Read Online Buying Time by Pamela Samuels Young - Free Book Online

touch.”
    “I’d like to introduce my fiancé,” Angela began, “Judge Cornell Waters. He’s—”
    The lights began to flicker, signaling that everyone should proceed to their tables. Streeter acknowledged Cornell with a curt nod, then walked off.
    Angela glanced down at her ticket to check their table number. When she looked up, Cornell had walked off.
    When she finally caught up with him, he was already seated. “What are you doing here?” he snickered. “I figured there’d be a seat for you at Streeter’s table.”
    Cornell could be such a baby, Angela thought. She pulled out the chair next to him and was about to sit down, but changed her mind. “I’m going to the ladies’ room.”
    Angela walked out of the ballroom and into the restroom, where she touched up her lipstick and fluffed her hair. She tried to ignore her nagging doubts. Did she really want to be a mother bad enough to endure a life sentence with Cornell? Maybe.
    A feeling of dread consumed her as she trudged back toward the ballroom. Halfway there, she pulled her BlackBerry from her purse and fired off a short text to Cornell: Not feeling well. Going home.
    As she headed for the valet stand, the tension she’d felt only seconds ago had magically disappeared.

CHAPTER 10
     
    E rickson had not expected his first visit to the White House to affect him this way. As he sat waiting in a reception area outside the Oval Office, he was practically giddy.
    Hold it together, buddy. It’s show time.
    He looked up to see the President’s executive assistant, a petite, stylishly dressed woman with a practiced smile, approaching from a long hallway. She stopped just in front of him, appropriately respectful of his personal space. “Mr. Erickson, the President will see you now.”
    Gripping both sides of the chair, he easily hoisted himself upward.
    Erickson felt a sense of power like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Being chairman of a preeminent law firm was one thing, but he was about to meet the freakin’ President.
    He followed the President’s assistant, easily matching her steady stride. She slowed, opened a tall door, then stepped aside so that he could enter.
    President Richard Bancroft and his Chief of Staff, Mark Wrigley, both stood up.
    “Good to see you, Lawrence.” The President greeted him with a strong, two-handed grip.
    “Good to meet you , Mr. President,” Erickson replied.
    He shook Wrigley’s hand next and tried to get a handle on his excitement.
    The majesty of the room overwhelmed him. It suddenly hit him that the place was called the Oval Office because it actually was. He glanced down at the Presidential seal on the rug in front of President Bancroft’s desk.
    “Let’s have a seat over here.” Bancroft pointed to a seating area in the middle of the room. “First things, first. How’s your wife?”
    Erickson lowered his eyes in what he hoped was an appropriate display of distress. “As well as can be expected. But she’s a trooper.”
    The President responded with a look of grave concern.
    Erickson seriously doubted that Bancroft had any genuine interest in the state of his wife’s health. At dinner the night before, one of Wrigley’s assistants, relaxed from too much vodka, let it slip that his wife’s illness might help him edge out the other candidates. At least two of the President’s advisors felt the press might cut Erickson some slack since he was about to become a widower.
    As the President made small talk, Erickson struggled to stay focused. Here he was, Lawrence Adolphus Erickson, son of a steelworker, grandson of a corn farmer, sitting in the Oval Office. He wished his whack job of a father, who constantly told him he’d never be worth a damn, could see him shooting the breeze with the President of the United States. This would’ve killed him. Not sclerosis of the liver.
    “Mark would like a few minutes alone with you,” the President said. He stood and exited through a side door that Erickson