“And it paid off, big-time.” He gestures at me with his drink. “Logan gets most of the credit. But I don’t need to tell you how outstanding his work is, do I?”
While I groan silently, Paige returns his grin with a tight-lipped smile. Her eyes find mine, and the message they deliver is clear: I’m going to owe her for this.
Not that she asked me to come up with an excuse not to go. Not this time. With only days left until I’m most likely going to become Stevens and Hammerness’s first sixth-year associate to be offered a partnership, she knows I can’t afford to dodge any opportunities to schmooze.
The firm’s founding partner sips his drink and lets out an audible breath, squinting at the woman he once hired over dozens of other highly qualified applicants. Because Paige is a brilliant lawyer, and he knows the firm lost a valuable asset when she didn’t return after Freya was born.
“So when are you coming back to work?” he finally barks at her. “That little girl of yours is old enough for a nanny by now, right?”
Shit.
My wife looks taken aback. “Uh. We haven’t really discussed it.”
“Logan told me you’re not planning on having any more kids.”
Horror straightens my spine. Paige whips her head in my direction, her gaze full of accusation and disbelief.
I can only vaguely recall saying anything to Hammerness about this, but I know I’ve reassured her in the past that I never tell him anything private. So I suppose her anger is justified.
“Freya’s not even two years old yet,” I say to the older man, and then I give my wife a faint smile as I add, “I’m sure Paige could tell you the statistical benefits of toddlers being in the full-time care of a parent instead of a stranger.”
Though she shows no apparent reaction to that, I can sense her disdain. Replaying my words in my head, I guess I did sound a little…condescending?
Whatever. I’m just trying to direct the Hammer away from the topic.
“Well, when you’re ready, even if you want to just start part time, you’ll always be welcome back,” Hammerness tells her. “Litigation, family law, whatever you want.”
“Thanks.” Paige looks and sounds perfectly cordial. “That’s good to know.”
Before I can catch on to what’s happening, he sidles up to her and wraps his arm around her shoulders. “And then,” he says, leering down at her, “we’re hoping for some big, exciting news about your husband’s career soon, right?”
In detached confusion, I watch as he slides his hand down to her waist and even lower, so that it comes to rest where her hip meets her ass. With a smirk that I’m sure he intends to be conspiratorial, he pulls her so close her body is plastered up against his.
What. The. Fuck.
Do something. Stop him.
The urge is there, fierce and insistent. But I’m paralyzed, stunned by the fact that this is happening, that the old lech has the balls to even think about pulling this shit, and at a complete loss for what I’m supposed to do.
How do I stop him—and keep my job?
How do I tell him to take his fucking hands off her—and still make partner?
Before I manage to find an answer, Paige sidesteps, easing out of his embrace. “You would know,” she tells her former boss, voice brittle.
Hammerness chuckles indulgently.
Then he spouts some platitudes and moves on, thank fucking God. Teeth gritted, I watch the back of his khaki pants and white dress shirt as he drifts over to a group of colleagues from corporate law, and then I turn back to Paige.
Never have I seen such a look on her face. Her chest is heaving, nostrils flaring, and her lips are so compressed they appear bloodless.
“Babe,” I say, shaking my head apologetically as I reach for her hand.
“I need to use the restroom,” she says, her eyes bright with cold, hard rage, and she evades my touch as she stalks past me.
Fuck. Releasing a harsh breath, I close my eyes for a second. Could that have gone any worse?
It’s not often I feel torn between my professional and personal selves. I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive spouse than Paige. She understands my ambitions, has known from the start what it’d take to get there, and has never uttered a peep of discontent.
She takes all of it in stride—the disrupted weekends and the way the job intrudes on our lives, the phone calls, the work I have no choice but to bring home with me, and how my preoccupation with my cases distracts my attention away from her and Freya.
Add to this the fact that I’ve got the career she wanted, and her lack of complaints makes her look like a goddamned saint.
And I just allowed another man to physically and verbally harass her. I chose the job over her in a way that’s inexcusable.
The fucked-up thing is, if I had a chance to do it again, I'd probably make the same choice. Because at this point it feels like my life depends on reaching this next step in my career.
I fully acknowledge that makes me kind of a piece of shit.
Paige doesn't return to me. For the next couple of hours, while I circle the grounds of Hammer’s backyard with a beer in my hand, chatting with colleagues and their plus-ones, I catch glimpses of her often. She’s being social, talking to old acquaintances from the office and making new ones.
And I can tell she's sticking to nonalcoholic drinks, like she said she would. “You don't want anyone commenting on you not drinking,” she told me on the way here. “I'll drive us home.” Which is unlike her. My wife is a product of her family, and the Waters clan has a deep appreciation for alcohol.
From a distance, nothing about how she looks or behaves indicates she's still pissed off. I'd have to be a halfwit to think she's not, though. But I'll deal with that when the time comes.
Which, unsurprisingly, it does once we’re in the car on the way home. Before I speak up, I let the heavy, tense silence linger until she's driven us out of the Hammer’s swanky neighborhood.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I say as she slows the car down for a red light. “You know he’s an asshole.”
Her profile looks taut and shuttered. “Yeah,” she replies at length. “And so do you.”
I heave a sigh. In fairness, I can't put all the blame on Hammer. It's on the tip of my tongue to apologize again, to make it clear that I'm doing so because I fucked up.
“The partners are meeting to discuss my partnership offer on Thursday,” are the words that come out of my mouth instead.
She scoffs, a grim smile on her lips as she flips on the blinker to turn onto the highway. “And then what? Once you’re a partner, you’ll stop letting him grope your wife?”
The verbal punch hits me in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. Jesus Christ. I guess I kind of deserved that, but Jesus Christ. I let him grope her? Come on now.
“I can’t afford to piss him off right now,” I answer tightly.
“Uh-huh.” Her agreement is tinged with more than a hint of bitterness. “And he knows that. So, because he loves to throw it in your face how much power he has over you, he’s trying to see how much you’ll let him get away with. He loves that you’re his little puppet on a string.”
“Seriously?” I clench my jaw, struggling to keep my temper in a mental choke hold. “Listen, I was trying to think of a diplomatic way to tell him to take his hands off you, but you stepped away right away, so I didn’t really have a chance to.”
The glance Paige slants me is brimming with disgust. “So if he told you, ‘Hey, Logan, the partnership is yours if you let me fuck your wife,’ what would you say?”
I jerk my head back, flinching, the words shocking me like a zap of static electricity.
“What the hell?” As I stare at her in disbelief, a hot and light-headed confusion flooding me, she keeps her eyes glued to the road. But I can see her throat working, can see how furiously she’s blinking and how she’s holding her breath, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“Pull over,” I say, spott
ing the first teardrop glistening as it trickles down her nose. “Now.”
I’m surprised that she actually listens, turning the car onto the shoulder and slowing to a stop. Then we’re sitting there in the idling car on the side of the road, her swiping at the wetness on her cheeks and me scrambling to regain my bearings.
“What’s going on?” I demand at last. “Is this just about him touching you?”
I’m dimly aware of holding my breath while she bends her head and touches her fingers to her forehead, massaging as if trying to soothe a physical pain.
“Baby, I'm so fucking sorry, okay?” I say, unable to wait for her to talk. “I fucked up, and I feel like an asshole. I won't let him do anything like that again.”
“Why are you talking to him about how many kids we’re having?” she asks abruptly, her voice high and thick with distress.
Uh. Okay. I blink while trying to process the change of topic and the fact that she ignored my apology.
“I think…” I start, shrugging, “I just mentioned it in passing. He makes me go to lunch with him, to go get drinks with him. We don’t have anything in common except work, and sometimes we exhaust that topic, and he starts asking me personal questions. I can’t just…not answer.”
She turns her red-rimmed and glassy gaze to me. “And why is he asking me about going back to work?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because before you went on leave, you told him you would?” I throw up my hands, widening my eyes at her. “I mean, you know that I have no problem with it if you want to go back now, right? I’ve always said, ‘Whenever you’re ready.’”
Her laughter is a short, humorless burst. “Well, I’m ready. I’ve been thinking that I could start working part time again. Freya would be okay. But it’s not gonna happen.”
“Why?”
Swallowing visibly, she averts her face. Her answer doesn’t come easily, because she stays silent for so long that by the time she speaks, my heartbeat is in my throat, and I’m steeling myself for the worst—whatever that might be.
Miserably, she grinds out, “Because I’m pregnant.”
“What?” My pulse does a weird flutter and jump. I’m staring at her and waiting for a just kidding that doesn't come. Instead she regards me solemnly, her tears having turned her eyes sharper and more stunning, much like how colors come alive when you put sunglasses on in bright sunlight.
We have one child with those same pale blue eyes.
Apparently we’re having another one?
“How?” I ask numbly, blinking. “You have an IUD.”
“I think it fell out,” she says, face twisting in a grimace. “I’m three weeks late. I took a test, and it was positive, but I wasn’t going to say anything until I’d seen my doctor. Just to be sure.”
“Shit,” I breathe out.
Everything that happened the past couple of hours suddenly makes a lot more sense. Yeah, she’d be pissed at Hammerness for his sleazy behavior under any circumstance, and she has every right to be upset at how I handled it. But the reason his talk about kids and work bothered her so much? That's much clearer now.
It's because she's pregnant. God.
So, yes, we’d agreed we were good with just one kid, mainly because it feels right. Freya wasn't planned, but she's just as loved and wanted as if she were. She’s like a ray of sunshine in our life, and imagining it without her is strange and incomprehensible at this point. But she was a colicky baby, and those months of daily, inconsolable, hours-long bouts of screaming wore us down. We’re neither of us interested in a sequel to that.
But now an almost giddy sensation fills my chest at the idea of another tiny human who’ll always be a part of me and a part of this woman, even as he or she grows up and becomes their own person. Another chubby-cheeked little marvel with Paige’s blue eyes and blonde hair, my nose and chin, a temper that has us tearing our hair out, and a smile that makes us fall completely and unconditionally in love.
Seems to me the biggest adjustment was becoming parents in the first place. With a second kid, at least we won’t experience the shock of our lives having changed irrevocably, that sense of having plunged into the deep end without being sure that we actually had the ability to swim.
Paige, though. I know she feels very differently. At least she’s not borderline hysterical, like last time.
“Well, I’d say it’s not the end of the world, but we’ve been there before,” I tell her now with a self-deprecating smile, hoping she’s receptive to the joke.
She’s not. Sniffling, she covers her mouth, tears popping out and rolling down her cheeks and onto her hand.
God dammit. I’m suddenly irrationally angry that we’re in a car and I can’t take her in my arms. “Hey,” I say, unbuckling my seat belt and leaning across to grasp her shoulders, pulling her as close as I can. I cradle the side of her head and rest my forehead against her hair, my mouth close to her ear, racking my brain for words that she might actually want to hear right now. She holds herself stiffly while she cries quietly, neither resisting nor welcoming my touch.
“You’ll be okay,” I almost-whisper fervently, realizing that my wife appreciates nothing more than the plain truth. “We’ll be okay. We’ll be a family of four. Freya will have a brother or sister. I obviously don’t know what that’s like, but you love your siblings, and I’m sure you don’t wish your parents had stopped with you.”
She lets loose a moist snort-laugh. “Pretty sure I’ve wished that plenty of times.”
I smile briefly. Point taken. Mia and Cam do have a tendency to aggravate her.
Still, I know she wouldn’t trade them for being an only child, not for anything.
“It’s gonna be a good thing.” I brush her hair back, tucking it behind her ear so that I can see her face better. “And you can still go back to work if you want to. Right now.”
“No, Logan,” she says, her lips quivering still, though the tears have stopped. “You know how that’d go. I could call it part time, but before I knew it, they’d dump a full-time case load on me. No.”
“So start your own practice. You’d be in full control of how much work you take on.” Dropping back fully into my own seat, I find her hand with my own, giving her no choice but to let me take a firm hold of it. “Start with some pro bono cases. Get your feet wet.”
She keeps her somber gaze on me for a while before turning to stare out the windshield. “Maybe.”
I squeeze her hand. “Where’s the woman I fell in love with, huh? She wouldn’t let anything stop her from doing what she wants.”
“I’ll think about it,” she says, her mouth twisting, and I know it’s time to let it go. We haven’t been together that long in the grand scheme of things, but I’ve still learned most of her subtle cues by now, and I only ignore them when she’s pushed me beyond giving a shit.
We fall into a brief, pensive silence. The interval makes room for the significance of it all to sink in. Starting with how close I am to partnership and how badly I need it, second only to oxygen. How that need drove me to stand silently by as my boss went full-scale misogynistic dickhead on the woman I love.
And how all of that is suddenly overshadowed by learning I’ve accidentally knocked her up. Again.
It’s inexplicable that I should be sitting here with this sense of all being right in the world. And yet, here I am.
Lifting Paige’s hand to my mouth, I kiss it—and hold it there until she turns her head and meets my eyes. Our gazes stay locked for a long time while I try to chase away the unhappiness in the depths of hers by silently baring my soul to her.
Before I met her, I intended to be single for a long time, and maybe forever, because I’d seen what heartbreak did to my dad, and there was no way I’d let anyone do that to me.
Then she happened to me, and there was no turning back. I probably haven’t done the best job making it clear how much she means to me. Becoming partner will make it easier. I’ll have more time.
“I’m no
t sorry we made another baby,” I tell her quietly, my lips still pressed against her knuckles.
Her eyes soften and glisten, breath whooshing out. For a second or two, her chin wobbles, and then a warm and weightless sensation fills me as the corner of her mouth dimples.
“It’s not going to happen again, though,” she says pertly, withdrawing her hand from mine. “After this one’s born, you’re not touching me until you’ve had a vasectomy.”
“Excuse me?” I sputter, laughing in disbelief.
“You heard me.” Her tone is breezy and resolute as she flips on the turn signal and checks the rear and side mirrors. “It’s your turn to take care of the birth control. Because I obviously suck at it.”
Because I have no argument against that and because the topic is not one that I—or any guy, I’m guessing—wants to dwell on, my only response is a snort. If she’s serious and she insists on it, I’ll do it. I know I will. But fuck, sharp objects near my junk? Not a happy thought.
“Just for the record,” I feel the need to point out after we’ve driven down the highway in silence for a few minutes, “if Hammerness ever said a word to me about having sex with you, I'd be out of a job and he'd be out of a face.”
“Then you'd go to prison for assault.” With her eyes on the road, my wife smirks. “And we know what happens to pretty boys in prison.”
“Nah,” I say with a shake of my head. “I’d plead out. Probation, time served. Being disbarred would be the worst part.”
Paige scoffs. “Yeah. Right. Like the DA would pass up an opportunity to put one of the city’s most successful criminal defense attorneys behind bars.”
I can’t help but grimace. Okay, fine. She has a point. “Still,” I tell her. “So worth it.”
She frowns. “If you hate Hammerness that much…”
“It's not that, baby.” Letting her know with my voice and my expression that I’m no longer joking around, I say, “It's about protecting what's mine.”
She casts me a surprised glance, and I can’t tell if she turns flushed because she’s pleased or because she's not.
Doesn’t matter. I said it. I meant it. And I’m not ever again going to give her a reason to doubt it.
Mend (Waters Book 2) Page 18