Trouble

by Ann Christopher

  Her foul mood carried over into the weekend. She didn’t even feel like going to the movies Saturday night with Sean and Monica. She was a little snappish when Sean called to invite her, and when he hung up, her guilty conscience told her to call and apologize, but she didn’t feel like doing that, either. She’d make it up to him on Monday.

  Sunday morning, she woke up with the flu.

  Probably induced by the stress Mike was causing her, which led to a weakened immune system and increased susceptibility to germs. Rotten SOB.

  By that evening she was tired of being in bed, so she shuffled into the living room and parked on the sofa to wallow in her misery. She was just snuggling down under her ultra-soft throw when her phone rang. She stared at it indifferently for several rings—why couldn’t she just die in peace?— then snatched it off the coffee table.

  “Hello?” she snuffled.

  “What’s wrong with you?” asked Monica.

  Dara dabbed her clammy forehead with a wet washcloth and shivered. “I have the flu or something.”

  “Oh, God. Need anything?”

  “No.”

  “Good. You won’t believe what happened last night. Sean and I went to Club Destiny after the movie. You know, the place where all the athletes hang out. Guess who’s the owner’s wife?”

  “Yeah, no.”

  “Okay, skip the guessing. It was Alicia Carey from high school, only she’s Alicia Johnson now. Her husband is Mark Johnson. Used to play for the Falcons, I think. Anyway, you should see her. She’s dripping with diamonds. Drives a Benz bigger than my apartment. She asked all about you and said to tell you hi.”

  Dara grunted indifferently.

  “So here’s the unbelievable part. I saw in the paper this morning that there was a shooting at the club last night, after we left. Some guy was killed in the back room.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  There was more, but Dara was too listless to follow the thread of the conversation. Eventually Monica let her go and Dara sank into a miserable stupor. Monday morning, she called in sick.

  “Take care of yourself,” Mike’s secretary Laura told her. “I’ll tell Mike you won’t be in. And don’t come rushing back tomorrow if you’re not ready.”

  Dara hung up and snorted at the image of Laura informing Mike she wouldn’t be in.

  Dara? Dara who? he’d say, his brow furrowed with concentration as he tried to recall what she looked like. Does she still work here? What’s she been up to?

  By Tuesday morning, the fever had broken, but she was still weak and exhausted.

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” said Laura when Dara called in again. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  By early evening, Dara felt restless after spending the day studying and decided to get some fresh air. She showered, dressed and drove to the office to see if Mike had put anything on her desk while she’d been sick. She let herself into the darkened brownstone with her key and went upstairs. She’d just stay for a quick minute, then—

  “Oh, my God!” she cried.

  A shadowy movement by the window made her jump and fling out a hand for the wall switch. Light flooded her office.

  It was Mike, she realized. Sitting in her desk chair and glowering at her, looking moody as a chain smoker who’s run out of cigarettes.

  “Where have you been?” he asked quietly.

  5

  Shit.

  Dara had caught him at what was, quite possibly, the lowest point in his life: skulking in her dark office, trying to catch a whiff of her perfume from her chair, wondering when he’d see her again. He’d thought seeing her every day was the worst thing that could happen to him, but no. Not seeing her every day was infinitely worse. So now he was pissed with her for getting sick and putting him through this misery.

  And he was furious with himself for being such a goddamn idiot.

  “Where have you been?”

  She frowned. “I’ve had the flu.”

  Yeah, and judging by her sunken eyes and pallor, not to mention her hoarse voice and congested breathing, the flu had laid her out.

  He’d been worried. And it was an entirely different kind of worry than the passing concern he’d felt the last time one of his other employees got sick. He didn’t like it.

  “Why didn’t you call to tell me?”

  Her frown deepened. “I did call. First thing Monday morning. Didn’t Laura tell you?”

  Ah, but I wanted to hear your voice, sweetheart. Why don’t you get it?

  “Why didn’t you ask for me?” he persisted.

  “I did.” An edge crept into her voice. “You were already in court. What’s the problem?”

  “The problem,” he said, frantically trying to generate a legitimate problem, “is that I expect to personally hear from you when you’re not going to be in the office. You should have texted me. Or something.”

  “Did I miss a deadline or—”

  “That’s not the point,” he barked. “The point is you were supposed to be here.”

  “I was sick!”

  “I expected to see you here.”

  She rubbed her temples and mouthed that back to him.

  I expected to see you here.

  He said nothing.

  Dropping her hands, she took a couple steps toward the door, a couple steps back, planted her hands on the desk and leaned down as she exploded in his face.

  “You expected to see me here?” she shouted. “Why? So you could cross another day of ignoring me off your calendar?”

  Shit. Damn. Fuck.

  Stalling for time, he got up and came around the desk. He cocked his head and tried to look confused.

  “What?”

  “What?” she cried. “You haven’t said two words to me in weeks, and now you’re acting like it matters whether I’m in the office or not? Are you kidding me right now? I guess I should have dragged my feverish, half-dead ass into the office so you wouldn’t miss a day of ignoring me! And don’t even get me started on all the stuff you’re not teaching me during this internship!”

  “Dara—”

  “You’re unbelievable! Un-be-lievable!”

  “I don’t want you here!” he roared, all his seething emotions finally overflowing their dam. “Do you get that? I don’t want you here!”

  Dara flinched but kept her chin up.

  “I’m here anyway,” she said quietly. “So I guess we’ll have to both be professionals and suck it up.”

  Be professionals? Was she for real? At this point, they should all just be grateful he hadn’t lapsed into a homicidal depression and brought a loaded rifle to work.

  He blew out a breath and scrubbed a hand over his chin. “You didn’t want to be here either.”

  She sniffled, reminding him she’d been sick and here he was, being a jerk again and badgering her. Oh, but there was more. Her big brown eyes were over bright, but whether it was from tears or lingering fever, he couldn’t tell.

  The bottom line was that he’d been a punk to her—again—and needed to stop.

  “True,” she said tiredly. “I’d prefer to work with someone who can stand to be in the same room with me for more than three seconds at a time, but since I’ve been assigned to you, I’ll have to do the best I can.”

  She turned to go.

  He hurried after her.

  “Dara.”

  She paused, looking back over her shoulder at him.

  Mike took a deep breath and got himself together. He couldn’t go on like this—ignoring her and sending e-mails and not looking at her. He wasn’t in fifth grade. He was a grown man and he needed to act like one.

  Even if it killed him to work closely with her while keeping his hands to himself.

  “You and me. Fresh start. Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” she echoed.

  “Yeah.”

  One corner of her mouth turned up in the beginnings of a smile. She nodded.

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  Mike was on the phone
when Dara poked her head in his office bright and early the next morning. He waved her to one of the chairs across from his desk.

  “I’m sorry I can’t help you,” he told the caller, scribbling idly on a legal pad. “I’m just way too busy right now. Yeah. My secretary can give you the names of some other criminal attorneys in the city. Okay. Hold on.”

  He transferred the call to Laura, then turned to Dara.

  “Sorry. How’re you feeling?”

  “Human again,” she said, grinning. “Ready for our fresh start.”

  “Was that today?”

  She flashed him a warning look. “Don’t even try it. So what was that phone call all about?”

  He flapped a hand. “There was some shooting at a club over the weekend, and the club’s owner’s been arrested. He’s at the justice center. He wanted me to represent him.”

  Dara’s jaw dropped. “You were his one phone call? What kind of self-respecting lawyer with bills to pay turns away a wealthy client?”

  “There’s more to it than money. I don’t want the case.”

  “Why not? A nice juicy murder case. What could be more fun?”

  He laughed. “Only a first-year law student could think of a murder case as ‘fun.’” He leaned back and propped his feet on his desk. “For one thing, he talked to the police by himself. That’s always a disaster. Also, one of his employees is giving him an alibi, which is sketchy because he signs her paychecks. And he’s talked to the press, which means high profile. And he’s former NFL, which means really high profile. Which means pain in the ass.”

  “That about covers it.” She raised her eyebrows. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t like him. He was arrogant.”

  “I see.” She nodded gravely. “And you’re already arrogant enough for two or three people. Too much arrogance.”

  “Exactly,” he said, laughing.

  “But still. What’s your retainer?”

  “For murder? Twenty large-ish.”

  Her eyes bulged. For a second she looked as though she might choke.

  She had a point, he thought.

  Maybe he’d made a huge mistake. The firm was doing okay, but being in business for yourself was always a risky proposition. Johnson could have paid his retainer without missing a beat. Still, his gut screamed at him that Johnson was bad news, and he tried to always listen to his gut.

  So no second-guessing.

  “Dara, Dara, Dara. It’s not all about money. And a thug gets thrown in jail every two and a half minutes, so there’ll be someone else to pay my exorbitant fees. Anyway,” he continued as he swung his feet down and opened the file on his desk, “if the firm hits hard times, I’ll just save on expenses by firing my legal intern.”

  “You don’t pay me,” she replied tartly.

  “Ah. Jamal, then. Let’s get to work.”

  “At your service.”

  “This is awful.” He tossed an opinion letter she’d written, now covered with red ink, across his desk to her. “You need to put more legal reasoning in your legal memo. See how that works?”

  She looked up from flipping through the memo long enough to shoot him a blistering stare.

  “Don’t tell me you can’t take a little constructive criticism?”

  “Of course, I can,” she said through her teeth.

  “And I don’t know if you remember that personal injury trial I told you about. Our client was hit by a truck, and now he’s a quadriplegic.”

  “Of course.”

  He slid a thick transcript across the desk. “I need you to summarize the defendant truck driver’s deposition testimony. So we can start preparing for my cross-examination.”

  Her entire face lit up with a dazzling smile. “Sure.” She picked up the transcript and flipped through it. “I can’t wait to...”

  She looked up, saw him watching her and trailed off.

  Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

  Mike caught himself and looked away to rummage through some papers on his desk. Would someone please tell him how was he supposed to think straight when a woman this beautiful smiled at him and made him feel like a god? Like he was seeing HD colors for the first time after centuries of nothing but black and white?

  “Well,” he said, his voice husky now, still rifling papers. “I’m not paying you to sit around in my office.”

  “Yeah,” she said, looking bewildered. Maybe a little disappointed. “Okay.”

  She headed out, but at the door she stopped and turned back to him.

  “Mike?”

  He didn’t look at her again, but her plaintive tone said it all. She was afraid she’d done or said something wrong when all she’d done was be her amazing self.

  “Chop-chop.” He snatched up his phone like he had to make an urgent call. “Time is money.”

  Looking reassured, Dara smiled and left.

  As soon as she turned the corner, he heaved a huge sigh of relief and put the phone back down.

  Dara had just settled back at her desk when Laura buzzed her to say her old friend Alicia Johnson—the one Monica had run into at the club before the shooting the other night—was in the lobby to see her. Stupefied, Dara hurried down and met with her.

  Ten minutes later, she trudged back up the stairs and crept into Mike’s office, cursing her soft heartedness every step of the way.

  Mike was writing something. When he looked up and got a good look at her face, his eyes widened. “What’s up?”

  She swallowed hard. She hated asking him for such an enormous favor, especially when they were just beginning to have a thaw in their relations.

  “Mark Johnson’s wife is here,” she told him. “Turns out she’s a friend of mine from high school. She begged me to talk you into representing him.”

  Mike’s lips curled into a humorless smile. “Is this a joke?”

  “Yes, well, couldn’t you just consider it a personal favor?”

  Disbelieving snort. “Bringing someone coffee is a personal favor. Driving someone to the airport is a personal favor. Taking a murder case because your legal intern wants you to goes above and beyond a personal favor, don’t you think?” He went back to his work. “Scram.”

  Irritated, she marched up to his desk, planted her hands on his papers, and leaned down until she was in his face. “Kindly stop dismissing me.”

  Mike glared up at her from under his thick eyebrows. “You’re like a dog with a bone.”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “Wonderful,” he said, tossing down his pen and scrubbing a hand over his nape.

  She stilled and waited, silent as a church mouse.

  He stared across at her, frozen with indecision. He’d had no intentions of taking the case. Not for twenty thousand, not for fifty. Mark Johnson was probably a liar, and the poor sucker who wound up representing him would inevitably be sorry.

  But something in Dara’s face stopped him. She seemed so hopeful, so confident he could save Johnson that he felt like he could do anything with her looking at him like that.

  Sighing, he drummed his fingers on the desk.

  He could do a lot of things. Saying no to Dara was apparently not one of them.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

  “Oh, my God!” Her face lit up like New Year’s Eve in Times Square. “Thank you!”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” he said gruffly. “I want twenty-five for the retainer.” He glanced at his watch. “I suppose she wants me to drop everything else to be at the arraignment this afternoon to bail his ass out of jail.”

  She headed for the door. “Probably.”

  “Meet Jamal here at two-thirty. He’s coming to watch and learn. Oh, and wear—” he waved a hand to indicate Dara’s plain black dress, which would be fine if she wasn’t rocking a body guaranteed to make the inmates riot— “something else.”

  Dara gasped and threw her hand over her heart. “Really? I can come with you?”

  Mike had the uncomfortable thought that the look of excitement
on Dara’s face, more than any retainer Johnson might pay, was his reward for taking the case.

  He grinned. “You can take notes for me. You don’t want to miss any of the fun, do you?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Good. Because if I have to work my ass off on this case, so do you.”

  When Dara met Jamal back at the office at two thirty, he looked her up and down as if she’d shown up in a bikini.

  “You’re not wearing that, are you? Mike said he told you to change.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s a perfectly respectable dress,” she said. “I’ll be fine. And all my other work clothes are at the dry cleaners anyway.”

  With Jamal muttering darkly, they quickly walked the eight blocks to the justice center and met Mike by the elevators. He took one look at Dara and scowled.

  “Didn’t I tell you to change?”

  “Look,” she said, thoroughly sick of the whole topic. “I can handle myself. Let’s go.” She turned her back on Mike shooting Jamal a stupefied look and pressed the UP button on the elevator.

  Mike shook his head in amazement, stole one last incredulous glance at Jamal as if to make sure he hadn’t imagined the whole incident, then followed Dara onto the elevator. He shook his head and muttered something—whatever it was didn’t sound very flattering—under his breath.

  When they got to their floor, Mike went to the information desk to fill out a sign-in form. Meanwhile, a guard unlocked a door for Dara and Jamal and took them into a visiting area with long, cafeteria-style tables with attached benches. Several inmates in striped jumpsuits sat talking in quiet, urgent tones with their attorneys, most of whom were male. Inside the adjoining glass-enclosed holding pen, other inmates loitered, waiting to come into the visiting area to talk with their attorneys.