Dylan’s lips slowly moved into a happy grin. “Okay, Cosmo night it is, but only if we throw a little tequila into the equation. If we’re going to do it, we’ve got to do it right.”
Linda wrapped her arms around Dylan and hugged her tightly. “Okay, but when I vomit, you’re holding my hair.”
Despite her eagerness to be away, she would miss her mother. She wouldn’t even pretend otherwise. “It’s a deal,” Dylan whispered with tears in her eyes.
Chapter Seventeen
Ben coasted through the hallway, staring straightforward and holding his chin in the air. As he passed each cubicle, he counted in his own head to appear as if he knew exactly where he was going. He always made sure his first impressions were his best.
He paid no attention to Nicole, his latest victim to run out of his room in tears, something he felt somewhat guilty about. She passed him as she traveled with a stack of papers that she hugged against her chest, and made an obvious face turn as soon as she noticed it was him. As bad as he felt, he couldn’t find it in his heart to apologize. That was asking too much of him.
Darius Mason, the attorney he would work under until the fall, instructed him to “settle in” and return to his corner office when he was ready. Ben was born settled into this role, but he felt it may be somewhat necessary to at least see the area where he would check his emails.
He found his cubicle and set his briefcase down. He dropped into his cheaply made chair and took in his surroundings. His heart was beating to the rhythm of a gladiator’s before a death match, he imagined. No one would ever know the rush of his nerves, however. His power face was on and he was ready for business.
He knew exactly how he managed to score the position with Darius, Weis and Carter’s most vicious, successful attorney. Ben had an overbearing, miserable father, but the perks from his last name would carry him far.
Ben figured he had given his “settling in” time long enough and stood back to his eager feet. He walked away from his cubicle and headed back into Darius’s office.
“Did you find everything all right?” Darius asked as Ben returned. “Is your cubicle as small as mine was when I interned here?”
“Was the desk hanging out into the aisle way?” Ben answered through a polite chuckle.
“No bother. You’ll be spending most of your days here with me or running errands.” He dropped a stack of files onto his desk and slid them to Ben. “First assignment,” he announced with a smile.
Ben stared down at the stack hungrily. He smiled and carefully restrained back his urge to slap his hands into one another and rub them together vigorously. He was nearly salivating at the idea that there was a real case inside that manila folder, just waiting for Ben to sink his teeth into it.
“You’ve got that look in you, McKenna. I like it.” Darius leaned back in his extravagant, leather chair and sighed. “I’m envious. I wish I still got that excited over work.”
Ben opened the folder and thought that he had never felt better in his life, other than anytime he was with Dylan, of course. Nothing could top that. But this was almost that good. This was what he’d been waiting for.
“A little background on this,” Darius began, “Jordan Long is an accountant facing fraud and laundering charges. Allegedly our guy swindled a few people out of a couple of bucks.”
Ben nodded his head slowly. “I’ve heard about this case. This is big on the news.”
“We don’t worry about the news, McKenna,” Darius said with a chuckle. “What do we worry about?”
“If the prosecution can prove it,” Ben answered confidently. “And, also, how do we disprove what they find.”
“My man!” Darius slapped Ben’s arm. “I was hoping you’d add that last part.”
Ben laughed. He sat down and carefully thumbed through the information in the file: legal phrases he understood perfectly, a picture of the client, Jordan Long, and three different bank statements, which had been run over with a yellow highlighter.
“Take this home tonight and do a little homework,” Darius instructed. “Tomorrow we have a meeting with Mr. Long and you’ll be there. You’ll be silent, but you’ll be there.” He grinned, flashing his perfect, white teeth. “It’ll be the same drill on Wednesday’s arraignment, silent observation. Consider yourself my secret weapon.”
Ben chuckled. He watched as Darius practically danced around the room. He wasn’t anything Ben expected. He seemed like more of a kid as he picked up a miniature basketball and flung it into a small net that hung from the back of the door.
“Are you hungry, Ben? We should go across the street to that pub and grab a bite to eat. You’ll die a happy man after you’ve had a burger from that place.”
Ben wasn’t hungry. He wanted to work, what he came there to do. It was barely eleven in the morning. He didn’t plan on eating for at least another six hours. However, this was a god before him, his deity of law. If the man wanted him to eat a burger, his only reply would be, bring on the beef!
The two took a seat along the bar and Ben sighed in relief when Darius ordered a diet pop. Ben ordered water. He wasn’t ashamed to tell anyone he wasn’t drinking. It was the answers to the questions that would follow his statement that he was ashamed of.
“So, Ben,” Darius began, “how’s your father doing?”
Ben tossed the lemon that came with his water onto the bar. He slowly sipped from the edge of his glass and nodded his head. “He’s good.” He really had no clue, but that wasn’t a very good answer.
“I never personally got a chance to get to know him, but I’ve heard a few things about him. What a shark, man. He sounds fierce.”
“Try being his son,” Ben replied with laughter. He never enjoyed small talk about his father really. It was that law deity thing again, though. Ben would eat, sleep, and breathe whatever way this man wanted him to. He could certainly handle a few off limit topics of conversation.
“Oh, I bet,” Darius said with an over the top laugh. “I bet you learned a lot from him, though. I’ve already seen that same fierceness in you. I saw the way you looked at that file, Ben. I thought you were going to take a bite out of it. That’s why I chose you.”
“You chose me, huh?” Ben asked, nearly laughing in Darius’s face.
Darius nodded eagerly. “Hell yes! I had to practically wrestle you away from Dick Thompson. That’s who your father wanted you to work with in the first place, you know?”
Ben frowned and fell into a deep racking of the brain. Darius Mason chose him? “I thought my father set this up,” Ben admitted. “I was sure he placed me with you because you’re the best.”
Darius raised his eyebrows and grinned. “No one sets interns up with me. Sometimes I don’t even have an intern because I’m not interested in any of them. I choose who I want, and I chose you because you’re the best, Ben.”
Ben had nothing to say. He had never earned anything on his own, without his father’s push or influence. This was the first time he felt pride in himself, knowing he had accomplished it alone.
“You have to know that your GPA is flawless. You came highly recommended by all of your professors,” Darius reassured once again. He had to have seen the disbelief in Ben’s eyes.
“I’m just not used to getting things without my father’s influence. He can be rather persuasive at times, you know?” Ben looked down as his food arrived. “Anyway, let’s eat.”
“I’ve heard he’s quite a guy, that Warren.” Darius shook his head and frowned. “Heartbreaking thing about his heart, though. The poor guy gets married, all is well, and then—bam—heart starts failing him. Sad.”
Ben froze and tried not to look confused. He nodded, pursing his lips.
Darius took Ben’s discomfort for sadness. “Hey, I’m sorry. You probably don’t want to talk about this.”
Ben shrugged, attempting to keep the color in his face. “It’s all right,” he assured him.
Darius waved his hands. “Let’s eat these burgers. You haven’t lived ‘
til you eat this thing.”
Ben looked down at his food and realized that if he hadn’t been hungry before, he certainly wasn’t the slightest bit interested in the greasy thing in front of him now. “I’m going to go wash up real quick. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Hurry up there, McKenna. I’m pretty hungry. I might steal yours if you let it sit here too long.”
Ben laughed his fake laugh for what must have been the fiftieth time in an hour. “Feel free,” he joked, standing up. He truly didn’t get the fuss this guy was making over a burger. It looked like any other burger he had seen before. If he were on speaking terms with Jonah, this would be the first thing he would make fun of Darius for when Jonah called to see how his first day went.
He walked into the bathroom and leaned over the sink. He stared into the mirror as he controlled his breathing. He splashed water over his face and regained his normal heart beat. As he pressed the rough paper-towel to his cheeks, it hit him: his father had a heart condition? How “sad” was this exactly? It wasn’t so sad that Warren had thought it necessary to tell him about it, despite their last encounter. Was Ben really this unimportant that strangers knew of this before he did?
He stood, dabbing the cheap paper over his wet forehead. He drew in a long breath and then sighed out through his circled lips.
“Shit,” he whispered.
Dylan exhaled as she made a long stroke against her blank canvas. She had been staring at it for hours and now laughed at herself for only coming up with this one meaningless line. She stepped back and brushed the hair from her face, leaving a green streak across her forehead. Despite her lack of creative ideas, she was happier than she had ever been with this one green line, only because it was the first line painted in her new studio.
Everything was put away except for a few random things here and there but, already, this place was home. Her drawing table was set up in the corner of the room and her easel was just under the giant window that stretched from wall to wall. It was perfect.
She could sense the joy in herself just by looking at the jars of paint in front of her. They were filled with only bright, lively colors, shades she had not used in ages. Peace was finally consuming her. Still, there was that one hole inside her that Ben had left. She had been able to camouflage it well, but she was sure it would never be complete again.
“Here comes the bride!” Meredith called as she and Charlie stepped in through the door to Dylan’s new home. No one ever accused her of not being cheesy enough.
“Don’t leave your door unlocked,” Charlie scolded with a frown. “That’s the first thing I said when I left last night and, here you are, unlocked and vulnerable.” He looked down at Meredith, and asked, “Didn’t I tell her that? I knew she wouldn’t listen.”
Meredith nodded and rolled her eyes with a sigh. “Yes, honey, you did tell her that.”
“I’m hardly vulnerable,” Dylan replied, eyeing the can of pepper spray Charlie left on her table. “And, hello? Do we knock ever?”
Charlie let out a quick burst of laughter. “Uh, no, we don’t. Robbers and rapists don’t knock, either. Just in case you were wondering.”
“Oh? I really wasn’t wondering, but thanks anyway.” Dylan’s eyes squinted as she forced a smile that wasn’t meant to be pleasant.
Charlie looked back at her through competitive eyes, beginning an immature staring contest. The two had been in countless of these before, which they found much easier than shouting. The only problem was they could both go on forever.
“Dylan, we brought you a present for your new place!” Meredith beamed, interrupting the stare down. “Look!”
Dylan smiled. “Oh, it’s a picture of you two. Just what I always wanted!”
“It’s our engagement photo,” Meredith pointed out.
Of course Dylan had seen that picture multiple times. The picture was by far one of Charlie’s cheesiest moments, but just as much a token of his love for his future wife. Only she could get him to dress up and sit in a garden.
Charlie rolled his eyes behind her. He didn’t need to say that, like everyone that knew her, he was ready for this wedding to be done and over with.
Dylan’s patience was incredible. She placed the frame on a shelf hanging by her window and smiled up at it like it was the greatest thing she’d ever seen. She needed more pictures of her family displayed anyway; her walls looked a bit lonely.
Charlie relaxed into the small, red loveseat that Linda purchased for Dylan on a Girls’ Night. He shifted comfortably and sank deeper into the soft cushion. “You’re spoiled,” he said with his eyebrows narrowed. “Mom never bought me a thing for my apartment.”
Dylan smirked. “Well, I am her favorite,” she teased. “You should have been a girl. Or, it’s not too late to be gay.”
Meredith’s head jerked up at the word “gay.” “Excuse me, I need him to be straight, thank you. That would just be a disaster.” Her lips frowned as her face saddened with thought. “Wouldn’t that be the worst thing ever? I mean, ‘honey, I’m gay’ would quite possibly be the most horrible news to hear on my wedding day.”
Charlie and Dylan both stared at Meredith as they attempted to keep up with her strange little ways of thinking. When she turned and realized that they were both fixated on her with puzzled expressions, she asked, “Charlie, you wouldn’t really wait until the day of our wedding to tell me something like that, would you?”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that, honey,” Charlie said monotonously, as if he were prepared with any answer imaginable for any ridiculous question. “I’m sure I would have realized it a long time ago.”
“It’s a bad Lifetime movie, Meredith,” Dylan said, still perplexed. “I was just kidding.”
Meredith laughed uncomfortably, her face a bit white. “Maybe we should just wait for after my wedding to say funny things, okay? My mind is running wild with the ‘what-ifs’ I’d rather not—you know—know if.”
“Let’s order a pizza,” Charlie said, ignoring his fiancée’s wondrous ability to think of everything. “I’m hungry.”
Dylan groaned. “Charlie.”
“What?”
“Leave!”
“Why?”
“Because we’re hovering, honey,” Meredith intervened. “She wants her alone time. That was the whole point of her moving here,” she reminded him.
“We gave it to her last night,” he said, dumfounded. “Really, though, did you lock the door last night after I left, like I said?”
“Charlie—God!” Dylan stomped to her door and flung it open. “Seriously!”
Charlie laughed and stood to his feet. “Okay, okay. We’re leaving.”
“The place looks great, Dylan!” Meredith called as she pulled Charlie’s hand.
“Lock it!” Charlie yelled as Dylan slammed the door in his face.
True to her protective brother, she locked the knob and twisted the bolt. She stood waiting next to the door for what she knew would be coming in only a matter of seconds.
“Thank you!” she heard Charlie call from the other side.
She shook her head and laughed as she headed back to her easel and canvas. Not even Charlie’s bridezilla of a fiancée could keep him too busy to drive her crazy. Despite the aggravation his smothering caused, Dylan thanked the heavens above that Brandon lived in California, far away from her. It was only a matter of time before he showed up with a state of the art security system, she suspected.
Dylan stared at her green line once again. She sighed heavily and crossed her arms, staring at this one, irrelevant line that she had grown to love simply because of its meaning: freedom.
“Well, that’s all she wrote for today, I suppose,” Dylan announced to know one, and scooped up her brushes. She placed her things back into their places and washed the one sad, lonely brush under the tap water.
Her phone rang loudly and made her just about jump out of her skin. “Hell,” she growled out in frustration and stomped over to r
etrieve the ringing disturbance.
“Hello?” she answered the foreign number. “Hello?” she asked again impatiently when the caller didn’t respond quickly enough. Her hands were still wet, causing her to hold the phone awkwardly.
“Hello. Ms. Mathews?” the male voice asked.
“Who’s this?” she hissed.
“I apologize for any interruptions, but my name is Lorenz Fuller.”
“Yes?” Dylan snapped, ready to end the call. “How can I help you?”
“Yes, I run a department here at the Boston Institute of Art Education. Ms. Mathews, did I catch you at a bad time?”
Dylan blindly sat in the loveseat behind her, hoping she had the placement of her furniture locked into her memory by now, but not really caring nonetheless. A bruised rear end was the last of her concerns. This was the art school of all art schools. A phone call like this didn’t come very often.
“No. I’m sorry. You’ve got my attention now.” She giggled nervously.
“I should hope so,” he said with a small chuckle. “I’ve been in touch with an old instructor of yours, a Mrs. Scarlet Hudson? She thinks very highly of you and your work. I came across your number through her.”
Her nervous heart sputtered in her chest with the many possibilities that could be behind his call. “Yes, I know Scarlet,” Dylan answered carefully.
Scarlet was Dylan’s favorite teacher in high school and was able to get her the job at the school she taught at now. She was always very free-spirited, smoking on school grounds and pushing for self exploration. As long as an artist believed and felt what they were creating, that was enough for Scarlet. She never had to say it out loud; Dylan was her most prized student. It wasn’t a shock to Dylan now that Scarlet thought of her for whatever this man was seeking.
“We’ve been looking for a new instructor here at the school. There’s only one position to fill and, while I’ve had many applicants, I’m just not sure that they have what I’m looking for.”
“Which is?” Dylan asked, making sure he was saying what she thought.
“Ah—well—you, Ms. Mathews,” he said simply. “I believe we’re looking for you.”
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