Know When to Hold Him

by Lindsay Emory

  “This weekend?” Nora pressed for more information. “Was he the one who pushed you in?”

  “No, that was Zach. This was the guy who…” Spencer relived the memory of being in the wet, warm arms of a tattooed stranger. “Caught me,” she finished.

  “Let me guess,” Rainey started. “His name’s Teddy. Or Trey. Or Preston.”

  Nora giggled. “And he’s a lawyer. The good kind, of course. Not the sleazy kind. Or he’s in banking. Or maybe a doctor?” She tilted her head at Rainey. “She’s dated a doctor a few times.”

  “Brooks Brothers, J.Crew, and an Audi,” Rainey said, nodding.

  “Golf club, Hamptons, and Episcopalian.” Nora kept the list going.

  “Ivy league,” Rainey added.

  “Or Old South. SEC. Emory? Vanderbilt?” Nora waited for Spencer’s confirmation.

  Spencer shook her head, thinking of Liam’s tattoos, Kenny Rogers songs, and kissing. He didn’t kiss like a Brooks Brothers’ wearing, golf playing Yalie. “I’m not that predictable.” Spencer tried to protest, disliking how well her friends had pigeonholed her.

  “No, no,” Rainey agreed. “Not predictable. It’s your type.”

  “Your style,” Nora offered. “Nothing wrong with that. It’s what suits you.” She sighed and wrapped her arms around herself. “The prince to your princess.”

  “The trust to your fund. The country to your club,” Rainey mused. Spencer brushed a finger over the new phone, still covered by a thin piece of plastic film. Liam wasn’t at all her type. She had already determined that. But her heart hadn’t fluttered like that with the last Teddy, Trey, or Preston. No man had ever surprised her like this. And her face still hurt from the gigantic smile he’d put there.

  Liam was like a black leather motorcycle jacket Spencer itched to try on. Just to see what it looked like.

  …

  Liam pulled up the expense report and stared at it. This would be a good job for an intern, he thought, but after Jared delivered the phone to Spencer without a hitch, he’d given him the rest of the day off. So now he was stuck deciphering spreadsheets from his last trip to Lubbock. When his desk phone rang, he was more than happy to stop inputting mileage and talk to whoever was on the other line. Angii (with two I’s), the new receptionist, reported that there was a doctor who wanted to talk to him about Troy Duncan.

  “Is he hurt?” Liam asked.

  “No.”

  “Is he sick?”

  “No, sir,” Angii replied. “She said it’s about a baby.”

  “Whose baby?”

  “Mr. Duncan’s, sir.”

  Liam bit back a groan. When it came to professional athletes, babies came out of the woodwork like clockwork. But Troy Duncan?

  It was one of the reasons he was excited to take on a self-professed virgin as a client. It’d save him a hell of a lot of time and trouble.

  “Take a message.” He hung up and scowled at the spreadsheet. He didn’t like complications or spreadsheets.

  Chapter Seven

  Spencer ended her phone conversation when Rainey returned to the conference room with an announcement.

  “Troy’s people said no. Wouldn’t even get on the phone with me.”

  Spencer gaped. “Did you tell them your name?”

  “I even used my full name. And honorific.” Rainey looked confused. Who wouldn’t take a call from Dr. Rainier Cordray-White? She sounded pretty damn important.

  Spencer frowned. This was unheard of. No one didn’t pick up the phone for Hightower & Associates.

  “Call back. This time, demand to talk to Troy’s agent.”

  Thirty minutes later, Rainey found Spencer in her office. “And?” Spencer asked.

  “I told them who I was. Who I needed to talk to. They put me on hold.”

  “What? What kind of incompetent assholes do they have representing this guy? No one puts us on hold!”

  “When the secretary finally took me off of hold, she said, ‘Mr. Duncan’s agent is not accepting calls from arsonists.’”

  Spencer held a hand up. This was just getting weird. “Arsonist? Did you light something on fire and not tell me?”

  “No, but I’m pretty sure I smelled smoke. Who tells someone that? After I’m on hold for thirty minutes, listening to the best of the crappy eighties music.” Rainey’s eyes blazed. “Foreigner. And Journey.”

  “Not… ‘Eye of the Tiger’?”

  “We Built This City…”

  “On Rock and Roll?”

  Rainey nodded. Spencer shook her head in disbelief. “Troy Duncan needs to find an agency with decent taste in phone waiting music.”

  “Is that a thing?” Rainey asked, with a smirk. “Phone waiting music?”

  “I don’t know the technical term.” Spencer pursed her lips. “Hold radio?”

  “Annoying, Incompetent Jerkface Soundtrack?” Rainey suggested. The new Blackberry on Spencer’s desk rang, the sounds of Kenny Rogers filling the office.

  “Speaking of which,” Rainey said under her breath, before ducking out to leave Spencer to her conversation.

  “Hi.” She loved the little thrill of knowing who was on the other end of the line.

  “Excited about tonight?” Liam’s voice, warm and low, sent a zing through her.

  “Of course. I would be sitting around drawing your name in little hearts if it wasn’t for this thing called, you know, work.”

  “Ah,” Liam said. “Work always gets in the way of my little heart drawing, too. Anything I can help you with?”

  Spencer shrugged. “Just annoying people who don’t pick up their phones.”

  “So annoying,” Liam agreed in an earnest, low voice. “You know what I do when people don’t pick up their phones?”

  “Buy them new ones and have them delivered?” The low rumble of Liam’s laugh reverberated through the phone. That voice.

  “Nah,” Liam said. “I go to them. Knock on their door. When they open said door, I say, ‘Knock knock, motherfucker, why aren’t you answering my calls?’”

  Spencer laughed at the mental image that conjured up. “Knock knock…”

  “…motherfucker,” Liam continued. “It’s a saying.”

  “Oh, yeah. I use it all the time.” She would never. But the idea was hilarious.

  “See?” Liam paused and Spencer enjoyed the companionable silence. “So, you going to do it?”

  “What? Go see the jerk face that’s avoiding my calls? Or say ‘Knock knock, motherfucker’?”

  “Both. Especially the last.”

  Spencer checked her watch. It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. Plenty of time to make an unannounced visit to Troy Duncan’s insufferable, annoying, self-important-jerk-of-anagent and still have time to get ready for her first date with Liam.

  “Yeah,” she decided. “Definitely the first. Considering the last.”

  There was a warm laugh. “I’d pay money to see that.”

  …

  Twenty minutes later, thanks to light pre-rush-hour traffic, Hightower & Associates sat in the sleek chrome and glass and black leather lobby of OPM. When she introduced herself, Spencer used her full name, but she might’ve introduced herself as Queen Elizabeth the Second as fast as the receptionist scrambled for someone.

  Spencer couldn’t help but smirk.

  Knock knock, motherfucker.

  The receptionist returned. “Right this way, please.”

  They were led to a modern conference room overlooking downtown Dallas.

  With an appraising eye, Spencer analyzed the white leather chairs and the long glass table. A little flashy for her taste, but then she wasn’t trying to woo professional athletes. Her conference room was designed for comfort and safety. Hightower & Associates clients needed reassurance that they were going to come out the other end of a scandal in one piece, financially and emotionally intact. OPM’s clients needed to hear a cha-ching sound when they entered this conference room.

  She imagined a room full of foot
ball and basketball players, with gold chains, the latest in high-tech sneakers and obnoxious championship rings, bragging about their groupies, their mansions and indoor pools, their latest appearances on Pimp My Ride.

  The door opened and Spencer turned, ready to do battle with a sleazy, greased up Ari Gold-type with a flashy watch and shiny shoes. What she saw was Liam, wearing rolled up shirtsleeves and the same scuffed boots he’d worn at the Buchanan ranch.

  Knock knock, motherfucker, indeed.

  …

  Liam had been pulled from his office by Angii with two I’s and a junior agent, both babbling about Troy and an apparent invasion of some baby doctor. He had headed down the corridor, intending to put an end to any further extortion of his client. It was also a welcome excuse to avoid spreadsheets. But when he’d opened the door to the conference room, Spencer waited for him, and all rational thought escaped him for a moment. She was as excited for their evening as he was. Obviously. It was the only possible explanation.

  Then the brunette opened her mouth. At first, Liam couldn’t concentrate on whatever information she was sharing. His mind was still distracted, filled with Spencer’s image.

  The brunette-she introduced herself as a doctor, even though he’d never seen a doctor this pretty or one with a purple streak in her hair or with a tiny gold stud in her nose-kept talking, and she was pretty intense about it, saying things like “client” and “baby” and “paternity.”

  Whoa.

  Liam inhaled a deep breath and held up both hands. “Hang on. You can’t just come here and start slinging accusations against an innocent man.”

  “Dr. White tried to call. You refused to speak to her,” Spencer stated. Liam was startled by the chill in her voice.

  The puzzle pieces clicked in Liam’s mind.

  Good grief.

  “So you took some bonehead’s advice and decided to barge in?” He tried to sound self-deprecating, but Spencer didn’t laugh. She crossed her arms and fixed him with an honest-to-God glare. Yeah, he didn’t get women some times, but this he got. Spencer was pissed as hell. And he hadn’t done anything. He was almost 90% sure of that.

  “Let’s take a seat and discuss this,” Liam offered, stretching a hand out to the line of white leather swivel chairs. He’d intended for the four of them to take a corner of the table, friendly-like. But the three flinty-eyed women lined up like soldiers and took seats across from him.

  Maybe he needed some backup. Or an offensive line-man.

  Spencer produced a card and slid it across the table. Picking it up, Liam read, “Spencer Hightower, Hightower & Associates. I have your number.” Liam pointed out, referring to the new cell phone he’d just sent over.

  “And you have Dr. White’s number. She left it with your receptionist,” Spencer retorted.

  “And this is Nora Dexter.” Spencer introduced the cute redhead with the thick glasses. He recognized her from the benefit. And somewhere else. But where? “We represent Dalynn Kay, a young woman who is currently eight-and-a-half months pregnant.”

  Liam leaned back in his chair, tapping Spencer’s card against the glass tabletop. “And she claims the baby is Mr. Duncan’s,” he finished.

  “Ms. Kay and Mr. Duncan were together for nearly two years. She believes the baby is his.”

  “Impossible.”

  Spencer’s eyes widened. “Because of a medical problem?”

  “No,” Liam answered in a clipped voice. “Because Mr. Duncan is a fine young man with strong morals who has decided to save himself for marriage.”

  “He claims to be a virgin.”

  Liam lifted a shoulder. “I can’t prove otherwise, can you?”

  A calculated curve spread over Spencer’s mouth.

  Magic, he thought. Pure magic.

  No other word described Spencer Hightower with such accuracy.

  “Actually, a paternity test can prove just that. So it’s settled. He’ll take the test and it’ll confirm what he already knows, and we’ll be done with this little situation.” Spencer’s voice was like hot melted honey. Sugary sweet, but dangerous. When a southern woman turned on “the sweet voice”, it should come with a warning. An evolutionary trick, a pretty flower that would snap tight as soon as an unsuspecting fly flew by.

  And something Liam wanted no part of. Especially on the receiving end.

  “When do we schedule the test?” Spencer reaffirmed her position.

  Poof. The magic just disappeared.

  Liam had been an agent long enough to know the old “baby daddy” routine inside and out. It was his policy to show 99.9% of the applicants for child subsidies to the door, unless one of two things happened: his client agreed or, even less likely, he was presented with indisputable evidence.

  Liam adopted a reasonable posture. “You’ll have to understand our position,” he said. “An athlete such as Mr. Duncan will have a significant number of these claims a year, the vast majority of which will prove to be false. Responding to each of them would be an undue burden on a busy professional, constantly on the road, training…”

  “It’s a cotton swab that he puts in his mouth,” Spencer conveyed in a tone that a kindergarten teacher might use. “We’ll ask the doctor to swab quickly so as not to waste any of Mr. Duncan’s valuable time.”

  Liam chuckled with no amusement. “I’m afraid the answer is going to be no.”

  “I don’t understand. If Mr. Duncan is, as you claim, a well-bred boy who has always kept his jock firmly in its strap, why would he refuse a paternity test? A quick test will confirm your assertion that he is, in fact, pure as the day his mama brought him into the world, and then he’ll be able to face the NFL Draft with no other distractions hanging out there putting an undue burden on him.”

  At the mention of the Draft, Liam’s jaw clenched. “We need evidence before we submit my client to…”

  “A sterilized cotton swab?” Spencer interrupted.

  Liam continued, pushing down his annoyance, trying to stay cool. “Unreasonable bodily searches for any extortionist that comes along…”

  “Extortion?” Spencer’s voice rose. “First you accuse Dr. White of being an arsonist, and now we’re extortionists? What next? Are we torturing poor Mr. Duncan? Depriving him of Doritos and his X-box? Poor Mr. Duncan.” She clucked her tongue.

  “What are—what?” Liam was exasperated. “What are you talking about? Arsonist? I never called her that!”

  Rainey piped up. “Your receptionist told me that I was an arsonist. I quote: ‘Mr. Duncan doesn’t negotiate with arsonists.’ End quote.”

  Liam sighed. Angii-with-two-I’s. He had used the word “extortionist”. And he hadn’t meant her to echo the exact words to the caller. He’d have to watch his f-bombs or they could have a real problem next time.

  “Let me be perfectly clear, Mr. Connelly.” Spencer stood, her associates following suit, ready to go. “There is no extortion going on here. My client is due to give birth any day now. For two years, she dated your client and believes he is the father of her child. So we can do this now, and do it easily, quickly, and quietly, or we can do it later, when there’s a big, bouncing bundle of joy that can make cute ga-ga noises for the camera and the whole country can see for themselves a certain family resemblance.”

  Liam’s knuckles grew white as his fingers gripped Spencer’s business card. “You talk a big game for someone who doesn’t have evidence.”

  “I have a client.”

  “And women never lie about who else they’ve been sleeping with.”

  Spencer’s glare showed him he’d hit his mark. He pushed her further, in offensive mode after she’d threatened the Draft. “Women leave out all sorts of important details when they think they can get something.”

  Her eyes turned Arctic cold. “And men lead women to believe they’re someone they’re not, skipping out the second they are afraid.”

  This was getting personal. Hell, as soon as she’d mentioned the Draft it had become personal. Liam
turned his head to the left and the right, exaggerating his search of the room. “Nope. Don’t see anyone afraid of you around here.”

  Spencer leaned toward him. He couldn’t wait to see where this was going.

  “Mr. Connelly,” she addressed him. As mad as he was, hearing his name on her lips unhinged him. “Not being afraid of me is the biggest mistake you can make.”

  It was the sexiest threat he’d ever heard. She turned and started for the door. Dr. White and the redhead chased her. “You have my number when you want to discuss our offer,” she called back over her shoulder as she strolled out the door.

  “I do have your number!” Liam shouted at the figures now halfway to the elevator. “Both of them!” Liam held up the business card now creased in his palm. The good news was he’d seen Spencer again. The bad news was…that was the only good news.

  Chapter Eight

  The Turtle Creek high rise sat above the winding tree-lined street. The simple beauty of the environment paled in contrast to the wealth that surrounded it. Liam remembered his real estate agent trying to show him the building. He had declined, thinking “luxury high-rise condo” sounded too LA. He’d just escaped from La-la land.

  And this was where Spencer lived. For the hundredth time, Liam asked himself what the hell he was doing here. The meeting in his office hadn’t gone well. This would be one helluva first date.

  If Spencer answered the door.

  He’d gone back and forth all afternoon. On the one hand, he’d made a commitment. On the other, they hadn’t left on good terms. Let it go, he’d told himself. She’s just another woman, one that was after the same thing they were all after.

  Liam had played football for ten years without leaving a trail of junior Connellys behind him, something not many of his colleagues could claim. He’d spent years ducking and detecting overeager women across the country, all out to get a piece of him and his bank account. Then he’d seen the same old story as an agent, time and again, and he wasn’t about to let this beautiful shark of a woman get what so many others had tried and failed to get–the best of Liam Connelly.

  If he ever settled down, it was going to be because he wanted it, not because he was hijacked down the aisle. And he’d be damned if he let that happen to any other man.