Dreams of Fire (Maple Hill Chronicles Book 1) by Elizabeth Alix Page A

meeting would probably be a good idea. It was hard to concentrate, though. He bounced his knee up and down, making the expensive leather shoe squeak slightly. The word ‘settlement’ came up in an item about a lawsuit with a manufacturer, and that reminded him of his own. The divorce settlement still irked him. Her lawyer had demanded far more from him than he’d thought was reasonable, and his own lawyer had told him just to take the deal. Who would have thought Marianne would hire such a sharp woman? When he complained, Mother told him she’d known all along Marianne was a gold digger after the Chubb family fortune.  
    Agitated, he flipped to his desktop and brought up a solitaire game. His knee resumed its ferocious vibration. His mother had never thought very much of Marianne or her family. The Chubbs were wealthier and moved in more elevated circles than the Singletons. His marriage to his college sweetheart had been a youthful decision. Mother had questioned his impulse at the time but let him have his way. Marianne had been pretty and completely devoted to him, which had been a heady feeling. They’d done some fun things together, but she’d become tiresome over the years. He really should have ditched her long ago and traded up. But the company partners were all married with kids and seemed to value the whole family thing, so he’d been reluctant to get divorced. For some reason they also seemed to like her. When he met Sandra two years ago, he’d enjoyed flirting with her before reveling in a full-blown affair. It had been easy to hide it from Marianne because she always took him at his word.
    His desktop image was of him and Sandra together on a boat earlier that summer. Sandra was so much better! She was gorgeous, had better T and A, and was ambitious like him. She was a much better fit for him in so many ways, he grinned privately as his foot stilled. He could see himself as a partner at the company in a few years, if he kept working this hard. Even if he had to make his own opportunities.  
    He turned back to the retail newsfeed and tried to focus, but his thoughts kept drifting.
    His good mood soured as he thought of his last promotion. That was the other reason he couldn’t quite let Marianne go yet. Tormenting her was satisfying payback for the ridiculous settlement. But there was the matter of what she might know about him.
    She was so timid and completely ordinary on one hand, but then she also had this weird side. She claimed to know things about him because she ‘dreamt’ about them. Completely absurd, of course, because who does that? Yet she’d known about his affair with Sandra somehow. Obviously, she was hiding her sources. Someone in his office or one of his friend’s wives had ratted him out. It had reminded him of that time in college when she said she’d ‘dreamt’ he was plagiarizing a term paper and colluding with his professor to get an A in spite of his poor class performance. He had done that, but how could she have known? He and the prof had been very careful. Geoffrey had been able to suppress her suspicions and convince her she was merely stressed out, but it had always left him wondering just a little. He unconsciously jiggled his knee again.
    In business school he’d helped himself along a few times, just when he needed it. She’d never said anything about that, but a part of him always wondered. At the time he assumed she’d wised up and was willing to let it go since his success benefited her too. He still wasn’t convinced she knew about his indiscretions. Since then he speculated that she had sources who told her things about him, even though he’d been careful to monitor and steer her connections. At this point he didn’t think there was anyone who would tell her what he did on the side. Yet she’d known about Sandra somehow.
    He needed to keep tabs on her. Just in case she decided to use her information against him.
    There was a tap at the door. He looked up