Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1

by Blair Babylon

  BARRISTER-CLIENT NEGOTIATION

  Gen ran down to the curb when Arthur texted her that he was coming up. He didn’t need to come all the way up to her office to walk her down. The goals of their sham relationship were to keep an eye on the wayward earl and to plant gossip in the papers, not to foment gossip in her chambers.

  “Lunch must be quick,” she said as she stepped into the car. Arthur had opened the door for her, and she swung her legs inside. “I have court this afternoon, and the brief was enormous. It’ll take all afternoon. It might have to be carried over.”

  Arthur stepped into the other side of the car. “We’ll go to my club,” he said. “They can be very efficient.”

  His “club” was a renovated house just a few blocks from Lincoln’s Inn. They were whisked to a private room, and a waiter took their orders within minutes.

  “But the whole point of these lunches is to be seen together,” Gen told him. If people weren’t buying them as a couple, these lunches might shore up their bona fides.

  “I should like to apologize,” Arthur said as he settled himself at the table. “I drank too much last night in addition to the pain pills, and I said some things that should not have been said.”

  Ah, yes. He had been drunk off his patoot and rambling lies. “It’s okay, Arthur. I understand.”

  “I can’t quite remember what I said,” Arthur said. “After ten o’clock, everything becomes quite blurry.”

  “It’s okay.” Gen smiled at him, trying to set him at ease even though her heart seemed to have inexplicably sighed and was huddling, hurt, inside her chest. “You were matching shots with Christopher on top of the Oxycontin. If you’d’ve punched someone, I could have gotten you off on a temporary insanity defense.”

  One side of his mouth curved up, but he smiled more with his eyes. In the subdued light of the supper club, his shimmering eyes looked more blue. Maybe his eyes were picking up the color of the vivid blue tie that he was wearing with his dark blue suit. “I appreciate your kindness. I do apologize.”

  Gen waved her hand, slapping his apologies out of the air. Her eyes stung, which was weird. “Pshaw. You were practically hallucinating. You didn’t know who I was. You probably thought that I was Peony Sweeting or one of those Parisian strippers.”

  Arthur leaned forward. “I knew who you were.”

  “Well, you were rambling, literally out of your mind. You might have said anything. You didn’t mean any of it.”

  He was watching her, closely, his silvery eyes flicking as he looked from one of her eyes to the other. “I meant every word. I’m only wondering how much I said.”

  Gen leaned back and braced her arms on the table. “You didn’t mean it.”

  “I’ve been attracted to you since we met. In the time that we’ve spent together, my interest hasn’t diminished.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m absolutely serious. Getting to know you without having a sexual relationship is fascinating and unprecedented.”

  Ah. Gen opened her hands, letting any little bit of hope fly away. It didn’t matter. “So it’s just that you want what you can’t have. I’m legally forbidden fruit. That’s all.”

  “You put yourself down too much,” Arthur said. “I hear it from you every day. It seems impolite to contradict you, but you’re a beautiful woman. Your legs go on for days. You have a classically beautiful oval face. If I extol any more of your virtues, I’ll have more to apologize for.”

  “You don’t have to do this. I’m a grown woman. We have a business arrangement to keep you out of trouble so I can win your case. You don’t have to schmooze me. Indeed, I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “If the circumstances were any different, I assure you, I would absolutely take advantage of our arrangement to try my best to seduce you.”

  “Oh, you don’t mean that.”

  “I’ve already told you that I mean every word of it. I am also aware that circumstances cannot be different. Octavia has warned me not to ‘ruin’ you in the eyes of your chambers. She says that you have a good shot at getting a tenancy offer—”

  Gen straightened. “She said that?”

  “Yes, and she said that you should not be caught in a relationship with me. After my case is over, I should like to take you out for a real date if you’d be amenable. I wouldn’t destroy your career for a date.”

  “Yes,” Gen said, breathless because she couldn’t believe that she was saying it.

  “Yes, what? That I shouldn’t ruin your career?”

  “That, too. But yes to the date. Yes, to going on a date,” she stammered. “If we don’t hate each other by the end of your case, then yes, we should go have coffee or something.”

  Arthur leaned in farther, and his strong fingers gripped the edge of the table. His intense eyes turned smoky in the dim light. “Coffee?”

  “Yes, coffee. Just to talk. Just to see if there might be anything between us.”

  He smiled a slow, sexy smile. Not lascivious, but a promise. “I think so, too.”

  But they had to wait until the end of the case. They couldn’t have a relationship or even a date before that.

  It absolutely would ruin her career.

  No matter how good she was at arguing points of law or whipping up a jury’s righteous indignation in a courtroom, having a real relationship with a client was a visit to the Ethics Board and an exit from chambers. Straight-up lying about a relationship with a client would get her blackballed from every set of chambers in Britain.

  So they had to wait.

  Right?

  BINDING AUTHORITY

  That afternoon, Gen was sitting at her table in court, listening.

  The claimant’s lawyer, who was of course her nemesis-in-chambers, the handsome James Knightly, went on and on and on and on about his client’s case.

  And on and on.

  She was taking notes diligently, even though she had already answered all of his points in her brief, weak as it was. Indeed, she had a copy of her brief and was ticking off the points that she needed to hit in her rebuttal.

  Well, some judges didn’t read briefs, just like some barristers didn’t read the solicitor’s instructions before they walked into court.

  So she had to nail that rebuttal.

  This case was weak, so damn weak. She wasn’t even sure why the solicitors had sent it around, except that perhaps the claimant wouldn’t give up and would not accept any offer to settle at any price.

  It was even a civil case for money, not a criminal case, but Gen always did her best for her client.

  This was just a waste of everyone’s time, anyway. She was going to lose and lose hard.

  Her client was going to have to pony up a heck of a lot of cash that he didn’t have.

  The judge called for a quick break before Gen began her arguments, and Arthur leaned over the bar to motion to her.

  She walked back and whispered, “What?” as she was clutching her notepad.

  Arthur leaned in and whispered, “Do exactly as I say. Stand up and say only this, ‘The appeal is misconceived since it has failed to refer to the binding authority of Tambling-Goggin v. Pye.’”

  Gen grabbed her phone, starting to search for that particular decision. “I can’t believe that such a short response can answer James Knightly’s skeleton argument. It’s not complete.”

  “Look at the barristers who argued the case.”

  Gen swiped her fingers over the page, enlarging the text. “It says Williams, Gendry, and Marks for the claimant, who won the case. Wait, Marks? As in Judge Marks?” She looked up at the empty bench, where Judge Marks’s nameplate shone in the overhead fluorescent lights.

  “Quite,” Arthur said.

  “He argued a case almost exactly like mine and won with it?”

  Arthur smiled, and the sly gleam in his eye was sexy as heck. “One of his finest hours.”

  “Oh, Arthur. This is amazing. I thought I was going to lose this case.”

/>   He leaned back. “Sometimes, if you know just whom to cite, you can work wonders. Make sure you look like a cat who’s been in the cream when you stand up and say it. Marks will be ever so amused.”

  Oh, what the Hell. It was better than anything she had.

  Back in the courtroom, when it came time for her response, she stood straight, looked straight at Judge Marks and grinned, and said exactly what Arthur had told her to say.

  She glanced over at James Knightly, still grinning, and bit the corner of her lip.

  Terror widened James Knightly’s English blue eyes.

  He slammed open his laptop and typed frantically, not even bothering to cover up his ignorance of the referenced case.

  He scanned the page, his head vibrating side to side as he read.

  At the end, he flopped back in his chair, the very image of what defeat feels like.

  Gen tried not to gloat.

  But she was unsuccessful.

  Because it was awesome.

  Later, as night was rolling through the streets of London and the streetlights were turning on to keep the darkness at bay, Gen trotted out of Lincoln’s Inn and through the park-like courtyard.

  Arthur was waiting for her beside the Rolls Royce, holding her door. She stepped into the car and dragged her purse into the back seat. Arthur shut the door behind her. In the evening, the stars sifted over the ceiling inside the car were even more diamond-like.

  He got in the other side, asking, “How did it go?”

  Gen exclaimed, “I did just what you said. As soon as the other lawyer figured out what that case was and that Judge Marks, that very same judge, had been the lawyer that had argued it, he accepted a pittance as a settlement from my client. I can’t believe that we got away with that. My client probably paid ten percent of what he should have been liable for. I wonder if we should have fought it out. We might have gotten him off the hook entirely.”

  Arthur chuckled as Pippa drove the car away from the curb. “I would say not. That case was unwinnable. It was only luck that I was able to shore you up with that gambit.”

  Gen dropped her purse, and it tumbled to the floor of the car. “But, Judge Marks had fought a case just like it ten years ago and won. It was precedent.”

  “Oh, no,” Arthur said. “Judge Leopold Marks spoke about that very case, Tambling-Goggin v. Pye, at a political fund-raising supper a few months ago. He is disgusted with himself for having taken the case and called it one of the gravest miscarriages of justice that he had ever participated in. Marks said that if a like case ever came before him, he intended to right the grievous wrong.”

  So Judge Marks would have ruled against her no matter what if she had not settled, and she would have lost the case in a most spectacular fashion, had she fought it out.

  But that wasn’t the problem.

  She said, “You manipulated me.”

  “I showed you a path to victory in a hopeless case. With Judge Marks presiding, there was no other way but to settle.”

  “But you didn’t tell me everything.”

  He shrugged. “You essentially won the case. You certainly found the very best outcome.”

  “I can’t believe you manipulated me like that, like a pawn.”

  “To excel at being a barrister, you must rarely, if ever, say what you mean.” He leaned toward her. “It’s the British way. Play the game for yourself. Don’t allow yourself to be a pawn. Be the king.”

  Barristers did play evil games in court and in chambers, and they did it all the time.

  “You say that like you’re a king instead of an earl,” she tried to quip, even though her eyes were tearing up. Damn it, she should have known the precedent and known what it meant. That’s what stung the most.

  “Oh, I’m not the king,” Arthur said. “At best, I’d say I’m a rook. In the Great Game, I wouldn’t want to be the king. A rook is far more nimble.”

  CHAMBERS HIGH TEA WITH SUN TZU

  Gen shoved a whole cookie in her mouth. The shortbread smelled like butter and chocolate in her sinuses.

  Across from her, sitting in an office chair and sipping a cup of steaming tea, Octavia raised her precisely sculpted eyebrows. “Rough day in court?”

  Gen swallowed the cookie crumbs. “I lost, but I won. I settled a case for far less than my client should have been on the hook for. I practically robbed a very deserving claimant.”

  Octavia’s devious smile curved her lips. “Bravo, Gen.”

  “To be honest—”

  Octavia pursed her lips and shook her head.

  Gen corrected herself, “To be frank,” because barristers never admitted honesty, “I accidentally manipulated James Knightly into settling a case for far less than he should have. He’s a chambermate.”

  “No, he’s your competition for obtaining tenancy.”

  “It wasn’t fair.”

  “Now, you’re getting the hang of it.”

  “I used his ignorance of a precedent against him.”

  “Even better,” Octavia purred. “You can’t be Atticus fucking Finch.”

  Gen asked, “So what if we settle like that? Is that winning when you win with an unfair tactic?”

  Octavia nibbled at her cookie, a rare indulgence. “It’s the best kind of winning, actually. ‘To fight and conquer in all your battles is not the supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemies’ resistance without fighting.’ Sun Tzu knew his shit.”

  HACKING HER PHONE

  Arthur held the elevator doors for Gen and followed her into his apartment. A quick glance at the winter sunlight streaming through the windows of the living room assured him that they had a few hours before that night’s soiree.

  Gen was stabbing her phone with her index finger and frowning. That little line that he associated with her cute baby-tantrums had formed between her eyebrows. Watching her buy the plot was like watching a puffball kitten lay its ears back and attack one’s foot in adorable fury.

  She muttered, “Stupid thing.”

  “Is there a problem?” Arther asked her, refraining from craning his neck to spy on her screen.

  Gen complained, “My phone is so dang slow. I tap an app to open it, and it pauses, so I tap it ten more times. When it finally opens up, it registers those ten taps as trying to do something in the app, and it goes all over the place and does something stupid. I think I just set my weather location to Abu Dhabi.”

  He laughed. “I might be able to optimize it, if you like.”

  “You? The Earl of Givesnofucks? You’re a computer nerd?”

  He touched his chest in mock horror. “Oh, of course not. However, all of us spendthrift nobles have our toys.”

  She frowned. “Oh. I guess so.”

  He held out his hand. “May I?”

  She shrugged and handed it over.

  Arthur asked, “Is there any place on it I shouldn’t look?”

  Gen laughed. “No naked pics or sex tapes, I promise. I’m not that interesting.”

  Oh, Arthur disagreed. He found her very interesting, absolutely fascinating, as a matter of fact. While he wouldn’t have poked around her files for boudoir pictures of her, he would have happily perused if she had offered to show them to him.

  Or if she had offered to take some especially for him.

  God, what a thought. His dick grew heavy in his shorts at just the thought of Gen in lingerie, maybe looking over her shoulder at the camera, framed on her voluptuous ass and thighs—

  Another train of thought was in order, lest he embarrass himself.

  Arthur asked, “Which of these apps do you not use, ever?”

  Gen sighed, her bosom heaving, and Arthur did his best not to look at her chest. “There’s so many, but I can’t figure out how to get them off my phone.”

  He concentrated on her phone, instead. “Many phones are pre-installed with bloatware, and you have to inspect the code of the operating system to uninstall them. Can I get this back to you in half an hour?”


  She shrugged, and her body jiggled under the severe black suit that she wore. By the way her breasts floated under her top, Arthur was quite sure that she was wearing the Myla lingerie he had purchased for her, a captivating thought.

  Self-torture wasn’t his usual modus operandi, yet he could not seem to stop. He was at half-mast already. Just being around Gen was beginning to become physically painful.

  Gen said, “Sure. I was just going to shower before the thing tonight.”

  And now he had that image in his head.

  Perhaps smashing his face against the wall of his computer cave would relieve the pressure.

  He said, “I’ll have this right back to you.”

  Arthur took the phone to his computer cave, the room with several large towers and servers and many screens, and plugged it into his computer. He broke apart the phone’s rudimentary security software in seconds and deleted all the bloatware. By looking at her data usage, he found quite a few apps that she had never opened nor registered in the eight months that she had had her phone, so he deleted those. Then, he installed a much better security program.

  One never knew when some nefarious person would try to hack her phone.

  He was pleased with himself, as he had resisted the urges to install an access program or to cruise her pictures.

  Arthur was, after all, the very definition of a gentleman.

  He tested the apps. They snapped open and ran flawlessly.

  When he gave it back to Gen, she exclaimed over it, smiling and thanking him, and she touched his shoulder while she watched images flash over the screen.

  Arthur smiled gently at her. “My absolute pleasure.”

  DAYS TURN INTO WEEKS

  Days turned into weeks, and Gen lived with Arthur in his apartment.

  Every night, Arthur had a scheduled charitable or political event. She wondered how he kept them all straight in his head until she saw that his head of staff, the inscrutable Mr. Royston Fothergill, programmed everything into a shared calendar that everyone received, including the drivers, Pippa and Oliver.