All right, so even if she had hurt herself, it wouldn’t have been where I’d spent most of my time kissing her. But making her come with my tongue was a great way to make it all better.
I set my phone on my desk and took a seat. Althea poked her head in and knocked on my partially open door.
“Do you have a few minutes?”
“Sure. Come on in.”
Althea always looked serious, but there was an unusual amount of gravity in her expression. She held a folder against her chest.
“What can I do for you?” I asked.
“I need to talk to you.”
I gestured to the chair on the other side of my desk. “Shoot.”
She glanced around, then shut my office door before taking a seat.
My brow furrowed. “What’s going on?”
She set the folder in her lap and flattened her palm over the top of it. “I’m not exactly sure how to say this.”
“That’s very ominous.”
“I know. But it’s not good news.”
Had something happened with Skyline? She was right; that wouldn’t be good news. “Bad news about Skyline?”
“No. This is personal.” She took a deep breath. “It’s about Sophie.”
Tension rippled across my back. “What about her?”
“I know you told me not to worry about her. But when it comes to your legal interests, it’s my job to worry. And it turns out, we have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Are you aware of her financial situation?”
“I haven’t asked to see her bank statements, no. Why would I?”
“Because you married her. And I knew you wouldn’t, so I took the liberty of doing some research. At the time of your wedding, Sophie was in a considerable amount of debt.”
“So? A lot of people are in debt. Why is that such a problem?”
She opened her folder and took out several pieces of paper. “She had two car loans, plus multiple maxed out credit cards, all in her name.”
I glanced over the documents. “Two car loans? Why would she… Where did you get all this?”
“I have sources. Did part of your agreement with her include paying off all her debt?”
“No. She never even brought it up.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” She paused and a sense of dread stole over me, like she was about to drop the hammer. “Her debt is gone. She paid it all. Every cent.”
I knew exactly what she was implying, but every cell in my body screamed no. It couldn’t be true. Sophie wouldn’t. She couldn’t have.
“Gone?”
“Every loan, every credit card, all with a zero balance. You’re sure you didn’t do it? Maybe she confided in you late one night and you decided to take care of it for her when you were half asleep? Or drunk again?”
I shook my head slowly. “No.”
“I know that you wanted to believe in her. That you were convinced she didn’t marry you for your money, but—”
“Let’s be clear, right now, before you continue,” I said, cutting her off. “You’re telling me you think Sophie stole money from me.”
“I think it’s quite obvious that she did.”
“How the fuck could she have done that? She doesn’t have access to anything.”
“The payoff dates on every loan are within a few days of each other. And they’re all when you were in Houston.”
What the fuck? A pit formed in my gut. There had to be another explanation. But if there was, I wasn’t coming up with anything.
“I’m sorry this is hard to hear,” Althea continued. “But she was there, alone in your house that whole week. She could have gotten your account numbers off your computer or your checkbook if you keep one around.”
Althea was right. She could have done either of those things. My passwords were all saved and I had a checkbook I never used in the top drawer of my desk.
I still wasn’t ready to believe it. “If all she wanted was money to pay off her debt, why not tell me up front? I offered her a settlement to wait to file for divorce. She could have just asked me to pay it off for her and called it a day.”
“Think about it. She asked you for something that appeared completely altruistic. Who wouldn’t trust a woman who seems to want nothing but the good of her elderly father? She saw a way to get closer to you and she took it.”
“You’ve got her all wrong. She isn’t like that. Besides, I was in Houston over a month ago. Why is she still here if all she wanted was my money to get rid of her debt?”
“I realize you have so much money, you don’t bother to look at your accounts, but this is why you should. She’s been siphoning money ever since. The withdrawals are irregular, the amounts varied, but we both know you never take cash out of your accounts. So unless you can explain why someone keeps taking out money at ATMs that are all within a half-mile radius of her office, it’s her. I’m sorry, but she played you.”
I stared at my desk, my mind racing, desperate for a different explanation. For an answer that meant Sophie hadn’t done this.
Was there one? Or was Althea right and Sophie had played me from the start?
Suddenly a different version of events ran through my head. One where Sophie hadn’t been nearly as drunk as she’d let on in Vegas. After all, how had she walked in her high heels around that MMA ring? She tripped over her own feet when she was sober. And how had she made that long, heartfelt toast during Drake Meadows’ wedding?
Or hell, maybe the clumsy thing was all part of the act to make her seem innocent and vulnerable.
She’d been on a winning streak when I’d walked into the casino. Had she seen her chance to keep right on winning? And when I’d offered her anything she wanted to delay filing for divorce, she’d certainly taken me up on it. All the while playing cute and hard to get, knowing she was getting under my skin. Knowing she could get close and I’d be none the wiser. She’d bide her time and strike when the next opportunity presented itself.
Was that who she really was? Had I been that fucking blind?
“I’m sorry,” Althea said again, her voice soft. “I know this is a lot. Do you want me to have Oliver clear your afternoon?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t look up.
“I’ll take care of it.” She stood and took the papers off my desk. “I’ll take care of everything.”
“Thanks, Althea,” I muttered to her back as she left.
I wasn’t sure if she heard me. I wasn’t sure if the words had actually come out of my mouth. It felt like a hundred-pound weight sat directly on my chest. Like my ribs were cracking and shards of bone penetrated everything.
My heart, especially.
I hadn’t told Sophie I loved her this weekend. I’d wanted to, but something had held me back. I’d been almost ready to admit it was fear—fear of being vulnerable. Of opening myself up completely to her.
Fear of what it meant if I loved her, and was married to her, and wanted to stay that way.
But maybe it hadn’t been fear. Maybe it had been a premonition.
And maybe Sophie Abbott wasn’t the sweet girl I’d believed her to be.