by M. S. Parker
She’d done a six-week, court-ordered stint in rehab, and had come out more level. I’d hoped she'd stay that way. Now I was kicking myself for thinking things might work out.
I grabbed my phone after dumping an armful of toys in the giant crate Alex had found for just that purpose.
Pacing over to the window, I pulled out my phone and almost sent another message.
But what was the point?
Alex was there. Carter was safe with Alex there.
I stood in front of the windows and stared outside.
I wasn’t seeing the city’s brightly light skyline, though.
In my mind’s eye, I was seeing Leslie.
Her and Carter. For a while, it had been easy to just kind of…wish.
Stupid, maybe, but easy.
I’d had a million things go through my head once I'd found out I was going to be a dad, but none of them had been like the reality. The reality of picking Carter up when I realized Brinke was getting sick in the bathroom because she’d drank half the night.
The reality of not just baby proofing the house, but daily – and nightly – checks to make sure my wife hadn’t left pills laying out.
I was an idiot.
I should have ended this a long time ago. The reason I hadn’t was because Brinke had gotten me. Before. She’d been the first one to ever understand who I was. But now, we were so far apart, we might as well be strangers and worse, she was a stranger who wasn’t good for my kid.
I’d started to think that maybe the only way my daughter would ever have somebody good around her would be through people I paid – like Alex – or through the friends I was lucky enough to have, like Decker and LaToya.
Then Leslie had sort of just dropped into Carter’s life and made my baby girl laugh. She’d talked to her like she mattered.
With Brinke, sometimes Carter was like a doll, something fun to play with when she had time – and was sober enough. But beyond that? Brinke was what mattered to Brinke. I knew she loved our daughter, but never enough to put Carter's well being above her own.
Maybe if Leslie had been a little less amazing, I wouldn’t still be thinking about her. Maybe I wouldn’t have coaxed her into staying the day. Laughed with her, talked with her.
I’d had fun with her, and not just when I was balls-deep inside her either.
And I’d cheated on my wife with her.
I could rationalize the hell out of it. Brinke hadn’t been faithful since the first year of our marriage. I’d seen it with my own eyes. I’d walked in while she was fucking a guy from some other band.
He’d seen me.
She hadn’t.
I'd walked back out and told myself to find a woman, but I hadn’t. All these years, I hadn’t. And now when it was almost over, I’d cheated.
I didn't know why it bothered me so much. It'd clearly never bothered Brinke to break the promises she made.
I’ll have her back by eight, sugar. Promise.
Promises.
Setting my jaw, I looked over at the clock and saw that it was just after seven.
I wasn’t going to think about it.
Heading to the practice studio I’d set up, I grabbed my guitar and moved back into the living room. I was no master with the instrument. I could strum my way through a song, and that was it, but having a tune helped when I was trying to put new lyrics to paper.
Killing time, I played with the melody that had been going through my head for weeks – longer. The song had been chasing me.
Broken promises.
I knew plenty about those.
Although the song was there, dying to be written, it hadn’t wanted to come; but tonight, whether loosened by stress or something else, I managed to get a few more lines down and fix the opening.
I had Leslie in mind as I played.
Wrong as it might’ve been, I could no longer pretend that Brinke was any kind of inspiration. She hadn’t been for a while, and I’d been writing without a muse.
There was nothing romantic about the lyrics coming out of me – it was all sex and heat and that was fine.
It felt like the sun coming out after months of storm.
I looked up only when the phone rang, and I realized it had gotten dark. Dark. And it was still quiet in the penthouse, which meant it was well past time for Brinke to have been home with Carter.
Swearing, I started to fumble for the phone I almost always had in my back pocket when I realized it was already ringing. On the coffee table.
I grabbed it, seeing a picture of Alex and Carter flash on the screen. My gut, already slippery and twisted with tension, eased a little.
“Yeah?”
“Paxton.” It was indeed Alex and her normally calm, confident voice was not calm or confident.
Don’t panic, I told myself. Don’t panic.
“What’s up, Alex? You guys running late?” Obvious answer is obvious, genius.
“We were finally getting ready to go, and I got up to use the restroom. Carter didn’t want to go with me so I left her with Brinke. I just got back to the table and they're gone.”
I blinked, my brain not processing. “Alex?”
“They're gone, Paxton,” she nearly screamed. “The manager is here telling me that Brinke said I was taking care of the tab because it was her birthday – the bill is over three thousand dollars – ” Her voice hitched and then steadied. “I’ll handle it, but they're gone.”
“The fuck you’ll handle it,” I said, furious and getting more so. “Give him the business card I gave you for expenses and…” My brain stopped functioning after that because that was the only thing I had a definite solution for.
Don’t panic, I told myself. Don’t panic.
“She’s probably fucking with us,” I told Alex, forcing myself to calm. “We both know she was pissed off because I insisted you go with her. Go on outside and see if you can find them anywhere nearby. I’ll try calling her.”
Don’t panic, I thought again. And I managed to listen to my own advice.
For a while.
I sent text after text to Brinke. No response to any of them.
Alex came rushing in less than thirty minutes after she’d called, her eyes half-wild.
I’d shaken my head and after a little while, I told her to go ahead and go on down to her place. No reason for us both to sit there and stare at my phone like it was a snake.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
But by the time midnight rolled around and I still hadn’t heard from Brinke, fuck it, I was ready to panic.
Chapter Twenty
Leslie
The hours drifted by in a haze.
I knew I’d gotten in my car, driven back home, and put my car back into my space. I knew I came inside and changed into my pajamas.
After that?
I thought I sorta drifted around the apartment, smiling stupidly as I gazed toward Manhattan and the general direction where Paxton would be. Carter would be home by now.
Hopefully, she’d had fun, and now she and Paxton were settling in for the night. Having dinner maybe, or she was taking a bath, and he was cleaning up in the kitchen. The mega-rich, mega-beautiful Paxton Gorham didn’t mind getting his hands dirty in the kitchen. It was kind of hot.
At some point, those silly daydreams turned into real dreams, and I fell asleep on my bed, curled up on my side.
Paxton was there and this time, we didn’t have borrowed time or a few stolen hours.
We just had each other.
When the phone rang, it jolted me out of a hot, sexy dream, and I sat there a few seconds, confused. The phone rang again, and I grabbed it, staring at it blearily before the number clicked and I realized who it was.
“Hello?”
“Leslie. It’s Paxton.”
“Yes?”
A few taut moments of silence passed before he said anything, and my heart began to beat in hard, slow beats, each one of them becoming more and more deafening until I could barely hear
anything past it.
When he finally spoke, I was aware of nothing but his voice.
“It’s Brinke,” he said finally.
I swallowed, my hand going damp where it clutched the phone. Shit.
“Leslie…she…she hasn’t come home yet. She and Carter…they’ve disappeared.”
I heard the words – they made sense, logically.
But, in that moment, all I could do was picture Carter and the way she and her father looked at her.
Carter…
“Leslie!” Paxton’s voice barked out of the phone in harsh demand.
“I heard you,” I said quietly, struggling to keep my voice level. My mind spun.
“They’ve disappeared, dammit! What in the hell am I supposed to do?”
A Legal Affair continues in Book 2. Click here to get the complete Box Set.
Bonus 2: Unlawful Attraction
Club Prive – Dena’s Story
M. S. Parker
Chapter One
Dena
The woman in the mirror looked back at me with pale gray eyes that matched the suit. It was a good suit, one I wore when I needed to look at least close to my twenty-six years, or when I wanted to look my best. Since today was my last day at Webster & Steinberg, it was my only choice.
I couldn't believe it was finally here. I’d gone through the follow-ups with my biggest clients and handled the ones who needed to be gently handed off to the woman who’d fill my shoes. They'd all been sorry to see me go, but not as sorry as my boss. I'd be the fourth lawyer she lost in a little over a year. The other three had been friends of mine, and their absence here made leaving a bit easier.
I thoroughly expected to get through the day without anyone really noticing and I'd managed it up until a few minutes ago when my co-workers had sprung a surprise going-away party for me. Surprise because I wasn't really that close with any of them. Without Leslie, Carrie and Krissy here, I'd mostly kept to myself. I wasn't shy or a snob, but I liked to focus on my work, and they'd been the only ones who'd ever really managed to keep me from being a total workaholic.
The bathroom door swung open and I leaned forward to finish checking my make-up. I hadn't cried because I didn't do that, but I had gotten a bit teary and I wanted to make sure nothing had run.
Emma smiled at me as she came in. “Don't think for one moment we're going to let you hide in here.”
I gave her a small smile. “I thought for once you guys wouldn't make a big deal of things.”
“You’re such a sweet kid, believing in fairy tales.” She winked at me before disappearing into one of the stalls.
I laughed and affably called her a bitch before stepping back from the counter. With my white blonde hair chopped into a short pixie-cut and my petite frame, I looked years younger than I was, which meant I spent plenty of time being referred to as a 'kid.' Instead of letting it bother me, I usually took advantage of people underestimating me.
“By the way, Dena, one of the partners came down to tell you good-bye. Better get out there,” she added.
Sighing, I pushed away from the sink. “Why would they want to do that?” I'd already said good-bye to my boss, Mimi. She wasn't a named partner, but rumor had it she would be by the end of the year.
Emma answered my question, “Probably because you know exactly when to go for the balls and exactly how hard to squeeze. You’ll be missed. For your ability to squeeze balls if nothing else.”
I rolled my eyes as I turned toward the door.
Another hour and I’d be done. I both dreaded and anticipated the moment. I’d miss the stability, the familiarity of Webster & Steinberg, but at the same time, I’d been preparing for the step I was about to take for what felt like my entire life.
As soon as I stepped out of the bathroom, scents of food assailed me from the break room. My belly started to rumble almost immediately. They’d kept me running all day, so when I hadn't been finishing up with my clients, I'd been handling busy work or running errands, even making calls that generally the interns would've handled. I hadn't thought anything of it since I'd known I couldn't take on anything new.
Now I saw they’d kept me busy so I wouldn’t figure out what they were up to. It also meant I hadn't had a chance to eat lunch. Most people thought that since I was barely five feet and maybe a hundred pounds that I didn't eat much. That wasn't the case, and I was seriously hungry.
As I stepped into the break room, the decorations hit me all over again. The entire room was done up in streamers, and on the far wall there was a sign with bars that read Put ‘em away, Dena! Behind the bars, it showed the scruffy, tired face of a man glaring sullenly at the camera.
Two weeks ago, I’d accepted a position as an assistant district attorney. I wouldn’t be arguing the big cases or anything. Not for a while yet, but at least I had the ever important foot in the door. Once I'd proven myself, I'd get to start on the big stuff.
“Are you excited?”
At the question, I looked over at Lori Martin, the attorney the firm had hired to take my clients. Since Leslie had left a couple months back, I carried too heavy a load to just shunt my cases off onto others in the firm. The divorce business was booming.
Smiling at Lori, I nodded. “I am.”
For as long as I could remember, this was all I ever wanted to do. Some little girls grew up dreaming about being a nurse, a doctor, a teacher. Not me.
A friend of mine from high school had majored in archaeology. That had been her dream ever since she’d been a kid. Working in the garden with her mom one year, she’d found a bone and in her child’s mind, it had been a bone from some rare, undiscovered dinosaur. In reality, it'd been a dog’s hind leg, but that hadn’t mattered in the long run. It sparked her interest and she'd gone for it.
I’d always wanted to be a lawyer. A prosecutor, to be specific. Working at Webster & Steinberg had only been a stepping stone.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have some fun little story about why I'd decided I wanted to put bad guys away. My desire had come from tragedy.
Late one night, more than twenty years ago, sirens had woken me. I’d crawled into bed with my parents and gone back to sleep. As a child, that wailing sound had been common enough in my neighborhood.
The next morning, both of my parents had been unusually quiet. My father had gone to work like usual, but Mom stayed home with me. When I asked her why my sitter hadn't come yet, she told me my sitter had gone away. I persisted, but all she'd say was that Miss Jenny was gone and I'd understand when I was older.
The problem was, I'd always been a precocious child, too nosy for my own good, and I discovered the truth myself a couple of days later when I'd seen a newspaper with a picture of Jenny.
Mom had come in when I'd been sounding out the headline.
She’d tried to take the paper away, but I’d already figured out enough of the words to ask the question.
What’s dead, Mama?
My mother had softened the blow as much as she could, but how could anything about murder be soft to a four year-old? I'd understood sick and old, but I'd known Miss Jenny hadn't been either one of those.
Mom told me that the man who'd killed Miss Jenny had been a different kind of sick and that he hadn't meant it. My childish mind had accepted that, but I'd come back to her explanation years later when the older sister of a boy in my class had been murdered. At twelve, I'd been old enough to read the stories in the newspapers and online. And I'd been old enough to research when I recognized the name of the man's previous victim.
Jennifer Kyle.
That’s when I'd found out that Jenny's killer had been an ex who'd beaten her before. That he'd been arrested with her blood still on him, but a defense attorney had found a loophole that had let the murderer go free. Free to kill my classmate's sister.
That was when I'd decided what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be the one who made the bad guys go to jail.
Soon, I'd be doing it. Very soon.
&nb
sp; Looking over at Lori, I nodded again. “Yes. I’m very excited.”
My excitement must've been showing on my face when I walked into Club Privé that night. My friends were already waiting for me at our regular table, Carrie's and Krissy's men at their sides. Carrie and her extremely rich and hot fiancé, Gavin Manning, ran the club together and they were almost sickeningly in love. Not that Krissy and her equally gorgeous and wealthy man, DeVon, were any better. They both lived on the West Coast, but DeVon was rich enough that he and Krissy came to visit as often as possible.
I hugged Leslie first as she stood to push out my chair. Krissy was next, and then I was in Carrie's arms for a quick, but heartfelt embrace.
I didn’t have a chance for anything more than that, though.
Carrie's eyes narrowed as she released me. “You’re up to something. It's written all over your face, Dena. Tell us. What is it? Tell us.”
Krissy leaned forward a little bit, her expression speculative.
Shit. I'd forgotten how intuitive the two of them could be. Even Leslie was looking at me with suspicion, and she usually let me alone.
“You're right, Carrie,” Krissy agreed, nodding sagely. “You’re up to something, Dena. I know that smirk. What's going on?”
I reached for the glass of water in front of me and took a sip, trying to buy time. I didn't want to just blurt it out. These three women were my best friends, the closest things I'd ever had to sisters. They would understand why this was so important to me.
In those brief seconds, Krissy took over, falling easily into her usual role within the group. Her dark eyes glinted as she propped her elbow on the table. Chin in hand, she asked, “Did you meet a guy? Say you met a guy. Tall and blond, or dark and mysterious?”
“Both?” Leslie wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. At least with her there, I wasn't the only single one.