STIFF DRINK
Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet, #1
By: Blair Babylon
STIFF DRINK
Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet, #1
By: Blair Babylon
Genevieve is a lawyer, not a babysitter, and certainly not a dog trainer. She is just about to become a full barrister, a British litigating attorney, when her law mentor dies unexpectedly. She is shuffled off to another barrister, one who’s nothing at all like her kind and decent former mentor, and then she is assigned the office’s worst case: Arthur Finch-Hatten, six-feet and four-inches of ripped, loaded, hot English nobleman who is wasting his life and his inherited estate so audaciously that his younger brother is suing him for control of their family’s earldom. There is a darn good chance that Arthur will lose everything, even his crazed, badly behaved puppy.
Unless he shapes up.
Gen’s new boss hasn’t been able to convince Arthur to mend his ways. His uncle’s lectures haven’t had any effect on his depraved debauchery and lavish lifestyle.
The only way for Genevieve to make partner is to win Arthur’s case, and the only way to win his case and save his earldom is to keep him from spending his days hungover in bed and his nights pouring Cristal on drunk, naked women before flying off in his private jumbo jet to the next party.
Arthur is enough to make any woman need a stiff drink.
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Published by Malachite Publishing LLC
Copyright 2017 by Malachite Publishing LLC
Table of Contents
Stiff Drink
Special Offers
Table of Contents
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Crows Fighting Over Crumbs
First Meeting
Chambers High Tea
Arthur’s Dark Mistress
A Long and Flexy Mate
Drunk-Dialing the Earl of Severn
Visiting Momma
The Girlfriend Tactic
USB
Tea and Marriage Therapy
Practicing
Pick Me Up
First Party
Polish Her Up
Needed Tonight
Come to Jesus
The Dom/sub Judge
Chambers High Tea
A Stalker and Lebanese
Waffling Witnesses
Debriefing
Computer Lads
Trollop Card
Meet the Dog
Harrods and Triumph
Second Party
Accident
An Extreme Option
Threats
Shacking Up
What He Would Do
Business Meeting
Another Client Gone
More Threats
Barrister-Client Negotiation
Binding Authority
Chambers High Tea with Sun Tzu
Hacking Her Phone
Days Turn Into Weeks
Poker Tell
Car Conversation #2
Tea Time
Nothing Less
Another Lunch
Fifteen Minutes
Fifteen Minutes--Gen
Devilling at The Devilhouse
A Devilhouse Discussion
Valentine’s Day
More Weeks
A Man and a Plan
First Kiss
Hope Ball
Hacking His Phone
Desensitization Therapy
Tattoos
Negotiation
Green Light
Games
The History of Spencer House
Forget Quirky Love
Submissive Therapy
The First Chaise Lounge
Followed
The Second Chaise Lounge
The Back Door
Tonight
Elevator
Party
Rose Petals
Honeypot
A Most Excellent Proposition
Needed
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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CROWS FIGHTING OVER CRUMBS
Genevieve “Gen” Ward stood in the conference room of Serle’s Court Barristers, a London law firm, eyeing dozens of manila folders strewn across the long table.
Her black, high-heeled shoes still bore traces of cold graveyard mud and shed dried flakes onto the rug, even though she had tried to wipe it off. Her cheeks felt starched-stiff from grinding her teeth during Horace Lindsey’s funeral. Weeping at a funeral was so American. Horace would have been so disappointed in her if she had cried in front of all the other lawyers.
The folders on the table held the summaries of Horace’s law cases that he had been fighting when he had died. Gen’s future as a British trial lawyer, a barrister, rested on which of them she might be assigned.
Just not the case of Lord Arthur Finch-Hatten, the Earl of Severn, she prayed to the capricious gods of the court. Any case but that one.
Outside the conference room’s long windows, a fountain spouted water amid the formal garden’s winter-dead lawns, as prim as any palace’s grounds. The tall spires and walls of Lincoln’s Inn—an antique, Gothic building that housed lawyers’ business offices—surrounded the garden and blocked out the skyscrapers and honking cars of central London.
Inside the conference room, the sixty-odd other senior and junior barristers crowded around the table, craning their necks and shouldering each other for a better look at the labels typed on the folders’ tabs.
Everyone was dressed in mourning black, and the gathered lawyers resembled vicious crows, ready to do battle over crumbs.
They would not, however, make a move toward the folders.
The Head Clerk, Celestia Alen-Buckley, stood at the head of the table, her short arms braced on the dark, carved wood as she glared at the folders strewn between the rows of hovering barristers.
The Head Clerk would decide who would be assigned to which case. Her dark eyes narrowed, watching the barristers, sizing each of them up even though she had known them all for decades. With just a glance, the lawyers shriveled under Celestia Alen-Buckley’s gaze. Without her formidable power stretching over the table, the barristers might have leapt onto the table to melee for the cases, each worth many thousands of pounds and mostly completed.
All the black-clad lawyers and staff had just returned from the funeral of their esteemed, learned colleague Horace Lindsey, one of the most senior barristers in chambers. The kindly, grandfatherly man had taken a special interest in Gen. Her multiple disadvantages—having spent her formative years in America, retaining an abominable Texas accent despite her best efforts, her lack of the benefits of the British independent school education like most of her colleagues had enjoyed, and of course, her unfortunate appearance—had provoked his pity.
Her mother had assured Gen of her lack of looks her whole life, telling her that she had to be especially smart and diligent to make up for her long, horsey face and too-big teeth.
Her whole life.
Gen liked to think that she had grown into her face and teeth when she had stretched to a towering five feet and ten inches, but her mother
had continued to harp on Gen’s thick waist, her thunderous thighs, and her cankles.
So Gen worked like a demon dog to make up for all her disadvantages.
Horace Lindsey had noticed Gen working late—all the other pupil barristers had left for the pubs and an evening of socializing and drinking—because Horace was still at his desk, too. They drank tea while they worked, and he had imparted the little bits of lore and advice that, as an outsider, she had sorely needed. Horace had thought of her as an up-and-comer, a grinder, despite all her disadvantages. He had been the first senior barrister to make a cup of tea for Gen, one late evening while they were listening to streaming music while they worked. She had practically fallen in love with him and his sparse, white hair when he had presented her with a hot cup of tea and a wry, wrinkled smile. He had become her pupil master for the first six months of her internship, called a pupillage.
Horace had suffered a heart attack at his desk just a few days before, late at night, a few weeks after Christmas. Gen had called the ambulance while he had clutched his chest, and then Gen had told Horace’s partner, Basil, that his last words were of him.
They weren’t, of course. Horace’s last words had been instructions on his cases. Gen had taken notes with one hand and held Horace’s meaty fist with the other while he gasped, suffocating. He had been desperate to leave those final instructions on his cases, and she had printed out every word and stapled them into the manila folders littered on the conference room table.
And now all the senior, junior, and pupil barristers in chambers hovered over Horace’s folders, nudging each other as they peered at the labels, ready to pounce on the most prestigious cases or the ones most easily won or settled.
Genevieve was a lowly pupil barrister, the lowest rung on the barrister ladder, still in her first six-month term of law practical training, only recently speaking for clients in court with Horace looking over her shoulder the whole time. The Head Clerk would assign her the dregs of Horace’s cases to write the briefs for a new pupil master.
If she got any at all.
Just not Lord Severn’s case, she prayed again.
Lord Arthur Finch-Hatten, the Earl of Severn, had been one of Horace’s most difficult cases. His younger brother, Christopher Finch-Hatten, was suing him for possession and control of the family’s earldom and several estates. For any other defendant, this would have been designated a frivolous lawsuit that would have gotten the filing lawyer assigned costs or disciplined by the Bar Council.
Except that the defendant was The Right Honorable Arthur Finch-Hatten, the twenty-fifth Earl of Severn, the notorious and incorrigible scoundrel, damn it.
When Lord Severn deigned to grace the law offices with his presence to discuss the lawsuit against him, he strutted through chambers, the walking incarnation of privilege and sin. His deftly tailored suits were cut close to his muscular body as if he had been carved from dark marble. His strong cheekbones and square jaw were the pinnacles of centuries of beautiful women bred to powerful men to produce stunning gentlemen and ladies in the next generations. His ancestral tree was studded with several kings of England and Scotland, several more and farther back than the current heir to the British throne could claim.
As Lord Severn strode through the chambers, his silvery-blue eyes surveyed the female admins and junior barristers as he decided which of them to tempt into a night or a week of exuberant debauchery. Dark hair fell across his forehead, and the subtle scent of some hideously expensive cologne—warm spices and clean musk—wafted from him as he passed Gen, who always seemed to be caught out of her tiny office when he arrived. She would rather have barred her door against his influence.
Lord Severn usually left the barristers’ chambers with a young woman hanging on his arm and smiling up at his arrogant face, and then Horace had scoured the gossip websites with trepidation until the woman came back to work, shame-faced but oddly exuberant and dripping with new jewelry. His superficial relationships never lasted longer than a few weeks.
Lord Severn was a silver-eyed, silver-spoon-fed, silver-tongued billionaire, which was absolutely everything they needed him not to be.
Gen prayed that she would not have to deal with Horace’s most problematic case.
The tan file folders splayed across the table.
Gen waited quietly, her hands clasped in front of her.
The other barristers did the same.
Celestia Alen-Buckley examined each file and made her pronouncements.
Some folders, she perused the stickers and pursed her lips, deliberating, her eyes picking out a few barristers as possibilities, before she handed them off.
Some folders only received a cursory glance and a deliberate throw to a senior barrister.
Evidently, some considerations had already been made behind the scenes.
Damn it. Gen should have lobbied to be assigned the Lombardi case. With Horace’s wise and gentle instructions, it should settle soon. Gen needed a few wins in her docket.
She needed court wins a lot.
Tenancy offers—an invitation to set up shop as a “tenant” within the chambers, essentially a job offer to be a litigating lawyer in the law firm—would be made nine months from then, at the end of September. If the senior barristers didn’t offer tenancy to Gen, it would destroy her career just as it had officially begun. No other chambers would take her on. She would have few options to salvage her career, and they were all bad.
Gen’s new boss, Octavia Hawkes, stood across the table from Gen, eyeing the manila folders littering the dark wood table. Octavia’s blond hair was tightly coiffed into a French twist, as it always was on court days. Her black suit clung to her slender body. Her tailor came to her home once a month to adjust any suit that wasn’t a perfect fit.
Yep, glamorous, successful Octavia Hawkes was Gen’s new boss and her competition for Horace’s best cases.
Gen needed to snag several of those cases or at least one really good one.
Most pupil barristers were in debt, of course, unless they had wealthy parents who had ponied up the cash for their education. Gen sure as heck hadn’t had that advantage, either. The bar course had cost thirty thousand pounds for the year-long session. Thirty thousand pounds of debt, and Gen owed that money to her mother.
And her mother needed it back now.
Not in five years. Certainly not in ten.
Right now.
Celestia Alen-Buckley divvied up the cases.
The Lombardi folder whisked across the table to James Knightly, one of the other first-sixers who was vying for a tenancy offer. James had brought a caramel macchiato to the funeral and handed it to Celestia Alen-Buckley, and now James had the Lombardi file.
James played the barrister game exceptionally well. His father was a judge.
Gen mentally kicked herself again for not cozying up to Celestia Alen-Buckley yesterday and this morning. She ought to have known better.
File by file, Celestia Alen-Buckley made her pronouncements, her dusky hands flipping the folders across the table to be grabbed by their intended recipients too fast for Gen to keep track of them.
Finally, only one folder remained on the table.
Please, not Arthur Finch-Hatten. Please, God. Not Arthur Finch-Hatten.
Celestia Alen-Buckley picked up that last folder and looked straight at her.
Gen tried not to shrink under the woman’s stare.
Celestia Alen-Buckley whipped the folder down the long tabletop, the paper whispering on the wood the whole way. It skidded to a stop right where Gen stood.
“Here, Genevieve,” Celestia said. “You’re ambitious. If you can win it, you’ll make your name here.”
Gen was reaching for the folder when she saw the label, a blur of black ink on white with three capital letters sticking up: an A, an F, and an H.
Damn it.
FIRST MEETING
Gen’s first meeting with her new client, the scandalous Lord Arthur Finch-Hatten, the Earl of Sev
ern, was scheduled for eleven o’clock the next morning.
Her handwritten notes covered the inside of his manila folder:
Call him Lord Severn, My Lord, or Your Lordship. Not Mr. Finch-Hatten. Certainly not Arthur or Hey Hottie Sugar-Buns.
Don’t offer to shake his hand. You’re a barrister for God’s sake, and barristers don’t do that.
Don’t stare at him. Act like a damn professional.
The meeting was not to be held in her cubby of an office at Serle’s Court Barristers. In her office, her pupil desk was hardly larger than her laptop and couldn’t have held even a fraction of the documents that she needed to go over with him.
Instead, Gen had reserved the smallest of the conference rooms for the all-important first meeting. The windows looked outward from the building over the winding streets of central London, lined closely with brick structures like a medieval city. The other side, the good side of the building, faced the courtyard garden.
In the conference room, the heavily carved table seemed ridiculously ornate to Gen, but she had grown up in America. Her bourgeois tastes ran more to clean lines and modern furniture rather than the trappings of wealth and history that were the norm in British barristers’ chambers. She needed to get used to this kind of thing.
She waited in the conference room for Lord Severn to show up.
By eleven in the morning, Gen had made good progress on her work for the day and had drunk several all-important cups of coffee.
That morning, she had also prepared several more cups of coffee for her new pupil mistress, Octavia Hawkes, who took her coffee at a piping-hot one hundred eighty degrees Fahrenheit, which is eighty-two centigrade after Gen converted it in her head from the American stuff to the British thing. Octavia also required exactly one quarter cup of half-and-half that Gen purchased twice-weekly from the market on her way to work and no sugar. Gen made Octavia’s coffee perfectly five times per office day, or else Octavia’s crimson-painted lips retracted into a red dot of anger on her face.
Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1 Page 1