She’d chopped it off when she’d moved to the Northeast for college, and while she loved New England for its seasons and its charm, sometimes she missed the warmth of southern Florida, missed how summer started at Easter and lasted well past Halloween. There were days when she longed for the sight of palm trees, for the feel of tough grass under her feet and humidity so thick she could chew it.
She missed other things too. Like the spicy sweet smell of her grandfather’s cigars—hickory and toasted almonds and tobacco.
She sniffed the air hoping for a whiff of it, and tears sprang into her eyes unbidden at the loss. Every once in a while, she tasted the scent of cigar smoke on the air, and the ghostly aroma made her feel his presence even though he’d been gone for years. It reminded her of his warm, leathery arms and the scratchiness of his stubble when he kissed her good night. But taking trips home didn’t bring her grandfather back, so she hadn’t visited much. Not when all being there did was get her stressed. The last time she’d given in, impulsively buying a ticket home, all she’d gotten was a week of lectures from her mother.
“How long are you going to keep putting your career over getting a husband?” she’d bemoaned. “¿El que dirán?”
What will people say? As if Cassie gave a rat’s ass about that. No, being here was better for her, away from the pressures of her family. Her layered, long bob cut was better for her too. She couldn’t be bothered with fussing with her hair when she had companies to reorganize.
She tugged her sweatshirt over her head. “Okay, where do you two want to—”
“Aw, take that hoodie off, baby. No need to cover that pretty body up.”
Cassie paused midstep and whipped her head in the direction of the male voice. A tank-top-wearing, muscled dumbass she’d seen once or twice at the gym was smiling at her.
She didn’t smile back. “Excuse me?”
“I said, don’t cover up.” He said covah instead of cover, dropping the final r in a way typical of native Bostonians. “You’ve got a beautiful body. Don’t hide it behind a sweatshirt.”
Adrenaline rushed through her, her fingers tingling with her fuck-the-flight-and-fight reflex. “I’m not hiding behind anything.”
“Yeah, you are.” He pointed at her shirt, his grin lazy and stupidly large. “I’m reading it right now. It says Boston University on it.”
Despite his local accent, he reminded her of things she didn’t miss from home. The machismo, men coming on to her at every street corner and calling her “gordita.” Affectionate expression or not, she’d hated being called “little fat girl,” and she didn’t like this guy man-splaining her own goddamn sweatshirt to her now.
“It says Boston University School of Law. I’m a lawyer, not some piece of ass for you to drool at. So unless you want a restraining order issued on you, I’d suggest you get the fuck out of my face.”
He stepped backward, his hands in the air. “Whoa. I was saying you were pretty. That’s all.”
“Yeah? Really? Is that all?”
Cassie turned on him like a small whirlwind, but didn’t feel as intimidating without her heels on. Whatever, she’d take him on anyway. She was about to step into his space when Sam’s hand closed around her arm.
“Okay, we’re going. Bye now.” She yanked Cassie in the other direction from Mr. Muscles. Lilly followed, and Cassie allowed herself to be tugged away. She cooled down as they walked in silence, which was probably a good thing. It wasn’t that guy she was angry at. She was upset at herself. And her boss. And Patrick. Not necessarily in that order.
After a few minutes, she finally muttered, “The guy was a jerk.”
“He was,” Sam agreed. “And you certainly put him in his place. But you might want to take it down a notch before you end up needing Lilly to represent you for ripping someone’s head off.”
They went into Cassie’s favorite café, a cozy neighborhood spot with decent lunch fare, baked goods and coffees, and got in line. Wishing for one of the pastries she could only find back home, she ordered a fruit croissant. After growing up on churros and guava-filled pastelitos, Cassie had an unhealthy relationship with carbs and powdered sugar. Screw the workout. Whatever assets she didn’t feel like shaking she could hold down with some industrial-strength Spanx. But she discovered after sitting down and biting into her treat that it was neither flaky nor fruit-filled enough to be satisfying.
“That’s your problem. A lack of…satisfaction in your life.”
She grimaced and dropped the pastry on its plate.
Lilly raised her eyebrows over her soup. “You know, not eating completely defeats the purpose of destroying your workout.”
Cassie had to laugh. “You have a point.”
Sam swallowed a bite of her sandwich—a healthy mix of whole-wheat bread and greens that put Cassie’s croissant to shame. “You want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what?”
“Whatever got you ready to put your fist through that guy’s head.”
Sam’s comment was punctuated by a knowing look in her dark brown eyes and a tilt of an eyebrow. Lilly, the more hesitant of the two and less likely to push, simply smiled and waited. Cassie envied them—Sam’s calm demeanor and Lilly’s hazel-eyed, freckle-faced innocence. They never seemed to lose their tempers the way Cassie did. But this was why she’d asked for their company today, so it didn’t seem right to clam up now.
She tore off another piece of the pastry and chewed. “I’m pissed.”
“About work?” Lilly asked.
Among other things. “I’ve busted my ass and now it feels like it’s been a waste of time.”
“It hasn’t been a waste. It’s what you want to do, isn’t it?”
A paralegal up until a few months ago, Lilly was at the beginning of her legal career. Now she was eagerly anticipating the results of her bar exam and a chance to practice law.
“Of course,” Cassie replied. It had been what she’d wanted to do since she’d beaten her grandfather in a game of dominoes, and he’d told her she was going to change the world.
Casimíro Flóres loved arguing almost as much as he loved his wife, cigars and Cuba. His name was Spanish for peaceful, although he was anything but. He was bullheaded and opinionated, and discussed everything heatedly, from dominoes to baseball to the Castro regime. He’d fled his homeland and come to America with nothing, worked hard for what he had and paid back every dime he’d had to borrow. Despite only being half Cuban, Cassie was born like him—pushy, determined and strongly averse to taking advantage of anything resembling charity.
“You’re going to change the world, Cassandra. I’m counting on it.”
He’d passed before she’d had the chance to prove it to him. She clawed her way through the lowest-ranking Miami-Dade public schools anyway, getting top grades and a scholarship to Brown. She worked part time at Boston Legal Aid while getting her JD, then started hacking her way through her student loans clerking for a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice. When she’d gotten her offer letter from Forrester, Schaeffer and Pierce, she’d thought the finish line was finally in sight.
“I’ve worked doubly as hard as my male counterparts, done all the right things demanded of me by the system, but despite the talk of diversity and inclusion I still can’t get anywhere.”
“You think you’re not getting anywhere because you’re biracial?” Sam asked.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
It was hard to talk about the blurred line of her ethnic heritage. Growing up, Cassie knew her family was different, but it became more apparent when she moved north. Acting Cuban with her Latina friends never felt comfortable, and acting American with Caucasians wasn’t a perfect fit either. There was no way to be both. Society forced her to choose, to split the way she behaved, and somewhere along the line, she’d become two separate people.
She didn’t know if that was the problem at work. It wasn’t as if she was “Cuban Cassie” that much at the office—no one asked wh
at her ethnicity was unless they heard a Spanish curse slip out. They assumed she was white, so she let that assumption stand, coasting by on her appearance. It was hard enough to get somewhere in the legal marketplace as a woman. Let her Latina side show, and that glass ceiling might get even farther away.
But parts of her had been erased in the process, and she’d been the one wielding the pencil.
“It feels like no matter what I’ve done, it’s not good enough. I work hard at the office, it gets me nowhere. I try to make something of myself, my mother puts it down because I’m not making babies. I try to relax on a Friday, and I get Patrick telling me my life is unsatisfying.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “He said what, now?”
Cassie sighed and shook her head. “Oh, nothing. He was being his usual dick self. But the worst part is he wasn’t wrong.”
Lilly frowned. “You think your life is unsatisfying?”
Yes. “No.”
“Then fuck him,” Sam said.
No, Cassie didn’t want to do that.
Well, maybe a little. But only as a means of shutting him up.
“Patrick, I can ignore.” He was a bug. A mosquito flying around her head that needed to be squashed. “But my goal was making partner. I figured the whole ‘finding a husband and making babies thing’ would fall into place afterward. And now it’s possible that neither one is going to happen.”
“Well, marriage and babies ain’t the happy ever after it’s built up to be,” Sam said dryly. If Lilly was fresh out of the gate in her career, Sam was the opposite, having opted to stay home and raise her kids. “And I get the whole parents-not-being-supportive thing. Mine are thrilled that I’m here instead of using my poly-sci degree in DC like I wanted.”
“You wanted to work on The Hill?” It was an easier question than asking what was going on between her and Brady. They hadn’t been friends long enough for Cassie to want to pry.
“I did, but my mom needed surgery so here I am.” Sam raised her coffee in a toast. “I wouldn’t give up my daughters for the world, but kids change your life. If you want them, nothing’s stopping you. Hell, you can make babies and skip the husband.”
If only Cassie could be sure that was what she wanted. Her biological clock seemed to be on permanent snooze. When her sister-in-law was pregnant with her niece, she’d waited for it to kick into gear. To see a pair of tiny booties and poof! The got-to-have-a-baby-gene would kick into action.
It hadn’t happened. Not then, and not a few years later when her nephew was born.
“I’m a year and change away from forty,” Cassie said. “As my mother loves to remind me, I’m running out of time.”
“You are not,” Lilly insisted. “Forty is the new thirty, right? And you’re gorgeous. You’ll have no problem finding somebody.”
“Sure. Because I’m awesome at dating.”
“That’s not true. You just went on a date with…”
Cassie waited. “You gonna finish that sentence, counselor?”
Lilly wouldn’t be able to because Cassie couldn’t remember the last time she’d been on a date either. Her friend wrinkled her nose in frustration.
“Uh-huh.” Cassie ripped off half her croissant and stuffed it in her mouth.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been trying, but dating had always been a challenge, and not only because of the hours she put in at work. She was a loudmouthed chick with a take-no-prisoners, badass side, but she had to be that way. In a professional landscape where women were often discriminated against, being tough as nails was only way she could intimidate. Her battle armor was what helped her succeed, from her first mock trial, to her first time in front of a judge to her own firm’s conference room. Problem was, that armor didn’t work in relationships. Her hard-shell exterior was great in the courtroom, but not so great in the bedroom. Which was why most of the relationships she’d had ended soon after they started.
“Well you’ve gotta get back out there,” Lilly said.
“Men out there don’t have a tendency to like women like me.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Sam asked.
“It means I’m difficult. Abrasive. Too hard to deal with.” At least that was what her last few boyfriends had said during their breakup conversations. “Men say they want someone who is hardworking and intelligent, but that’s bullshit, because look at me, Ivy League and still single.”
Not that she was going to change who she was. If a guy was being a dick, she was going to say so. They couldn’t take her heat, then they could get the fuck out of her kitchen.
“Clearly, you’ve dated some real winners,” Sam said.
“They weren’t strong enough to take me.” Her toughness scared most men off at the first signs of conflict. Cassie shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t need a man. I’m perfectly happy on my own.”
She glanced at Lilly’s collar. At Sam’s wedding ring.
If she’d been under oath right now, she’d be perjuring herself.
“It means you haven’t found the right guy,” Lilly insisted. “You’ve gotta keep looking. Weren’t you the one trying to convince me to get out there a few months back?”
“I was,” Cassie grumbled.
“And didn’t I resist it?”
“Like a stubborn mule.”
“And didn’t I end up meeting an amazing man and falling hopelessly in love?”
And Cassie had stood by the whole time, terrified her wounded-by-an-ex-boyfriend, vulnerable friend would get her heart broken. “You did. But—”
“But…?” Lilly prodded.
Cassie rubbed the back of her neck. She’d never explained why she’d been so overprotective when Lilly was first dating Jack. It had been a combination of fear and envy, because BDSM was perplexing as fuck. How did it work, when you didn’t think you were dominant or submissive, but fell somewhere in between? What did it mean when you liked to fight, but wanted a man who would fight back? Cassie was tough, but what she hungered for was to be taken down—to feel that satisfying push in a way that was both arousing and terrifying.
Just like the grey area of Cassie’s genetic makeup, her sexual desires left her feeling like an outsider, uncomfortable and confused.
“But, I’m not sure everyone is that lucky,” Cassie finished. “So I think I’ll focus on making things happen at work.”
Lilly smiled. “Your name’s gonna be up on that wall. I know it.”
“That’s the dream.”
They finished their meals, talking about doing more things during the week to get Sam out of the house, and Lilly suggested a shoe-shopping trip that made Sam almost as giddy as it made Cassie. When they parted ways at the lot where Lilly was parked, Cassie walked home, determined to get her head back in the game. Now wasn’t the time for worrying about men or babies. It was time to find the client that would make her a rainmaker, and bring in so much business the firm begged her to become a full equity partner.
And as for her shameful desires? They’d stay buried where they’d been for years. It was easier than hoping she’d find someone who could fulfill them and still respect her—that she could have them fulfilled and still respect herself. She wasn’t Cinderella, didn’t need any Prince Charming to bring her a shiny slipper. She was going to use her own expensive stilettos and shatter that damn glass ceiling with them all on her own.
And then she’d show Patrick Dunham how satisfying her life could be.
5
You have someone waiting for you in the conference room, Ms. Allbright.”
Cassie stopped in the lobby and stared blankly at Piper, the firm’s receptionist.
“I don’t have anything on my calendar,” she said as she fished her phone from her bag and thumbed over her agenda.
Other than ten memos she needed to hand in, three back-to-back client meetings, finishing document review for an upcoming discovery hearing, and helping Gabe with a motion he needed to get in before midnight.
“He waltzed in as I was unl
ocking the door and said he’d make himself comfortable until you got here.”
“Couldn’t you have farmed him out to one of the first-years?”
Piper had worked there as long as Cassie had. She was half admin, half bouncer.
“I tried. He wanted you specifically. Real sleazy-looking kind of guy too.”
Fantastic. “All right. Thanks for letting me know.” Cassie hurried toward her office. Gabe appeared by her side, coming out of the kitchen with a steaming cup of coffee.
“Buenos dias,” he said. “Got a case of the Mondays already?”
“We can’t all be chipper like you are.” Married to Lilly’s brother Nick, Gabe always seemed happy. He was also a partner in the firm, and had been her mentor for years. “I haven’t put my stuff down yet, and already there’s some dipshit without an appointment making demands on my time.”
“I’m sure you’ll have him beaten into submission in seconds. Stomp all over him in those fabulous Jimmy Choos.”
She stopped to model her favorite glittery pumps. Four-inch heels with a rounded toe and worth every penny. Cassie didn’t mind the bit of extra junk in her trunk—real women had curves and all—but if she was able to offset it with some flashy footwear, she was gonna. She didn’t spend on much. Her apartment was modest and she budgeted the hell out of her salary to afford her mortgage, putting money aside to save for her capital contribution to the firm. Making partner would mean she’d have to purchase her equity share to the tune of a hundred grand, so she kept her expenditures to a minimum. But when it came to shoes, she was Imelda fucking Marcos.
If Imelda had gotten all her heels from discount racks and outlet shops, of course.
“Good thing I didn’t wear my Pradas. I wouldn’t want blood on them.”
“Don’t judge. That could be somebody’s kink.” Gabe waggled his eyebrows. “And hey, what happened with Schaeffer on Friday? Are we about to celebrate?”
Cassie grimaced. “Nope. No celebrations. Instead our fine Mr. Schaeffer told me I was no longer on partner track.”
Gabe’s jovial expression vanished. “Do you want me to talk to him?”
Her Claim: Legally Bound Book 2 Page 4