by Arlene James
“Maybe the word I should have used is responsible.”
“Same thing!” Laurel insisted. “Heavens, if I’d been as dependable and responsible as my grandmother wanted, I wouldn’t be here now!”
“Oh, really?” He seemed inordinately pleased by that
Laurel’s frown deepened. “I think you’re being unfair to your friend.”
He shook his head. “Look, all I’m saying is that too much work and no play makes Edward a dull boy.”
“My father used to say that about himself,” she revealed sternly, “and he died trying to climb a stupid mountain because it was there. He took my mother with him, too.”
“Yes, I think I heard about that. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, refusing to be mollified. He had offended her sensibilities. How dare he call dull and boring the very qualities she had struggled all her life to cultivate! Unsuccessfully. She bit her lip, her eyes misting with tears. Maybe she didn’t deserve her inheritance. Maybe Danny Hardacre was the best she could expect both as an attorney and a husband. Now that was a truly depressing thought.
Parker Sugarman reclaimed her attention, sliding to the forward edge of his seat and bending toward her. “I didn’t mean to upset you, and I wasn’t implying that Edward is of less than sterling character. The fact is, I’m concerned about him. He works too hard. Do you know what my friend Edward needs?” he asked eagerly.
She shook her head, frowning still.
“Something to shake him out of his rut, or maybe someone, a woman perhaps, preferably a wife.” He smiled unrepentantly. “Just not mine.”
Laurel’s jaw sagged while her brain tried to formulate a reply. Before she could marshal her thoughts, however, the heavy, leaded glass door that led into the reception area opened. A large, rumpled man stepped into the room. He was a big, powerful man with shaggy caramel brown hair that fell haphazardly over a high, broad forehead and a thick drooping mustache that hid his upper lip. His eyes, in contrast, were a pale, glowing blue. He put her in mind of a big, huggable, rather bedraggled teddy bear, and yet she sensed that beneath that expensive, conventional, poorly tailored suit was a body of stone. She made a pointless but automatic mental note: He should never wear gray. It- detracted from his golden coloring. Hmm, and a double-breasted coat would slenderize his broad body and emphasize the amazing width of those shoulders, lending greater emphasis to the aura of power….
“I beg your pardon.” His deep voice cut into her reverie.
Laurel opened her mouth to make some standard reply, found it already ajar and snapped it shut with an audible click of teeth. Color flamed in her cheeks, but she could not avert her gaze. He stared down at her.
“Do we have an appointment? I’m sure my secretary would have announced you.”
Laurel’s blush intensified. “Oh, well, she was g-gone when I arrived.”
He frowned and turned a cloudy gaze on Parker Sugarman. “Parker, this will only take a moment.” Abruptly his gaze switched back to Laurel. “What time was your appointment?”
Laurel gulped. This was always the hardest part for her, but she knew only too well that if she had called ahead for an appointment, she would have been instructed to bring a consultation fee with her, a fee she couldn’t pay. Without it, she would have been turned away, appointment or no. Slipping in after the secretary had left for lunch was her only hope. She got unsteadily to her feet, intending to equalize their positions somewhat. She could not help noticing that the top of her head came only to the tip of his nose. Without her high heels, she would have reached no farther than his chin. She gripped her small gold handbag in both hands, knuckles whitening with the effort.
“I, um, only have my lunch hour.”
He grimaced. “I see. Well, unfortunately, I already have a lunch date. Perhaps you could call later for an appointment.”
“Oh, please, couldn’t I have just a few minutes of your time?” she wheedled.
“I’m sorry. Let me see you out”. He turned away from her, moving to open the door once again. “Parker, are you coming?”
Laurel shot Parker Sugarman a desperate, pleading look. He smiled, got up and motioned for her to follow. He held the door for her, nodding encouragement as she slipped by into the reception area. Edward White was walking down a short hall toward a door that led out onto the sidewalk, extracting a ring of keys from a pocket.
“Hey, listen,” Parker called to him, “I really only have a few minutes anyway.”
“No matter,” Edward said. “We don’t see each other often enough anymore.”
Parker shot Laurel an enigmatic look and hurried after Edward. “True, but you know how it is, Kendra has to go in early, and Darla will need me.” Edward stopped and turned around. Parker smiled lamely. “Sorry, old buddy, but you kept me waiting a half hour, and the family does comes first.”
Edward sighed and shot an irritated glance at Laurel. “Give me a break, will you? I was on the phone.”
“And I’m sure it was very important,” Parker said, clapping him on the shoulder, “but I still have to go. You’ll understand when you have a wife and family of your own.”
Edward White snorted. “That’ll be the day.”
Parker’s smile was as broad as his wink when he slid it over one shoulder at Laurel “Besides, you’re needed here.”
Glowering, Edward stepped close to Parker and spoke quietly into his ear. Parker chuckled, clapped Edward on the shoulder again and stepped away. Turning, he lifted a hand in farewell to Laurel. “Nice to have met you, Laurel Heffington No-LongerMrs. Miller.”
She returned his wave. “I hope so, Parker, and…thank you.”
“My pleasure.” He moved jauntily toward the door, grinning, and pushed his way through it.
Edward tossed the unused keys into the air and caught them in the same hand, looking her over from top to toe in the process. “How long have you known him?”
“Parker Sugarman?”
He nodded, just once. She glanced at her wristwatch and shrugged. “About fifteen minutes.”
He lifted a brow and seemed to relax a bit. “He’s married, you know.”
“So he said, repeatedly.”
Attorney White nodded, to himself this time, and swept a hand through his hair. “Well, I can give you a few minutes,” he said, “but only a few.”
She beamed him her brightest smile.
He looked, for a moment, as if she’d poleaxed him, but then he scowled and muttered, “Just keep it brief. I’d like to get some lunch out of my lunch hour.”
“Very brief,” she assured him, following as he led her past the secretary’s desk toward his office. Pausing at the large, cherrywood door, he extracted another, smaller set of keys and let himself in, flipping on overhead lights as he moved out of sight. Laurel timidly entered and swept a gaze around his office.
Unlike the waiting and reception areas, no professional decorator had stepped foot in here. The walls were plastered and painted white where they were not lined with simple, functional bookshelves. A tweed sofa in neutral tones had been shoved up against a vast, bare window in the wall facing the desk. A maple coffee table, its surface marred with a deep gash stood before it. Both table and sofa were stacked with folders, books and papers. The massive cherrywood desk behind which Edward White now stood was likewise covered with piles of documents, as were the tops of the metal file cabinets that stood in the corners of the room, flanking the desk.
Edward nodded at one of a pair of leather-and-chrome chairs. Laurel stepped in front of it and sat down. Only then did he seat himself in the big black leather armchair behind him. It creaked and tilted ominously with his weight.
“Now then, Ms…. What is your name again?”
“Laurel. Laurel Heffington Miller. Call me Laurel, if you please.”
If her maiden name meant anything to him, he gave no sign of it, merely nodding in acknowledgment. “All right, Laurel, how can I help you?”
She took a fortifying breath. �
�You can agree to represent me in a civil suit against my exhusband, seeking control of my inheritance, which is valued, roughly, at four million dollars.”
He lifted a brow at that. “Am I to understand that your exhusband now has control of an inheritance belonging to you?”
“Yes.”
“And you want it back.”
She tilted her head uncertainly. “Actually, I never had it—not control of it, anyway.”
He rocked forward and templed his fingers, elbows braced against the edge of his desk. “You’ll have to explain that. If it’s your inheritance, why does he have control of it?”
“Because my late grandmother set it up that way.”
“She left your inheritance to him?”
“No, she left him in control of my inheritance, and the divorce apparently did not change that”.
He picked up an ink pen and made some random marks on a yellow legal pad at hand. “At what point did your grandmother intend for you to take over control of your own inheritance?”
Laurel looked down at her hands. “According to Abelard Kennison, she didn’t”
She heard the creak of his chair, followed by a fulminating silence, and then, “Abelard Kennison. Well, well, well.”
Laurel pushed her gaze up. “You know.of him, then?”.
He waved a big hand fitted with a heavy gold class ring containing a large, oval green stone. “Everyone even remotely connected with the practice of law in this city knows of Abelard Kennison.”
“And most are frightened of him,” she said softly.
“For good reason,” he replied. “Kennison is a shark in court and out”.
“Are you frightened of him?” Laurel asked.
His smile was tight and small. “Why would I be?”
Laurel gulped. “Would you be frightened of him if you had to go up against him in court?”
He leaned forward, forearms laid across the blotter on his desk. His pale blue eyes were cold as stone. “Let’s just say that it takes a shark to know a shark, and let it go at that.”
Oh, yes, she could see it now, the shark, safely caged, just waiting for a chance to bite. Laurel let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. “Then you’ll help me?”
“I didn’t say that. Why don’t you tell me why your grandmother felt you were incapable of handling your own inheritance?”
Laurel wrinkled her nose. “She didn’t approve of me.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
She lifted a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “She said I was just like my father.”
“He’s the one who died climbing that mountain in Tibet, isn’t he?”
So he did know. “He and my mother,” she confirmed.
He leaned back in his chair. “Damned stupid thing to do if you ask me.”
Laurel’s brows shot up in surprise. “Me, too!” she blurted.
“A man with a family ought to be more sensible,” he said.
“I agree,” she hastened to assure him.
Those blue eyes suddenly impaled her. “Then why did your grandmother think you were like him?”
Laurel sat back in dismay. She hadn’t alleviated his doubts at all. He was just trying to catch her off guard. Frowning, she said, “I wasn’t happy after my parents died—or before, for that matter. They were always off on some adventure or other, and my grandmother controlled my life. She wasn’t an easy person to get along with, my grandmother. Nothing I did seemed to please her, and I guess I got in to some pretty rough stuff trying to get my parents’ attention. Then they died, and I knew there was no way I’d ever please grandmother. I guess I rebelled, and frankly, my grandfather encouraged me. But then he died, and there was no one left but Grandmother. I honestly tried to build a real relationship with her then, to win her approval. I even married in order to please her, and what a mistake that was! Then she died, too, and I realized that I was completely at his mercy, my husband’s that is—his and Abelard Kennison’s. And they planned it that way, Mr. White, as God is my witness, I swear they did!”
“So you divorced Mr. Miller,” he surmised.
She nodded. “His name is Bryce. Kennison brought him into our house as a kind of caretaker. Grandmother’s health was failing, and she trusted Kennison unreservedly. So did I, for that matter.” She lifted her hands, beseeching Edward White’s understanding. “He said he wanted to help me. He said he’d help me gain my grandmother’s approval. I didn’t realize until later that he’d planned for me to marry Bryce all along, that it was part of his plan to get his hands on my inheritance. I even suspect that some of the charities that he convinced Grandmother to leave the majority of her funds to are fronts. I think he got the lion’s share with his dummy corporations and bogus charities, so why should he get my share, too?”
Edward White arched one thick, chocolate-colored brow. “Those are pretty strong charges.”
“I swear it’s all true. Please, can’t you help me?”
Edward spread his hands. “This sort of thing is an expensive proposition, Ms., uh, Laurel. I’ll need a sizable retainer and—”
Laurel shook her head, eyes closed. “I can’t. That’s the problem. You see, I don’t have a cent to my name other than a small salary and what tips I get as a waitress.”
He was silent so long that she sneaked a peek at him. He was staring at her—and frowning. Her heart sank. “Are you telling me that you got nothing in the divorce?”
She nodded miserably. “Nothing. My attorney said it was the only way to get it done without a protracted legal fight. He said we’d deal later with the matters of the inheritance and the house.”
“Your grandmother’s house?” he asked in a tone of disbelief. “The Heffington house? The mansion in Highland Park?”
Laurel spread her hands in abject affirmation. “My ex lives in my family home,” she said, a catch in her throat, “on my money, while I work at a diner and barely make the rent on a studio apartment down off Central Expressway.”
White lurched back in his chair, tilting and wobbling precariously. “And who,” he asked in a hard tone, “was the Neanderthal who represented you?”
She looked down at her hands, knowing all too keenly what a fool she’d been and muttered, “Daniel Hardacre.”
“Holy—” He bit off the next word, shaking his head. “Lady, you have a talent for getting involved with the very people you ought to avoid. Hardacre is a slime, and very likely on the Kennison payroll, or haven’t you figured that out yet?”
Of course. She bit her lip, saying in a small voice, “A friend of my grandmother’s recommended him. Bryce probably put her up to it, but I didn’t know that then. I didn’t even realize until it was too late that he was intentionally mishandling everything, and even then I thought he just wanted to marry me.”
“Marry you?”
She nodded. “After the divorce, he said he’d help me get my inheritance if I’d marry him, which meant, of course, that he’d get half of everything.”
“Well, at least you had sense enough not to go for that!” White said sarcastically. Then he pushed his hands over his face and shook his head. “I can’t believe this.”
“All right, I’m an idiot!” Laurel snapped. “You think that’s anything I hadn’t figured out on my own? The question is, will you help me?”
He glared at her over the tips of his fingers for a moment, then dropped his hands and softened his gaze. “I’ll look into it,” he finally said.
Disappointed, Laurel pressed for deeper commitment. “Does that mean you’ll represent me?”
“It means I’ll look into it,” he said smartly.
Laurel chewed the inside of her cheek, consumed with the fear that he was just trying to let her down gently. Saying he’d look into it was far from agreeing to help, and she knew it only too well. It was the money, of course, or rather, the lack of it If only she could guarantee him funds…. But then, couldn’t she? As long as they won, she could guarantee him any amount he wanted,
right up to half of everything. It was certainly worth that much to her. In fact, it was worth more than that. If she could just come out of it with the house and enough to keep it up, she’d be happy. At least Bryce and Kennison wouldn’t get it, and she’d be able to take care of Barry properly. She’d have to continue hiding him, of course, perhaps for many months to come yet, but she’d been doing that all along. On the other hand, Edward White might not even care. He might not even expect her to keep up appearances. Unlike Hardacre, he wasn’t in the least attracted to her. He might well be willing, even eager, for her to go her separate way immediately.
For a moment, she couldn’t believe what she was considering, but why not? She took a long hard look at him. Yes. Better him than Danny Hardacre. Much better than Danny Hardacre.
“There is a way,” she mumbled, spirits lifting.
“I beg your pardon?”
Emboldened by the sheer sense of what she was about to propose, Laurel straightened and engaged him with her clear green gaze. “There is a way to guarantee your fee.”
“Well, that couldn’t hurt,” he began, “but—”
“I’ll pay you one million dollars,” she interrupted flatly.
He shook his head as if trying to unblock his ears. “But you just said—”
“Two million dollars!” she repeated, sliding to the edge of her chair in her excitement. “Two and a half! Just think of it as a partnership.”
“What on earth are you talking about? What partnership?”
“Us! The two of us! We can do it, I know we can.”
“Do what?”
“Get my inheritance. We, you can get my money and my house. You bring your expertise to the effort and I’ll bring my zeal and an iron-clad guarantee of cold hard cash! What do you say?”
“I’m still trying to figure out what you’re saying!” he exclaimed.
“It’s so simple when you think about it,” she told him. “And to think that Danny gave me the answer! Only, Danny wasn’t the right man for the job. Danny couldn’t win against Kennison. You can.”
His chair slammed down in exasperation, and he leaned so far forward that his upper body stretched almost all the way across his desk, bringing their faces into proximity. With mere inches between them, Laurel felt a thrill of recognition unlike any she’d ever felt before. This was right. She knew that this was right. Edward White only knew that she had confused him. Poor Edward. He wasn’t letting himself feel it. He hadn’t sifted through the logic of it yet, but she would make him see the sense in this, and finally, finally, she’d have her life in her own hands. The prospect, the very idea of winning a fight that seemed to have lasted her own life long, left her trembling.