Blind Trust

by Lynda Aicher

  She closed her eyes and found a small dose of solace in the darkness. Could she simply stay there? With her head in the sand and heart numbed to the vicious swirl of hurt, disappointment and rebuke compressing it tight?

  “This is personal because you’re making it so.”

  Lori’s voice floated into her quiet to shatter her small moment of attempted peace. “So fucking my boss isn’t personal?” Because it sure as hell felt like it to her. Every fiber of her was screaming with how personal it’d been. His gentle caresses ghosting over her skin. The throaty rumble of her name as he’d filled her. The tender possession that’d kept her safe.

  Yeah. Those classified as personal—to her.

  “Would you feel this way if you didn’t work with him?”

  “Yes.”

  The truth was out before she’d thought about it. Every moment in those rooms had been personal—with him. Just him. And that was the real issue. If it’d been just sex, then maybe she wouldn’t care so much. But she’d made the encounters into way more than they’d been, and that just added another layer to her embarrassment.

  “Then I suggest you figure out how to deal with that.”

  “No shit.”

  “Without sacrificing your job.”

  Brie raised her hand and flipped her friend off, her eyes still closed. Lori’s soft chuckle quirked her own lips up. The action had been received exactly as she’d intended—with unspoken sarcasm. And Lori was probably her only friend who would’ve taken it that way.

  This was exactly why she was here. To hear the brutal truth when she’d rather hear how wronged she’d been. The latter would justify the anger and hurt burning a hole in her stomach. The former would show her reality and make her face it.

  “Can I really continue to work with him?” The silence stretched until Brie was forced to open her eyes. She studied Lori below half-opened lids, not entirely prepared to face her or the truth.

  Her friend leveled that interrogation glare and laid into her. “Did he threaten you in any way?”

  Her reluctant “no” came out after a long moment of internal debate between telling the truth and justifying her own reaction.

  “Did he make an unwanted advance?”

  Another “no” was pulled out against her will.

  “Did he imply that—”

  “No!” she cut her off, too deflated to continue the detailed breakdown of exactly how irrational she was being. “No. Okay? No. He didn’t do any of those things.”

  A smile that could only be descried as smug landed on Lori’s face as she patted herself on the back. Brie didn’t even have the energy to flip her off again.

  “So what did he do?” Lori asked.

  Brie is safe with me.

  She squeezed her eyes closed against the shot of pain that laced her heart. The sense of protection had wrapped around her and shredded her at once. She’d understood exactly what he’d meant. He hadn’t been talking about just her secrets or her physical actions in those rooms, but who she’d become.

  Who she’d let herself be.

  That Brie was one only he knew. Not even the other men in the room could understand what his touch had done to her. Did he have a clue to the havoc he’d set free?

  Brie is safe with me.

  Was she though? Truly?

  “Tell me something,” Lori said, breaking into Brie’s thoughts. She opened her eyes and lifted the corner of her mouth in assent. Lori cocked her head, brows lowering a tad. “Would you or did you do any of those things to him?”

  Brie jerked up, scowl set. “No.” Her indignation raised the hair on her arms and sparked the fire that’d burned out after her first sip of wine. “I would never do those things—to anyone.”

  Lori’s slow nod was one of quiet victory. “Then don’t expect less from him.”

  Brie sputtered, rebuttals dying in quick succession until only one was left. “But that’s our job. We’re trained to expect and prepare for the worst.”

  “While ensuring the best possible outcome,” Lori finished. “And in most cases, the worst never happens.”

  “We don’t win every case.”

  “True. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to lose them all. Or that we should stop trying.”

  Brie squinted at her, lost in the sea of innuendo and veiled analogies. “What are we talking about again?” Her brain was fuzzy from the wine and the overload of thoughts that’d been flying in and out of it. Processing any of the hidden meanings in Lori’s words was impossible.

  Lori’s laugh filled the room with much-needed lightness. “We’re talking about how you’re going to go to work tomorrow and act as if nothing happened.” Brie’s eyes widened, and Lori nodded, her expression firm. “You are. Your little hitch of unnecessary conscience will not be the cause of you quitting a job you love.”

  “Who said I was going to quit?” But the thought had crossed her mind multiple times since she’d fled the building. There were plenty of other law offices where she could work. And none that she’d be able to walk into and have the power and position she did at C, L and B. She was well aware of her elevated status on the paralegal totem pole within their office.

  “Excellent.” Lori sat forward and motioned to Brie as she lifted the wine bottle. “At least we have that down.” She refilled Brie’s glass and sat back. Her own was still half-full. “Now what else is there to cover?”

  Brie blinked, her mind empty for the first time in hours. Was there more? Yes, but nothing she was willing to share with her friend. Not when Lori clearly had no ties to anything or anyone she interacted with in the Boardroom.

  There was a clear line of delineation between the two of them. Brie apparently couldn’t be that detached even when she’d tried to be.

  “Nothing,” she deflected. The weight settled over her to press her further into the cushions. “I’m fine.”

  Lori’s sharp bark of laughter said how much she believed the bullshit Brie had just fed her.

  “Really.” Brie forced a smile and willed her words to be true. “I am. I’ll go to work. Do my job and pretend I’m not daydreaming about every ‘sexual act’ he did to me.”

  “Oh, you’re free to daydream,” Lori said with a wicked grin. “Daydream all you want. Just don’t act on any of them—until you’re in the Boardroom. Then it’s game on.” Her glorious cackle set off a wave of dread within Brie.

  There was no way she’d ever return to the Boardroom. Not when she had to face her fantasy every damn day for the foreseeable future. There, that was another decision made. She wasn’t backing out of the Palmaro case either.

  They were both adults. If he could pretend those two wild, erotic, wonderful encounters never happened between them, then so could she.

  Damn her lusty Libido Bitch and every obnoxious thought she’d generated. She’d never thought with her pussy, and she wasn’t about to start now.

  Even if the vision of being spread across that conference room table and fucked senseless by him eventually drove her insane.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ryan looked up from his computer, stretched his shoulders back.

  “Did you find the property codes and regulations from nineteen eighty?” he asked the room at large.

  “Donaldson did,” Brie answered.

  A scowl tugged on Ryan’s forehead, his distaste for the schmoozer associate attorney coating his throat.

  “They’re printed in that stack over there,” Brie went on, pointing to a pile of papers beneath a file labeled in black marker as City Regulations. “The information is summarized in file CR one nine eight zero A,” she went on before he could ask. “The findings support the plaintiff, so I placed it in your To Read folder.”

  He clicked on the electronic folder. Brie had set up the file structure for the case with a precise logic that was organ
ized and easy to follow. The office had some basic standards, but Brie had taken it a step further, making the critical info easier for him to find.

  His back ached from the hours spent hunched over his computer doing research and assembling briefings and filings. Thankfully, Brie had started most of them or pulled in the ones they needed.

  The Palmaro case had become as much hers as his, and that hadn’t happened since he’d taken his first case years ago.

  He slid his glasses off, rubbed the grit from them before sitting back. Only then did he realize they were alone in the room. His gaze landed on her like it had so often over the last two weeks. She’d been sitting in that very spot when he’d arrived the day after he’d blown every boundary he placed on both himself and his work.

  She’d come back.

  He’d stalled in the doorway for a fraction of a second before taking his seat and getting to work. Their relationship had proceeded in the professional manner he extended to everyone he worked with, which he was grateful for.

  He refused to acknowledge the swipe of regret that tried to take hold. This was the best possible outcome of a situation that could’ve been disastrous for him.

  “I had Carla move your ten o’clock meeting tomorrow back to two,” she told him, glancing up. “We should have the supporting evidence in place for the collusion theory by then, so you can better present it to our clients.”

  “Thank you.” The platitude came out automatically when he would’ve bristled at the overstep under any other circumstances. But this was Brie.

  She’d swooped into his awareness on a gasped breath and whispered “please” only to sneak into his life on a wave of efficiency, brains and decorum. The very things he longed to wipe away with one long thrust into her clenching heat.

  The memory of her cries and moans wove their way behind the walls he rebuilt daily to withstand her nonexistent assault. Not literally anyway. It was his own damn head that continued to create havoc where none should be.

  She brushed her hair back, a smile gracing her face before she looked to her computer. Her profile displayed the straight line of her nose that drew his eyes to her lips. Her mouth flexed with each thought that entered her head while she worked. Frustration was a slight pinch. Annoyance a compressed line. Excitement a slight uptick at the corner.

  The light poured in from the window behind her to highlight the varying shades of brown, red and blond in her hair. She rarely wore it up even though it spread over her shoulders and down her back in a wave that’d been declared unprofessional by some outdated standard. She defied that and so many other rules defined by those who wanted to stake out their superiority.

  Whoever raised her had done right on that aspect, or had she grown into that strength on her own?

  “Where are you from?” he asked before his brain engaged to halt the intrusive question.

  She squinted at him, confusion drawing her brows together. “What?”

  Did he retreat or proceed? Desire to know conflicted with the more clearly established desire to not care. He reached for his coffee cup, caught in an awkward position of his own making. Yet another thing he wasn’t used to.

  He glanced at his empty mug, annoyance increasing.

  “I was born and raised in Walnut Creek.” Her frown deepened. “Why?”

  He wasn’t surprised. The affluent commuter-burb west of the city offered an illusion of superiority, of distance from the peninsula. But the peninsula, crammed with people as it was, held a quiet power Walnut Creek would never penetrate.

  “Just curious.” He set his cup back down. “Is your family still there?” He dug in when he could’ve dismissed the subject.

  She sat back in her chair, a half-smile forming. “Yes. My dad works in the city.”

  “And your mom?”

  Amusement flashed before her smile fell, the light dimming from her features. “She does charity work.”

  Ah. The secret code words for the country club elite who were privileged enough to spend their time raising funds for all the poor suckers who need two incomes just to get by—and then only barely.

  And his resentment was showing.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  He kicked himself for opening the topic in the first place. “In Oakland.” He left it purposely vague. The city was large, with plenty of both good and not-so-good areas. He sat forward. “I haven’t spoken to my parents since high school.”

  His stomach clenched, heart contracting in a hard wince of what the fuck? He kept all of that from showing, though. The fact was nothing more than that, despite how little he shared it.

  Her brows lifted higher, and he prepared to dismiss her condolences or apology or whatever other platitude people felt compelled to offer. Another reason why he didn’t divulge the information.

  She didn’t move or lower her gaze at all. Her study of him dragged on until it crawled over his nape and dug into the very part of him he refused to let others see.

  “You’ve done well without them.” Her voice had lowered to those whispered notes of intimacy he habitually avoided. “Did you have other family to support you?”

  He shook his head when everything urged him to shut this discussion down. The more she knew, the more power she had. “No.” He answered anyway.

  “That must’ve been hard. Doing all of this on your own.” Empathy flowed from her voice, but absent was the pity he’d heard from his college counselors, who were the last people he’d allowed to dissect his upbringing.

  He shrugged, neither confirming nor denying her claim. “It just was.” And every painful step had brought him to where he was now. “You can’t change the past.”

  “No,” she agreed. “But it follows you nonetheless.”

  His bark of laughter burst free to shock them both. He shook his head, the sound dying to a low hitch as her surprise shifted to a soft laugh of her own.

  “You speak the truth,” he finally said. That empty space in his chest filled with a tad bit of warmth.

  “I know from experience.” She lifted her shoulder in dismissal. “Everyone has something that dogs them.”

  “And those somethings all vary.” He rested his elbows on the table, enjoying the morphing conversation. “Some are far darker and more gut-wrenching than others.”

  “By whose standard?” She sat back, arms crossing as she dug into the discussion.

  “Maslow’s hierarchy, to begin with.”

  “Needs do not equate to individual experiences and impact.”

  “No,” he agreed, a smile tugging on his lips. “But the hierarchy sets the foundation for assuming impact.”

  She frowned. “Explain.”

  He leaned back, his debate forming as he went. “If a person has no food and no home but is given both, the subsequent loss of one or both would be disappointing but not catastrophic. However, for someone who’s always lived in a grand house with more food than they can eat, losing both would be devastating.”

  “The same could be said for love and social standing, if you apply it like that.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So that’s probable impact,” she said, nodding. “How do you assess actual?”

  “How would you?” he challenged right back.

  Her eyes narrowed, a smile edging her lips at his turnaround. “You first have to understand their background and their current situation. Much like your example, only deeper. Such as, if in example A, the loss of food and shelter was due to the death of a loved one, then that could be catastrophic, especially if the child has no one else to care for them.” Her triumphant smile begged him to counter.

  How could he resist? “And what if that child is finally able to escape the one person who was supposed to love them, but only showed them contempt and abuse?” He raised a brow as her smile fell. “Then the same event could invoke relief an
d be seen as an opportunity.”

  “And the woman who gets hospitalized after being abused by her husband?” she asked, her frown back in place.

  “That would depend on how she responds. Does she report it? Go back to her abuser? Seek shelter?” Was Brie speaking from personal experience or knowledge? Was that the cause of the scowl that formed when she answered some of her texts? The thought of any man abusing her sent a rage boiling through him. He cleared his throat, reined his thoughts back in. “No matter how crushing an event may be, the actual depth of the pain is often dependent on how that individual responds.”

  “I disagree.” Her head was shaking before he’d finished. “Pain can be camouflaged. People can move forward, make decisions and go on with their life while the pain is ripping them apart inside. Everyone doesn’t show pain in the same way.”

  He only had to look at his own experience to see the validity in her statement. No one ever knew how hard his parents had struck him, both verbally and physically. Showing his pain had only gotten him more.

  “And what about the longevity?” he tossed out, if only to stop his memory trail. “Can actions or steps shorten the length of the pain?”

  She propped her chin on her thumb, a finger curling over her lips as she contemplated his question. “Yes and no.” She sat back. “And again, that depends on the person. A funeral service can help put closure in place for one person, but it’s an expected motion for another. Just like buying lumber to rebuild a destroyed home or applying for a job to restart a career brought down by a random mistake. Those steps can be seen as moving forward, while the individual is still mourning what they’ve lost.”

  “So it’s about the state of mind and the individual point of view?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then the conclusion based on that theory is that actual impact can only be determined by the individual.” He paused before circling back to the original statement. “Which means the standards applied to exactly how much, and to what extent, our pasts impact our current lives—no matter how gut-wrenching or dark they may be—is completely dependent on each individual.”