Maybe it was just me, but the only lawyer I’d encountered recently was a lazy, complacent, greedy man who didn’t come cheap. And I had the pleasure of spending the next few hours in his company.
Lucky me!
Flashing back on the expensive suit and watch the hot, yet dangerous, dad had been wearing, it made sense that he could be a lawyer too. Now that would explain a lot.
Chapter 4
Jacob
I watched the angry woman disappear in my rearview mirror with a smirk. Some people really aren’t morning people.
Shaking my head as she vanished from sight, I wondered what had crawled up her ass and died. She was way too pretty to be so wound up so early in the morning.
Really pretty. Beautiful actually.
After Shannon, Allie’s mom, and I had split up, I’d found myself attracted to different kinds of women than would’ve caught my eye before. Shannon personified the very definition of blonde bombshell. Tall, tanned, with sparkling brown eyes, masses of makeup, and with the cheekbones and body of a supermodel.
My tastes hadn’t changed that radically. I still liked blondes, for instance. I just preferred women who looked a little more real. Like the angry lady.
With her curvy body, vibrantly green eyes, and her light hair in a messy bun on top of her head, she was the exact type I dreamed about getting underneath me now. Even with her reddened cheeks and comfortable clothing, there was no denying that she’d gotten my blood flowing.
Feisty personality too, which is definitely hot.
Even so, I hadn’t dated much since the divorce. Allie was my top priority, and I usually only went out with women while she visited her mother in New York. Considering that was only for a month or two a year in the summer, it didn’t leave much of a chance to start and build a relationship.
Between my daughter and my job, there just hadn’t been much time for dating, and I wasn’t particularly interested either. I hadn’t written off the possibility of getting involved with someone again in the future. It simply wasn’t on my radar at the moment.
Ignoring the gutter my mind was begging to climb into with thoughts of the angry mom, I focused on the work I needed to get done today instead. By the time I pulled into the parking lot at the office, my brain was back on track and no longer on a mission to torture itself and my body.
The firm was situated in a building in downtown Savannah. Watkins Incorporated was small but prestigious. We had a great reputation and a solid enough lineup of clients that we could afford to take on as many pro bono cases as we could make time for, and that was one of the big reasons why I stayed there despite having been headhunted by firms all over the country.
John Watkins, the senior partner, only liked us taking cases we knew we could win, but he also trusted our judgment on what those cases were.
Our offices were located in a modernized colonial building right on a historical square. We had arches and wide windows, richly carpeted floors, and bronze handrails, but we also had state-of-the-art furniture and facilities. It truly was the best of both worlds, and walking in always made me smile.
“Good morning, Mr. Parker.” Dannie, my paralegal, fell in step beside me as I stepped out of the elevator. I never knew how she knew exactly when I’d arrive, but I had my suspicions that she watched the security monitors leading into the basement parking area.
It might have creeped me out knowing she was always waiting, but there was nothing creepy about Dannie. She had strawberry-blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin, and was as thin as a rail. A very Southern, girl-next-door type really.
She took her job seriously, and having her waiting meant we could always hit the ground running. I also wasn’t blind to the fact that she had developed a little crush on me, and even John had told me he thought she waited in the hopes of making me notice her.
I liked Dannie. I really did. I just didn’t like her in that way, and I wasn’t attracted to her physically at all.
“Good morning, Dannie. What’ve you got for me?” We strode down the hall toward my office while she gave me a brief update until we found the senior partner waiting for us at her desk as if my earlier thoughts about him had summoned him there. “What’s up, John?”
John Watkins was the third generation of Watkins lawyers to run the firm. I was also one hundred percent sure that he was the best boss anyone could ask for. He grinned and rapped his knuckles on Dannie’s desk.
“I just wanted to tell you we got the signed settlement agreement from Tricky Nicky. Well done, Jacob. You did it again.”
Score! I dragged my hand through my hair and internally let out a relieved breath. This had been an important one for me. “Great news. I had a conversation with him a little earlier. They were terrified of going to court with this.”
He inclined his head. “As they should’ve been.”
Dannie must have assumed the conversation was over when John pushed away from her desk because she suddenly had a ton of questions for me. As always.
“What are your plans for the weekend now that you won’t have to prep for that trial, Jacob? Is Allie excited for Halloween and trick or treating tomorrow? I bet she looked so cute in her lawyer costume. Did you take any pictures of her this morning?”
“Sure. Let me just pull them up.”
John shot me a warning look over the top of her head when I pulled my phone out of my pocket and she leaned in to look at it. I rolled my eyes and gave him an almost imperceptible shake of my head, but the old man didn’t miss a thing.
He didn’t have to worry about me with her, but every once in a while, he felt like he needed to remind me. In all fairness to him, she was leaning so close to me now that I felt her breasts against my arm.
“I only have a few,” I said to Dannie, taking a step back to put some space between us. I wasn’t tempted by her boobs on me, but I knew moving away would give John some peace of mind. “There she is. My little wannabe lawyer who will hopefully come to her senses soon enough and choose a different career path.”
John let out a hearty, booming laugh and nodded his agreement as he peered over my shoulder. “One can only hope. My own efforts to deter my kids from choosing this path were successful. Thank God.”
Unlike so many of his peers, John hadn’t forced his children into studying law so one of them could take over the firm and family legacy. He was perfectly happy to be the last Watkins lawyer here—as long as any future partners agreed to keeping the name as it was.
It was something I knew because we’d talked about it, and I knew he planned on leaving me in charge when he eventually retired. While I felt the familiar stirrings of excitement in my chest at the prospect of “inheriting” the firm one day, Dannie gushed about how cute Allie was.
“Oh my word. Just look at that little face.” She smiled. “She’s gorgeous, Jacob. Getting more beautiful by the day. I hope you have your shotgun on standby because it won’t be long now.”
I laughed and avoided touching her fingers when she handed the phone back. “I’m ready, all right. As ready as I can be anyway.”
John slapped my shoulder and made a sympathetic noise at the back of his throat. “That’s what I thought too. Now all three of my girls are married and I still want to use that shotgun sometimes. I better get back to work, and I’m sure you two do as well.”
“That, we do.”
He gave us a slight wave as he headed down the hall, leaving me alone with Dannie. Her light blue eyes were fixed on me, and there was a wistful expression on her face for a moment, but she cleared her throat and blinked it away.
“Right, boss,” she said as she followed me into my office. “Our court date for the Wolney case has been confirmed.”
“I’m ready for that one. Hopefully, we’ll be closing it before the end of next week.” The Wolneys were my favorite clients at the moment. I knew I shouldn’t have favorites, but fuck it.
They were an amazing couple who had been scammed out of fifteen thousand dollars by an inve
stment firm not local to Savannah. “I’m confident we have the win in the bag. I might just need you to do some last-minute research for me. I’ve come up with a few more points I want to look into.”
Dannie nodded before going to her desk to get her old-school spiral notebook and sitting down across from he. She jotted down what I needed her to look up for me, then left to go to our library.
When she was gone, I took off my jacket and rolled up my sleeves. I wasn’t losing this for the Wolneys, and luckily, I now had all weekend to prepare just for their case instead of having to split my focus between them and Nick’s case. I didn’t want to leave anything up to chance, and now I’d have more than enough time not to.
As I was working my way through their file for the umpteenth time, my phone buzzed underneath a stack of papers. My ex’s face came up on my screen after I dug it out, and I sighed but still answered.
She wouldn’t stop calling until I did.
“Good morning, Shannon. How are you?”
“Always so formal these days, Jacob,” she teased, and I curled my fingers into fists on my desk. “I won’t take up very much of your precious time. I just wanted to ask you to send me pictures of Allie’s costume for the Halloween contest.”
“I’ll send them tonight. I’m just in the middle of something right now.”
“You’re always in the middle of something, and you always have a lot on your plate, so it’s not like you can use that as an excuse. It will take you two seconds to send some pictures. Please? I’m dying to see what our baby looks like.”
“Shannon.”
“You could’ve sent them by now. Please, Jacob? I just want to see what she dressed up as.”
“A lawyer,” I said. “Hang on a second. I’ll send something.”
Annoyed as I yanked my phone away from my ear, I attached a few snapshots I’d taken to a message and sent it off. Shannon didn’t sound impressed when I came back on the line.
“A lawyer, Jacob? Really? Before she left here, she told me she wanted to be a fairy.” She sighed.
“A lot can change in two months, Shannon. Allie’s a kid. She changes her mind all the time.” She would’ve known this if she’d stuck around to raise our daughter, but she’d taken off just before Allie’s third birthday.
After that, she’d spent a little over a year without speaking to us. Eventually, she’d reached out, but by then, she was rebuilding her life in New York City and had no intentions of moving back to Georgia.
As such, she couldn’t see Allie much more often than she did. That month or two in the summer and for special holidays was it. It didn’t cause any friction between us since I adored Allie and would’ve fought Shannon tooth and nail for custody anyway, but it did test my patience when she made comments like the one she just had.
“Could you maybe ask her if she wants to go as a fairy when you go trick or treating tomorrow?” she asked after a long pause. “I bought her a beautiful pair of wings when she was here. I’d love to see her in them.”
“She’s not sure if she wants to go trick or treating. I convinced her to go this morning, but we’ll have to see if she actually does it. I’ll ask about the fairy thing if we do go, okay?”
“Okay,” she said. Our split hadn’t been amicable, and our relationship had been turbulent for years before it, but we managed to mostly stay civil with each other now. “Are you still doing Thanksgiving dinner this year?”
“Of course, I am.” I dragged my highlighter across a sentence in the Wolney file that had triggered another idea for a line of defense. “Is there anything else? I really need to get back to work.”
“Sure, I know. One last thing. Am I still invited to the Thanksgiving dinner?”
I wished I could say no. I wished I didn’t have to invite her in the first place. Just because we managed to keep things civil didn’t mean seeing each other was pleasant. The atmosphere between us was always tense, and there was nothing either one of us could do about it.
Ultimately though, Allie loved having both her parents with her on special occasions. No matter my feelings toward Shannon—or hers toward me—Allie was the only person who really mattered, so we both made an effort.
“Of course, you’re still invited. You’re Allie’s mom. You’ll always be invited.”
“Thank you, darling. I’m always so nervous that you’re going to back out of our plans. You’re the absolute best.”
I rolled my eyes. If I was the absolute best, she probably wouldn’t have run off with her yoga instructor. But sure. I’m the best.
“I’m bringing a plus-one this year,” she added after a beat. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. That’s great.” I sighed and screwed my eyes shut. “We’ll see you in a few weeks. Goodbye, Shannon.”
It hadn’t worked out with the yoga instructor. In the three years since she’d reappeared in our lives, she hadn’t seen anyone else.
If she was bringing this guy with her to Thanksgiving, I hoped she was serious about him. Allie had put up with enough from her over the years. My patience with and tolerance for her bullshit was close to depleted.
But somehow, I didn’t think she’d push her luck. I’d meet this guy, be nice, and hell, maybe I could even finally put the past to bed for good.
Chapter 5
Laurie
All I wanted to do as I drove to Eric’s office downtown was to go home and keep unpacking. It was an emotionally draining task, but it was also one I had to get done. I wanted to create a real home for Katie, and moping wasn’t going to turn that house into a home.
After everything that had happened this morning, it dawned on me as I drove that I didn’t want to live in limbo anymore. The move. The court case. I needed to be done with it all.
The delay in unpacking was on me. The delay in the finalization of the court case, however, was squarely on my lawyer’s shoulders. I needed to get my life back on track, and being able to get back to work would make a world of difference.
Determination rolled through me as I parked on the street outside his offices. They were situated in a super-modern building that was devoid of all character, but a friend in the writing industry had referred me to Eric.
Every time I walked in here, I wondered how much of a friend that friend really was. She’d highly recommended using Eric for this case, but I was starting to get the feeling that he either didn’t know what he was doing or he was just trying to suck every penny he could get out of me before kicking the case to the curb.
As I crossed the polished marble lobby, I mentally crossed my fingers and toes that he’d actually have something for me today. He was supposed to be helping me go after the jerks who took the plot of one of my books and made it into a movie.
It should’ve been great to be getting a highly anticipated movie made out of one of my books. If only I’d known about it, but I hadn’t.
I’d seen the first teaser trailer right along with the rest of the world almost a year ago. The storyline had seemed far too familiar, so I’d looked the movie up. It still hadn’t been released yet, but there was no doubt that it was based on my book.
The day I saw the trailer was the last day I’d been able to string together more than two words at a time. As it was, I’d only just been able to really get back into writing when it happened. It devastated me that someone would just steal my work like this, and my muse, who had only returned from an extended break a few months earlier, took right off again.
“I’m so sorry, Laurie,” Eric’s receptionist said when I reached her desk. “He’s running late. Just have a seat, and I’m sure he’ll be here just as soon as he can.”
“Really? Again?” It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that he wasn’t ready or even here to see me at the arranged time. He was always late.
The receptionist gave me a tight, insincere smile, and flicked a finger at their waiting area. “He’s a very busy man. I’m sure you understand.”
“I understand, all r
ight,” I muttered under my breath as I strode over to the very same waiting room that I’d spent hours in thus far. “He’s too busy for his actual work.”
It wasn’t like he wasn’t getting paid either. I slammed my back against the padded chair and pulled out my phone. Maybe I could actually get something written while I waited this time.
Half an hour later, nothing had come to me. At least my screen lit up when the phone started ringing in my hand. “MOM” appeared in bold letters, and I smiled. She always seemed to know when I needed to hear her voice.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she said when I answered. “How’s my girl doing?”
“I’m okay. I’m at Eric Starkey’s office now. He’s late again. Surprise, surprise.” I saw the receptionist rolling her eyes at me, but I ignored her. “How are you?”
“Someone should buy that man a watch and attach a shock collar to it,” she said. “Just one of those ones that give you a little jolt that’ll remind him when he’s got an appointment.”
I laughed. “How I turned out not to be prone to random bouts of spontaneous violence, I’ll never know.”
Mom would never hurt a hair on anyone’s head, nor did she condone violence, but I’d definitely gotten my creative-thinking streak from her. She chuckled at my joke. “You’re a writer, honey. You get to take it out on the villains in your stories. The rest of us only have the lawyers of the world to fantasize about giving little jolts to.”
“Well, if anyone deserves it, it’s him.”
“Exactly. Some people put those things on dogs, you know? I’m not saying it’s right. All I’m saying is if the collar fits…”
I burst out laughing again. “I agree. I hate comparing him to a dog, though. It’s not fair on our canine friends.”
“True.” She giggled before clearing her throat. “I wanted to know if you and Katie are still up for trick or treating as a family tomorrow night?”
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