Chapter 5: The Face Behind the Memos

Billington Rail kept its offices in an old brick depot across the Allegheny, with the tracks still running right under the windows.

I went there on Tuesday evening, alone, in the same charcoal suit.

Fran had wanted to come, and I had told her no.

I wanted to see the man without a witness.

His assistant had gone home, and the floor was dark except for one lamp.

Roan Billington sat on the edge of a drafting table, with his shirt cuffs folded back and a pen in his teeth.

He took the pen out when he saw me.

"You came yourself," he said.

"You asked for the face."

"I did." His eyes traveled once from my shoes to my hair and back, slowly, without apology. "It's better than the memos."

"Do you say that to all the owners you try to buy?"

"I'm not here to buy you."

He said it so flatly that I stopped halfway across the room.

"Everyone who sits down with a company my size is here to buy it," I said.

"My father owned a trucking firm in Altoona."

He put the pen down.

"A bigger outfit swallowed it when I was seventeen, and he never worked again."

"I don't buy people out. I build next to them."

"Then why have you been buying our supplier bonds since March?"

"Because that's the only way a man gets a meeting with a woman who sends her COO to say no for her."

I laughed before I could stop it.

It was a real laugh, and it surprised me enough that I sat down.

"Fran says no beautifully," I said.

"She told me you were unwell and then that you were in Zurich."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband Regrets Divorcing Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.