Silent Partner by Stephen Frey Page B

did you bother flying me all the way across the country? she wondered. She cursed herself silently. Maybe she shouldn’t question people’s motivations so often. “Is that all?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I know you’re a busy man.”
    “Stay awhile,” he urged, reaching across the couch and putting a hand on her knee. “I’ve still got a few minutes before Colby bangs on the door to tell me it’s time to go.”
    “Okay,” she agreed hesitantly, easing back onto the couch.
    “I like to get to know the people I work with,” he explained, sliding subtly closer. “All right with you?”
    “Sure, fine.” Her instinct was to move away or stand up, but she didn’t want to irritate him.
    “I think I remember from my notes that you have a son.”
    Her body went rigid. Apparently nothing was sacred. “That’s right.”
    “Sam Reese’s son?”
    “Yes,” she answered stiffly.
    “What’s his name?”
    “Hunter.”
    “I like that name. How old is Hunter?”
    “Six.”
    “I assume you got custody of him after the divorce.”
    Angela glanced down. “No, I didn’t.”
    “What?” Lawrence asked.
    “Hunter lives with his father,” she explained quietly, wondering why Lawrence was playing this game. Or maybe he just hadn’t paid close enough attention to the information his assistant had prepared.
    “How often do you see Hunter?”
    “One weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.”
    “Really? Well, I’m no expert when it comes to divorce and child custody, but don’t mothers usually get custody?”
    “Usually.”
    “What happened?”
    Angela took a deep breath. “I was fighting a machine. My former father-in-law is an influential man in Richmond and he hates me. He hired a legion of lawyers from the best firm in town, and I only had enough money to hire a one-woman shop. I can’t prove it, but I think he paid off the judge, too. He doesn’t leave much to chance.”
    “Why does he hate you so much?”
    “Because my family was dirt poor,” she replied bitterly.
    “But you graduated from one of the best business schools in the country. You pulled yourself up by your bootstraps.”
    “Didn’t matter to him. He didn’t want me in his beautiful world, or his son’s. He wanted Sam married to a blue-blooded debutante from Richmond’s West End who grew up knowing all the right people from the day she was born. Not some nobody from a trailer park outside Asheville, North Carolina.”
    “That’s terrible,” Lawrence said gently. He was quiet for a few moments. “Who filed for the divorce?”
    Angela folded her hands tightly in her lap. “Sam did,” she answered.
    “On what grounds?”
    She hesitated, knowing how this would sound. She could refuse to answer or lie, but chances were good that Lawrence already knew, and all of this was just a test to see if she’d tell him the truth. “Adultery.”
    “I’m assuming that accusation wasn’t true. Just a trumped-up charge for the lawyers to use.”
    “That’s right,” she said. The truth was exactly the opposite. She’d caught Sam in bed with a woman one day when she’d come home early from a trip. “But the judge believed it,” she added, her eyes starting to burn. Angela thought it was mostly because two of Sam’s closest bachelor buddies had lied in court about having sexual relations with her while she was married to Sam. Lied about how she had seduced them, then went into lurid details concerning the alleged trysts in front of a courtroom packed with Reese’s family and friends. And the lawyers had coached her accusers expertly. One of the men had even broken down on the stand, begging for Sam’s forgiveness across the courtroom. She could only imagine how much they’d been paid to perjure themselves. Probably six figures. Sam’s father hated her that much. He had hated her right from the start. But she’d believed all along that Sam was strong enough to be his own man. She’d misjudged the risks and paid a terrible