by Alexa Davis
“I get that,” Nelson said in a whiney voice, “but why me? Why not set up Dad?”
“Your father’s reputation for honesty is what has made his company so successful. They knew that no one would believe he had done this, so they turned to the next best fall guy: his son.” I tried to keep the confident look on my face and in my eyes when Nelson asked his next question,
“I was the perfect fall guy because my reputation is the opposite of my dad’s, right?”
“We’re going to do all we can to keep your past from being allowed into this, okay?” Nelson nodded, none too convincingly, and I asked him, “Are you ready?” he nodded again as Nico and I stood up. Nelson rubbed his face over his hands and looked up at us again. Looking very much like a child, he said,
“Please don’t let them put me in jail. I couldn’t stand being locked up.”
Although our legal team was made up of three of the best and brightest young attorneys Hanson had to offer, none of us wanted to make promises that we might be unable to keep. Instead, Kyla put her hand
gently on his arm and said,
“Come on; let’s go get this confession thrown out.”
********
Kyla, Nico and I celebrated our first victory over lunch. Judge Nolan had agreed that saying “Shouldn’t my lawyer be here?” was a statement the police should have explored more with Nelson. The top of Dawson’s bald little head had been bright red with anger by the time we were through with him. I held that vision in my head as I danced back into the office that afternoon – and ran smack dab into Marjorie. Shit.
“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.” Marjorie stepped back and looked me up and down as if seeing me for the first time, even though we had met before. She adjusted the lapels of her designer jacket that Adam’s money had bought and said in an irritated voice,
“Obviously,” and then with a weary sigh added, “But I suppose I could expect nothing less from employees of the buffoon that runs this place. Excuse me…”
I stood dumbfounded by the woman’s rudeness and watched her leave. I shook my head, unable to comprehend what Adam must have ever seen in her in the first place. Maybe she was softer once, when she was younger. Some people just find it impossible to age with grace, my mother used to say. I had a feeling that Marjorie was one of those women. I had been close enough to her today to notice the taut lines of her jaw and the complete absence of any lines around her eyes or on her forehead. Adam’s money had paid a fortune for that harsh, expressionless face. I shuddered. No matter what she may have once been, the simple fact now was that the woman was insufferable.
I tried to shake off the encounter and return to my earlier pleasant state of mind as I went in search of Adam to tell him about our victory. As I rounded the corner from the long hall that led to the executive offices, I saw Mary, Adam’s personal assistant, closing the heavy oak doors that led to the executive conference room behind her.
“Hi, Mary,” I said. “Is Mr. Hanson in a conference?”
Mary smiled at me, and I couldn’t help thinking that the smile caused Mary’s face to crinkle in all the right places, making her look radiant. I liked her and appreciated that she was almost always in a pleasant mood, which was definitely a breath of fresh air after my little run-in with Marjorie.
“Hi, Alicia, yes he’s in there with Mr. Brigham, Mr. Fritz, and a few other men from Brigham Oil Company. It’s getting pretty intense. I was going to get some refreshments in hopes of lightening up the room.”
I smiled back at her. “If anyone can do it, it’s you, Mary. I can see why Mr. Hanson has kept you at his side for so long, you keep him sane. Would you mind asking him to call or come by my office when he’s finished? I have a case I’d like to discuss.” It wasn’t really a lie. I did want to talk to him about the case. I also wanted to kiss him. My face colored at the thought, as if Mary could read my mind. I would be so happy when Adam and I could stop pretending. Stretching the facts during the course of a case to save a client didn’t bother me much, but telling an outright lie to someone I considered a friend went against everything I had been raised to believe, and it seemed like I’d had to do that a lot lately.
Once I got back to my own desk, my receptionist handed me a pile of messages. “Thank you, Carla.”
“You’re welcome; how did court go?” she asked as she followed me into my office.
“Great!” I told her with a smile. “We got the confession thrown out. Without that, the rest is all hearsay and should be easy to discredit.”
“Good!” Carla said with real enthusiasm. “Mr. Dawson called a few minutes before you walked in. He gives me the creeps a little, but anyways, he said he urgently needed you to call him as soon as you walked in.”
“You know what?” I told her with my lip curled, “He gives me the creeps, too. I’ll call him…in a while. Thanks, Carla,”
“You’re welcome Ms. Winston. Let me know if you need anything.” Carla closed the door as she left, and I sat down at the desk to begin sorting through my messages. Most were from clients who were anxious to discuss one aspect of our case or other. As I sifted through the rectangular squares of pink paper, a familiar name caught my eye. The message said, While You Were Out—Jack Grant called.
I did a double take at the name. It was one that I hadn’t seen or heard in a message for quite some time. Jack and I had been very close friends since kindergarten. As we grew into adulthood, we had ultimately gone from being friends to being lovers. It was great for a while and I had felt blessed that my boyfriend was also my best friend. The excitement of it fizzled out quickly, though, and eventually, we both had to admit that we were better as friends than we were as a couple. We had managed to stay friends, and once I moved to the States, I had really meant to keep in touch and maintain our friendship, but life interrupted my plans.
I had heard most recently about him from my mother, who told me that Jack was in a relationship with a woman from the Country Club her and my father had been members of for decades. She said it seemed serious. I remember her telling me that with a frown. She’d been most disappointed when he and I had stopped seeing each other. He came from old money. His parents were very active in the community and my mother and his worked together on many of our charity projects. The Lady Winston had high hopes that I would one day be Mrs. Jack Grant.
I snapped out of my memories and back into the present looking back at the slip in my hand, the number was a local one – not in Europe but right here in New York. I reached to pick up the phone just as it began to ring. I picked it up without waiting for it to roll over to Carla.
“Alicia Winston.”
“Alicia, darling, it’s Robert,” came the sleazy little voice from the other side. Feigning ignorance for the sake of insulting him and no other, I almost felt a little ashamed of myself as I said,
“Robert?” with an obvious question mark at the end,
“Dawson, Robert Dawson!” he said, obviously offended. “Surely you haven’t forgotten me already.”
“Oh, Mr. Dawson, I’m so sorry. Of course I haven’t forgotten you. Your first name just threw me off. How can I help you?”
“I want to throw out an offer for that juvenile delinquent in a man’s body your firm is representing. What say we meet for a drink and talk about it?”
I almost laughed aloud, but I caught myself. For the sake of Nelson and the other clients I represented, I couldn’t afford to insult him outright.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dawson, but I have a full plate this afternoon. Perhaps you can tell me what you are offering and I can pass it on to my client.”
Dawson cleared his throat and the tone of his voice changed to borderline hostile as he said, “I suppose you big time corporate lawyers fancy yourselves better than the average lawyer, too good to slum it with the prosecutor who could maybe make your life easier if you gave him the chance.”
I was silent. I was sorely tempted to give this na
sty little man a piece of my mind. How dare he try to suggest that I would even consider trading favors with the likes of him? When I didn’t reply after a few moments, he said, “But anyways, tell that little rich boy you represent that I am offering five years if he pleads guilty to misdemeanor accepting a bribe.”
“Five years? Are you serious?” I asked, almost certain I had heard him wrong or he had made a mistake.
“He can get ten if the jury convicts at trial,” Dawson said.
“He can get nothing if we get an acquittal,” I said with confidence in my voice. “I think we’ll take our chances.”
“Okay, but don’t forget to offer it to your client. He might want to save himself and his family some embarrassment and skip the trial.”
“Oh, I won’t forget, but don’t lose any sleep waiting for me to call you back on it. My client didn’t do anything wrong. He doesn’t want to plead guilty to anything, and he won’t accept any jail time. You have a nice day, Mr. Dawson,” I said, emphasizing the “Mr.” to make sure he knew we were more foe than friend. After my conversation with Dawson, I was no longer in the mood to call Jack for a reunion chat. Instead, I buzzed Adam’s office.
“Yes?”
“Hi, are you busy?”
“No, just unwinding after that awful meeting.”
“I take it all didn’t go well?”
“I don’t know. Brigham seems to think we are miracle workers, instead of lawyers. He wants us to run off the press and calm the politicians. Alex is working his magic on the politician angle for us, but I’m not sure what to do about the press at this point.”
Alex was Alex Fritz. He was Adam’s best friend from college and currently one of the front runners for the Democratic seat that had recently opened up in the House of Representatives. Alex was strongly connected in the political community and even had ties to the White House. He was helping Adam to connect with the people involved in the scandal over Brigham being one of the President’s lead campaign funders. He was also charged with the task of severing the ties between the currently offending oil company and the presidential campaign.
“Anyways, how did your morning in court turn out?” he asked me.
“It was great! The judge agreed that the confession was bogus since Nelson had mentioned his attorney and threw it out. Then, just a few moments ago, the world’s sleaziest prosecutor called and offered us a deal.”
“Great! Was the deal something you think Nelson will consider?”
“Absolutely not, he’s offering five years if Nelson pleads to conspiracy to accept a bribe. Nelson will never go for it. But, it does mean that Dawson is nervous. He knows that without the confession, his case is on shaky ground or he wouldn’t have offered anything.”
“True,” Adam said thoughtfully. “He could get ten years or more if we do convict, you know.”
“Yes, I do know that. I won’t play games with his life, but I won’t see him locked up for five years for doing nothing more than being a spoiled little rich boy.”
“I respect that,” Adam told her. “By the way, are you free for dinner?”
“With you? Always,” I said with a grin. “Your place or mine?”
“How about Romaletti’s?” Adam said, surprising me.
“Romaletti’s, really? Is this a business dinner?” I asked suspiciously.
“No, it’s an ‘I’m tired of pretending, too’ dinner. The hell with Marjorie and the hell with her lawyer, I want to take my gorgeous girlfriend out for dinner. That is, if she’d like to go with me.”
“I would love that, thank you!” I told him with real enthusiasm,
“No, thank you,” he said. “I realized today after another exhausting and volatile conversation with Marjorie that you’re right. She's probably not going away any time soon. I’m going to try like hell to stop letting her get in the way of my life, of our life.”
I was ecstatic to hear it. We made plans to meet in Adam’s office later since we both still had piles of work to do. I called Nico and a paralegal named Sarah into my office and we spent the rest of the day working on Nelson’s case. Kyla came in later after I finished prepping for a real estate case I was working on. The message from Jack was put on the back burner of my things to do list as I shuffled through motions and briefs and looked forward to my first public dinner with Adam that was not work related.
CHAPTER FOUR
ADAM
The rest of my day after I finally manned up and told Alicia I wanted to take her out to dinner flew by. It dawned on me all at once that I was sick to death of sneaking around like I was cheating on someone. My marriage with Marjorie had been over for years before we finally separated. We had been separated for six months before Alicia and I ever started seeing each other. We weren’t doing anything wrong, and I was tired of feeling like we were. Besides, the thoughts I’d had this morning about Alicia getting tired of it all and leaving me had haunted me all day. It would crush me to lose her.
I was buried in paperwork when I finally pushed it back across the antique oak desk and decided to call it a night. So far, there were thirteen plaintiffs in the case against Brigham Oil, and the numbers grew daily. They were being sued by the EPA for unsafe practices, by several local fishermen that were claiming lost revenue over not being able to fish in the waters after the spill, by a representative of people from a village in the area that were not able to drink the water, and the list went on. I had actually begun to worry that it may have been a mistake to take it on. But, tonight was about me and Alicia. I wasn’t going to allow Marjorie or Brigham to ruin it for me.
My penthouse is on Fifth Avenue, quite a ways from the office. I keep suits at the office, though, so I grabbed one out of the closet and used the executive lounge to get ready for my night out with Alicia. She’d left me a message that she was leaving about an hour before. I felt a little silly at my age, but I was really excited about taking her out. It felt like a first date. At forty years old, I was damned lucky a young, beautiful woman like Alicia wanted me. I knew that I had to do this more often, she deserved it and if I didn’t start, she’d find someone that would. I wanted her to finally be able to stop feeling like the “other” woman, although that was never really what she was.
When she opened the door to her apartment, my mouth went dry. I almost forgot how much I wanted to take her out and took her to bed instead. She had her auburn hair down and curled around her face. It brushed against her soft bare shoulders and the thin straps of the dark burgundy dress she was wearing. It was cut conservatively, but it accentuated every one of her hot curves. It stopped just above her knee and also showcased her long, shapely legs that ended in a pair of matching stilettos on her small, sexy feet. I pictured them up on my shoulders in those shoes while I fucked her and my cock did a dance in my pants.
“Wow, you look amazing.”
She actually blushed. “Thank you, so do you.” When she turned to get her bag, I saw the back of the dress was wide open to her waist. I had no idea how I was going to keep my hands off of her in public half the night. We’d have to eat fast. She grabbed her bag and coat, and I put my hand against her bare back and led her into the elevator. It took every ounce of impulse control I could muster not to take her down and fuck her right there and again in the Lincoln Town car. I was actually almost relieved to see how busy Romaletti’s was. It would make me behave, at least.
Marco, the grandson of the original owner, came out to greet us. He was a client of our firm and ever since I had saved the restaurant from a bogus lawsuit a few years earlier that could have put them out of business, Marco treated me like a visiting dignitary when I came in. “Mr. Hanson, so very nice to see you,” he said in a thick Italian accent, “and who is this ravishing young lady?”
“Marco, this is my girlfriend, Ms. Alicia Winston,”
Marco took Alicia’s small hand in his large arthritic one and brought it up to his lips, kissing the back of it gently. With a bow, he said, “Welcome to my restaurant, Bella.
Please, choose anything you would like from the menu and I will make sure it is cooked to absolute perfection for you and Mr. Hanson, and tonight is my treat. Come,”
We followed him to a table across the room. In the center was a “Reserved” tag. It sat next to a large, picture window that looked out onto a small man made pond. Marco kept the pond stocked with gloriously-colored Koi fish and ducks and a gaggle of swan glided across its mirrored surface.
“Oh, it’s beautiful,” Alicia said as Marco held out her chair for her to be seated. She looked out on the pond and watched in fascination as the moonbeams danced off the surface and the colors of the Koi underneath glimmered like a rainbow.
“It’s my pride and joy,” Marco said before leaving us to get our waiter. He bowed at the waist once more before going and said, “If not for Mr. Hanson, it would have been lost to me. Please, enjoy yourselves tonight.” We thanked him again as he left and our waiter approached with a wine list right away.
I looked at it and then told Alicia, “I don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood for a real celebration tonight.”
She readily agreed, and I ordered a bottle of the restaurant’s best champagne. The waiter returned promptly with a bottle and two flutes. He filled Alicia’s and then mine and then handed us both a menu before setting the bottle back in the brass ice bucket and leaving us to make our choices. I picked up my champagne glass, and holding it up in Alicia’s direction, I said, “To us.” She picked hers up and clinked it to mine and said,