“It was a very intimate ceremony,” Wendy said, casually flaunting the motherlode of an engagement ring on her left hand. “Just a few friends and close family.”
Drue chewed the inside of her cheek and wondered if this office had a trapdoor, or maybe a fire escape.
“How did you two, uh, reconnect?” she asked.
“Reconnect?” Brice frowned. “I handled some legal work for Wendy, but I didn’t actually ask her out until after she’d gotten her settlement.” He winked. “Don’t share that with the Bar Association ethics committee, okay?”
“He didn’t remember me at all,” Wendy assured her. “I mean, it was so long ago. And when I hired him, I was Wendy Harrison, which was my ex-husband’s name.”
“We were in eighth grade,” Drue said, her voice cracking in disbelief. “You spent the night at our house nearly every Friday night of eighth grade. We’d tape Sabrina the Teenage Witch and watch it together on Friday nights. How could he not remember you?”
Wendy laughed and waved away Drue’s insistence. “Same old Drue. Still wildly exaggerating things. It wasn’t every Friday night. I spent the night maybe twice, three times tops. Your dad wasn’t even around that much back then, the way I remember it.”
Drue’s memories were distinctly different. She and Wendy had been nearly inseparable in the eighth grade, bonding initially over their shared misery at being the new girls in school, their friendship deepening over painful problems at home.
“Whatever,” she said now.
“Right,” Wendy said briskly, consulting her Rolex. “I was actually expecting you earlier, so we’re already behind with your training schedule.”
“My car wouldn’t start this morning,” Drue said, instantly feeling both lame and defensive.
“I’ll let you two girls get to the training room,” Brice said. “Why don’t we meet up and have lunch together at your break? I’ll get Geoff to make a reservation.”
“Can’t,” Wendy said. “We need her on those phones tomorrow. Which means she’s got the whole legal training module to get through, which is six hours, and then there’s the employee handbook. And she’s still got to run over to Medical Associates for her drug test.”
“Drug test?” Drue asked. “Are you seriously telling me I have to pee in a cup before I can work here?”
“Surely we can skip that for Drue,” Brice said. “I mean, she’s family.”
“Sweetie?” Wendy said, raising one eyebrow. “You know it’s office policy. How will the rest of the staff feel if they find out we made an exception for your daughter?”
“Oh. Right.” He glanced at Drue. “The drug test won’t be a problem, will it?”
“No,” Drue said, her lips tight. Unlike many of her friends in and out of kiteboarding, she’d never really developed an appreciation for pills or weed. But the drug test itself wasn’t the issue here. The issue was that her father was once again siding with his wife, instead of her. The last time it had been Joan. Now it was Wendy.
Suddenly, she was fifteen years old again. Pissed off and pissed on. Literally.
* * *
The training room was a cramped space with a conference table, a desk, complete with desktop computer and phone setup, and a whiteboard that took up one entire wall.
“Okay,” Wendy said, gesturing for her to sit at the table. She plunked a thick loose-leaf binder onto the surface in front of Drue. “Policies and procedures. Basic best legal practices. Company policy.” She consulted her watch again. “Read it, digest it, memorize it.”
Drue opened the cover and scanned the first typewritten page.
“What kind of sandwich do you want?” Wendy said. “I mean, you’re not a vegan, right?”
“Huh?”
“Sandwich. For lunch,” Wendy said, rolling her eyes. “You can have a fifteen-minute break. I’ll have Geoff order something in for you. I’m sorry, Drue, I know Brice means well, but things will go much smoother here for all of us if you’re treated exactly the same as your coworkers.”
“Right. Turkey on rye. Tomato, no lettuce, mustard, not mayo. Unsweet tea.” She turned back to the page, willing Wendy to disappear, which she finally did, after drilling Drue on the importance of discretion and nondisclosure in all things regarding the firm’s clients.
After three straight hours of reading and note-taking, the type began to swim around the page. Drue stood, walked around the room, then sat and did some stretches.
Wendy walked into the room with a white paper sack and a Styrofoam cup.
“What are you doing?”
“Stretching my knee,” Drue said, feeling guilty for slacking off. She eyed the bag hungrily. She hadn’t eaten since leaving Lauderdale the previous day.
Wendy placed the bag on the table and pointed at Drue’s knee. “I was wondering about the brace. What happened?”
“Sports injury,” Drue said. She opened the bag, took out a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper, took a bite and nearly spat it out.
She pried the sandwich apart and glanced over at her supervisor. “Mayonnaise.”
Wendy shrugged. “That place never gets orders right. I keep meaning to tell Geoff to find a new deli.”
Drue lifted the top layer of bread and set it aside. Using a single leaf of lettuce she managed to scrape most of the mayonnaise aside. She ate four bites, then set it aside in disgust. Mayonnaise taint.
“What kind of a sports injury?” Wendy asked.
“Torn ACL, torn meniscus, torn medial collateral.”
Wendy regarded her with disbelief. “You don’t look like a runner.”
“I’m not. I hate running.”
“So, what then? How did you hurt your knee? Jesus, Drue, why are you so angry and hostile? Your dad and I are just trying to help you.”
Drue wiped her hands with a paper napkin. “I hurt my knee kiteboarding. Right before my mom got sick. Some quack at an emergency room at Delray Beach sewed me up, and I’m pretty sure he botched it. So now, I can’t do the one thing I was good at, the one thing I loved. And, oh yeah, I’m essentially an orphan because my mom is dead and my dad doesn’t actually consider me real family, hence the not letting me know about that ‘intimate wedding’ to you.”
She turned a level gaze at Wendy.
“You and I were best friends a long time ago, whether or not you choose to admit that. Now you’re married to my dad, who happens to be, what, thirty-five years older than you? Swell. Good luck with that, because he’s such awesome husband material. I know he cheated on my mom, and I’m guessing he cheated on Joan too. I don’t know and I don’t care. But don’t expect me to throw you a lingerie shower, m’kay?”
Wendy’s face turned pale. She brushed imaginary crumbs from the front of her dress. “Look,” she said, her voice dangerously calm. “First off, he’s only thirty-two years older than me. And since we’re being so brutally frank right now, let me just go on the record as saying I was against Brice offering you a job here, but he absolutely insisted on hiring you out of some sense of misplaced obligation. You’ve got, what, two years of community college? You can’t even keep a job waiting tables at some shitty beach bar. You’ve clearly got anger management issues, and it’s a total conflict of interest to have you working for this law firm. As for my marriage to Brice, let me point out that you know absolutely nothing about your father. He’s the finest, kindest man I’ve ever known, but you’ll never figure that out, because you’re thirty-six years old and still whining about being from a broken home.”
Drue stuffed the sandwich remains in the paper bag. “Are we done here? If so, I think I need to get back to my training manual.”
“Oh, we’re more than done,” Wendy said. She looked at her watch. “When you’re finished with the manual, go out to the reception area. We’re so shorthanded I can’t spare anybody to train you on the phone the way I’d planned, but Geoff can show you how everything works. He’s got a copy of your phone script too. And they’re expecting you at Medical Associates
on Fourth Street no later than five. No test, no job.”
“I’ll be there.”
4
Drue was walking out the office door for her drug testing appointment when the black Mercedes zoomed up to the curb and Brice leaned out the open passenger window.
“How’d it go today?” he asked.
“Okay. I’m just headed over to the testing lab.”
“Good,” he said. “Hey, did Wendy tell you about happy hour tonight?”
“No.”
He laughed. “She’s so focused, probably slipped her mind. Anyway, Monday nights we have staff happy hour at Sharky’s. This is perfect timing. You can meet your coworkers outside the office, let your hair down a little.”
Drue was instantly wary. “It’s been a really long day for me, Dad. I was gonna go check out of the motel and start moving stuff into the cottage—which I haven’t even seen yet. If it’s okay with you, I’ll take a rain check.”
“Hey,” he said earnestly. “It’s gonna be a little awkward, at first anyway. You’re the boss’s daughter, and the office manager’s stepdaughter.”
She cringed at the stepdaughter description, but kept quiet.
“If you want to get off on the right foot, get yourself over to Sharky’s tonight, six o’clock.”
“I don’t even know where that is,” Drue protested, making one last stab at bowing out. She hated everything about happy hour. Hated the mindless boozing, the forced camaraderie, the vision of over-served guys pawing every woman in sight, and shit-faced girls facedown in their own vomit by the end of the evening.
“You don’t remember Sharky’s?” Her father was incredulous. “It’s that big bar just down the beach from the cottage. You can’t miss the place. There’s a giant fiberglass shark head out in the parking lot.”
“Oh, that place.”
Sharky’s had been a Sunset Beach landmark for decades. She’d been fascinated with the place as a young teen. Music blared out of their deck-mounted speakers, from eight in the morning ’til 3:00 A.M. It was a something-for-everyone kind of swim-up beach bar, with sprawling decks, sand volleyball courts and rows of roped-off lounge chairs pointing toward the Gulf.
“Just come,” Brice said. “And that’s an order from the boss.”
As he drove away she noticed her father’s vanity license tag: ISUE-4U.
* * *
Back at the motel, Drue picked through the meager offerings in her suitcase until she found her designated “casual date” outfit, which consisted of white skinny jeans and a black halter top with large white buttons down the back. She peered into the steam-clouded bathroom mirror, trying to evaluate her appearance. She pulled her dark shoulder-length hair into a high ponytail, brushed on some mascara, and after careful consideration, added lipstick and a pair of gold palm-frond earrings.
Okay, she told herself. Not “trying too hard” but also not “currently living in a van down by the river.” She stuck her cell phone, motel key card, driver’s license and some folded bills in her back pocket and set out walking along the beach, her best flip-flops hooked over her thumb.
She hadn’t realized how nervous she was until she was standing at the water’s edge, looking up at the orange traffic cones that demarcated Sharky’s beach zone. The palms of her hands were damp and she felt a trickle of perspiration slide down the side of her face and between her breasts.
For a moment, she was transported back to middle school, to that horrible first day in her new school when she stood in the cafeteria, looked around and realized she was the only girl wearing bib overalls in a high-waist acid-washed-jeans world.
“Chill out,” she muttered to herself now. “It’s just happy hour. You own happy hour, damnit.”
Brice must have been waiting for her, because he walked out to meet her the moment she stepped onto the deck. He was dressed in sharply pressed golf shorts, and a polo shirt with an embroidered yacht club logo.
“Hey!” he said, looking genuinely pleased to see her. “I was afraid you weren’t coming.”
“Sorry. It’s a long bus ride out here,” she said.
“Why didn’t you say something? I could have given you a ride home.”
“I’ve got a car, it just didn’t choose to start this morning. It’s fine now, though.” This was a bald-faced lie, but she couldn’t risk the hideous proposition of having to ride to work in the morning with Brice and Wendy.
“Okay, but let me know if it acts up again.” He pressed a drink into her hand. “Here. Tonight’s drink special. The Kinky Dolphin.”
She could see the layers of viscous blue and green liquors through the sides of the plastic cup. “What’s in this?”
“You used to work in a bar, so you tell me.”
Drue rolled her eyes, then discarded the paper umbrella skewering a maraschino cherry and orange slice garnish. She took a gulp of the Kinky Dolphin and immediately wished she hadn’t. It was both mouth-puckeringly sour and sickeningly sweet. “Mmm. If I had to guess I’d say antifreeze and Ty-D-Bol.”
He held up his own bottle of beer in a salute. “Come on. I want you to meet the rest of the Campbell, Coxe and Kramner gang. We’re at a table inside.”
She followed him under the tin-roofed porch toward a table around which a dozen people were gathered, trying to quell a growing sense of unease.
“Hey guys,” Brice announced, standing at the head of the table. “Quiet down, okay? I want you to meet my daughter, Drue. I’m thrilled to announce that she’s joined the Campbell, Coxe and Kramner team.” He gestured around the table. “Drue, meet the team.”
The music and hum of chatter from the growing happy hour crowd made it hard to hear as one by one, the “team” introduced themselves. There were Deanna and Priscilla and Sylvia in accounting; the two paralegals, Marianne and a woman whose name she didn’t catch; Geoff, the receptionist; and at the end of the table, two men, one a bespectacled ginger who said his name was Ben and …
“I’m sorry, what was that name?” Drue shouted, leaning in to hear.
“It’s Jonah. With a J,” the other guy said. He was what she and her girlfriends back in Lauderdale liked to call “frat-tastic,” meaning he was your typical entitled white college grad. Tousled dark hair with a high forehead, square jaw and full lips, he was a Ralph Lauren ad come to life. Totally hot, if you liked that type.
Ben, who was tall and gangly, stood up and pumped her hand. “What are you drinking?”
Before she could reply, Brice gestured at the server, a busty brunette dressed in a midriff-baring tee and shorts. “Bianca, can you bring my daughter another Kinky Dolphin?”
“No, no, no,” Drue said quickly.
“Okay, what do you want?” Brice said expansively. “Everything’s on me tonight. You want something to eat? They’ve got wings, burgers, grouper sandwiches…”
Her stomach growled at the mention of food.
“Maybe just some nachos? And an iced tea?”
“Iced tea?” Jonah scoffed. “Brice, I can’t believe your daughter is a liquor lightweight. Definitely not a chip off the old block.”
“You don’t want a drink?” Brice asked. “Doesn’t have to be the special.”
“Well, maybe just a margarita, no salt,” Drue said, relenting. She took the only vacant seat and looked around at the gathering. With the exception of the boss, she realized, everybody at the table looked to be under the age of forty.
Brice, she reflected, had always like ’em young.
“Where’s Wendy tonight?” she asked, turning to her father.
“Oh, she never comes to happy hour. Being the office manager and all, she worries that it’ll make people inhibited. This is supposed to be a team-building kind of event.”
“Team building.” Drue turned the phrase over in her mind. Before she could ask any more questions, though, her food and drink arrived.
The nachos were just gummy processed cheese melted over mildly stale corn chips, scattered with a representational amount of
pickled jalapeños, chopped tomatoes and cubes of avocado, but she had to restrain herself from gobbling them down all at once.
Instead she sipped her drink and nibbled at the chips and nodded and listened to the conversations swirling around her.
“I didn’t even know Brice had a daughter,” Ben said, taking a swig of his beer. “Did you know anything about a daughter, Jonah?”
“Nope,” his pal said. “You live around here, Drue?”
“I do now,” she said.
“Where’d you grow up?” Jonah asked.
“I was born here in St. Pete, but I guess you’d say I grew up in Fort Lauderdale.”
“Cool,” Ben said. “I still haven’t even been over to the east coast yet.”
“So, what, you’re taking Stephanie’s old job?” Jonah asked.
“That’s what they tell me.”
His hazel eyes lazily flicked up and down, checking her out.
She returned his gaze, thinking, Dude, I’ve been checked out by way better than you.
“That’s awesome,” Ben said. “You’ll be in our pod.”
“Pod?” She turned toward him.
“Yeah, that’s what they call our group. We do phone intake, speak to potential clients, assess their situation, and if it seems they have a likely case, we work up their info and forward them on to Brice, his paralegal, or sometimes, refer them to one of the firms we partner with. I also do some of the firm’s basic IT work.”
“Okay,” Drue said.
“It’s not rocket science,” Jonah said. “But you’ll need a working knowledge of Florida law. You ever done this kind of work before? I mean, you did grow up with Brice as your dad, right?”
Drue took a long gulp of the margarita, enjoying the momentary brain freeze.
“No,” she said succinctly. “My mom and I moved to Fort Lauderdale after they split up. So there hasn’t been a lot of ‘contact’ until just recently.”
Wanting to short-circuit this line of intrusive questioning, Drue raised her cup in the direction of the hovering waitress. “I’ll have another of these,” she called.
Sunset Beach Page 3