by J. K. Coi
He crossed his arms. “This separation has been painful for me, too, and the last thing I want is to extend this misery any longer than necessary.”
She flinched at his clipped tone. He was the one who’d kept his messy feelings locked away. If only he’d shared it with her, they could have helped each other. “Why go through this process at all? You could sign over the house to me right now and be done with it. Move on.”
His jaw tightened and he leaned closer, staring her down with a flinty light in his eyes. “Make no mistake, Bria, you won’t be getting this house.”
She gasped, her hand fluttering at her throat. “What? What do you—?”
“This house is as much mine as it is yours, and since you’ve been so desperate to avoid me, I’ll use that to get what I want. The first time you renege on our deal and blow me off, you will forfeit, and it’ll be me who wins the right to buy you out.”
Her cheeks bloomed with heat. “What makes you think I’m going to agree to that?”
He shrugged. “It’s the only way I’m even willing to consider walking away.”
“What you’re suggesting is no better than a game of chicken,” she snarled. “How mature is that?”
He didn’t budge. “How mature was it of you to give up on our marriage?”
That was not fair, and from the rueful expression on his face, he knew it, too, as soon as it left his lips.
She refused to spend the rest of her life being the only one responsible for making their marriage a success. Unless both of them were on the same page, it was never going to work. She regretted that it had taken losing a child for her to see it and do something about it, but she wouldn’t change her mind now.
“Fine, have it your way. But we need a deadline,” she said tightly. “I’m not agreeing to an unspecified length of time to get this done. The division of assets and the buyout of the matrimonial home must be completed by no later than—”
“Four weeks.”
She shook her head. “Two.”
His lips pressed together, and she knew he was going to be stubborn about this. Actually, “stubborn” was inadequate for the kind of obstinate bullheadedness Leo was famous for when he put his mind to it.
“Two,” he agreed with a nod, to her surprise. He’d likely been aiming for two weeks the whole time.
“All right, I suppose we have a deal. Not that it’s going to make any difference. I’m going to win my case, you’re still going to pay me out at the end of two weeks, and then you’re going to vacate my house.”
“I guess you have nothing to worry about, do you?”
She swallowed and plastered a smile on her face. “Bring it on.”
He stuck out his hand, daring her to take it. It would be the first time she’d willingly touched him in months, but not doing it would make her look weak and scared. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that’s exactly how she felt.
She took it.
“A pleasure negotiating with you, counselor,” he said.
His satisfied smirk made her more determined than ever. In two weeks, she was going to be on her way to a partnership and on her way to a new future…without Leo Markham.
Chapter Three
“Brandon, will you call Mr. Samuels and tell him I won’t be able to meet with him tonight?” Bria called out.
Her assistant appeared in the open doorway of Bria’s office and frowned. “Are you sure you want to cancel? He’s already made it clear that if you don’t have time to talk to him, he’s got no problem bringing all of his business back to your old firm.”
When the news got out that she was no longer with Ashton Granger Markham, Bria had been surprised that a good portion of her old clients tracked her down here. It would have been unethical to contact them directly when she left, but she wasn’t about to turn down anyone who sought her out. Not to mention, with every retainer agreement filed away that had her name on the bottom of it, the coveted partnership spot she wanted so badly became a solid reality.
Nelson Samuels had been one of those clients, and he brought corporate work as well as a matrimonial file involving extensive personal holdings, two exes, and support for three children. When the partners had heard she might lure him into the fold, they’d started salivating at the dollar signs floating in front of their eyes.
She glanced up from the deposition transcript in front of her. “He actually said that?”
Brandon nodded.
“Damn it. Okay, confirm our appointment.” Brandon nodded again and turned to go. “Wait,” she called after him. “You had better get Leo Markham on the phone for me.”
He paused, obviously curious, but she waved him away and went back to the transcripts she’d been reading. “Don’t even ask.”
“But he is your husband, right? I mean, that’s what—”
With a huff, she looked up again and quashed his keen interest with a hard gaze. “Brandon, you like working for me, don’t you?”
He snapped his mouth shut and muttered, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll get him on the line directly.”
She winced and turned her chair to look out the large west-facing window as Brandon pulled the door shut behind him. He was proving to be a good assistant, and thankfully, he didn’t seem to have any hang-ups regarding women in positions of seniority, but that didn’t mean she was going to discuss her personal life with him at any point in their interactions.
And as much as she may not like the idea, Leo was still very personal.
“He’s not the only one who’s curious, you know,” a voice said from the doorway. She hadn’t even heard it swing open again, already distracted by nerves just thinking about what she was going to say to Leo. It would be the first time she’d willingly reached out to him for any reason in months…even if it was only for the purpose of canceling their first agreed-upon evening together.
She swung back around and pasted on a smile for Nadia Foster, ruthless associate…and Leo’s old girlfriend.
A tiny woman with beautiful, shiny black hair falling stick-straight to her shoulders stood with crossed arms at the threshold. She wore a severely cut business suit and three-inch heels that might have been overcompensating for her height…just a little.
Bria had worn her favorite power suit this morning—a navy blue Armani—even though there was a small stain on the skirt from the time she went out for sushi and spilled soy sauce, but she told herself nobody but her could see it.
“Nadia, what can I do for you?” she asked, purposely ignoring the other woman’s snarky comment. Bria hated that this woman had dated Leo before her, but had been trying not to let it influence their interactions. “Did Helga find what she was looking for yesterday?” Brandon had caught the other lawyer’s assistant snooping in Bria’s new files.
“She was checking up on you for me,” Nadia admitted smoothly, without showing an ounce of shame.
“I figured as much,” Bria said, propping her elbows on her desk. “Want to tell me why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t like being shown up, and I’m not about to let another lawyer walk in here off the street and try stealing my partnership.” She put emphasis on “try,” as if she viewed Bria’s efforts as more of an annoyance than an actual threat.
Bria stood. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other of us, Nadia. Your shot at partnership isn’t affected by mine. We both do the best job we can and—”
“I’m amazed that you can be a lawyer and be so naive at the same time.”
Bria opened her mouth to let her have it, but the intercom beeped. “Mr. Markham is waiting on line one for you.” Brandon’s voice echoed as if he was broadcasting to the office, probably because she could hear him through the open door, as well.
Nadia’s eyebrows lifted. “Or maybe not so naive after all,” she said with a thin, mean smile. “I suppose if you can’t make partner yourself, you could just marry someone good enough to make partner, right?”
Bria jammed her knee forcefully against
the drawer of her desk, using the discomfort to keep her from saying something she would probably regret. “Excuse me, but I have a call to take.”
Nadia turned to go, but not without throwing a parting shot over her shoulder, just to make sure she’d drawn blood. “Say hi to him for me, would you? It’s been a while, but maybe I should look him up now that he’s free again. We had some good times.”
Bria took several deep breaths before she collapsed back into her chair and picked up the phone, trying not to think too closely on what kind of good times Nadia had been referring to. “What?”
“Bria? Whoa, you called me, remember?” Leo said. “Is everything all right?”
She groaned and closed her eyes. There was a little bit of a background buzz on the line, and she knew he had her on speaker. She could picture him pacing back and forth in front of his large cherrywood desk, glancing out the window with a digital recorder clutched in his fist. When working, the thing was never far from his grasp. His slavish dedication to his work had paid off, and being in constant motion certainly did a body good. She marveled that she could still blush thinking about just how good.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just…I’m having a difficult day. Speaking of which, I know this is the first night of our…agreement.” She winced. “But I’m going to be busy. I have a client meeting this evening and can’t put it off.”
“All right,” he said.
She sat up straight and narrowed her gaze at the phone. “Really? Just like that?”
“Of course. I didn’t think it would be this easy, but if you’re willing to bail on our deal on the first day, the house can’t be very important to you, right?”
She’d known this was going to happen. She’d worked alongside him for long enough to understand how he operated. He’d gotten it into his head that this thing between them was something he had to win. And so now he would attack whenever he thought he had a weapon, and manipulate whenever he saw a potential weakness. Leo Markham hated to lose.
“That’s fine, Leo. Be careful what you wish for. You want your night; you can have it. But since it’s going to cost me a client, consider yourself warned.” She would give Samuels a call and suggest they go to lunch tomorrow. He’d keep her on the phone for an hour before he agreed, but she was pretty sure he wouldn’t cancel her retainer. Still, if Leo wanted to play the game this way, then she wasn’t going to make it easy on him. It would hurt to end their relationship fighting each other tooth and nail, but he wasn’t leaving her with much choice.
She slammed down the receiver so hard, all the pencils on her desk started rolling, so she slapped her hand over top of them to keep them from falling to the floor and ended up clipping her half-empty cup of cold coffee and knocking it over. She jumped up with a curse, scrambling for something to soak up the creamy liquid before it stained her transcripts. She’d hate to have to explain to accounting why she needed to spend another couple hundred dollars for a second copy that they couldn’t bill to the client.
Brandon was watching her through the glass wall of her office with a startled look on his face. Snatching five tissues out of the nearby box in quick succession, she had the mess mostly tidied up just as her line started to ring again. Brandon answered the phone and looked up at her through the glass again with raised brows. He mouthed the words “Leo Markham.”
Damn, he just had to get the last word in, didn’t he?
She shook her head.
Brandon nodded, and she watched him apologizing into the phone.
No, I’m sorry, she’s not available… I realize you just spoke with her, but she’s on her way into an important meeting now.
Ah, the ever-convenient “meeting.”
Her cell phone buzzed with a text just as Brandon was hanging up the phone and lifting a thumbs-up her way. She nodded her thanks before picking up her cell and glancing down.
She wasn’t particularly surprised to see Leo’s name pop up.
Coward.
If he couldn’t get her one way, he’d get her another. She would do well to keep that in mind going forward.
Forget it. She wasn’t going to let him bait her, wasn’t going to dignify that with a response.
She set the phone aside and sat back down at her desk. It buzzed again. She pulled the transcript in front of her and managed to ignore him for all of ten seconds before she stuffed her pencil through her hair with a muttered oath and grabbed the phone again.
You hung up…was about to suggest compromise.
She snorted. Bullshit. Leo didn’t compromise. He always took the hard-line approach, the most effective means of getting exactly what he wanted. Evidenced by his habit of steno-texting, only using as many words as absolutely necessary to get his point across.
What he wanted now was to throw her off-balance and make her sweat.
Meet @ Russo’s after you’re done with client. Will consider us even for tonight.
Her first instinct was to shoot him down. But—and she hated to admit it—he was right; she was acting like a coward. She owed him three nights a week, and if she met him for a late dinner, at least their first night would be half over by the time she arrived. Not to mention, Russo’s was a public place, and food meant they wouldn’t have to do much talking, if any.
Nine pm, she texted back.
…
When Leo walked through the door of the restaurant promptly at nine, a squat, balding Italian man turned to greet him. Mr. Russo flung a hand towel over his shoulder and rushed forward with a wide smile and open arms. “Hey, there’s trouble,” he greeted Leo fondly. “It’s been too long. Where have you and your beautiful wife been hiding?”
“Hi, Mr. Russo,” Leo said, bending for a back-slapping hug from the man who’d been like an uncle to him since he was a kid.
Leo had worked in Mr. Russo’s restaurant as a busboy in the kitchen back when he was still just a know-it-all teen with a permanent sneer curling his lip and a monstrous chip on his shoulder, on the verge of getting his punk ass sent to a juvenile detention center. For months after Leo’s father died, he’d come home from school every day covered in new, colorful bruises, and his mother hadn’t been able to talk any sense into him. But it was the night he’d come home in the back of a police cruiser that had finally broken the camel’s back.
At her wit’s end trying to keep him out of trouble, his mother had begged the officer to give him one more chance. She’d gotten him a job working for the same man who’d once given Leo’s father an after-school job—Mario Russo—then promised Leo that this last chance was all he was ever going to get from anyone. She’d threatened to kick him out of the house and send him back to the cops herself if he didn’t keep the job and smarten the hell up.
Russo had taken one look at Leo and somehow known exactly what was going on inside his messed-up head. He’d said if Leo was going to fight, then he needed to learn how to stay in control and do it properly, and then he introduced Leo to his son Jason, who ran a boxing club. Leo had been hooked immediately, but his mother hadn’t wanted to sign the permission form allowing him to join.
Mr. Russo had come over to the house, but instead of the two of them joining forces to talk Mom into the idea of the boxing club, Russo had sent Leo out back to mow the lawn. A little offended and indignant at being shuffled off like a kid while the adults talked, he’d still gone because for the first time since his dad died, he’d wanted something very badly. Enough to do whatever it took to get his mother to sign the paper. Still, the whole time he’d been out there, he’d stared in through the kitchen window. Mr. Russo had talked, Leo’s mom had listened…and then she’d started crying.
Hands fisted at his sides, he’d started to stomp back in there. Mr. Russo had promised he was on Leo’s side, but he’d never said anything about making his mother cry. She hadn’t even cried at his father’s funeral, and neither had Leo. That’s the promise they’d both made to him on his deathbed…that they wouldn’t cry over him, that they�
�d be strong for each other when he was gone.
As Mr. Russo had patted Leo’s mother on the shoulder that afternoon, Leo’d realized that he’d broken that promise. He hadn’t been strong for his mother. Seeing just how deep her grief, frustration, and hopelessness went had cut him to the core, because he was the reason. He’d contributed to it by getting into trouble and failing to hold his feelings inside like he’d promised.
She’d wiped her tears, taken a deep breath, and nodded. She’d gotten up from the kitchen table and come to the back door to tell Leo she would sign the form so he could join the boxing club. From that day forward, he’d sworn to do better. He’d sworn he wouldn’t be a burden on the people he loved.
He owed the old Italian man everything…and he’d never forgotten that.
“Sorry, Mr. Russo. We’ve both been really busy the last little while.”
Leo winced, remembering the last time he’d seen Mr. Russo. Bria had lain near death in the hospital. He’d been sitting in the chair outside her room with the door cracked open just enough to hear the machines keeping track of her heart rate and monitoring her breathing. When Russo had sat down next to him and put an arm around his shoulder, he’d looked over into those knowing blue eyes and completely broken down like he hadn’t since he was a kid.
For the first time and the last time.
Mr. Russo smiled and squeezed Leo’s arms. “I’m just glad you’re here now. Two busy lawyers.” He clucked like a mother hen. “Look at you. You probably haven’t eaten a good meal in weeks.”
He made a show out of stretching this way and that to look over Leo’s shoulder. “But where is the lovely Mrs. Markham? Don’t tell me you’re making her park the car? What is this modern world coming to? Don’t get me wrong, I believe in gender equality, and I love an independent woman”— he winked—“but chivalry is still important, and don’t you forget it.”
Leo hoped Russo would never find out about the problems between him and Bria. It would break the old man’s heart, and Mr. Russo had suffered enough when Jason died two years ago of a blood clot to the brain.