The First Time by Joy Fielding Read Free Book Online

grabbing the jury by its collective throat, “and the truth in this case is that Douglas Bryant is on trial for his life.” He paused,training his deep blue eyes on each member of the jury, allowing angry tears to fill those eyes, knowing the jury would mistake his fury at Mattie for compassion toward the defendant. “Douglas Bryant is on trial for his life,” Jake repeated. “And that is no laughing matter.”
    The jury sighed, like a lover responding to a well-placed caress. He’d done it, Jake thought, watching several of the women shed compassionate tears of their own. Mattie had inadvertently handed him the biggest win of his career. He’d get the not-guilty verdict, the great publicity, the offer of partnership.
    And he owed it all to Mattie. As usual, he owed everything to his wife.

F OUR
    M attie stood on the outside steps of the Art Institute of Chicago, feeling the cold breeze whip across her face. “Harder,” she muttered under her breath, pushing her face forward as if daring the wind to strike her. Go on, knock me down. Send me flying. Humiliate me in front of all these well-heeled patrons of the arts. It’s no less than I deserve. Payback time for the way I humiliated my husband in court this morning. “Go on,” she whispered, still trying to make sense of what had happened. “Give it your best shot.”
    “Mattie?”
    Mattie spun around at the sound of her name, her mouth opening in an exaggerated smile as Roy Crawford, a man with the weathered face of a boxer and the lithe build of a dancer, approached, gray eyes twinkling beneath a full head of gray hair. He walkedwith his shoulders, Mattie observed, studying him as he strutted confidently toward her, right shoulder, left shoulder, right shoulder. Definitely cock of the walk, in his casual black trousers and cream-colored turtleneck, no coat, despite the increasing chill. Roy Crawford had made his first million before the age of thirty and had recently celebrated his fiftieth birthday by shedding wife number three and moving in with his youngest daughter’s closest friend.
    “Roy,” she acknowledged, shaking his hand enthusiastically. “I’m so glad you were able to get away early.”
    “I own the company,” he said easily. “I set the rules. That’s quite a grip you’ve got there.”
    “I’m so sorry.” Mattie immediately released her stranglehold on his fingers.
    “Nothing to be sorry about.”
    Nothing to be sorry about, Mattie repeated silently, her mind spinning back to courtroom 703, the memory of what she’d done flashing before her as if caught in a strobe light, revealing images frozen in time and forever seared inside her brain. Nothing to be sorry about. Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Crawford. There’s everything to be sorry about. Starting with her ill-advised trip to court this morning, continuing with the scene she’d created, and not just any scene, the mother of all scenes, the scene from hell. Scenes from a marriage, Mattie thought sadly, knowing her husband would never forgive her, that her marriage was over, her sorry excuse for a marriage, her marriage that never really was, despite nearly sixteen years and the daughter it produced, the only thing in her life that she didn’t have to be sorry about.
    “I’m really so sorry,” Mattie repeated, and promptly burst into tears.
    “Mattie?” Roy Crawford’s gray eyes shifted warily from side to side, his lips pursing, relaxing, then pursing again as he reached for Mattie, gathered her now-shaking body into his arms. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”
    “I’m so sorry,” Mattie repeated again, unable to say anything else. What was happening to her? First the laughter in the courthouse, and now tears on the steps of Chicago’s famed Art Institute. Maybe it was environmental, some insidious form of lead poisoning. Maybe she was allergic to majestic old buildings. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to leave the comfort and security of Roy