I Married a Billionaire: Lost and Found(54)

We came home to a notice on the door. They’d tried to deliver a certified letter, something overnighted. Daniel hurried to the post office, and I stayed behind, updating Lindsey on everything that had happened.

Daniel came back in a little while, with an expression on his face that looked like it might almost become a smile.

"They granted the petition," he said. "I’ve got a new judge."





CHAPTER SIXTEEN





"Congratulations, Danny. Have I said that enough times yet?" Lindsey was so excited she could hardly contain herself.

"You know this means we have to start over completely, don't you?" said Daniel, but he was smiling. "I'm going to be up all night tomorrow working with my lawyer, we have to completely re-build the entire case and present the whole thing over again. This essentially resets the timetable."

"But this time you have a judge who's not determined to crucify you," I said. "And that makes all the difference." So he’d be working all night. The night of my showing. I had no idea why a feeling of sick disappointment blossomed in my chest; I’d already decided he wasn’t invited.

"Do you really have to work all night? Can't it wait?" Lindsey wanted to know.

"The new judge is fitting me in starting next week," he said. "And my lawyer's got cases booked during the day until then, so we have to work after-hours. Otherwise I'd have to wait for months and months to even get started. This whole thing has thrown the trial schedule for a loop."

"Well, that's ridiculous," said Lindsey. "Can you at least relax and celebrate tonight?"

"Maybe," he said. "As long as 'celebrating' means takeout and beer in the kitchen. There's absolutely no way I'm subjecting myself to being in the public eye."

"Okay, fair enough." Lindsey opened one of the kitchen drawers. "I'll start digging for menus."

"I can't believe you still have all those," I said, eyeing the massive stack of wrinkled paper that Lindsey pulled out of the drawer. "You know it's all online now, right?"

"You say that," Daniel replied. "But you remember that Italian place we wanted to try once? Didn't even have so much as a profile online. We had to go and read the menu at the table, like we were in the dark ages." He grinned. "I'm in the mood for anything, Linds."

Lindsey gave him a mock salute, her nose buried in a binder's worth of menus.

We talked about everything but the trial over dinner, and Lindsey turned in early, determined to get a full night's sleep before a teleconference she had in the morning. Daniel and I stayed up, talking, even laughing a little, and it was almost - almost - like all this had never happened.

But not quite.

I looked at him now, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the accusations. I wasn’t naive; I’d always assumed that someone of Daniel’s prominence had probably conducted himself with less-than-pristine ethics at some point in his career. But assuming and knowing were very different things.

When I’d first married him, it was just a business deal. I didn’t concern myself with what kind of person he was, beyond his ability to honor our agreement. But somewhere along the way I’d managed to fall in love with the man. And now, I was actually getting to know him. It was deeply unsettling, which I supposed was the cost of doing things backwards.

Jesus Maddy, stop being such a drama queen. It’s not like he’s in organized crime.

"So," I heard myself say after a lull. "It’s going to be weird facing Paulson in court again, right? After all those years?"

He was looking at me sidelong. "I suppose," he said.

"I bet you thought you’d never run into him again."

"Well, the matter was settled." He rotated his beer bottle around, slowly, over and over again. "In a very literal sense of the word. Non-disclosure agreements were signed."

"But you can’t really blame him for holding a grudge." I paused. "I mean, without taking sides or anything."

"Without taking sides, he had nothing without me," said Daniel, tightly. "And he knows that."

I shrugged. "Maybe it’s not as obvious to him as it is to you. Not that I was there, of course. I don’t know what happened. But whatever kind of…you know, misunderstanding…"

A muscle in Daniel’s jaw twitched. "There was no misunderstanding," he said. "All of them, they just wanted a taste."

"Well," I said. "That would be your perspective."

"Well," said Daniel. "As you say - you weren’t there."

My head was buzzing.

"And what if I did?" he said, his voice suddenly growing louder. "What if I did steal it?"

I couldn’t look at him. "I don’t know," I said.

"Would it change the way you feel about me?"

There it was - the question I’d been afraid to ask myself, all this time. I hadn’t exactly invited my feelings for him, but now that they were here, I didn’t know how I could live without them. I was afraid to look them in the face, but I was even more afraid to let them go.

What if he did do it?

What if he made that mistake, all those years ago? Blinded by ambition, or frustrated by inaction, or driven by some forces that I simply couldn’t understand, and never would?