I patted her shoulder, more of a friendly gesture than anything else. “You’re the best one over there, and you know it.”
Lena looked from Sheila to me. She didn’t seem very happy with what she saw. I took a big bite of steak and smiled patronizingly in her direction.
“Yeah, it’s a tough exam. I had a mini panic attack when I sat down that first day. I looked at the essay question and the words all seemed to swim in front of my face. It’s like my mind blanked,” Lena went on, pretending I wasn’t there.
Good luck with that, baby.
“I guess not everyone can score a 310 on raw points like I did,” I boasted. I sounded like a jackass, but it seemed I couldn’t help it. There was something about Lena that made my jerk dial go to eleven.
Sheila looked at me, her eyes wide. “You got a 310 on raw points? Are you serious?”
“Like a heart attack, unfortunately. And he never lets us forget how incredibly smart he is,” Rob joked good-naturedly. He and Adam would never be threatened by my bar exam score, considering they both tested off the charts as well. It’s why the three of us worked so well together. Combined, we were smarter than 99% of the other lawyers out there. They didn’t have a chance.
“Yeah, that’s a really good score.” Lena sounded entirely too smug. She sipped on her wine innocently.
“What did you get then?” I asked her.
“A girl never kisses and tells.” Lena batted her eyelashes and Meg snorted. Clearly, they were enjoying the moment.
Adam grinned at his sister. “Come on, tell him.”
Lena shook her head. “Why would I want to burst his balloon?”
“Spit it out already. You know you want to,” I urged Lena. “Burst my bubble.” I said it with so much innuendo that everyone shifted uncomfortably. I didn’t care though. Maybe I should have. After all, I had another woman beside me as my date. But Lena got under my skin in a way no other woman ever had. I wanted to push her. I wanted to get a reaction. And I was sure she felt the same about me. It was a constant tug of war for dominance and I sure as hell wouldn’t concede an inch.
Lena drank some more of her wine. “I got a 330,” she said quietly, smiling into her glass.
“You did not,” I huffed incredulously.
Sheila let out a low whistle. “Damn girl, that’s impressive.”
“She sure did, Wyatt. I saw the letter myself. Lena even beat Rob’s score,” Adam exclaimed, clinking his glass with his sister’s in congratulations.
Rob inclined his head. “I happily relinquish the crown of smartest smarty-pants to Lena Ducate.” He mimed lifting a crown from the top of his head and setting it on Lena’s.
Even though the wind had been decisively knocked out of my sails, I wasn’t surprised by the news that Lena was more of a genius than I had originally thought. And there was a pretty large part of me that was incredibly proud of her. I knew how hard she had worked and how much she put into everything she did. If anyone deserved to knock the bar exam out of the park, it was her.
So instead I gave her a slow, sarcastic clap. “We all have our lucky days, I suppose.”
“Dude, don’t be a dick,” Rob chastised.
“It’s all right, Rob. Some men can’t help but be threatened by powerful women.” Lena’s dark blue irises were going to burn me alive.
I crossed my arms and leaned over the table. “I’m all for being dominated, Marlena.”
“If you call me Marlena again, I’ll show you what being dominated really feels like, Jeremy.” She spat my name out of her mouth, but I could see the way her chest rose and fell with each intake of breath. I was sure she got off on our sparring as much as I did.
“Okay, enough. Wyatt, put a lid on the testosterone and Lena, put your balls back in your pants,” Adam butt in, but there was a hard edge to his voice. He looked between us. “This isn’t going to be an issue, is it? I thought we could all be mature adults.”
I sat back in my seat and held my hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry. I’ll be good. Promise.”
“I’m sorry, Adam.” Lena lowered her head, looking slightly embarrassed.
“Good, because we need to be working together, not against each other,” Adam went on, lecturing us as if we were school kids.
There was a brief silence where no one said anything before Meg started talking about her new art installation that was going to be displayed in downtown Philadelphia next month. Lena and I glanced at each other and then as if by mutual decision, we didn’t look at each other again the rest of the evening.
I turned to Sheila who had been particularly quiet. I noticed she hadn’t eaten much of her dinner. “You didn’t eat much. Was the salad as awful as it looked?” I teased, trying to make her smile. I was being a shitty date. That wasn’t like me. I usually made every woman I was with feel good.
Sheila didn’t respond to my question. “I think I’m going to get a cab home. I’m pretty tired and I have an early start tomorrow.”
“Oh, okay. But I can take you home. I thought maybe we could go back to my place and…”
Sheila put her hand on my arm, stopping me. “It’s okay. No need for that.” She cast a quick look at Lena and the others. “I’ll talk to you later.”
Before I could say anything else, Sheila got to her feet and said goodbye to Adam, Meg, Rob, and Lena. She leaned down and kissed my cheek. “I’ll see you around, Jeremy.”
When she was gone, I noticed that Lena was watching me, an odd expression on her face.
“You really do have a way with women, don’t you Wyatt?” Her question was cutting.
She didn’t wait for me to respond before turning back to the others as if I weren’t there.
Chapter 4
Lena
“Palmer. Palmer. Where the hell is the Palmer file?” I went through each of the filing cabinets in the storage room, trying to find what I was looking for. I had quit my job as the paralegal/Adam’s assistant at Jenkins, Ducate, and Wyatt months ago so I could devote my time to studying for the bar exam and to finish law school. It seemed in that short amount of time my meticulous organizational methods had gone to pot. I had spent forever going through the old case files and organizing them carefully. Someone, or someones, had undone all my hard work and it made me want to pull my hair out.
“Carly, can you come here?” I called out to the young woman sat at the receptionist's desk. I crouched down on my haunches thumbing through manila folders, not realizing someone was standing behind me until he cleared his throat.
“Carly’s gone to lunch. Do you need anything?”
I tried not to groan because that would be unprofessional. And since I began my job as a junior associate, I was trying really hard to be a goddamn professional.
Too bad Jeremy Wyatt hadn’t gotten the memo.
I stood up, brushing lint from my black pants and looked at my wristwatch. “It’s only eleven. She didn’t get in until nine-thirty. Why is she on lunch break already?”
Carly was the latest in a string of crappy receptionists the three partners had hired since she had vacated her previous position. It seemed they were having trouble finding someone who wasn’t—to put it nicely—a complete airhead.
Jeremy took a bite of the apple he was holding, chewing slowly and watching me as I shoved the file box back onto the shelf and pull another one-off. “She said something about taking her cat to the vet. I didn’t ask too much about it.” He took another bite, the crunch grating on my nerves.
“You didn’t ask too much about it? Isn’t that your job as her boss?” Still not finding the file I needed, I gave the box an immature kick.
Jeremy cocked a perfect eyebrow. “Well, I let her know this morning we were letting her go at the end of the week. She seemed rather upset, so I let her take a few hours to tend to her cat, who apparently has feline leukemia. I didn’t want to upset her more by asking invasive questions about the health of her pet.”
“Oh. Okay. That’s understandable, then,”
I muttered, feeling like a bit of a jerk. “So, you let her go?” I put my hands on my hips, then realizing how defensive I looked, I forced my hands to my side, where they hung awkwardly before I crossed them over my chest.
Jeremy’s eyes flicked down to my arms—or more likely my chest—before sliding them lazily up to my face again. “Adam, Rob, and I had talked about it and decided it was for the best. Particularly after she mixed up three appointments last week and gave Rob the wrong file for his case on Monday.”
“She’s nice enough, though.” I found myself defending Carly, even if she really was the worst receptionist in the history of receptionists.
“We don’t pay for nice. Well, not just for nice.” Jeremy lifted the lid off the file box and peered inside. “Whatcha lookin’ for? Maybe I can help.”
The last thing I wanted was Jeremy’s help. It would only end with us bickering and me walking off in fury. I closed the box and shoved it back on the shelf. “It’s nothing. I just wanted to have a look at an old case file—”
“Is it for the Palmer case?” Jeremy asked, squeezing past me into the tight space and pulling a box from the highest shelf that I would never have been able to reach. I could see his muscles bunching and straining beneath his blue cotton shirt. The man had some amazing shoulders. Broad and thick. I momentarily imagined my hands spanning across them…
“Can you back up, sweetheart? I don’t want to knock you over with this thing.” Jeremy looked at me over his shoulder, his eyes full of amusement.
Realizing how close we were standing, I quickly backed up. “Sorry,” I mumbled, feeling silly. He knelt down on the floor and found the file in question in a matter of seconds.
“Here you go.” He handed me the file as he straightened up and I tried not to stare at his chest. His cut, muscular chest…
“Thanks. It would have been easier to find if you guys had kept my filing system,” I couldn’t help but snap.
Jeremy glanced around the tiny room. “It is a mess in here,” he admitted.
“You think? It’s like I never straightened anything up. What did you guys do? Come in here and play mix up the boxes?” I held the file to my chest as if I needed a barrier between us. The air always felt too full when we shared space.
Jeremy smiled and I pretended I didn’t feel butterflies all the way to my toes. “We’ve just been lost without you is all.”
He was such an incorrigible flirt. The butterflies were immediately extinguished as I thought of how easily he turned on that charm for anyone with an XY chromosome.
“Well, thanks for this.” I patted the file and quickly turned on my heel, leaving him alone in the storage room. I hurried to my hole in the wall office at the far end of the building. I sat down and laid the paperwork out on my desk.
I had only been officially working for the law firm for two weeks, but I had hit the ground running. Adam, Rob, and Jeremy had handed over several cases they didn’t have time for given the increase in work that had come their way. This case involved Deacon Palmer, an administrator at the department of social services who had been charged with embezzlement and had reportedly funneled over ten thousand dollars into a private account.
Deacon had hired the firm to represent him when the case went to trial. He was up on felony charges with significant jail time on the line. Deacon swore up and down he hadn’t taken the money, that it was a clerical mix up, but it wasn’t looking good for him. Particularly given that he had been accused of mishandling funds when he was a volunteer at the local homeless shelter years before. It was these earlier charges that I wanted to look at given Adam had represented him before and had gotten him off. I would have talked to Adam directly, but he was out of town with Meg for the next three days.
Looking at the facts of the previous case, it seemed Deacon hadn’t misplaced any funds, but the director sure had. In fact, the director had been siphoning off money from donations for the past ten years. Adam, through some pretty smart sleuthing, had found the paper trail that blew the whole thing open. But what were the chances that this particular man was being accused of the same thing twice? Was he simply a good patsy for those who need someone to pin their crimes on?
A cup of coffee appeared in front of me and I almost moaned with appreciation. Looking up, my mood soured instantly at the bearer of the gift.
“Trying to butter me up for some reason?” I snapped, sipping on the coffee, not wanting to tell Jeremy how good it was. Because damn it, it was so, so good.
Jeremy, without an invitation, took it upon himself to sit down in the only other chair in the room. Given that I was at the bottom of the proverbial totem pole, I had the tiniest office in the joint. Not that I was complaining. I had a great view of the park and a nice ergonomic desk chair. But with Jeremy’s massive presence, the room felt stifling.
“No need to butter you up, your sunny disposition is pretty much perfect,” he goaded with a cheesy grin.
“Well, I’m busy.” I flipped a page over and tried to read the rest of the details, but Jeremy sitting five feet away made it difficult.
“I was looking through the initial information and it’s an interesting case. I remember when Ducate, I mean Adam—after all, there are two Ducates now—” he grinned again, “I remember when he represented Deacon before. It was 2016, right?”
I looked at the date and nodded. “Yep.”
“He seems to be a decent enough guy, perhaps too trusting if you ask me.” Jeremy fished a pen out of the pot on the corner of my desk and clicked it over and over again. “But this one is a little tricky. Who had access to the funds in question?”
I glanced at Jeremy. Was he actually trying to be helpful? I quickly scanned the facts before me. “There were three people with access to the funds. Deacon, Susannah Weathers, the head of financials, and Fenton Avis, the Director of Social Services. That’s it. But there’s nothing to indicate either Susannah or Fenton had anything to do with the missing funds. Plus, they ended up in an account that Deacon had access to.”
“Deacon and Randa Pitt, right? That’s his girlfriend if I remember correctly,” Jeremy added.
I nodded, not understanding his point. “Right. Randa Pitt is Deacon’s girlfriend and she’s a joint account holder.”
Jeremy clicked the pen a few more times before putting it back into the pot. “I always look at the significant others. They usually know something. And if Randa’s name is on the account, she’s a good place to start in order to get a better idea of what the hell is going on. It’s amazing to me she wasn’t charged along with Deacon.”
I chewed on my bottom lip considering his suggestion. “The police didn’t feel she had anything to do with the embezzlement. They felt Deacon acted alone. But that’s a good idea. Thanks, Jeremy,” I said hesitantly, unsure if his help came with a catch. Or at the very least a baited comment.
Jeremy shrugged indifferently. “Sometimes it’s nice having a second set of eyes on a situation. And it seems to me that someone did something very stupidly, or incredibly calculated, for Deacon to get caught so quickly. My dad always said stupid is as stupid does. I remember thinking how smart he was for saying that.” His mouth twisted, a painful stretching of lips. “That was until I realized he’d lifted his greatest saying from Forrest Gump.” He smacked his knee with his hand and stood up. “Should have known. The bastard never had an original thought in his life. And he sure as hell never gave me a thing that was worth a damn.” The naked bitterness in his voice took me aback.
“Jeremy—” I had no idea what I was about to say, only that his fleeting vulnerability made me want to reach out to him. To bridge the gap between us.
Thank god the impulse didn’t last long.
“Anyway, given my vast knowledge and extensive experience in all areas, I’m sure I can help you out in one way or another,” he added. And there he was. The jerk I had come to know and loathe.
“Sure,” I replied dryly.
He grabbed a handful of Skittles from the b
owl on my desk and popped a few in his mouth. “You and your brother sure do have a sweet tooth, huh? He always keeps Reese’s Pieces in his office. Tries to hide them from me too, but I know all his hiding spots.”
“I didn’t say you could have any,” I argued, pulling the crystal dish out of his reach like a five-year-old.
Jeremy grabbed another handful. “One for the road.” And then he winked. My belly flipped over, which infuriated me. “Let me know if you need any more of my help.”
“I’m sure I won’t,” I called out to his retreating back. “Ugh.” I rubbed my temples, feeling the start of a headache that had Jeremy Wyatt written all over it.
**
“Thank god you called. I need a drink or five,” I groaned, sliding into the booth opposite Hannah. Sweet Lila’s was heaving, but somehow my bestie had finagled a table in the corner.
I had spent the rest of the day pouring over the Palmer case. Jeremy had been right to look at Randa Pitt, Deacon’s girlfriend. In doing some digging it turned out that Randa and Fenton Avis, the Director of the local social services, had been involved several years ago. It was an interesting connection that I planned to look into more closely after meeting with Deacon next week.
But it was a Friday night and I was in the mood to get a little bit wasted.
Who was I kidding? I was always in the mood to get wasted. And my girl Hannah was my partner in crime. It was a wonder that I did so well in school given how often I was hungover.
“Jenna couldn’t make it, of course. Claimed she had to go to yoga or something,” Hannah reported. I wasn’t surprised Jenna wasn’t there. She was okay getting loaded at home but doing so around strangers made her paranoid. That was why she had refused to come with us to Club Galactica after my graduation dinner. Hannah and I never held it against her though.
“I already ordered the first round of margaritas. And nachos—because we can’t have margaritas without nachos,” Hannah announced with excitement. “After the day I’ve had, if I’m not comatose under the table by ten o’clock, I’m going to cry.”
Say You Love Me : An Enemies to Lovers Romance Page 6