He was right about the other part, though: it’s not easy, and he didn’t make it easy on me, either. Everyone assumed I’d work with my father and rise swiftly through the ranks at his firm, Dufresne Proctor, but I’d known since age twelve, when I announced that I’d be attending Yale, then Yale Law, then becoming a lawyer just like him, that I would never work at his side. He told me people would call it nepotism and refuse to take me seriously. I had my father’s drive but my mother’s looks, and people saw three things when they looked at me: blond hair, blue eyes and big breasts.
Despite the fact that I moved to Chicago without knowing a soul, interviewed at a dozen different firms and ultimately accepted an entry-level position with Sterling, Morgan & Haines, people still refuse to believe that I’ve worked for everything I have. Growing up, teachers complained to my parents that I didn’t work well with others. Even now I don’t pawn off less appealing tasks to paralegals or junior associates; I do the work myself. Some people call it vain or selfish, but I call it getting things done, and it’s served me well in my five years at the firm. It’s why I’m the best.
It’s also why I’m at the office at 11:17 p.m. on a Saturday when nearly everyone else has gone home to be with their wives or husbands or cats, or whatever it is people do when they’re not here. The thirty-second floor of the King Building in downtown Chicago isn’t the top of the world, but on clear summer nights like this, it feels pretty damn close.
I worked my ass off to make it this far, and for some people, this is as good as it gets. But not for me. The company plans to launch a new office in Los Angeles this fall, and I’m the one they’ve selected to head it up. A new city, an office on the forty-fourth floor and guaranteed fast track to partner. Right on schedule.
I’ve got dozens of active cases, but at the moment my focus is my biggest client, Teller Manufacturing, a home appliance maker being sued by a woman who makes her living fabricating lawsuits. I could win this single-handedly, but the partners have insisted on assigning a second lawyer to the case, even when I could get things done ten times faster on my own. Right now I’m saddled with a fellow fifth-year named Arthur Wong. We started at the firm on the same day, but that’s where the similarities end. I win where Arthur loses; I push where he pulls. I stand out where he shrinks back; I am competent where he is... “Arthur?”
“Yes?” His head pops up from beneath the conference table.
“What are you doing down there?”
“I’m...looking for something.”
A backbone? Legal acumen? Confidence?
“You’re hiding from the picture again, aren’t you?”
“What, um... What?”
Working with Arthur is like toting around one of those fake babies they use to discourage teenage pregnancy: pointless and cumbersome. He’s as helpless and hapless as a newborn, cries at least half as often and I have not learned anything from the experience.
“Do you need a tissue?” I ask when he sniffles.
“No, thanks. I have one.”
“It’s a photo of a finger, Arthur. The woman is still alive.”
“I know.”
“And she’s suing our client.”
“I know.” Shaky breath.
“She’s a manipulative liar who hacked off her pinkie in order to come after Teller for millions of dollars.”
“I know! I just have allergies.” Now he does snatch up a tissue, dabbing at his eyes.
“For Christ’s sake.” I restack the evidence photographs. “Stop looking at the pictures if they aggravate your ‘allergies.’”
He looks relieved but merely says, “We should probably wrap up for the day,” as he randomly tucks papers into his briefcase. “It’s getting late.”
“It’s quarter after eleven.” I take a sip of my energy drink, underscoring the message that we’ve still got lots to do.
“At night.”
“We’ll be here until we’re done. You’re deposing Petra Moreno next week, and you’re nowhere close to ready.”
“Yeah, um, about that...” He carefully refastens his briefcase. It’s monogrammed. A.W. As in, Aw, as in pity, the sentiment he most inspires in people.
“What about it, Arthur?”
People who want to win work until they succeed, they don’t go home because they’re tired or hungry or their wife recorded The Amazing Race. How Arthur managed to get hired is a mystery. He dresses the part, but that’s as close as he comes to belonging here. His short black hair sticks out in every direction, there’s an unidentified stain on his silk tie and one of his shoelaces is perpetually undone. Nothing about him inspires confidence, not even when he manages to stare at me without blinking for twenty full seconds.
I sigh. “Did you forget what you were going to say?”
“Um...”
“It may have been about the Moreno deposition.”
“Yes. Right. I’m not sure we should be doing this.”
I roll my eyes. We’ve had this conversation half a dozen times, and it always ends the same way: We’re definitely doing this. “We’re doing it,” I say.
“It feels wrong, Caitlin. They met in a depression support group. Called the Whispering Angels.”
“I know where they met, Arthur. I’m the one who found Petra. And the only reason Laurel Frances was meeting with the Whispering Angels—” It takes all my willpower not to gag uttering that dreadful name, “—is because she burned through the money she got from her last settlement.”
“And she was depressed.”
“Of course she was. If I spent three hundred grand on lottery tickets and didn’t win, I’d be depressed too.”
“So—”
“But I don’t spend three hundred grand on lottery tickets because I’m not an idiot. And I don’t stick my hand in the PrestoChop and act surprised when it chops off my finger, because it’s called a PrestoChop. And I definitely don’t try to sue the company that made it for seven million dollars because I’m an idiot with poor judgment.”
“I’m just not sure...”
“Fine. I’ll do it. You can hold her hand afterward. Don’t worry—she’s got all five fingers.”
Arthur picks at a hangnail and avoids my eyes.
I bail on the pep talk and flip through a stack of less offensive photos until I find the ones I’m looking for. “Here. Remember these?” I slide across photos of Laurel, a career protester, fighting for various causes over the past two years. In five of the photos she’s pictured next to the same young man. In two particularly memorable pictures, they’re protesting a factory that produces stuffed animals. Laurel is dressed as a unicorn, her partner is a flying tiger. Her handmade protest sign reads Stuff This: Animal Gender Diversity Is Not a Myth! Not even I know what that means.
Arthur studies the images and nods. “Should I—”
“Identify Laurel’s friend and bring him in to talk? Yes.”
“Okay, I—”
My phone, set to vibrate, jitters across the table, and I frown when I see the name on the display: William Eldard, son of Julian Eldard, an old man with too much money and too little impulse control who also happens to own one of the largest construction companies in the city. He’s sixty-six, dying of liver cancer and convinced the cure lies with a reclusive shaman in the rain forests of Brazil. William, vice president of Eldard Construction, has been urging his father to sign over power of attorney so he can run the company while his father searches for a cure—or dies trying—and Julian has finally agreed. We’re drafting the paperwork now, and he’s set to sign it on Friday before he hops on his private plane, most likely never to be seen again.
“William,” I say, picking up. “What’s wrong?” A dull roar drowns out his answer. “William? I can’t hear you.”
A faint thud, then silence. “Caitlin? Are you there?
”
“Yes. Where are you?”
William exhales shakily. “At the airport.”
“Please tell me your father has not gotten on a plane.”
“He’s about to.”
“He hasn’t signed the papers.”
“I know. Change of plans. He snuck out an hour ago and I just found him. They’re cleared for departure at 11:55. I need the papers now. Are they ready?”
“I—” I abandon Arthur and hurry down the hall to my office to pull up the documents on my computer. “Very nearly. I can email them to you, but you’ll need him to sign a hard copy. Do you have access to a printer?”
“I’ll find one.”
“How’s his mental state?”
“You mean, is he crazy? No worse than usual. But he read that it was important to visit the Brazilian shaman on a full moon, so he has to leave now to get there in time for the next one. He also shaved his head and both his legs.”
“Are you going with him?”
“I offered. He says he has to go alone.” William sounds a tiny bit relieved by this fact, and I don’t blame him. When he first told me of his father’s plans, I pictured future hikers finding Julian’s remains wrapped up in vines, just his teeth and a couple of ribs left behind to identify him.
“Okay, William. I’ll prepare the POA and email it to you in half an hour. It needs notarization and the signature of at least one witness.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m also going to send you a notary public. Don’t sign anything until she gets there. And ask the pilot or a member of the flight staff to sign, too, as your witness.”
“Okay. Okay. Thanks, Caitlin.”
I hang up and curse Julian and his idiocy, then sort through the company contact list until I find the home phone numbers of our three notary publics. The first one doesn’t answer, the second has a sick child and the third, Nancy Patel, extracts a promise for an appointment with my hairdresser, Marcel, the most exclusive stylist in the city, in exchange for racing out to the airport at this hour.
I fire off a text to Marcel before tossing down the phone and finalizing the details for the power of attorney. I type with one hand and reach for the energy drink with the other, finding the can mysteriously empty. I hesitate, but a series of yawns convinces me to down a second one. Despite its promises—or perhaps I’m just becoming immune to the stuff—I don’t feel any more awake, and my hands are twitchy. It takes four tries to type in William’s email address, and the words on the screen are starting to blur. I blame it on skipping dinner again. I’d been in court all day, returned to the office in time for a staff meeting, then snagged Arthur to discuss the Teller case for a few hours. I remind myself a missed meal never hurt anybody, but my rumbling stomach disagrees.
“Um, Caitlin?”
I glance up to find Arthur in the doorway, briefcase in hand. “What is it?”
“It’s 11:35. I’m going to head home. Unless you need something...?” The question trails off, as reluctant to be asked as its asker is to be asking.
“No, Arthur. I’ve got it.”
“Are you sure? I’ve done a lot of power of attorneys. I could—”
“I’m sure.”
He hesitates, then nods once before turning to go. “Good night.”
By the time I hit Send on the email my head is pounding, the words are swimming and I can barely keep my eyes open. It’s 11:51. Nancy will be there by now, William will make sure his father signs and everything is taken care of.
This is what I live for, I think, covering my mouth as another yawn hits. I love being the first one in and the last one to leave. The quiet office feels like it’s all mine, and I spin in my seat to look out at the dark city, the moon reflecting off a window across the street as though it had been hung there just for me.
Don’t miss
IN HER DEFENSE by Julianna Keyes
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Copyright ©2015 by Julianna Keyes
Also available from Julianna Keyes
UNDECIDED
Nora Kincaid has one goal for her second year of college: be invisible. Last year’s all-party-no-study strategy resulted in three failed classes and two criminal charges, and if she messes up again she’ll lose her scholarship. But there’s one problem with her plan for invisibility, and his name is Crosbie Lucas: infamous party king, general hellraiser...and her new roommate’s best friend.
Crosbie’s reckless reputation and well-known sexcapades aren’t part of Nora’s studious new strategy, but as she’s quickly learning, her new plan is also really boring. When Crosbie’s unexpected gestures of friendship pull her head out of her books long enough to see past his cocky veneer, she’s surprised to find a flawed and funny guy beneath it all. The muscles don’t hurt, either.
But as Nora starts to fall for Crosbie, the weight of one of last year’s bad decisions grows even heavier. Because three failing grades and two misdemeanors are nothing compared to the one big secret she’s hiding...
To buy and read this and other books by Julianna Keyes, please visit her website here or at www.juliannakeyes.com/undecided.html.
Copyright ©2016 by Julianna Keyes
Acknowledgments
As ever, I am hugely grateful to all the wonderful people at Carina Press for their work on and faith in the Time Served series. These books feature imperfect characters doing imperfect things, and I’m so fortunate to have found an editor who is absolutely okay with that. An enormous and endless thank-you to Kerri Buckley for her encouragement, intelligence and thoughtfulness.
Sitting in front of a computer filling a blank screen with words is both thrilling and terrifying, and hearing from readers makes it worth all the hair-pulling. Your support and feedback are so sincere and reaffirming, and I am forever astounded and humbled that you choose to read my books. Thank you for being amazing.
Also available from Julianna Keyes
and Carina Press
Time Served
In Her Defense
About the Author
Julianna Keyes is a Canadian writer who has lived on both coasts and several places in between. She’s been skydiving, bungee jumping and white-water rafting, but nothing thrills—or terrifies—her as much as the blank page. She loves Chinese food, foreign languages, baseball and television, though not necessarily in that order, and writes sizzling stories with strong characters, plenty of conflict and lots of making up.
In addition to The Good Fight, she is the author of four contemporary romances: Just Once, the story of a world-weary socialite and a stubborn ranch foreman; Going the Distance, a love story set in China between a kindergarten ESL teacher and a former army interrogator; Time Served, the tale of an ambitious young lawyer whose perfect world is jeopardized when she reunites with her ex-con ex-boyfriend; and In Her Defense, in which a ruthless young lawyer realizes there’s more to life than being the best…right? Her first new-adult romance, Undecided, was published in April 2016.
For more details on these and any upcoming books, visit her online at juliannakeyes.com or sign up for her free newsletter at juliannakeyes.com/newsletter.html.
DIDN’T I WARN YOU
by Amber Bardan
Not everything dangerous is bad.
From the moment Angelina laid eyes on him, she fell into a fantasy. Mysterious, foreign, gorgeous, Haithem offered her what she needed most—a chance to feel again. But he lives in a world of danger where everything comes at a price…and she was warned.
“This is a darkly seductive Beauty & the Beast romance that will give you goose bumps.”
—Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
The Bad for You series continues wit
h DIDN’T YOU PROMISE.
You’ve been warned.
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The Vengeful Love series
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LAURA CARTER
He’s a devastatingly handsome, filthy-rich CEO.
She’s a high-flying London lawyer.
All it takes is one boardroom pitch. One hostile takeover…
Vengeful Love is a darkly suspenseful, sinfully sexy white-collar romance series.
VENGEFUL LOVE
VENGEFUL LOVE: DECEPTION
VENGEFUL LOVE: BLACK DIAMONDS
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The Good Fight (Time Served Book 3) Page 32