The thing was, I tended to have pretty accurate instincts for people. It came with growing up in a business empire, I was sure. When Lexi had shown up on my doorstep, I hadn't thought for a second that she was lying to me about Emma's paternity. Especially not since the little girl looked so much like a young Katherine. But now, with that file sitting there on my seat, I started to wonder if maybe we should get the DNA test done. Just to have absolute reassurance.
What would happen if it turned out Emma's father was really some other guy, and he one day came along and wanted to take her away from me? He'd have every right to do so if the DNA was a match, I had a feeling. Despite all of my millions, the comfortable family life that I'd managed to cobble together could come crashing down in an instant.
I wondered if maybe I should confront Lexi. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. Come to think of it, I didn't know why I hadn't had a background check run on her already. I knew that she was having difficulty getting hired, and I had to assume that there was something in her history that made her unemployable. Sure, she had said that Albright was blackballing her to everyone else in the industry, but what if that wasn't the case? What if she had a criminal conviction for fraud?
Hell, that could have been the whole reason why Albright had fired her in the first place, if that arrest history had only suddenly been made known to them.
I didn't want to go behind Lexi's back, though. I could hire a private investigator of my own and have all the information I could ever have wanted on her in a day's time. But that felt sneaky, and I felt like I owed it to Lexi to do this face to face. But I was going to need to ask her.
I took a deep breath to calm myself and pulled into a parking lot down the street from my mansion. If I was going to confront Lexi, I might as well do it with Renée's documents in hand. And if I was going to do that, I would need to know exactly what was there in that file.
I began to leaf through the file, heedless of how late it was growing.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lexi
I stood up and went to the front door as I heard Andrew enter. Emma had gone to sleep a little while ago, and it had taken me three stories to get her to close her eyes. She'd been distraught at the fact that her Daddy wasn't there to tuck her in. Andrew had been good about being there lately, and it had been nearly a month since the last time he'd missed bedtime.
“Hey,” I said, coming into the front hall and leaning up on my toes to kiss him, even as he was still taking his jacket off. “Did your meetings run late? I know you said you were going to be running late this evening, but I didn't expect you to be quite this late.”
Andrew grunted in response, and I frowned. Maybe something had gone wrong in one of his meetings? But I couldn't think of what. He'd just been telling me yesterday, as he prepared his notes for his meetings today, that everything was going amazingly for this quarter and that he was so proud of his team.
But maybe there had been some new problem that day, something to do with shipping lines or warehouses, and he was just caught up in that. It wouldn't be the first time that he was unable to draw his mind away from a work problem.
“Emma's already in bed,” I told him slowly, wondering if maybe thoughts of our daughter could draw him out of his funk. “She was pretty sad that Daddy wasn't here to tuck her in.”
Andrew scowled. “I'm not always going to be here to tuck her in; you know that,” he said. “I run a very important business. You shouldn't set her expectations so high.”
I blinked, wondering if what he really meant was that I shouldn't set my expectations so high. I bit my lower lip, feeling wounded. “There's still some dinner leftovers,” I told him. “Do y
ou want me to fix you a plate?”
“Would you quit that?” Andrew snapped.
“Quit what?” I asked, holding my breath as I waited for his answer.
“Quit acting so domestic. We aren't a couple.”
I stared at him, feeling tears pool in my eyes. I blinked them rapidly away. “Of course not,” I said, wondering what I had done wrong. “Sorry, I'll just head up to bed, I guess.” I paused. “Should I sleep in my own room?”
“I don't really want to cuddle tonight, no,” Andrew said. He really sounded distracted; his mind was clearly elsewhere.
“Okay,” I said, feeling something inside of me shatter at his words.
Sure, it was just one night away from one another. It would be nice to stretch out in my own bed and not have to worry that I was stealing too much of the blankets or that I was too far over on his side of the bed.
But even though I wanted to believe that this was only one night apart, something had clearly happened, and I had zero idea what it was. If I didn’t know what the problem was, I couldn’t begin to figure out how to fix it. Maybe he'd just grown tired of me.
I started towards the stairs, trying not to trip over my feet, feeling the tears already starting to spill over.
“Lexi, wait,” Andrew said, catching my wrist and pulling me back towards him. He ran a hand back through his hair. “We need to talk.”
“Did something bad happen at work?” I asked, hoping that would explain this scary outburst of his. Maybe that would be the end of it, and we could go back to some semblance of normal.
But if anything, Andrew just looked more agitated. “People are always trying to take advantage of me in my business,” he said. “Whether because they think that I'm young and inexperienced or because they're just blindly after my money, they think they can just walk all over me.” He paused and then said, weighing the words significantly, “But people try to take advantage of me in my personal life, too.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, starting to feel a little scared.