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I looked at the date on the receipt again feeling like it stood out for some reason.
“This date”—I tapped the receipt—“I was out with my two friends.” I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled through old text messages until I found the one I needed.
It was a text from several months ago to Hazel and Amy confirming girls’ night out at a sports bar in Arbor Hill. Roman had shown up that night and I’d learned he and Amy were dating.
Eric looked between the text and the receipt. “Okay,” he said, taking out a pen from his jacket pocket and writing on a legal pad.
“We have a lot more to go through here, Miss Levine. I hope you cleared your schedule for tonight.”
With a nervous smile, I nodded and said, “Anything I can do to help get to the truth, I will.”
Eric nodded. “Excellent.”
He took out some more receipts and started going through every last one until I was exhausted from saying, “I wasn’t there,” and “that wasn’t me.”
It took hours, but finally, we were done. Eric sat back and looked over his notes, then at me.
“Would you be willing to testify to all of th
is if it came to that?” he asked.
“Absolutely.”
It had been a long night, but stating my case and providing evidence to an official made me feel like I had a voice. A small voice, but it was something to prove my innocence. Bill had tried to cover up his outings and screw me over by putting my name on receipts in order to label them as “business expenses.”
But I wouldn’t let him drag me down or involve me in his lie any longer.
“I think we’re done here.” Eric smiled. “I hope you enjoy your business trip. I’ll be in touch if I need anything else.”
“Thank you, sir.” As I got up and walked out of the little café, my nerves were fried and I realized I didn’t think I’d be able to rest easy until the whole mess was over once and for all.
I did, however, have a trip with a sexy man to look forward to. And I’d try to cling to that one bit of happiness the best I could.
Chapter Twenty-One
My face hurt I was smiling so much, but I couldn’t help it. The meeting with Jes Frolos was tomorrow. Leo had spent all day taking me around London, showing me everything. I hadn’t thought about the scandal, attorney general, or any of the mess back home for the last twenty-four hours, and it was a comfort to my overly stressed brain.
“This is incredible,” I said, stopping in the middle of the walkway on the Westminster Bridge to look at the Houses of Parliament across the water.
With the setting sun reflecting off the clouds and flooding the sky with oranges and yellows, I couldn’t help but feel truly happy. Like the world was bigger than I’d ever known and life was moving forward.
“Thank you, Leo,” I said, and stared up at him.
He smiled and there was something sad about it.
“Something wrong?”
He shook his head. “Just the way you look at me.”
My breathing stuttered a little. “The way I look at you feels wrong?”
“Yes. No.” He sighed and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “That’s the problem. Even the good moments, like this one, feel fleeting.”
Standing in London with the sunset around us in the middle of a bridge and looking at a spectacular world I didn’t even know existed, I knew he was right. I felt small in the best way. But I felt more at home standing there with him than I ever had before in my life.
He smiled and something sly played across his face. Like he was about to execute a plan. “This moment is so good in fact, that you should have something to commemorate it.”
He pulled out a long, black velvet box from his jacket pocket. “Perhaps something worth hanging on to.”
