Mr. Hall Takes a Bride

by Marie Ferrarella

In the end, although she became increasingly disgruntled, Jordan managed to convince her that there was really nothing the agency could do for her, other than give her the name of a reputable shelter. After examining every piece of mail she brought him, Jordan had to conclude that the landlord had been within his rights to evict her. Jordan pointed out that the man had been kinder than most, allowing her to stay on almost six months without paying. As tactfully as he could, Jordan pointed out that she had clearly been taking advantage of the landlord’s generosity.

  The one thing he did wind up doing for her, after placing a few phone calls, was to get the charge of disorderly conduct against her dismissed. This, even though she had resisted the marshals who came to remove her from the premises, spitting in one of their faces.

  Jordan promised to get back to her if anything came up in her favor. And with that, he escorted her to the door, making sure to close and lock it after he’d all but coaxed her to the other side.

  Just before he did, he slipped a hundred-dollar bill into her hand. He closed the door just as the woman looked as if she was going to kiss him.

  Sarajane watched him as he walked back to his desk. Everyone else had left for the night. Everyone but her and the man she’d slept with.

  The man she’d slept with. The sentence echoed back to her.

  She shouldn’t be going out with him again, she told herself. She shouldn’t be setting herself up for the eventual disappointment that would come all too soon. A disappointment she knew was coming because in less than two weeks he was going back to his high-priced world, leaving her to deal with the evictees and the people with pending lawsuits and cases against them they knew nothing about.

  Oh, c’mon, live a little. Cinderella knew she had a curfew, it didn’t keep her from going to the ball. And look how that turned out.

  Cinderella was a fairy tale. There would be no fairy-tale ending for her. There wouldn’t even be a consolation prize of a pair of glass slippers, not that she’d ever understood how anyone could walk in those.

  But there’d be memories. Good ones, the little voice in her head whispered. Or was that in her heart?

  She’d seen him slip the money to the woman and it had gladdened her heart, making her even more vulnerable to the man than she already was.

  Still watching Jordan, Sarajane did her best to block out the little voice, but for some reason, she couldn’t silence it, couldn’t drown it out even when she started thinking of a particularly infectious lyric to a song that had been stuck in her head just the other day. Nothing helped. The little hopeful voice managed to triumph over it all.

  “Ready to go?” Jordan turned from his desk as the computer screen finally darkened and then disappeared. “To the restaurant,” he added when Sarajane didn’t seem to know what he was referring to.

  This is where you do the right thing and turn him down. “I’ve got to go home and change first.” So much for the right thing.

  Jordan was already crossing over to her. He shook his head.

  “No time,” he told her, taking her hand. “We’ve got about fifteen minutes to get there. If we’re not right on time, the owner gets petulant. Worse than that, he gives away our table. Besides—” he grinned at her “—you look great.”

  Because he gave her hand a little tug, she rose to her feet. “For haunting houses,” she retorted.

  His hand to the small of her back, he escorted her to the rear of the office and the exit. “A little sideline never hurt.” Her eyes widened in surprise and he laughed. Didn’t she know he was kidding? “C’mon, Sarajane, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

  She wasn’t sure if he was just repeating some hardware-store mantra, or if he actually meant what he said. No, it couldn’t be the former, she decided. She sincerely doubted if Jordan Hall had ever even seen the inside of a hardware store, or picked up a screwdriver, or worked with his hands outside of a bedroom for that matter.

  Two different worlds, Sarajane reminded herself. They were from two completely different worlds. But for the next week and a half, maybe she could pretend that they weren’t.

  “Okay,” she said cheerfully, getting out the key to lock the back door. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The evening didn’t end in the restaurant when dinner was over. Sarajane had known that it wouldn’t. The moment she’d said yes to Jordan’s invitation that morning, she knew they would wind up in bed together.

  She just hadn’t thought of whose bed.

  It was his.

  The huge, king-sized bed in the master suite that lay at the far side of his penthouse apartment. Try as she might not to, she found herself comparing the two beds. Comparing their worlds: his apartment, his bed to her tiny twin bed in her tiny bedroom within her tiny fifth-floor apartment, which half the time turned into a fifth-floor walk-up because the elevator was malfunctioning for one reason or another.

  The experience, she thought, could be likened unto Cinderella spending the night in the palace. For all intents and purposes, it was a fantasy come true. But even in the middle of their wild lovemaking, and it was just that—wild—she could hear a soft little voice whispering in her head: “You don’t belong here.” Didn’t belong in his arms, or in his bed and certainly not in his apartment.

  But, oh, it felt so wonderful while it was happening that she just couldn’t make herself do the right thing, couldn’t find a way to protect herself. Couldn’t get up and leave before she was completely and hopelessly forever lost.

  Who was she kidding? Sarajane upbraided herself. That boat had sailed. She was lost, it was just a matter of how lost. And what she could do to get herself back in her own harbor without sustaining too much damage to her poor heart.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Jordan murmured against her hair as he gathered Sarajane in closer to him.

  They were in bed together and the afterglow of lovemaking had yet to dissipate. He found himself hoping it would linger on a little longer. This was the third night he’d brought Sarajane to his penthouse after a mind-draining long day at the agency and somehow, it was beginning to feel as if he’d been doing this forever. As if having her in his life, in his bed, was something that had been going on for a very long time instead of merely a handful of nights.

  Sarajane looked at him, unaware that she had drifted off. A tingling sensation slithered through her as he pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder. This man could turn her on as easily as she could throw a light switch.

  “So that’s how your family made its fortune, by being cheap,” she quipped.

  Jordan raised her hair from her neck, lightly skimming his tongue along her skin. He liked the way she shivered in response.

  “We prefer to think of it as frugal, and, in light of inflation, I’ll up the asking price to a nickel.” He let her hair fall back into place. “How’s that?”

  She laughed softly in response, struggling against a bittersweet sensation. Oh, I’m going to miss this. “Spoken like a true lawyer.”

  “I am what I am.” And then, as he looked at her again, his teasing tone faded. “What’s on your mind, Sarajane?”

  She didn’t want to let him in. This was too personal, too painful. She didn’t want Jordan thinking of her as being needy. Hell, she didn’t like thinking of herself in that way.

  “What makes you think there’s something on my mind?”

  He’d sensed her distraction and wanted to know if something was bothering her. Wanted to know, he realized, about everything that had anything to do with her.

  “You were somewhere else tonight. This part of you—” he lightly tapped her temple “—wasn’t here.”

  Because that part of me was worrying about a week from now. Wondering who would take my place in this bed with you.

  But she couldn’t say that, couldn’t allow Jordan to think that she was being jealous when she had no right to be. She knew that this was nothing more than a pleasant interlude for him. The best she could hope for was to leave som
e sort of an impression on him that he would recall fondly once he had returned to a life already in progress…

  Because Jordan was waiting for some sort of reply, she plucked the first thing she could think of out of the air. Something that concerned them both and sounded plausible.

  “I was just thinking about Alicia. She’s taking care of Joe’s kids,” she told him in case he wasn’t aware of that. “She thought it was only temporary. Now she doesn’t know what to think.”

  Sarajane was like Jenny, he thought. Utterly selfless. How did someone get to be that noble? he wondered in awe.

  He did his best to reassure her. “This isn’t over yet,” he promised, wrapping his arm around her waist. “I’ve got appeals in the works.” He’d made sure to put through all the paperwork immediately. To reassure her, he repeated what he’d told her earlier. “And I’m going to get to the bottom of why Joe suddenly did a one-eighty and claimed that he wasn’t innocent when he’d maintained the opposite up until just before the trial.” He saw the bemused expression on her face. Had he said something to confuse her? To amuse her? “What?”

  Sarajane had heard only one thing. “You’re appealing his case?”

  He’d thought that was a given. Why was she so surprised? “Yes, why?”

  An appeal wasn’t something that came around just by snapping your fingers. Everything related to the law moved at an anemic snail’s pace. “But that’s going to take time.”

  He didn’t see her point. “I know.”

  Was she missing something? “You’re scheduled to go back to your ivory tower at the end of next week.”

  He wondered if she’d meant that to be insulting, or if it was just the way she thought about the world he came from. “I know that. We have phones, Sarajane. I can keep tabs on the appeal from there.”

  Why was he doing this? He was under no obligation to follow up on anything once he left. “He still can’t pay you.”

  Did she think he didn’t know that? “I’m still not asking.” He could see she wanted more than that. “It wouldn’t hurt Morrison and Treherne to do a little pro bono work once in a while.” Damn, but sitting here next to her like this was making him want her all over again. Leaning in against her, he outlined the shell of her ear with his tongue. Man did not live on work alone. “Enough shop talk for the night.”

  Already the warmth was pouring through her veins like hot honey. “My thoughts exactly.”

  Sarajane groaned as she realized that she’d almost drowned her hot dog in hot mustard. Taking a napkin, she tried to do a little damage control. She could feel Alicia watching her skeptically.

  This was the first time she’d managed to get together with the nurse since the trial had ended and they were grabbing a bite of fast food at a lunch wagon that habitually parked halfway between the Children’s Connection and Advocate Aid. It was about all either of them could afford to spend.

  “I think I’m falling in love with him,” Sarajane lamented in response to Alicia’s quizzical look.

  It was Monday and Friday was coming fast. Too fast. Like a potential victim aware that she was standing directly in the path of a hurricane, Sarajane still couldn’t get herself to shore up her beaches and prepare for what was coming. A part of her was hoping for a miracle.

  “And this is a bad thing because?” Alicia asked, glad to be focusing on someone else’s problems for a change instead of on what was happening to her brother. “The man is rich, handsome and it’s easy to see that he’s really crazy about you.” The couple of times she’d witnessed Jordan and her friend interacting, she was extremely aware of the sexual tension, the sparks that were all but shooting between them.

  “The operative word being crazy,” Sarajane agreed. “As I would be if I thought this had a snowball’s chance in hell of going anywhere.”

  Alicia didn’t ask what this referred to. She could read between the lines. She frowned at Sarajane. “Why are you so negative?”

  Oh, for so many reasons. “Past experience.” Alicia knew about Rocco and about Andrew even though she and Sarajane hadn’t been friends at the time. Sarajane had given the nurse a thumbnail sketch of life with both. “And besides, our two worlds don’t mesh.”

  Alicia looked unfazed. “So create a third one that’s the best of both.” She stopped eating and looked at her friend. “Honey, do you know how hard it is to find someone to care about who cares about you in return?”

  Sarajane stubbornly refused to let herself believe what Alicia was obviously buying into: that she was destined for a fairy-tale ending. “The man has taken me out to eat several times and we’ve gone to bed together. That doesn’t instantly translate into true love.”

  “And he rescued you,” Alicia reminded her suddenly, holding up her index finger as she made the point. “Don’t forget that he rescued you with no small danger to himself.”

  Sarajane could feel her eyes watering—not from anything that Alicia said, but because the mustard was too spicy. She sniffed, wiping away one loose tear. “What are you, his agent?”

  Alicia gave her arm a squeeze. “No, I’m the impartial bystander you were hoping for when you put this in my lap. Now eat up.” She nodded at the half-eaten hot dog Sarajane was holding. “I’ve got to be getting back.”

  Sarajane looked at her watch. How had that happened? “Oh, God, so do I.” Wrapping a napkin around what was left of her so-called lunch, she stuffed it into her shoulder bag. “I’ll take a rain check for the rest of this conversation.”

  “Coward,” Alicia commented, gathering her things together. “Just remember, there are worse things in life than having a sexy, naked man in your bed.”

  “His bed,” Sarajane corrected, already putting distance between them.

  “Any bed,” Alicia called after her.

  Sarajane just waved her hand at Alicia without looking back. She had no time to get into a discussion over this right now.

  “Four more days and you’re a free man,” Eric commented. The sound of his voice echoed within the room where they had met for their weekly racquetball game. Because of a scheduling conflict, they were playing on a Monday instead of the previous Friday.

  “Yeah.” Funny, freedom didn’t feel as good as he’d anticipated at the beginning of all this. Jordan lunged for the shot that Eric sent his way. It went whistling by the rim of his racket.

  Eric was surprised. “You missed that by a mile. My game hasn’t improved that much.” And then it dawned on him. “Something on your mind?”

  “No.” Jordan knew that he’d fired the denial out too fast, but there was nothing he could do about that. “Jenny find someone to take her place yet?” Which was still temporarily “his” place as well.

  Eric shook his head, putting his back into returning the serve. “Not yet.”

  “Well, I can’t stay on,” Jordan said with feeling, barely making the shot he reached for. He missed the next one and swallowed a curse.

  Eric looked at his brother-in-law thoughtfully. “She’s not asking you to. Hell, Jordy, that’s the third easy shot you missed. You want to make this game history and just talk for a while?”

  Jordan shot him an annoyed look. “I don’t need a therapist, Eric.”

  “Good, because I don’t have one in my hip pocket. I do, however, have our friendship to fall back on.” For the sake of the game, which he was winning by a mile, he continued playing. But his heart wasn’t in it. “You know you can tell me anything.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jordan agreed as he chased down a shot he would ordinarily have gotten easily. “And Jenny will hear all about it by the time you make it back to the office.”

  “Not if you don’t want her to,” Eric told him seriously. He made a stab at guessing what was bothering his friend. “So this is a Jenny-related subject?”

  “No,” Jordan retorted, for once hitting the ball squarely. “It’s just that you can’t keep your mouth shut around my sister.”

  Eric didn’t quite see it in those harsh terms.
“Love does that to you. Makes you want to share everything.” He hit the ball back to Jordan’s half of the court. “But if you want me to keep something secret, I will. You have my word.”

  Jordan missed the shot and gave up. With a sigh, he dropped his racket and then, leaning against the back wall, he slid down until he was sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  What he wanted to do was talk about these feelings he was having, the ones that urged him to climb up on the highest building in Portland and shout her name at the top of his lungs. But he had no idea where to begin, how to frame what was happening to him. So he focused on something else that had been bothering him for the last few days. Something that had been becoming more and more prominent.

  He chose his words carefully. “I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I’m wasting my life, working at Morrison and Treherne.”

  This was a new note, Eric thought, looking at his brother-in-law. One he wouldn’t have expected from Jordan. “Wasting how?”

  Jordan scrubbed his hand over his face. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he should have kept it all to himself until it was sorted out. “As in getting something meaningful accomplished.”

  “Keeping rich clients out of jail doesn’t do it for you any more?” Eric quipped, his mouth curving. “Rich people need justice, too, Jordy.”

  Jordan wasn’t disputing that. “Agreed, but rich people can afford to get it. If I don’t represent some well-to-do man or woman, they can find someone else who can. Easily.”

  Jordan paused. He was being modest, Eric thought, waiting. When his brother-in-law didn’t continue, Eric asked, “What’s your point?”

  “My point is the people who come to Advocate Aid can’t afford to pay for legal aid. Hell, some of them can’t afford to pay for food.” Until he said it out loud, he hadn’t realized just what an impact these last two weeks had had on him, how much of an impact the people he’d dealt with had had on him. He was actually feeling for them. “Justice might be blind, but it costs and if they can’t afford attorney fees, they’re at the mercy of so many different things in the system.”