She returns my smile and reaches a hand out to touch my arm. “That would be lovely.”
I cringe and pull my arm away so I can signal for the waiter, who starts over toward us. I’m going to guzzle the champagne because the sooner its drunk, the sooner I can leave and be done with Lorraine Cummings. Granted, she’ll be around for another thirty days, but we can suffer with it since it’s a permanent fix.
Pulling out my phone, I check the time. 8:30 PM.
I wonder what Mac is doing right now. Is she thinking about me? Cursing me? Masturbating thinking about me?
One can only hope.
None of that matters though. We are done, and it’s back to business as usual starting tomorrow.
For the first time, in a long time, I actually feel sad.
Chapter 12
I hang up my phone and mentally check off my list to find a date for the Patron’s Gala for the New York State Bar Association next week. I hate these functions, but they are a necessity. Much of my business comes from personal referrals from other attorneys, so it’s necessary for me to rub elbows with them.
I’m taking my friend, Melody Chambers. She’s a partner over at Weinsten Fannerty, a very successful criminal defense firm. She and I worked together at a little boutique civil rights firm right after we graduated law school. It was only for a few months before she moved on, but we stayed in contact and became friends. We became better friends after my divorce.
Not in a sexual way. Rather, Melody’s husband, Richard, is an advertising executive and he travels a lot internationally. I’ve filled in as escort for her on occasion, and she’s done the same for me so I don’t have to go stag to these functions. It works out nicely, and we get along well. She planned to go to this party anyway, so we’ll basically share a limo and I’ll have someone who I can actually stand to talk to all evening.
Glancing at my watch, I see it’s almost six PM. Mac sent me an email this morning asking for help on the Jackson case. I’m not sure what it says about me that I felt like a schoolboy that just got handed a note from the girl he likes when I first saw that email. A zing of adrenaline went through me and maybe I secretly hoped when I opened it that she would be asking to see me tonight.
Alas, it was short and to the point, asking for help on that case.
Still rocking the schoolboy complex, I immediately responded back to her that she could come discuss it with me any time. I sort of expected her to come immediately to my office, but I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
I didn’t go out to lunch, in case she decided to come see me on her lunch hour.
But still I waited.
Finally, I gave up and spent the remainder of my Friday afternoon lost in some legal research on an admissibility issue, and I forgot… for a while… about Mac.
Which was good, because the email is not the first thing I’ve obsessed about this week. Since she broke things off Monday night, I’ve gone over in my head a million times how fucked up that entire situation was. I let my anger over seeing her with Cal get the better of me, and I made her suffer for it.
I know it was wrong not to tell her about Lorraine, but the way she demanded it of me took this thing we have going in a different direction. It smacked too much of a relationship, and I don’t like having to answer to anyone. I do know, however, that’s an issue I have to work on… someday.
I know it was wrong to demand she stay away from Cal. But fuck… the thought of her with him is driving me bat-shit crazy. The fact that she has something going on with him causes my veins to feel like they have acid swimming in them.
Everything just fucking burns.
If it would be any other man in the entire world, it would not have been a problem. Okay, well… that’s not exactly true. I don’t want her with any other man.
But for fuck’s sake. Cal Carson?
In the hierarchy of people that I despise, Marissa is numero uno. But taking the second slot position, just a millimeter under her is Cal Carson. Truly, the only thing I hate about my career is that I actually have to deal with Cal on cases we have. Thank God, we are on opposite sides of the cases we have, and so all of our dealings together are dirty fights. Over the last few years, we’ve managed to act civilly toward each other when we are around other people, but if we were ever to get alone… I guarantee there would be bloody knuckles involved.
I think about how I found out about Cal and Marissa. I would have never known had Cal’s conscience not gotten the better of him.
He actually confessed… waiting outside my apartment. Marissa and Gabe were out and about, so I invited him up. He declined a beer I offered him, and then proceeded to destroy me.
I already knew that Marissa was cheating on me. After I started noticing suspicious behavior—taking phone calls and walking out of the room so I couldn’t hear, running errands at odd times of the day or night, going out with “the girls” four to five nights a week—yeah, it all tipped me off something was wrong, so I hired a private investigator. Within one week, he had a thick report with photographs of my wife banging two different guys.
The marriage was over. She didn’t know it yet, but I was carefully plotting the way it was going to occur. She didn’t think it was odd that I was sleeping on the couch, or had basically stopped talking to her all together. In her shortsighted mind, that was just better opportunity for her to sneak around.
So, was I surprised that Marissa fucked another guy? No.
Was I surprised it was my best friend? Abso-fucking-lutely.
I didn’t even get the story from him. Cal made the mistake of starting his confession off by hitting me with the bad news.
He’d said—with tears in his eyes, “Matt… I am so sorry. But last night, I got really, really drunk and I was with Marissa.”
That’s as far as he got before my fist planted in his face. It knocked him backward into one of the kitchen island stools, and he flipped over it, crashing to the floor. I was on him like stink on shit, pummeling his face with my bare knuckles.
It was only when I drew back from a direct hit to his eye, and saw I had burst a blood vessel in it, that I stopped the attack. While fury was driving me, common sense was stepping in and telling me not to do anything that would get me in criminal trouble. Without that good, old common sense driving me, I probably would have killed him and to make matters worse, Cal wasn’t defending himself.
I pushed off him and stood up, my legs shaky, my chest heaving, and blood dripping from my hands.
“Get out,” I said quietly.
I watched him roll over and push himself up, blood pouring from a cut to his temple and out of his nose. One eye was already swollen shut. He staggered to the door and just like that, the two closest people to me had shredded my heart.
I’m broken out of my tragic memories by a shrieking noise coming from somewhere close by. My head snaps toward my door because it was a woman yelling, and I listen again. I don’t hear anything but I get up to investigate, walking down the hall from where I think the noise was coming from.
Turning the corner and heading down a hallway that houses a long row of attorney offices, I hear, “Don’t you have anything to fucking say for yourself?”
Okay, that’s Lorraine’s voice and I start to walk a little faster. It’s coming from the door I have my eyes pinned on just thirty feet away.
Mac’s office.
I’m starting to reach my hand for the door when I hear Lorraine say, “You’re such a fucking screw up, McKayla!”
Rage suffuses me, not only that Lorraine would be screaming at someone, an offense I just basically told her was getting her shit-canned from my firm, but because she’s yelling at Mac. A protectiveness rises up and I throw the door open to Mac’s office so hard that it crashes into the wall and one of her degrees falls to the ground, causing the glass to break. I take in the scene in a quick glance. Mac sitting at her desk with papers scattered all around, an empty file on the floor, broken d
egrees looking pathetic, and Lorraine standing over Mac with fury in her eyes.
Yes, broken degrees… as in plural. Apparently, her other degree had been already knocked to the floor and lay amid a pile of crushed glass.
“That’s just great,” Mac says forlornly, looking down at the damaged proof of her graduations.
Even though I want to grab Lorraine by the neck and wring the meanness out of her, I look to Mac and say calmly, “What the hell is going on here?”
Her eyes rise to mine and she says quietly, “You broke my frame.”
Maybe once I wring Lorraine’s neck, I’ll wring Mac’s too. She’s purposely being evasive.
Turning from Mac, I look to Lorraine. My tone is still calm, but there is a bit more anger laced in my words. “I repeat… what is going on here? I heard yelling clear down in my office.”
Lorraine looks like she’s about ready to puke. Her face is green, and she stands there twisting her hands around one another in a sign of nervous guilt. Mac quietly starts gathering all the scattered papers on her desk, straightening them into a single pile. When she grabs one document off the floor, she looks at it and the corners of her mouth tilt upward slightly.
She hands the paper to Lorraine and says quietly, “Here’s your Order.”
Lorraine doesn’t take the paper from Mac but rather stares at it in horror with her face blanched pale. Then I watch an interesting byplay between Mac and Lorraine.
Mac keeps her eyes steady on Lorraine, holding the Order out to her. Lorraine slowly drags her gaze from the offensive document and looks at Mac beseechingly. Mac looks at Lorraine with a hard glint for just a moment, and then she opens her mouth like she’s going to say something. Lorraine’s face goes green again.
Then Mac turns to me with a sparkling smile and a sweet voice. “Nothing’s wrong. Just a little disagreement, but we cleared it up. Right, Lorraine?”
Lorraine’s breath comes out in a massive, relieved rush, and she regains some of her color. Giving Mac a grateful look, she turns to me and says, “Right. No problems here.”
Nice try, Mac. You little liar.
I look back and forth between the two of them, trying to figure out if it’s worth my while to figure out what’s really going on here. But then I decide against it. Mac told me before she doesn’t want my help with any beefs she may have with Lorraine and, in just a few weeks, Lorraine will be gone.
I decide to let it go. “McKayla… let’s meet on the Jackson case so I can get out of here. I’ve got plans tonight.”
Mac follows docilely behind me to my office, although she doesn’t have a docile bone in her body. I wait for her to choose which chair she wants to sit in, and then I choose to sit in the chair next to her rather than behind my desk, causing her eyebrows to raise.
It’s the closest we’ve been to each other since Monday, and it’s disconcerting. Although I’ve been coming to a slow acceptance that our time together is done, I still have an aching urge to grab her and kiss her.
Looking down at my watch, I say, “I’ve got twenty minutes before I have to leave for dinner. Bill and I are meeting our accountant tonight.”
I told her that part about Bill and me going out to dinner tonight in an effort to give her full disclosure, since I know I fucked up earlier in the week by refusing to tell her where I was going. Why I conceded to do that is beyond me. I don’t owe her that courtesy, yet I just gave it to her.
She responds by shrugging her shoulders, as if she could give a damn. “Not any of my business.”
I just stare at her, pissed she doesn’t appreciate my effort.
Then she really sticks the knife in by adding on, “Sir.”
My blood boils with anger over the fact she’s deliberately trying to get under my skin with the “sir” routine. She’s been doing it all week in the few interactions we’ve had, even once calling me “Mr. Connover”. None of the attorneys here call me Mr. Connover.
I grit my teeth and narrow my eyes at her, rising to the challenge. To hell with saying I was going to stay out of it. “I want to know what was going on between you and Lorraine.”
She shrugs her shoulders nonchalantly again. “Nothing. Just a little misunderstanding, but it’s solved now.”
“Misunderstanding?”
“Misunderstanding,” she agrees with a nod of her head.
“Lorraine was screaming at you. Just before I walked in, she called you a fucking screw up. I don’t care what the reason was, but we don’t talk to each other like that at this firm.”
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again,” she says apologetically, and I feel like my head is going to explode.
“Fuck, McKayla. Why are you apologizing? She was the one screaming at you.”
“And like I said… it was just a misunderstanding. No harm, no foul.”
I grit my teeth even further, feeling my blood pressure rise. Why can’t she just admit that Lorraine was on her case unfairly? Why can’t she let me help her fix it?
And even as I ask those questions, I know the answers. Because she doesn’t need me for anything. She doesn’t want to give me the satisfaction of possibly trying to make things up to her.
That just pisses me off even more, but now is not the time to battle with Mac. So I pick a piece of imaginary lint off my slacks as if I’m completely nonplused and say, “I’ll just have to talk to Lorraine myself, I guess. Give your degrees to Miss Anders, and she’ll get them fixed for you, at my expense.”
“No, thanks,” she says primly. “I can handle it.”
Okay, now she’s just being devious, and I glare at her. She looks back at me with a bland expression, but I see it… deep down in her eyes… way down deep… she’s enjoying bucking against me. She’s enjoying the little power trip she has right now by refusing to give me what I want.
And that just won’t do.
No, that won’t do at all.
Mac needs to learn that while I will give her some latitude, she’ll never win the ultimate battle against me. She needs to learn that when I set out to do something, I don’t give up until I get what I want.
It’s time to show her that.
Chapter 13
For the past week, Mac has been tormenting me. Long before this little act of defiance by refusing to tell me what just happened with Lorraine. And she’s doing it on purpose… a little female evil I suppose, to get back at me for refusing to cancel dinner with Lorraine.
To get back at me for demanding something from her, but refusing to reciprocate in kind.
It’s bad enough that she’d been dropping the “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” routine all week, making clear to me that she’ll be the dutiful little employee now, but she continued to torment me in other ways.
This past Thursday, I about flipped my shit. I was sitting in the break room, minding my own business and able to actually get my mind off Mac for a few minutes while I read the paper and had a cup of coffee before I started my workday.
Mac walked in, looking stunning with her hair all loose and curled so it bounced when she walked, and her makeup a little more pronounced. Whatever she had done to her fucking eyes had made them pop like a star bursting.
And her dress?
That fucking dress hugged her breasts like a second skin, cutting down fairly low. It smoothed over her flat stomach and her hips, and then flared out around her knees. She was wearing another pair of sexy-as-fuck heels, and for a moment… I forgot we weren’t together. Our eyes met, and I started to give her one of those smiles… sexually hot… to show my appreciation.
Then another staff person walked in, and I hastily averted my gaze. Mac turned away to talk to her, and I had my ear only half on the conversation. But it was open enough that I heard her say she had a “lunch date,” which was why she had dressed up.
My blood pressure skyrocketed because I knew she was talking about having lunch with Cal. I know she said that out loud, purposely to shove my nose in it. She knew it would get to me.
&
nbsp; She just had no idea how much.
I had to stand up and walk out of the break room, before I grabbed her and threw her over my shoulder in a testosterone-driven display of ownership. It took me almost an hour to calm down and remind myself that I had no hold over her whatsoever. I certainly had no right to her.
So, she’s been purposely driving me nuts all week, and even now, this little act of defiance is earning a point in her column. But I’m tired of playing her game, and it’s time to take back control. If she won’t tell me what’s going on with Lorraine, I will find out for myself and I’ll make Mac watch how easy it is to get said information.
Curling my lips upward, I give Mac a knowing look and turn my smile into an evil grin. She blinks hard and tries to maintain eye contact, but I see the way she nibbles on her lip nervously.
Standing up, I lean over my desk and press a button on my phone. It chimes once, and then Lorraine’s voice comes through. “Yes, Matt?”
“Lorraine… can you come into my office for a minute?”
She pauses just a moment, but I can hear the fear in her voice. “Sure. Be right down.”
I disconnect the call and turn back around toward Mac. Leaning my butt back against my desk, I cross my arms over my chest and give her my most conquering look. Because I read body language, I catch the almost imperceptible way Mac sucks in her breath and stiffens her shoulders.
She’s bracing herself against the unknown and I’m not going to lie, the little bit of unease in her eyes is turning me on.
My office door opens and Lorraine steps in, but I don’t look at her. I keep my gaze on Mac, waiting to see if she’ll confess what happened with Lorraine but even though I know I’m making her nervous, she lifts her chin up at me in defiance.
So be it.
I motion for Lorraine to take the seat I had vacated and push off from my desk, walking around to my big, leather chair on wheels. Taking my seat, I lean back in the chair casually and look over at Lorraine. She’s sitting straight, as if a steel pole was fused to her spine, with her hands tightly clasped on her thighs. I move my gaze over to Mac, and I give her that knowing smile again. I want to laugh when she raises her chin just a bit more, and I hate myself that I find her so adorable and charming.
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