What He Fights (What He Wants, Book Ten) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (3 page)

I turned to look at her.
 
She had brown hair that fell in loose
waves over her shoulders and everything about her was dark -- dark eyes, dark
hair, dark skin.
 
Except her eyes,
which were shockingly blue.
  

“Nice to meet you, Charlotte,” she said,
reaching her hand out to me.
 
I
shook it, surprised at how warm it was.
 
Her nails were perfectly manicured, painted a sophisticated taupe color
that matched the silky turtleneck she wore under her black suit.

“Nice to meet you, too,” I said.
 
She brushed her hair back from her face
before turning her attention to Noah, and something about the gesture,
something about seeing her from that angle, as the light hit her face, made me
gasp.
 

I’d seen her before.

She was the woman who’d been out on
Noah’s terrace the night I’d spent at his apartment, the night he’d shut me in
the dark and then disappeared.
 
She’d given him papers and a green scarf.

I let out a sigh of relief, thankful, at
least, that this part of the mystery was over.
 
Obviously this Clementine woman worked for Professor
Worthington, obviously she had some kind of connection to Noah’s case.
 
She’d probably been over there dropping
off papers or something, and Noah didn’t want me to wake up because he’d wanted
to keep whatever it was private, the way he’d kept the Audi James situation
private.

It wasn’t ideal, obviously – but it
was much less sinister than what it could have been.

But why would an associate be dropping
off papers at three o’clock in the morning, dressed all in black, and why would
she be handing him a green scarf?

The question entered my mind just as Noah
reached across the table to take Clementine’s outstretched hand.
 
I waited for them to explain they
already knew each other.

But instead, Noah held onto Clementine’s hand
for a beat longer than necessary.
 
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Hayes.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Cutler.”

My heart slipped into my throat.

Why were they pretending not to know each
other?

The waiter arrived and took our
order.
 
I went first and ordered
blueberry pancakes.
 
The rest of
them ordered light—fruit or a bagel or a plate of scrambled eggs with dry
toast.

It was just another reminder that I
didn’t fit in.
 
The three of them
were dressed up, on their way to their offices.
 
I was wearing jeans and a sweater, my hair frizzy from the
rain, my palms slick with sweat.
 

I sipped my smoothie as the three of them
made small talk about lawyers in the city, different cases they were working
on, people at the DA’s office they knew, plea bargains they couldn’t believe
had happened.

I sat there, quiet, like a child, my
focus on Noah the whole time, wondering what he was thinking, why he had
pretended he didn’t know this woman, Clementine.
 
This beautiful woman, Clementine, who had gone along with
Noah’s rouse that he didn’t know her, who had unfettered access to him in the
middle of the night, who’d stood on his balcony and touched his hand.

Once our food came, the three of them got
down to business.

“I think,” Professor Worthington said,
“that we should start with the evidence and see what we might be able to get
thrown out.
 
Charlotte, have you
been contacted yet by the DA?”

“No.”
 
I shook my head.

“They’ll contact you today, I’m
sure.
 
You’ll be asked to go down
there for an interview.
 
See if you
can get it for tomorrow afternoon.
 
They’ll probably only ask you a few questions – that’s all they’ll
need to try to get this brought to trial -- but your answers will be
important.”

I could feel Noah’s eyes on me, feel him
studying me carefully as the professor talked.

“Okay,” I said.

Professor Worthington opened his
appointment book.
 
“Can you be at
my office tomorrow morning at seven, Charlotte?” he asked.
 
“So that you can go over your testimony
with Clementine?”

Bile rose into the back of my throat.
 
Clementine?
 
I was supposed to sit in a room with this woman while she
asked me questions about my sexual relationship with Noah?
 
My heart thrummed in my chest, panic
rising inside of me.
 
The tingling
sensation returned to my fingers, the one that had overtaken me in the hotel
room right before I’d had my panic attack.

“Tomorrow morning?” I frowned, pretending
to think about it.
 
I took a sip of
my coffee.
 
“What time?”
 

I caught Noah’s eye across the
table.
 
He was still looking at me,
his gaze steely.
 
Do something!
I wanted to scream.
 
Do not let these
people humiliate me any further.
 
Do not make me sit in a room and discuss my relationship with you with
another woman, one who was at your house for some unknown reason you tried to
keep from me!

I waited for him to jump in, waited for
him to say that he would coach me, that he would tell me what to say when the
DA interviewed me.
 
But he stayed
silent, his eyes never leaving mine.

“Seven am,” Professor Worthington
repeated, sounding slightly worried at my obvious inability to pay
attention.
 
He looked at
Clementine, who nodded her approval.
 
She pulled out a slim appointment book, an old school leather one that
was monogrammed with her initials.
 
She made a note of it with a fancy-looking pen.

“That would be fine,” she said.
  
She gave me a friendly smile that
was designed to put me at ease, but I looked away without returning it.
 
Somehow, her attempt at kindness only
made things worse.

“Good.” Professor Worthington pulled out
a sheet of paper.
 
“I had my
paralegal draw up a one-sheet based on the evidence provided to us by the DA’s
office.”

He handed copies out around the table.

I forced myself to wait a beat, forced
myself not to immediately look at the sheet.

Noah had his head down, like he was
looking at the paper he’d been handed, but he was really watching me, waiting
to see how I was going to react to whatever it was I was about to read.

I told myself that whatever was on that
paper, whatever I was about to find out, I needed to have no reaction
whatsoever.
 
Not in front of these
people.
 

I lowered my eyes and began to read.

It was a bullet-pointed list, with each
of the main areas of evidence bolded into its own section.

I thought I’d have already known at least
a couple of the things I was about to find out, thought I would have at least
known some of the evidence the DA’s office had against the man I was falling in
love with.

But everything on the list was new to
me.
 

Every single thing.

It started with the least damaging
– an eyewitness, Daniel DiMatteo, who claimed to have seen Noah in the
park with Katie on the morning she was murdered.
 
This in and of itself wasn’t news – Noah
had
been in
the park that morning jogging.
 
However, this Daniel person had said he’d seen Noah arguing with Katie
that morning, which didn’t match Noah’s story that he hadn’t seen Katie.
 
But still.
 
Eyewitness testimony was notoriously shaky – people
could get things wrong all the time.
 
Professor Worthington would do his best to discredit Daniel
DiMatteo.
 
I felt the lump in my
throat start to loosen just a tiny bit.
 

But at the next bullet point, things
started to get a little dicey.

People in Noah’s office claimed they’d
heard Katie and Noah fighting, had heard raised voices in Noah’s office a few
weeks before Katie had been killed.
 
Katie had come storming out, crying.

It was damning – but again, people
got into fights with their bosses.
 
It didn’t mean their boss was a murderer.

My throat stayed the same.

And then things took a horrible turn for
the worse.

A photo had surfaced showing Katie
leaving Noah’s apartment building in the middle of the night.
 

And
his
fingerprints were all over
her
apartment.
 

My throat began to constrict.

It got even worse.

Noah’s DNA had been found under Katie’s
fingernails.
 

And then, finally the worst part.

Emails had been recovered, sent from
secret accounts Noah and Katie had set up.
 
Someone in the DA’s office had thought to look for other
accounts, someone smarter than us.
 
I cursed Professor Worthington for not finding the emails sooner, but it
didn’t matter who had found them.
 
They were a blow either way.

The emails showed Katie and Noah had been
having a relationship – none of the emails were printed on the one-sheet,
but there was a summary of what they contained.

Katie had been about to end it.
 
Noah had gone insane, begging her to
stay.
 
The emails got crazier and
crazier, until finally they stopped.

The one-sheet ended with a summary of the
prosecution’s theory.

That Katie and Noah had been having an
affair.
 
That she’d tried to end
it. That he became obsessed with her, that they’d met in the park that morning,
they’d fought, and then, finally, he’d strangled her.

Motive.

Means.

Opportunity.

I could feel the bitterness of coffee
mixed with acid in the back of my throat, and for a moment, I was sure I was
going to throw up.
 
I took a sip of
water and tried to stay calm.

I put the paper back on the table, not
wanting to read it again.

Professor Worthington and Clementine
began talking, something about trying to get the testimony of Katie’s friend
Madeline thrown out – that she hadn’t ever seen them together, that the
whole thing was hearsay.

The walls seemed to be closing in on me,
and I turned my napkin in my hands again, trying to keep myself grounded.

Noah was still looking at me.

But this time, when I met his eyes, I
didn’t see anything.

They were emotionless, cold.

I stared back at him before finally
looking away.

I couldn’t deny it any longer.

He was a killer.

**

The rest of the breakfast passed in a
blur.
 
I don’t remember anything
that was said, just that the three of them were all business.
 
No one expected the preliminary hearing
to go our way – a prosecutor was never going to charge a defendant unless
they were sure they had enough probable cause to go to trial.

It was unusual for these cases to be
thrown out by a judge.

Especially one in which a young woman had
been murdered.

My world felt like it was crashing in
around me, and yet, these people were acting like it was just another day at
the office.
 
Which, for them, it
was.

Once we were done eating, they lingered
over their coffee.

“I’m sorry,” I said.
 
“I have to get to class.”
 
It was a half-truth.
 
I did need to get to class, but it
wasn’t like I couldn’t miss it.
 

I went to push my chair back, and I
backed into our waiter.
 
“Oh, I’m
sorry, “ I said.

“No problem, Miss,” he said kindly, and
for some reason his kindness made my eyes fill with tears.
 

He looked down at my plate, which was
still full.
 
“Was there something
wrong with the pancakes?”

“No,” I said.
 
“They were delicious.”
 
I’d taken one bite, and they’d felt like cardboard sliding down my
throat.
 
I was sure it wasn’t
because they were bad, but because I was so sick to my stomach that nothing would
have tasted good.

“Would you like to take them to go?”

“No, thank you,” I said.
 
“I really have to go.”
 
I thought about reaching into my bag
and pulling out money for my food, but something told me that would be gauche, would
show that I didn’t know how this worked even more than I already had.