by Julie James
THEY MET AT The Shore, their usual place, a restaurant owned by Brooke’s company that was located right on Oak Street Beach. They scored a prime table overlooking the water—one of the advantages of dining with the general counsel and part owner—and toasted over a couple of Dos Equis to his upcoming front-page feature.
Shortly after their food arrived, Brooke brought up a different subject. “Why are Charlie and Tucker sending me text messages asking if I know what ‘the real deal’ is between you and someone named Victoria the Divorce Lawyer? And more important, why don’t I know what the real deal is?”
Ford shook his head, not surprised to hear this. Charlie and Tuck had been all over him about Victoria ever since they’d met her—particularly Tucker, who kept asking for his “future wife’s” phone number so he could ask her out.
Clearly, in light of recent events, he was going have to tell Tuck that wasn’t happening.
Ever.
“I told you about her,” he said to Brooke. “She’s my new next-door neighbor.”
“Ah, right. The one who SUCKS.”
He chuckled, having forgotten about the text message he’d sent Brooke a few weeks ago. “Well . . . I may have been a little fired up when I said that.”
Brooke studied him closely, then set down her fork. “Oh my God, you’ve slept with her already?”
“A little louder, Brooke. I’m not sure the volleyball players on the other side of the beach could hear you.”
She lowered her voice, but still looked at him like he was crazy. “Your next-door neighbor? And here I thought you were an idiot for hooking up with that chick who made you talk dirty in a Scottish accent. How is this not going to be awkward when it ends?”
Ford dismissed this with a wave. “Don’t worry. It won’t be.”
Brooke rolled her eyes. “You are so thinking with your penis right now.”
That part of him definitely had been all in favor of sleeping with Victoria the other night, but his head also had zero regrets. “If you knew her, you’d understand. She’s different from . . . I don’t know, any other woman I’ve met, really.”
“How so?”
He took a bite of his French fries. “She’s this high-powered divorce lawyer. Runs her own firm. Smart, confident, and totally snarky. The first time we had dinner together she gave me this big speech about not wanting to get married, and how she’s ‘self-selected out of the happily-ever-after rat race.’ And it’s not just a speech—the woman is truly cynical when it comes to relationships. And snarky. Did I mention that?”
“Twice.”
Right. Ford ate another French fry. “Although I suppose when you get past all the sarcasm and the saucy comments, she’s actually kind of . . . funny. And it is pretty cute how she’s so determined to hide the fact that there’s this softer side to her.” He grinned slyly. “Fucking hot as hell in the bedroom. And on my dining table.”
Brooke gave him an amused look. “You do realize that’s the most you’ve ever told me about any woman you’ve hooked up with?”
He scoffed at that. “Get out of here. I always talk to you about the women I go out with.”
“That last woman you dated? Hailey? I don’t even know what she did for a living.”
Ford sipped his beer, remaining silent.
“Trying to remember?” Brooke asked.
“It’ll come to me.”
She smiled, her point made. “I’m just saying, it sounds like you like this Victoria the Divorce Lawyer.”
Christ, not this conversation. “You know what you’re doing, don’t you? You’re married now. And that means, like every other married person we know, you want all your single friends to get married, too, so that you can have couples’ dinner parties, or couples’ Scrabble nights, or go on little couples’ weekend trips to bed-and-breakfasts in Door County, or—”
“All right, I get the picture. And that’s not what this is about.” Brooke paused. “Although Cade and I were just talking about going up to Door County with Vaughn and Sidney and Huxley and Addison.”
“Of course you were.”
“But that doesn’t change the fact that I’d hate to see you pass up the chance to have something good because you’re too busy being a typical male bonehead about these things.”
“You know, if you were a guy, and I’d just told you that I’d had fantastic, no-strings-attached sex with a hot woman, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. You’d simply high-five me and ask if she has any single friends.”
She flashed him a grin. “Sorry, babe. But when they handed out best friends, you drew the straw that came with boobs and occasionally likes to talk about feelings.”
Great. “I was ten years old at the time. Of course I picked the straw that came with boobs.”
She laughed, and then looked at him for a moment. “Just tell me you know what you’re doing.”
“Don’t I always? Trust me.” With a confident wink, he took a sip of his beer. “So what’s going on with Cade these days? Any more crampon shopping?”
* * *
OUTSIDE THE BAY window of the kitchen, a sailboat floated by on the lake. It was an idyllic scene—a beautiful summer day, not a cloud in the sky, and the water a calm, deep blue.
Inside the house, however, the scene was anything but idyllic or calm.
“Maybe if you’d paid half as much attention to me as you did to all the crap you collected, we wouldn’t be here,” the soon-to-be ex–Mrs. Hall shouted.
“If it’s such crap, then you shouldn’t give a crap about getting half of it,” her husband shot back. He turned to Victoria. “Does she really have to be here for this?”
They were all gathered in the gourmet kitchen of the Halls’ six-million-dollar North Shore lakefront estate: Victoria and her client, Brad Hall, standing at one end of the massive granite island; Lisa Hall and her lawyer on the other. The appraiser the parties had hired hovered awkwardly by the refrigerator, trying to stay out of the fray.
The Halls, both in their fifties—him, a technology entrepreneur, her, a cardiovascular surgeon—had mutually filed for divorce after nearly thirty years of marriage, for the simple reason that they couldn’t stand each other anymore. Thankfully, their two children were grown, which meant custody wasn’t an issue, because the divorce proceedings had been bitter and contentious at every step.
This meeting, the purpose of which was to determine the value of Mr. Hall’s sizable rare notes, coins, and stamps collection, wasn’t shaping up to be any different.
Before Victoria had a chance to answer her client, Mrs. Hall jumped in.
“Oh, sure. Turn away, talk to her instead of me,” she said, pointing to Victoria. “That pretty much sums up our marriage. Only before, you would talk to me through the kids. Then they left home, and we didn’t talk at all.”
“Can we go back to that?” Mr. Hall asked sarcastically. “Because this conversation is reminding me exactly why we didn’t talk: because you bitch about everything. It’s like you don’t know how to have a fucking conversation if you’re not complaining about something.”
“Oh, sorry if I don’t get all excited about some stupid dollar bill printed in 1861.” Mrs. Hall pointed to the collection of rare notes that lay out on the counter. “Because for the last ten years, that’s about the only thing that seemed to get your motor running.”
“Gee, another complaint. Imagine that,” Mr. Hall said in mock surprise. “You know, you used to think I was cute for being so interested in U.S. history.”
“I also used to think you were cute when you were a size thirty-four in pants.” She smiled sweetly, gesturing to his stomach. “Things change, baby.”
Okay, time to cut this off, or they would be here for hours. Victoria managed to convince her client to wait in the living room as the other lawyer corralled Mrs. Hall into the sunroom.
Unfortunately for all of them, however, the appraiser had several questions about the collection. And every time Mr. Hall came into the kitchen to answer one
of those questions, Mrs. Hall bolted out of the sunroom, determined to ensure that her husband didn’t screw her over “with any of his bullshit.” Convinced he was hiding part of the collection, she examined every drawer and shelf in the library and master bedroom, and also insisted they open the two safes in the home. All of which was furiously contested by Mr. Hall—and for no good reason, since, as it turned out, he wasn’t actually hiding anything.
Victoria finally got out of there around six P.M., and then fought Friday rush hour traffic back into the city for nearly two hours. By the time she rolled into her office to pick up some files that she wanted to review over the weekend, she was mentally and physically drained.
Given the late hour, she was surprised when she saw Will sitting at his desk outside her office. “Hey, what are you still doing here?”
He held up a white takeout bag in one hand, a bottle of Basil Hayden’s bourbon in the other. “From the way you sounded when you checked in, I figured you would need it.”
“I’m so giving you a raise.”
He grinned. “Sweetie, I already gave myself a raise last month.” He followed her into her office, where she dropped off her briefcase and sank gratefully into her desk chair. He handed over the takeout bag—pork fried rice that smelled delicious—and then poured two fingers of bourbon into a couple of glasses he’d snagged from the break room as she told him about her afternoon with the Halls.
When she finished eating, she leaned back in her chair, a companionable silence falling between her and Will.
It was after eight o’clock, and the sun had just begun to set. Outside the window, the Chicago skyline was set against a brilliant backdrop of orange, red, and purple.
“It’s funny,” she said. “Just the other day I was telling someone how in the eight years I’ve been a divorce lawyer, I haven’t seen much that inspires me to try my luck at marriage.”
On the opposite side of the desk, Will had his feet propped up on the chair next to him. He turned his head and looked at her. “I’m guessing today didn’t improve that opinion much.”
Indeed, it had not.
Nineteen
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Victoria proudly told Dr. Metzel about her successful train ride the previous Sunday—an achievement she’d repeated just that morning by taking the subway to his office.
He seemed pleased with her progress, and encouraged her to continue with weekend excursions, when the train cars weren’t so crowded, so that she could continue to “experience the feared environment” under safer, more controlled circumstances.
“And I also took an exercise class,” she told him. Granted, it had been a yoga class at seven A.M. that morning, which meant no crowd and no hot and sweaty room to trigger her fear of light-headedness, but still. Baby steps.
He walked her through another version of a relaxation technique, then tried something new: he asked her to hyperventilate, and then hold her breath, with the idea of re-creating the sensations of a panic attack.
She got about a minute into that, and then began to feel light-headed. Immediately, she stopped.
“I’m not sure about this exercise.” Feeling as though her heart was racing, she tried taking a deep breath.
“It’s okay, we can stop,” Dr. Metzel said reassuringly. “Remember your relaxation techniques.”
She nodded and closed her eyes. I feel quiet. The muscles in my forehead are relaxed and smooth. My shoulders are loose. My legs and feet feel warm and heavy.
After several moments, she felt better and smiled weakly at Dr. Metzel. “Guess I’m not cured yet.”
“You’ll get there. The point is for you to remember that you are in control.”
She nodded, then glanced at her watch and saw they still had ten minutes left in the session.
“With the time we have left,” Dr. Metzel led in, “I was wondering if we could talk about your relationship with your parents.”
“Sounds very Freudian.”
He smiled. “Let’s start with your mother. Did her suicide attempt impact the relationship between you two?”
No beating around the bush there, apparently. “Of course. How could it not?”
“Could you expand on that a little?”
“Afterward, I felt very protective of her. My mother is an only child, and my grandparents on that side were already in a nursing home at the time, so she didn’t have anyone else to look out for her. My father was no help, naturally—in fact, after her suicide attempt, his entire family completely distanced themselves from my mother and me.”
“Were you worried she would try to kill herself again?”
Only every day I left for school, for about five years. “It was a concern, yes.”
“That must have been very difficult on you.”
Victoria paused, surprised to suddenly feel a slight burning in her eyes. For Pete’s sake, Slade. This was something she’d resolved a long time ago. “It wasn’t easy, no.”
Dr. Metzel held her gaze. “Were you angry with your mother for trying to kill herself?”
She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Okay, see, now this was why she didn’t like therapy. “I mean, what kind of question is that? You want to know how I felt? I felt happy when she got better. There.” She pointed to his notepad. “Write that one down.”
Dr. Metzel let that sit for a moment. “What’s your relationship with your mother like today?”
They were moving on—good. “She still lives in central Florida, where I grew up. We see each other a few times a year. Either I’ll fly down there or she’ll come up here.”
“How about your father? Any contact there?”
“Nope. Nada.” She debated whether to admit this next part. “I looked up my two half sisters on Facebook a couple years back. I guess I was just curious.”
“Have you considered reaching out to them?”
She shook her head. “How do you start that conversation? I’m not sure they even know I exist.”
Dr. Metzel jotted something down and then flipped through his notes. “I want to circle back to something we started talking about during our last session, before we ran out of time. You mentioned that you haven’t had a relationship that lasted more than three months since high school.”
Oh, brother. “The summer after high school. And really, I still don’t see how that’s relevant to . . . well, anything.”
“I think if you dig a little deeper, you might find it’s relevant to a lot of the things we’ve been talking about.”
“Ah, you have a theory.” She cocked her head. “Okay, I’ll bite. Let’s hear it.”
Dr. Metzel’s voice was calm and matter-of-fact. “Your father left you, started a new family, and hasn’t been in contact with you since. Then your mother, the only parent you had around, tried to kill herself—leaving you fearful, as a child, that she might try to do it again. My theory, Victoria, is that because of all this, you have significant trust, abandonment, and control issues that are continuing to impact your ability to have healthy, intimate adult relationships. Issues that you are reluctant to acknowledge, given your near-compulsive need to always seem ‘okay.’”
Victoria swallowed, and said nothing for a long moment. Blinking back the sting in her eyes, she gave the good doctor a half smile. “Well. I asked.”
* * *
DURING THE CAB ride home, Dr. Metzel’s words rang again and again in her head, like a depressing emo song that was overplayed on the radio because it had angst and meaning and because some people, apparently, liked to focus on the crappy things in life.
The good doctor was only trying to help. She knew that. He just . . . wanted to talk about things she didn’t like thinking about.
She’d been doing just fine her entire adult life. She was a successful woman; she’d worked hard to get where she was today. Back when she was twelve years old, and still Victoria Delgado, she’d started working after school and on weekends to help her mom pay the bills. Then, she’d been a cafeteria server
at a retirement home, the only place that would hire her that young. Now she had people who worked for her, at the law firm that bore her name and her name alone.
She had two great best friends. She had sex with men when she wanted. Good sex. So what if she didn’t have serious relationships? Was that required? What, because she was a woman of marriageable age, she was just expected to follow that path?
Inside her bedroom, she realized she was pacing.
See? This, too, was why she disliked therapy. In a nutshell, because it made her feel like shit.
She needed a distraction.
She couldn’t call her mother; heck, with all the raw emotions she felt right then, God only knew what would come out of her mouth. Audrey and Rachel were probably available, but they would know something was wrong and, frankly, she didn’t know where to start the conversation of all the things supposedly “wrong” with her right then.
She looked over at the wall she shared with Ford.
Two minutes later, she smiled when he opened his front door. “I’m early, I know. I just thought if you weren’t busy, maybe we could get a jump on things.”
He pushed the door open. “Sure. Come on in.”
“Great. Thanks.” She took a calming breath and stepped inside.
Taking her gently by the elbow as she passed by, he cocked his head. “You okay?”
It was the oddest thing, but as she stood there, feeling the warmth of his hand on her elbow and peering up into his eyes, she suddenly just felt . . . better, somehow. “I’m okay.”
She touched his cheek—that was cute, this “worrying about her” thing—and then she headed in the direction of his kitchen.
Time to get back to their mission.
Twenty
THEIR FIRST STOP that afternoon was Peter Sutter Number Eight’s home. Car window open, Ford watched through his camera lens as Victoria waited at the top of the front steps of the massive Lincoln Park greystone.
She rang the bell again and shifted the envelope from her right hand to her left. Watching her through the camera lens, his gaze traveled over her blue sundress, which fell just above her knees. The deep color of the dress highlighted her golden skin, and with her rich brown hair pulled back into a long ponytail, she somehow managed to look both sweet and sexy.