by Edie Claire
A beat passed. “Not if I could afford to pay half the rent,” he answered.
Haley’s jaws clenched. He couldn’t afford a third of her rent. “So you do have a thing about taking a woman’s money,” she accused.
He slowed his steps and faced her. “No, I don’t,” he defended. “If I was married and we were mingling all the finances legally, then mine versus hers wouldn’t matter. But aside from that, I’m not living off anybody else’s money. Period.”
Haley looked away from him out towards the water. Twinkling purple lights flew over the beach; she could just see the dim outlines of two boys tossing an LED flying disc.
Ben gave her hand a squeeze. “Maybe I’m over-sensitive on the issue because of the way I live and the way people look at me,” he explained. “I may be a nomad, but I’m not a bum.”
Haley huffed out a breath and faced him again. “Accepting a gift does not make a person a bum,” she insisted. She still suspected there was more. Something he wasn’t saying. Something he didn’t want to say. She considered how to extract it.
“Let’s say, hypothetically,” she began again, “that I bought you a plane ticket as a present. You wouldn’t have a problem with that, would you?”
Haley waited. If there had been crickets on the beach, she would have heard them chirping. As it was she heard a combination of traffic, ocean, yapping dog, and ESPN. Ben’s gaze dropped to his feet. Her heart fell along with it.
“You let me pay your rent,” she reminded.
“That was different,” he said quietly. “You were my landlord, waiving a charge I owed you. We weren’t dating. I didn’t know if I’d see you again. Besides, that was before…”
He winced slightly as his voice trailed off. He clearly hadn’t meant to say that.
“Before what?” Haley said sharply, even though she knew exactly what. Before I knew you worked for Stirjon.
She stopped walking. “This has nothing to do with dating Dutch, does it?” she demanded, her cheeks growing hot with ire. “You won’t take anything from me because you see it as dirty money!”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Haley,” he said sternly.
“Then choose them yourself,” she fired back. “Why won’t you let me buy you anything?”
A couple walking two dogs approached them from the opposite direction down the boardwalk, and Haley and Ben stood in awkward silence while the mini-parade passed. The dogs, both boxers, were dressed up in his-and-her coats that made them look like a bride and groom, complete with pearls and a bow tie. If Haley wasn’t currently furious, she would have laughed and cracked a joke about how even house pets live better in California.
“Haley,” Ben said softly, taking her hand again and trying to catch her eyes. “I don’t know how to explain it any way that isn’t going to make you angry. And right now, that’s the last thing I want to do.”
“Well, I’m angry already,” she admitted. “So go for it.”
He exhaled slowly, then began. “Please try to understand how I feel. I’m not just some guy who’s crazy about whales. It’s more than that. Protecting the environment is my life’s passion. I don’t make a huge amount of money, but I probably make more than you think I do. I just donate a fair chunk of it to the causes I believe in.”
He took her other hand and held both of them. “Can’t you see how hypocritical it would be for me to benefit from the major bucks corporations are paying out to fight environmental regulation — when I’m scraping to give my own paltry change to get those same laws enforced? It’s not my place to tell you or anyone else what they should do for a living. Your money isn’t ‘dirty’ and I don’t think what you’re personally doing is ‘evil.’ But for me to profit from it would be, to use your own words, a conflict of interest.”
His eyes begged her forgiveness, even as his jaw was set firmly with resolve. “And I don’t see how that’s ever going to change,” he said softly.
Haley felt her hands begin to tremble. Whether from grief or rage, she wasn’t sure. An image of Bob Hardin popped unbidden into her mind — an image of how he looked whenever he was thwarted by the opposition. Bullheaded, that’s what they are! He would carp, his pasty face reddened and his voice ruthless. She had heard him say the same words literally hundreds of times. Damned environmentalists!
Ben studied her another moment, then pulled her into his arms and held her. “Don’t be mad at me, Haley,” he said miserably. “I can’t stand it. Not tonight. We’ll work out something somehow. I promise you.”
Actually, Haley thought as she revised the image in her brain, Bob only rarely used the word “damned” in that context. When referring to environmental activists, he preferred a more vulgar adjective. His condescending, adversarial attitude had irritated her at first, but she had quickly grown used to it. Her success, after all, depended on impressing the man, which included pretending to share his philosophies. It was a game she’d had to play, a game she’d become astonishingly good at. And when you played at something for over ninety percent of your waking hours, it was easy to forget you were pretending.
She settled into Ben’s embrace, wrapping her arms around his middle and nestling her nose beside his collarbone. There was still a volleyball between them. There were a lot of obstacles between them, but she’d be damned if she’d let her professional life be one of them. She was under no obligation, right this very minute, to argue the world according to Bob. She had never agreed with Bob. She did not even particularly like Bob.
Ben had a right to his feelings about her job, and she had the right to accept them without defending herself. She was tired of defending herself. She wasn’t even sure she gave a damn.
After a long, wonderfully restorative moment in Ben’s arms, she stepped back. “Have you ever flown an LED slingshot on the beach at night?” she asked casually.
Ben’s face lit up with relief. He smiled at her. “No. What is that?”
Haley took his hand, reversed their direction on the boardwalk, and started walking. “Let’s go buy one, and I’ll show you,” she suggested, swinging his arm as they moved. Another gust of breeze rustled the palm trees, and Haley turned her face into the wind, letting her tousled hair blow freely. “But as soon as you’re done playing with it,” she ordered, “you have to promise to give it back.”
She looked up at Ben’s face in the lamplight. He was smiling at her again, his hazel eyes sparkling with tenderness.
“You have my word on it, counselor,” he replied.
Chapter 28
“It’s probably not my place to say this,” Tyrene said evenly, tapping her pen on one of the few free inches of space on top of Haley’s expansive desk. “But you do realize you look like hell, right?”
Haley growled under her breath. “I am aware.”
It had been three weeks since Ben’s painfully short visit. Three weeks in which Haley had felt increasingly wretched, not only emotionally, but physically. It was one thing to sprout a basketball from your waist. It was quite another to retain so much fluid you could almost feel yourself squish as you walked.
Tyrene’s lips twisted. “You’re not going to make it, Haley. If you think cutting back to forty is going to get you to New Year’s, you’re delusional. My sister was preeclamptic. So was my niece. You want to go on pretending, fine, but I’m telling you — you’re going to screw the rest of us over when you just don’t show up one morning.”
Haley turned her tired, heavy-lidded eyes on her favorite paralegal. “I am not preeclamptic. I’m borderline.”
Tyrene scoffed. “As of now. You’ve got six weeks to go. You’ll get there. May be sooner. May be later. No… actually I’m pretty sure it’ll be sooner. You get puffier every time I see you.”
“You are so incredibly comforting, Ty,” Haley said wearily. “Why do you think I called you in here? I’m trying to delegate! I know I’ve got to cut back.”
“What you’ve got to do,” Tyrene said sharply, “is get the hell out of here. Let s
omebody else have Stirjon. I’ll bring them up to speed.”
Haley’s teeth gritted. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. She was in excellent health and had done everything right. But her blood pressure was all over the place, she was retaining water like a camel, and the labs she’d just finished couldn’t possibly have been closer to the official cutoff for a diagnosis of preeclampsia. When she’d insisted on going back into the office after her appointment this morning, Micah had completely flipped out on her.
“Ty,” Haley said heavily. “I don’t trust anybody else.” She had managed, finally, to convince Stirjon to stop the chemical leach. With Sylvester as her new boogeyman, she had painted such a vivid picture of impending financial apocalypse that the Powers That Be had begrudgingly surrendered. But there was still more to do. “How many extra hours could you pick up?” she asked.
“No more than I already told you!” Tyrene retorted. Then she cast a wary glance at the door and exhaled. “Look, you didn’t hear this from me, but we’re going to be short-handed soon. You know Ruth?”
Haley nodded nervously. Ruth was the second best paralegal at the firm.
“She’s leaving. Got poached.”
“Poached?” Haley said incredulously. Nobody hired paralegals away from Merriweather, Falstaff, and Tynes. They paid better than anybody, and they only hired workaholics to begin with. “By whom?”
Tyrene’s voice lowered. “You know that national clean water group Bob was complaining about? The one that got Sylvester involved with Stirjon? They’re part of some environmental consortium that’s got a new project in the works, a database of case law that could be accessed by plaintiffs’ attorneys around the country. Rumor has it they just got a crapload of money, and they’re recruiting experienced paralegals.” She smiled slyly. “They asked me first, but they couldn’t afford me.”
Haley put up her hands to massage her temples. She could not have a headache. She was supposed to report any and all headaches to the clinic ASAP. “Well, that’s just peachy.” Lovely as it was for the underfunded plaintiffs’ attorneys of America to have a slightly more level playing field against the corporate giants, it did not help her figure out how to shift her caseload. “I’m not going to get any extra help in the next couple months, am I?”
Tyrene shook her head firmly. “Pass it off, Haley,” she ordered. “For God’s sake, just let it go.”
Haley’s cell phone rang. She looked down at the number. It was the clinic. “This doesn’t look good,” she said soberly.
Tyrene rose as if to give her privacy, but Haley gestured for her to stay and keep working. She answered the call.
Five minutes later Haley hung up and did a faceplant on a pile of briefs.
“Your doctor?” Tyrene asked.
Haley nodded into the papers.
“Yelled at you, did she?” Tyrene asked with amusement.
Haley groaned. “She just reviewed my chart. After my sister called her and told her exactly how many hours I’d been working.”
“Mmm hmmm,” Tyrene agreed.
“The doc said — in colorful and no uncertain terms — that I had no business working more than twenty hours a week at most, that they’re going to step up my monitoring schedule, and that if my numbers creep up even the slightest bit more, she’s going to mandate bed rest.”
“Told you,” Tyrene said smugly. She rose. “I’ll tell Bob you want to see him.”
Haley didn’t move. She heard her door quietly open and close. Only ten minutes later, when Bob knocked and walked in simultaneously, did she bother to raise her head.
She felt terrible. It was hard enough ticking away the days until she could see Ben again, torturing herself with worry over whether or not he was considering moving to California and whether or not he could be happy if he did. But physically, her body was failing her. She was puffy and sluggish; even her brain seemed to be slowing down. Nothing seemed real anymore; not even Fred’s insistent kicking and squirming. It seemed as if she was merely watching while her life happened to somebody else.
“What’s up, Haley?” Bob asked, his tone a perfect combination of detached concern and irritation. He didn’t bother to sit, but stood on the other side of her desk glaring down at her.
“I have to cut back to twenty hours a week until the baby’s born,” she said flatly. “Doctor’s orders for borderline preeclampsia.”
“Preeclampsia!” Bob fired, dropping into the nearest chair like he’d been shot. He rubbed a hand over the bald part of his head and let out a sigh. “Well, that’s it for Stirjon,” he announced bitterly. “There’s no way, Haley, and you know it. Not when you could drop out at any moment. For weeks! Consolidated, too. You’ll just have to take a support role for a while.”
Haley’s jaws clenched. He was right, and she knew it. But it was so unfair. “I’m sure I can—”
“No you can’t,” Bob said sharply. “You knew when you took this pregnancy on that it could end like this! Hell, there’s always risk!” His voice softened slightly. “You can get back up to speed afterwards. You’ve got what it takes, Haley. You’re the most promising associate I’ve ever worked with. But I won’t let your ego get in the way of this firm’s doing the best damn job we can for our clients.”
He rose. Haley said nothing else. He walked out the door and closed it, with more force than strictly necessary, behind him.
Haley put her head back down on her desk. She lay there a long while, aware that the tip of a mechanical pencil was digging into her cheek, but lacking the initiative to move it.
It was over. Stirjon. Consolidated. All the work she’d done; the relationships she’d built. Bob would give Stirjon to one of the sixth-year associates and probably move Harrison onto it, too. And Harrison would talk a good game, but ultimately botch the hell out of it.
She realized that her pulse was pounding, and a chord of fear struck through her chest. What was she doing? She had Fred to think about, and she was supposed to be lowering her blood pressure. She closed her eyes and imagined Ben on his boat in Hawaii, skipping across the blue waters with the green peaks of Maui behind him. She imagined telling him she’d been bumped off the Stirjon case. He would be appropriately sympathetic to her pain, no doubt. But inside, he would be shouting with glee.
Glee.
Haley raised her head slowly. There was one bright spot to this nightmare, wasn’t there? Ben would be happy she was no longer working for Stirjon. Despite his honest promises of toleration, the man would be freakin’ ecstatic. The only thing that would make him happier would be if she stopped working for the corporate side altogether.
Her feeble brain churned at half speed.
Then it churned some more.
Why couldn’t she, exactly? She knew there were good reasons why she felt she had to continue in environmental law, but at the moment those reasons didn’t seem nearly as convincing as they used to. What was the big deal, anyway? She had learned the field quickly; she could learn another. She was only 29 years old. Who said her career was set in stone? If she was hoping and praying that Ben would be willing to give up his nomadic yearnings for her, could she not make an equal sacrifice for him? And, she thought with a sudden, almost feverish excitement, if she switched to another area and married the stubborn mule, he would finally be forced to let her spoil him!
Her slightly numb lips stretched into a smile. Spoil him she would. Thoroughly and completely, in one of California’s most wonderful playgrounds. She would get the two of them a bigger place with an even better view. She would get him a hybrid to tool around in. And someday she would really surprise him. She would buy him his very own boat.
With her mind filling with gratifying pictures of a happy Ben enjoying the fruits of her no-longer-objectionable labor, she rose slowly and collected her things. She left her office, sloshed down the hall to the elevator, and pushed the button for the sixth floor.
She was aware that her brain was bleary and that her emotions were at the mercy
of her hormones and her blood pressure. She was even aware that, most likely, she wasn’t thinking nearly as clearly as she thought she was.
Or maybe, just maybe, she was thinking more clearly than she had in years.
She settled herself in the executive suite of a rather surprised Tom Paris, senior partner in the Merriweather, Falstaff, and Tynes employment law division, and she did not mince words. She faced him squarely and confidently, even though she suspected she still had the indentation of a mechanical pencil on her cheek. “You once said that if I ever considered leaving the environmental group to look into another specialty, I should come and talk to you first.”
Tom’s bushy gray eyebrows perked. His lips drew into a smile.
“So here I am,” Haley announced. “Can we talk?”
Chapter 29
Haley reached a hand out to her bedside table and picked up Ben’s latest letter. Like all of them, it made her laugh out loud.
So just before we got back into Lahaina today, I spotted this big brown animal in the water. Turns out it was a grizzly bear, and it was swimming right up to the boat. I leaned out and asked him what the hell he was doing off the coast of Maui, and he said he was looking for you. I told him you were in Newport Beach, and he swore and swam off to the northeast. But don’t worry. I didn’t give him your address.
“Haley?” her mother called from her kitchen. “You want some more tea?”
“No thanks,” Haley called back. “I’m good.”
“Something else to eat?”
“No, Mom.” Haley shook her head with a smile. Michelle truly did have only two settings: neglect and smother. Her trip to Bermuda with a college friend had turned into a four-month odyssey involving a new boyfriend with whom, against Haley’s strenuously worded objections, she had invested in a fractional share of a condo. After months of infrequent calls and confusing texts, Michelle had returned to Newport Beach unexpectedly just a few days after Ben’s visit, weeping and wailing and insisting that Haley sue for fraud. Now she was back in smother mode, taking shifts with Micah to ensure that Haley followed doctor’s orders and stayed in bed doing absolutely nothing.