Page 27 of The Billionaire's Classmate
Maria stood and gathered up the loose papers. She reached across the desk to take up one of the papers he had withdrawn. Daniel gently covered her hand with his, and Maria gasped softly at the contact. She looked up at Daniel, and her stomach clenched as her eyes locked on his, and she watched as they darkened as his expression grew serious.
“You will find it, Maria,” he said, his words hushed. “And when you do, you will have a case. Come back tomorrow with what you find.”
Maria felt Daniel start to tighten his grip on her hand, and she abruptly jerked it back. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she gathered up the file from the desk, holding it tightly to her chest.
“Thank you,” she stammered out, flustered. “I’ll look over the files in my office.”
“Of course,” Daniel smiled slowly, then stood and moved to get the door for her.
Maria kept her eyes on the carpet as she moved past him to leave his office.
“Have a good day, Maria,” Daniel bid her as she proceeded down the hallway, his voice heavy with concealed amusement.
“You too,” Maria replied weakly, never faltering in her course. She could feel his eyes on her every second as she walked down the hallway until she turned the corner to get to her office.
As soon as she reached the relative safety of her own much smaller office, she collapsed into her chair and heaved a sigh of relief. Her heart rate was still elevated, and she could not deny that there were still residual butterflies in her stomach from the encounter. His scent lingered in her nose, and she sighed lightly as she remembered the way his hand felt over her own…
Maria shook her head to get her thoughts back together. She had no time to be thinking this way about Daniel. With no further thought to the attractive partner, she gathered up her case files and prepared to spend any amount of time necessary to finally sew the last loose ends together and win her first court case.
Maria went immediately to the original court case and looked at the testimony of the defense’s witness and compared it with her emergency calls. The woman, a maid in the home of the victim, had called 911 upon seeing the dead body in the home. The testimony and her statements merely followed the progression of her arrival at the home, her call to the police, and her interactions with the police when they arrived at the scene.
Maria frowned. She must have read over the files a dozen times at least when she was forming her arguments. Everything was exactly as she remembered. She couldn’t fathom why on earth Daniel had told her to reexamine these. Maria huffed a sigh and tossed the file back onto her desk.
She leaned back in her chair and let her eyes skim over the documents in disgust. It was then that her eyes landed on a piece of information that she had not even taken into consideration. She seized the piece of paper and her eyebrows met in concentration as she drank in the tiny scrap of information that might change the entire case. The time of the 911 call was made at 10:37 AM, over three hours later than the maid usually showed up for work.
Maria immediately shuffled through the papers strewn across her desk until she found the maid’s statements and testimony. Maria scanned the document meticulously for any mention of the delay, but there was none. A wave of excitement passed through Maria’s body. This wasn’t by any means the end, but it was certainly a new start. Maria wasted no time. She basically scratched the case she had built before, and began anew with this new piece of information.
This, however, was no small task. It had taken weeks to build her case already, and now she had to build an entirely new one with her court date looming just around the corner. Maria buried herself in her work, stringing all the details she had accumulated over weeks of research in new and different ways. Her case had found a new center, and she geared her questions around the three missing hours of time that had been disregarded until now.
Time seemed to fly by as Maria constructed her new and improved case, and she found herself in the office long after her colleagues had packed up and gone home for the day. At this point in the day, Maria was usually back home in her small apartment, curled up on her couch with a book and a cup of tea. She knew, though, that with the case weighing so heavily on her mind, she would never have been able to relax.
Before she knew it, the sun had set, and her eyes were heavy as she pored over the documents. She leaned back in her chair for a moment and rubbed at her eyes. She was exhausted, yes, but relieved and exhilarated at the same time. She just needed a moment to recover and refocus her eyes, which had grown bleary after so closely analyzing the words on the paper. She decided she would close her eyes for a few minutes and take a break, and then hit it hard for another hour or so before heading home for the night.
No sooner had she closed her eyes, though, than she heard a knock at her office door. Maria jolted in her chair, alarmed at the sound, since she assumed she was the only one in the office so late. She immediately looked up to the small window in the door, and jumped again at who she saw. Daniel Boone stood outside her door, smirking in at her through the window.
Maria waved at him to enter as she hastily gathered up the mess of paperwork scattered across her desk.
“I had no idea you kept such late hours,” Daniel mused, moving to lean against her desk as she organized her files.
“I usually don’t,” Maria said simply, never taking her eyes off the papers in front of her.
“Did you run into some difficulty?” Daniel pried, and Maria could hear the teasing edge in his voice.
“On the contrary,” Maria crossed her arms, irritated. “I am actually making progress.”
“You found it, didn’t you?” Daniel smiled down at her, his eyes sparkling.
Maria pressed her lips together, and Daniel’s smile only widened.
“You did,” he guessed correctly, and Maria gave him a single nod of confirmation.
Daniel glanced down at the newly organized files, and then back up at Maria.
“May I take a look?” he asked, raising his eyebrow interestedly.
Maria hesitated for a moment, reluctant for him to criticize her newly formed case. At length, though, she sighed, and nodded, sliding her new files across the desk to him. He took up the documents, and began to pace around the room as he perused them. Maria kept her eyes locked on him. She couldn’t help but notice the ease in his movements, and the predatory aura that seemed to emanate from him. Just being in the same room with him put her senses on edge. Every now and again, he would look up and catch her eyes, and would flash his bright smile. Maria hated the way it made her stomach clench.
At length, he circled around to once again stand in front of her desk, and handed the files back over to her. He leaned against her desk once again, and smirked down at her. Maria was itching for him to say what he was thinking, but her pride kept her from asking. It seemed, though, that he was determined to make her ask, as he merely continued to look down at her, that irritating smirk ever on his face.