the very least, I wanted to make it to a box that wasn’t possibly within eyesight of Kelly’s office. She’d been nice enough to warn me off. I didn’t want her to see me openly defying her kindness.
But then, I caught something in my peripheral that made me stop dead in my tracks.
THE WOMAN BEHIND THE MAN
It was giant white text, laid out artfully over a blown-up version of that very same coming-home-from-yoga picture that had already been a thorn in my side. Was this really happening? An entire article about me?
I reached over and opened the box - it was one of the free papers, of course - wanting more than anything to turn and walk away, to pretend I’d never seen it. But there was no closing this Pandora’s box.
Since the advent of the insider trading scandal, there’s been one question on everyone’s mind - who is that woman? We know this much: her name is Madeline, and she’s Daniel Thorne’s wife, whom he met and married when she was his subordinate over at the main offices of Plum. But where did she come from? How did she capture a billionaire’s heart? And how does she feel now, having boarded his sinking ship?
One imagines that she was quite pleased with herself, back when she first managed to nab his attention. Thorne was a billionaire before he rose to his current level of media prominence, so he wasn’t exactly a diamond in the rough - unless, of course, you count his renowned anti-social tendencies. It’s not hard to see what she saw in him. But what about Thorne? When he first laid eyes on her, did he think to himself - yes, I will make her my bride?
There is most likely no way to plumb the depths of Daniel Thorne’s mind, to understand his motivations for doing what he does. And if anyone did have such ability, they’d do much better to make themselves into billionaires as well, rather than waste any energy trying to figure out what Thorne sees in this plain, ordinary - let’s be completely honest - frumpy aspiring artist who was once under his employ.
I sat down heavily on a nearby bench.
The article went on, but for some reason, I didn’t feel in the least compelled to read it. And not because I was angry, either. I looked at the cover again - at the absurdly unflattering picture of me - the huge headline, and took a moment to sit back and really appreciate the fact that everyone was expending this much energy wondering about me. Plain, ordinary, frumpy old me.
Suddenly, I was laughing.
It was just too ridiculous. How could I do anything but laugh? It wasn’t even worth feeling outrage anymore. This was what these people did. This was their bread and butter. And me? I could still buy my groceries and draw my pictures and go to my classes and do whatever I wanted to do, regardless of what they said about me. None of it mattered. I didn’t have the time or energy to worry about it anymore.
I laughed an
d laughed, knowing that passers-by must be deathly curious, but this was a part of town where you didn’t ever look someone in the eyes. I laughed until my stomach hurt, and then I finally got back to my feet, walked up to the corner, and hailed a cab.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Oh, don’t be silly. It was my pleasure," Genevieve was saying. I was pretty sure it wasn’t my imagination - there was something meaningful about the way the word "pleasure" rolled off her tongue.
She smiled at Daniel, and he smiled back.
When he’d suggested taking her out to dinner, as a "gesture," he’d said it in a tone of voice that suggested the decision was already made. So I’d just nodded and smiled, thinly. Gen was able to suggest a restaurant where she absolutely guaranteed no one would bother us, and so far, it was living up to her promise. But once I’d managed to stop looking over my shoulder, I realized the scenes that were playing out directly in front of me were a lot worse.
Gen wasn’t nearly as blatant as the pretty young things that all the papers had been sending during Daniel’s heyday, before everything fell apart. But there was simply no mistaking the way she looked at him, letting her eyes linger a little too long. The way she’d touch her lips, lightly, like she was imagining his fingers on them. She’d cross and uncross her legs, incessantly playing with her necklace, ducking her eyes down and then back up again every time he spoke to her.
On a certain level, as one human being to another, I couldn’t blame her for being attracted to him. And really, she wasn’t doing anything too untoward. What was wrong with a little harmless flirting?
On a certain other level, I wanted to throw her through the plate-glass window.
I forced myself to take few deep breaths, and tried to focus in on what they were saying.
"…and by that time, I didn’t even want it anymore. So I ended up at Brandeis instead, which, you know - it was fine. It was a great experience, and looking back I can’t imagine doing anything different, even if it wasn’t what I thought I wanted at the time." Gen took a sip of her wine and glanced at me briefly, before looking back to Daniel.
"Isn’t it funny," he said, "how things always work out like that?"
"Not always," I said, quietly, but neither one of them had anything to say to that.
Before the entrees came, I actually tried to involve myself in the conversation. And they weren’t - excluding me, exactly, it was just that neither one of them looked at me very often, or responded directly to something I’d said. Mostly, it seemed like I was just talking to myself. So I finally gave up. I focused on my meal when it came, refusing to let myself get upset that the two of them seemed about ready to crawl under the table. After all, we were all responsible adults here. It wasn’t like anything was going to actually…happen.
Because if it started to, I’d stab her with my fork.
I had to snicker at the thought, covering my mouth with my napkin. As if anyone was going to notice.
"What’s so funny?" said Daniel, as if on cue, looking at me for the first time in about twenty minutes.
"Nothing," I said, because that seemed like a better answer than oh, just trying to figure out if you’d be horrified or aroused if me and Gen got into a massive, nail-breaking, hair-pulling fight over you across the table.
Gen glanced at me briefly, then went back to her salad.
I fumed. There was a tiny rational corner of my brain that told me I might just be imagining things, or at least exaggerating them. And even if I wasn’t, so what? Daniel wasn’t really the type to pursue a torrid affair as a married man. At least…I didn’t think so.
But it was that sort of deep-seated, irrational jealousy that’s not necessarily the product of anything you might call "real." I knew nothing was going to happen between them, and I knew most of Gen’s reactions to him were probably subconscious. She wanted him. Who could blame her? But she wasn’t going to get him.
He was mine.
The thought hit me like a ton of bricks, and it left me feeling lightheaded and tingly, in a way that I was pretty sure had nothing to do with the wine I’d been drinking all night. This man, as utterly infuriating and downright heartbreaking as he could be sometimes - was…all mine. Nobody else’s. Nobody else had the right to touch him like I could, or crawl into bed with him at night, or see him the way I saw him. In spite of how well he might close himself off, and in spite of how distant he could be sometimes, I was still privy to a version of Daniel Thorne that no one else got to see.
No one else could watch his face transform when he lost control - his pupils blown wide open, almost swallowing the irises in blackness - his lips parted - the way he’d almost bare his teeth, the little noises - and then afterwards, the smile. The way his whole body would sag, relaxed. That little performance was a privilege that I, and I alone, could enjoy.
I licked my lips, letting my eyes dart from him to her and back to him again. No matter how badly she wanted to see him like that, she never would. And I could see it anytime I wanted. I could see it tonight.
Or now.
I was struck with a wicked idea.
"Excuse me," I said, sweetly, standing up and walking away from the table, briskly. I went down the little hallway that obviously led to the bathrooms, cursing inwardly when I saw that there were no single rooms with locking doors, only a multi-person affair that anyone could walk in or out of, at any time.
This was a fancy restaurant. I had a feeling they wouldn’t take kindly to this sort of thing.
It was in that moment that I almost lost my nerve. But my body was already thrumming and I knew there was no turning back at this point. I stood in the hallway for a second, considering. Despite my eagerness, I’d never actually done this before. I’d never really thought about it in enough detail to figure out the logistics. A man in the women’s bathroom would certainly be more scandalous than a woman in the mens’ bathroom - well, that decided it.
I pushed the door to the mens’ bathroom open, slowly. Peering inside, I quickly scanned the empty-seeming room to make sure we we really would be alone.
For now, at least.
Oh, God - why did that thought send a not-unpleasant shudder through me?
I stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind me. It was pristine - I expected nothing less from a place like this. But still, it was nice to know. I hurried into one of the stalls, shut and locked the door, and briefly considered crouching on the toilet so nobody would notice the obvious women’s feet sticking up under the stall. But couldn’t quite bring myself to act like a fugitive.
I pulled my phone out of my purse and began hastily composing a text message.
I stood in silence for a while, the sound of my own breaths echoing harshly in the room. I took a moment to smooth my hair and blot a little more lipstick on. As if he’d notice. As if he’d care, at a time like this.
The door swung open.
My heart stopped for a split second, and then started beating again like it was trying to escape from my ribcage. I stood stock-still, praying that it was Daniel - praying that if it wasn’t, he’d have the good grace to leave well enough alone.
The footsteps came closer and closer, finally stopping directly in front of the door.
"Maddy," he said, softly.
I threw the lock back and pulled the door open, and he stepped in, quickly, re-locking it behind him without missing a beat.
He was on me, kissing me wildly, before I even knew what had happened. I was of course hoping he’d react well to my proposition, but this was even better than what I’d imagined. I could feel him pressing against my leg, stiff and hot already.
"You…" he whispered, his hands all over me, pressing me up against the wall. He was hurriedly untucking my blouse from my skirt, his fingers fumbling with the delicate little buttons. I didn’t know what he planned to do, exactly - I wasn’t quite so lost in a fit of passion that I wouldn’t object to my favorite blouse being slung over a bathroom stall door. But apparently, he just wanted to
open it enough to see me and touch me a little better. He stopped halfway down, reaching up and roughly pushing my bra up over my breasts.
"I…what?" I breathed, tilting my head back so he could press his lips against my neck. When he nipped me with his teeth, I squealed, but it wasn’t hard enough to leave a mark. Not this time. By the time we got back to the table, no matter what excuse he’d used to slip away, it would be abundantly clear what we’d been doing - hickey or no hickey. There was no use rubbing it in.
Besides, I didn’t particularly want to be banned from this restaurant for life.
"We won’t get in trouble," he rumbled, his mouth against my collarbone, like he knew exactly what I was thinking. "I could buy and sell this place."
I normally hated it when he said things like that, but for some reason, now, in this moment, it was the hottest thing I’d ever heard in my life. Even so, I felt I had to at least put on a show of protest.
"Shut up," I said, planting my hands on his chest and shoving back at him. He didn’t budge an inch; his face registered surprise for a moment, and then he smiled, wickedly.
"Really?" His hand slid behind my head, grasping a handful of hair. I hissed. "Is that really what you want? For me to shut up?"
I didn’t answer. "What if somebody walks in?"
His mouth twitched. "Ms. Wainwright, this was your idea. Surely you’re not getting cold feet now."
"I’m not," I insisted. "I just think we should have…a plan."
"Here’s the plan," he said. Then, he closed his hand around the very top of my throat, where it met my chin - not hard, not nearly enough to be uncomfortable, but just enough to hold me in place. And then he kissed me.
I made a soft noise against his mouth, but he swallowed most of it. I wondered how thin these walls were. The restaurant wasn’t particularly quiet, but it wasn’t necessarily loud enough to drown out everything.
I Married a Billionaire: Lost and Found (Contemporary Romance) Page 11