by G. K. Brady
He gave a noncommittal shrug that was more fake than her glasses. “Few, really. We will ask you to first sign an agreement to hold the firm harmless. After that, everything is back to normal, and you will be at your desk Monday morning.”
Wrong. Nothing will ever be back to normal. Since Thanksgiving, she’d had plenty of time to ponder the crossroads where she stood and which future she desired for herself. This, right here, left her with no doubt the path she was about to follow was the true one, the only one for her. And that future did not include slaving away in a pit of slithering snakes.
When Michaela didn’t immediately respond, Steadman slid a sidelong glance at Judith before his gaze landed back on her. “We appreciate that this has been a difficult time,” he said smoothly. “Therefore, if you would prefer to return after the start of the year, you have the firm’s blessing. Your pay raise will go into effect today, as soon as you sign off.”
Judith passed the file along the table’s smooth surface, and he corralled it with his fingertips. He plucked a document from the folder, scanned it, and placed it between himself and Michaela.
She didn’t look at it. She didn’t need to. “Thank you, Mr. Steadman,” she said with a graciousness she didn’t feel. “But I’ve made some discoveries of my own, and no matter how big the bribe, I will not be coming back.”
God, that feels good to say!
Steadman flinched, and Judith, whose guile wouldn’t fill a thimble, rocked back in her seat as though she’d been struck.
Steadman scrutinized Michaela. “May I ask your plans?”
Michaela pulled off her fake glasses, placed her clasped hands on the table’s surface, and leaned forward. “You may. I will be going out on my own. As to the rest, I’m not prepared to share those details until I’ve conferred with my attorney and we’ve worked out what’s in my best interest going forward.” The fact her attorney was herself was nothing he needed to know.
His eyes sharpened, and he regarded her for several beats, as if processing something that made no sense to him. “Might I suggest you will regret your decision, Ms. Wagner?”
“I don’t think I will, Mr. Steadman.”
For the first time since he’d entered the conference room, the old man’s façade showed signs of cracking. “I don’t understand. We made you a ridiculously generous offer.”
She leaned back in her chair. “It’s not always about money. Someone told me that individual effort is a solo journey. I may be part of a team—in this case, a legal team—but how hard I push myself, how high I climb, is purely up to me.” Thank you, Blake Barrett. “Being away from this office made me realize the power in that statement, and I plan to take control of my destination and drive the bus there myself. Had you not suspended me, I’m not sure I would have recognized my own potential, so thank you for that.”
Michaela cringed as she watched Blake turn over the puck for what must have been the fifth time in the game—and they were only halfway through the second period. Aiming the clicker at the TV, she muted the game and tried to look away, but it was like pulling her eyes from a car wreck. Some part of her just had to keep watching, had to assess the level of damage, no matter how horrible. The jumping muscles in his jaw told her he was trying to conjure confidence from thin air, and he wasn’t succeeding. As he drifted in for the face-off, his usual tics and twitches were more pronounced than ever, and his eyes held a look that bordered on frantic. Where had his fierce determination gone?
Her heart sank like a stone. She’d watched every game, and a fresh crack had scored her heart whenever Blake’s ice time had been shortened. Hockey was everything to him. The slide in his play and his role had to be killing the ferocious competitor inside him.
She had yearned to reach out and soothe him, but she had held herself back. Push, pull. During the past weeks, ever since she’d put Steadman, Hart & Fast in her rearview mirror, the familiar struggle had been going on inside her, and the only outcome had been paralysis. Was his poor play her doing? If she bothered to check in with him—hell, she hadn’t even wished him a happy birthday—would his play improve?
“Oh, get over yourself!” she admonished aloud. “He’s a pro who’s going through a slump. You’re not even a blip on his thought radar when he’s on the ice.”
Her phone vibrated, and she snatched it up, grateful for the distraction.
“Happy New Year’s Eve, Micky-Dub!”
Michaela exhaled. “Same to you, Fi. Where are you guys now?”
“The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. You should see this place! So luxurious and sooo romantic.”
“Wish I was there too.” The stab of envy in Michaela’s heart physically hurt. An image of spending days lolling in a big fluffy bed with Blake popped into her head. They’d both be naked because why bother with clothes when—
Stop it!
“You could be. Just hop in your truck and—”
“You know the old saying. Two’s company and all that.”
“Well, maybe give that man a chance to grovel and we could be four. Then again, you’d have to talk to him first, wouldn’t you?” Fiona said blandly.
Michaela sat at her parents’ kitchen table, and she dropped her forehead in her hand, fighting back a sudden knot in her throat that made it hard to breathe.
“Shouldn’t a best bud be on her bestie’s side?” she choked.
“If the best bud thinks the bestie’s right, then yes. But sometimes a best bud’s job is to shake some sense into the bestie because her fake glasses are fogged up.” Fiona sighed. “I want to see you happy, Mick, and you were happier with Blake than I’ve ever seen you. He was good to you. Yeah, you had a fight where some not-so-nice things were said, but that’s heat-of-the-moment shit. He tried to apologize. Why not give him—give yourself—a chance?”
“I-I think it might be too late.”
“How do you know if you don’t try, Mick?”
“I’m just … I still have so much to sort out with the job change.” And breaking up with Blake had dulled her ability to sort anything to do with her heart. She was a robot going through the motions programmed into her. Was she coming or was she going? This late in the game, was it even possible to backpedal and try to hit the reset button with him? The thought was daunting, like trying to undo the damage from a broken bone that hadn’t been set properly right after the break.
The last few weeks had been upheaval on top of turmoil, and she’d shut down, made herself numb. But with time and her parents’ doting care, the numbness was wearing off—which wasn’t necessarily a good thing because she was emerging from her stasis with a great big hole where her heart was meant to be.
God, she missed Blake. Was there a way to let him know subtly so she didn’t put him on the spot and could protect herself from the backlash if he was done with her? Trouble was, she wasn’t sure she was sneaky enough to figure out how to orchestrate it.
She tuned back into the conversation in time to hear Fiona ask, “Have you heard any more from your former employer?”
“I just got a nice lump sum deposited into my account that I plan to use to get my new gig off the ground.” Even that gave her heart a mere nudge instead of the big boost she should have relished, but the shift in subject managed to jump her to a different track where she could partially function.
“So you took the settlement they offered?”
Michaela scoffed. “No, I squeezed them a little harder and wrung a few more dollars from them. I also got a tidy sum for April, which will help when she comes to work for me after the New Year.”
“Good for you! Those fuckers are lucky you’re so nice and didn’t slap them with a big fat lawsuit.”
“If I’m being honest, Fi, they weren’t the ones who did anything wrong. Well, except hire Brad in the first place. But he was a master conniver and manipulator. They had no idea that when he stayed late, he was letting himself into my office to mess with my stuff. They also had no idea how well he knew their IT systems and
how capable he was of engineering trouble, that he was the one deploying their systems to invent catastrophes all along.”
“You’re giving him way too many props, Mick. He was a vengeful creep who wanted you and set you up because you didn’t want him back.”
“Whatever his motivation, he was masterfully deceptive, and they had no idea until it was too late. But I have a feeling he’ll get his in the end.” And that thought did give Michaela a lift.
“You mean beyond firing him?”
“Mm-hmm. The DA and Steadman are old chums from law school, and Steadman doesn’t like egg on his face any more than he likes dishonest employees. There’s a good chance Brad will end up somebody’s bitch behind bars.”
Fiona cackled. “I still say you should have accepted the big raise Steadman offered you just so you could torture the old geezer by reminding him, every day, how badly he screwed up where you’re concerned.”
“Honestly, as awful as it was, he did me a favor. The money won’t be great to start, but I’m going to enjoy going to work so much more.”
“Especially when work is in your lovely condo mansion.”
Michaela blew out a breath. “About that. Looks like I’ll be finding a new place to live.”
“What? What happened to staying there through March?”
“The owner’s project is wrapping up early, and he’s returning in January. He wants his condo back.”
“Where will you go?”
“Paige and Beckett have a carriage house above their garage, and they told me I could stay there as long as I wanted, so that could be a nice stopgap until I wrangle a permanent place.”
“Hey, maybe you could give that Scott guy another chance!”
Michaela chuckled. “Don’t think so. Apparently, he’s got himself a girlfriend, which is great. He wasn’t for me anyway.” I can only think of one guy who is.
As if her bestie had read her mind, Fiona steered the conversation back to Blake. “Okay. So your professional life is back on track, which leaves your personal life. Obviously, Scott is out, but you still have option two: hot hockey player Blake.”
“Gah! Stop, Fi. Let’s admit I’m not good at picking men.”
“I disagree, Micky-Dub. He’s nothing like Anders, and he deserves a second chance. Anders had a stick up his butt and thought he never screwed up. Blake uses a stick for a living, and he screwed up but owns it.”
“Is he paying you?” Michaela chuckled.
“He’s the one for you, Mick. You just don’t see it yet.”
“I only knew him for two-plus months, and you knew him a few days. How can you possibly tell?”
“There’s a lot you can intuit about a person,” Fiona argued. “The way he looked at you at Thanksgiving told me volumes.”
“Like he was hungry?” Michaela scoffed. “It was sex, Fi.” Even Michaela didn’t believe the words she spewed because there had been an undeniable deeper connection she couldn’t explain.
Honestly, Fiona wasn’t telling her anything that she hadn’t recently admitted to herself, and while the memory of what Blake had said to her during that fight still stung, the sting didn’t hurt nearly as much as missing him did.
“No, not like a guy who’s hungry. Like a guy whose heart was quicksand—shifting and gooey and sucking things in. Okay, so not the best analogy. But I watched him watching you, and he was so focused on you that he was blind to everything and everyone else—well, except his mother when she spiraled out of control, but kinda hard to be blind to that spectacle. Then he looked like he was in hell, but again, it seemed centered on how it affected you, not himself or anyone else. And just look at how shitty he’s been playing since you two broke up. I’m telling you, Mick, that man would give up his world for you.”
Too dumbfounded to respond, Michaela let the comment slide for a beat. He had been playing shitty. “I hate it when you’re stubborn. You’re like a dog with a bone.”
“You hate it when I’m logical, which is the opposite of what you are right now,” Fiona countered. “Tell me what made you fall for him the first place. Other than how he looks, that is, because we both know there’s more to him than that.”
Michaela let out a resigned sigh. “He makes—made—me laugh. He’s smart, thoughtful, protective. He has a really good heart. He genuinely cared about what affected me, and he tried to fix things, whether I wanted him to or not.” She let out a soft chuckle. “I like that sexy brooding thing he’s got going on.”
He put me first, spent time trying to figure out what he could do to make me happy, and I’ve never felt like that with anyone but my parents. Hadn’t that kind of caring deserved the second chance she hadn’t given him?
Her breath stuttered in her chest as an image of his eyes drilling into hers popped into her head. They’d haunted her dreams, night and day.
“His eyes,” she blurted. “He had a way of looking at me … maybe it’s what you were describing from Thanksgiving.” He made me feel beautiful and adored and like I was the most important part of his world.
She caught herself and snapped out of her Blake trance. “Two months isn’t enough time to know someone well enough to commit to more.” Is it?
“Yeah, well, five years didn’t tell you everything you needed to know about Anders either.”
“Brutal, Fi.”
“The truth often is, Mick, but it doesn’t have to be.”
Chapter 36
Mila Kunis Cure-Alls
Mid-January
Blake parked his Range Rover and strode to the Cooper Lounge, where he was about to meet his date.
My date.
He was flying blind here, as in he was on the first blind date he’d been on in over a year. First date he’d been on in months. But was it really a date when he was merely helping Ferguson out? The guy had just gotten back together with Tracy, and her best friend was in town for the holidays. Ferguson had begged Blake to join them for dinner so she wasn’t the proverbial odd-man out.
“Believe me, Bear, you’ll be glad you came out of your hole for a few hours,” Ferguson had enthused. “Tracy’s girlfriend is hot, hot, hot, and unless you really screw things up, sex is on the menu tonight—which is something you need, dude. Badly.”
No, he didn’t need sex on the menu. Well, he did, but only with one woman. Horny-specific. Wasn’t that the term he’d used with Michaela when he’d been hammered a lifetime ago? God, no wonder she was done with him! Not only had he been stupid drunk, he’d been just plain stupid.
Now he was firmly mired in his Michaela misery, along with being mired on the team’s fourth line, battling in vain to get himself back to the second line. Hell, even the third line seemed like a long shot. He needed to break out of this funk because he was hurting his team. None of them were playing well, and he couldn’t help but feel it was his fault. The slide had started with him, and it hadn’t stopped. Their shot at a playoff spot was sliding right along with their record.
Everything had gone south after he and M broke up—the breakup he hadn’t even realized was a breakup until its obviousness clobbered him over the head. By then, it had been far too late to put it back together again.
After trolling relationship websites for advice, he’d suffered through a self-imposed “no-contact” period. Had it been long enough? Was it time to try again? Her answering silence from before had been painfully deafening—was still painfully silent. Its sting poked at his frustration, and anger flared along with the same inner debate: he’d fallen over his skates trying to apologize. Didn’t she owe him at least the courtesy of a response, even if it was a “Go fuck yourself”? That sudden flash dissolved into a fresh stab of disappointment and hurt. Maybe it was good he was getting out tonight.
As he entered the restaurant, Ferguson stood and flagged him over to a table where Tracy sat beside Fergs and a Mila Kunis lookalike sat next to an empty spot in a booth. She was … Fergs hadn’t exaggerated. The girl was stunning. When she gave him a dazzling smile, his bat
tered ego bumped upward an inch or two.
“Lisa, this is Blake Barrett,” Ferguson said before retaking his seat.
She tucked a piece of her long brown hair behind her ear. “I’ve really been looking forward to meeting you. I’m a huge fan.”
Blake gave her a polite half-smile as he slid into the seat beside her. “Nice to meet you too.” A flowery sort of fragrance assaulted him. Sweet, but not too overpowering.
“I’ve heard this place is really, really good.” She flashed big hazel eyes at him and made a moaning sound that would have been sexy … if it came from M.
Stop thinking about M. He gave himself an inner head slap. “Yeah, it is.” He tried to work himself into the small talk without his awkwardness blazing like a beacon, mostly listening in while the three chatted.
Lisa was fairly easy on the eyes and ears. Pretty. Enthusiastic. Maybe too enthusiastic. Her hair was the same shade as M’s—maybe not quite as rich or shiny—but she had soft waves instead of corkscrew curls like the ones he’d wrapped around his fingers for months. The thought it might not all be hers jolted him in his seat.
Dinner was decent, though he couldn’t remember what he’d had hours later as they sat at a reserved table in Vinyl’s upper mezzanine, not too far from the table he’d shared with M, Quinn, and Sarah Halloween night. Head on a swivel, he found himself looking for M everywhere, torn between wanting to see her and hoping like hell she wasn’t there with some other guy.
Lisa tapped his forearm and pointed at his club soda. “You don’t drink?”
“No.”
She frowned, the vertical lines between her brows deeply creased, like frowning was a normal expression on her … which brought to mind M’s soft dimple and the tiny creases bracketing her mouth whenever she smiled.
Focus, dumbass.
“My mother’s an alcoholic,” he explained. An alcoholic who’d just entered rehab. Blake had talked to her several times before she started on the program, and she sounded determined. Hopefully, it would stick and she wouldn’t fall off her wobbly wagon. The fact she’d enrolled herself was a victory, one M would’ve celebrated with him.