I Married a Billionaire: Lost and Found(36)

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 Outdated mode of news reporting that they might be, I still found myself looking at them on occasion - as a kid, I’d gotten used to them being a primary form of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 and 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.