Father of Two

by Judith Arnold

  Dennis sat up even straighter. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I mean, this is all third-hand gossip, but—”

  “My kids’ iPods are missing.”

  Gail lapsed into a a brief silence, then said, “Your kids might have misplaced them. Did you look under the couch in your study?”

  Dennis recalled the trove of kid junk he’d mined from under that couch the day Gail had come to his apartment. Comic books, moldy food...and Barbie’s black lace stockings. “I figured the kids had lost them—and their Xbox, too. But now you’re telling me your friend’s friend’s nanny stole that stuff, and I’m wondering. I mean, my nanny takes a powder, and then a short time later my kids discover their iPods and Xbox have disappeared.”

  “It could be a coincidence,” she repeated.

  “Maybe.”

  “Did your kids use their iPods after the nanny disappeared?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask them. It just never occurred to me that the two things could be connected.” Again he wished Gail was with him. He was all pumped up, ready to pursue leads and unravel conspiracies. If she were seated next to him, they could unravel conspiracies together. He could bounce his ideas off her and read her response in her eyes. She had such expressive, eloquent eyes. “Do you think this nurse’s nanny was the same woman as mine?”

  “I don’t see how it could be the same woman. The timing is wrong. Your nanny disappeared, what? Two weeks ago? This nurse had her nanny for three weeks.” She thought for a minute. “I’m sure this sort of thing must happen fairly often. People who come to work in someone’s home—not just nannies, but people who clean houses or do repairs while no one’s at home...I mean, they have opportunity, and if they’re greedy they have motive.”

  Her phrasing reminded Dennis that she was a criminal defense lawyer. “People who rob stuff like iPods and cameras would need a fence or something, wouldn’t they?” he asked. “Someone who could pay them cash and then dispose of the goods.”

  “Well, yes, but...” She stumbled to a halt.

  Her silence forced him to recognize how much he loved the sound of her voice. And the substance of her thoughts. “Wasn’t that your buddy Kopoluski’s line of work?” he asked.

  “Two years ago,” she said quickly. “And he was a robber, not a fence. But he’s cleaned up his act since then.”

  “I’ve done my homework, Gail. I checked out your boy’s record. He was definitely on the wrong side of the law back then. He deserved more jail time than he got.”

  “A few months in prison were all it took to make him see the error of his ways. He’s a counselor. He works in a church, for heaven’s sake. Or perhaps I should say, he did work in a church, until the Gazette ruined his life.”

  “I’d hardly call his life ruined,” Dennis argued.

  “He has no job, he has no income, he has no reputation—”

  “He gets to see you,” Dennis let slip.

  She said nothing for a few beats. “What do you mean?”

  Dennis had already shown his hand. He might as well go ahead and bet his chips. “He gets to see you. He comes to your office, and you listen to what he has to say. You show him respect and trust. It’s a reason to live, Gail.”

  “He may come to my office every now and then,” she conceded, her voice hushed and wary. “But he’s never...”

  “Never dragged you under the desk and had his way with you?”

  “I think I’m going to say good-bye now.”

  “No!” Why was his heart pounding? Why did he suddenly feel desperate? He didn’t want her to sever the connection. He didn’t want to lose the sound of her voice. If he couldn’t have her, he wanted this conversation, at least.

  He heard nothing. “Gail? Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “Are you sorry we went under your desk? Do you hate me for what happened this afternoon?”

  “No, I don’t hate you for that,” she said.

  In other words, she hated him for other reasons. But if she didn’t hate him for making sexual overtures, he could keep on making them. “How can we get things rolling, then? Give me a hint.”

  “Get things rolling?” she repeated, uttering the words as if they tasted acidic. “What is this, a go-cart race?”

  He laughed. “This isn’t a race. We’d both be winners. All I’m interested in is crossing the finish line with you.”

  “Murphy, look.” She sucked in a breath; he could hear a deep hiss through the phone. “I don’t want to cross anything with you. We’re on opposite sides of a libel case. Perhaps you consider professional ethics irrelevant, but—”

  “Oh, now, wait a minute,” he protested, trying to sound indignant even as more laughter threatened to bubble out. He had learned that the best way to deal with self-righteous prigs was to laugh at them, but he suspected that if he laughed at Gail she’d be furious. “Ethics is my middle name. You want to be ethical about this? Let’s settle the damned case.”

  “Fine. Let’s settle the damned case,” she agreed.

  “I’ll set something up,” he promised. “I’ll have my secretary call your secretary.”

  “I don’t have—never mind,” she muttered.

  She didn’t have a secretary, he recollected. What she had was a gum-chewing dingaling receptionist who didn’t even know enough to screen visitors before letting them roam the halls of the Public Defenders Office. But Dennis wasn’t going to make Gail feel bad about her substandard working conditions. He was just going to put together a settlement so he could go back to seducing her in a completely ethical way.

  “We’ll get a deal done,” he promised. “As soon as possible. And once we do, you’re going to have to be creative if you want to keep your distance from me. You won’t have Kopoluski to hide behind anymore.”

  “Good-bye, Murphy.”

  “I crave your body.”

  “Good-bye.” This time she meant it. He heard a click, and then dead air.

  He smiled, pressed the disconnect button, and closed his eyes. Oh, yes, he craved her body. And a whole lot of other things, like her mind and her voice and her guts. Even her ethics.

  He’d convince the Gazette to settle. The sooner the better, and the hell with the tender egos of reporters, the hell with budgets and Freedom-of-the-Press principles. He wanted Gail, and she wanted him. No matter that she’d just hung up on him; she wanted him.

  Only a woman who wanted a man, wanted him like the night sky wanted the moon, wanted him like newspapers wanted headlines and the Red Sox wanted to trounce the Yankees—only a woman who wanted a man as much as Dennis wanted Gail Saunders would care enough to worry about that man’s problems with his nanny.

  Chapter Ten

  “THIS IS VERY, VERY BIG GOOD OFFICE,” Leo commented as his gaze circled the conference room at Schenk, Murphy, Lopes and Associates. Like Murphy’s office, the room’s square footage was comparable to an aircraft carrier’s, and it featured a wall full of windows. The vertical blinds were slanted to obscure the view of downtown Arlington.

  Gail had a good sense of direction. She was pretty sure that if she stood in the far corner and peered out at just the right angle, she would see the building that housed the editorial offices of the Arlington Gazette.

  Murphy and the Gazette might have money on their side. They might have power. They might have enormous offices. But it took more than money, power and expensive downtown real estate to intimidate Gail.

  She gestured toward one of the chairs at the broad glass-topped table. “Have a seat, Leo. The others will be in soon.”

  “We get my one million American dollars, for sure,” Leo said, adjusting knot of his tie and hitching the knees of his trousers before he sat. He was wearing suit number one, and he was looking both eager and sheepish. “This office is very much of money. I can feel this in skeleton.”

  “Bones,” Gail corrected him.

  “Bones?”

  “It’s an expression,”
she said, taking the chair next to him and placing her briefcase on the table, not caring if it scratched the gleaming glass surface. “You feel something in your bones.” What she felt in her own bones was anger, impatience and a touch of dread. Anger that Murphy’s secretary had brought her and Leo into the conference room and abandoned them there, as if to let them steep in the rarefied atmosphere until it made them squirm. Impatience that Murphy was keeping them waiting. Dread that when she saw him, she would remember the shocking pleasure of his kisses.

  Four days, and she hadn’t forgotten. Four days of reminding herself that she didn’t like sex, she didn’t like children, she didn’t like men who believed they had the upper hand. Four days of wondering how Dennis Murphy had managed to scramble her emotions so profoundly that she could no longer remember what her soul had sworn never to forget.

  She was determined to endure this meeting, win as much money as she could for Leo, and then walk out and dismiss Murphy from her mind forever. She couldn’t afford to let him erode the base upon which she’d rebuilt her life. That base was granite-hard and firm; she could only hope it would withstand a siege by the sort of man who could make a woman weak merely by kissing her.

  “Is very funny, this glass,” Leo said, staring at his feet through the table top. “Is like I look at my feet through windshield.”

  Gail pulled a file from her briefcase. She didn’t wish to look at her feet through the glass table. She just wanted to get the meeting over with.

  “In rage, person goes pounding of fist on table, it would shatter like when you take light bulb and hit it by hammer.”

  “Why would anyone hit a light bulb with a hammer?” she asked Leo.

  “Can happen. You have light bulb, see—” he cupped his hand, palm up, as if he were balancing a bulb in it “—and you hold like this, and you hit with hammer like so.” He mimed hammering a light bulb. “Is very good way to break light bulb.”

  “I imagine it would get the job done,” Gail said wryly. The door to the conference room swung open and she glanced up. Dread was definitely the right term.

  Why did he have to look so absurdly handsome? Why did he have to sweep into the room with the dynamic self-pride of a track star carrying the torch into an Olympic stadium? Why did his shoulders have to be so square, his legs so lanky, his step so graceful?

  He flashed her a smile that was as quick and keen as a scalpel, slicing right through her. In his left hand he carried a folder; he extended his right to Leo. “Mr. Kopoluski, I’m Dennis Murphy. Sorry for the delay.” He set the folder on the table across from Gail, then smiled again, another surgical smile that made her toes curl inside her shoes. “I’ve been waiting for Bob Hammond, who got stuck in traffic. He’s here now.” Murphy held the door open, smiled and beckoned in a slightly older man with brushes of white hair at his temples and a suit cut with considerably less flair than Murphy’s. He carried an attaché case and wore wing-tip shoes. The only men Gail ever saw in wing-tip shoes were wealthy Republicans and her friends’ fathers.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Hammond mumbled, setting his briefcase down with a thud. He sat and glared up at Murphy, who seemed far too cheerful for the occasion. “Can we get started?”

  “I wish to say—” Leo began.

  Gail nudged him with her elbow. “You don’t wish to say anything right now, Leo,” she warned.

  “Is just, I wish to say what wonderful place this America is, that man like me, humble Ivan, can sit at table like windshield with best good lawyers in Arlington.”

  To Gail’s surprise, Hammond’s gaze softened. “Well, we’ve already found something we can all agree on. America is a great country.”

  “Off to a promising start, aren’t we,” Murphy said, sending Gail a look, not a smile this time, but something more personal, a gaze that seemed to vibrate with unspoken meaning. She wished he’d stop glancing at her. She wished he’d wear a mask so she wouldn’t have to see his shimmering eyes, the laugh-lines fanning out from them, the dimples carving his cheeks. A paper bag over his head would do the trick.

  Abruptly the door opened, and Murphy’s secretary leaned in. “Dennis, I hate to interrupt, but Erin is on the phone. She says it’s an emergency.”

  Dennis groaned. At one time, Gail had believed he’d manufactured just such an interruption—but then she’d learned that far from being phony, his daughter’s call had announced a near-disaster. “She’s supposed to be at school right now,” Murphy said. “It’s eleven o’clock.”

  “She said it couldn’t wait. She sounded upset.”

  “Thanks, Velda. I’ll take it here.” He shoved away from the table and crossed to a credenza, where a telephone sat. Punching the flashing button, he lifted the receiver. “Erin, honey? What’s going on? I’m in a very important meeting right now.” He listened for a minute, his back to the others. Gail noticed the tension in his posture, the ramrod-straight line of his back, the impatient tap of his foot, the shift of his hips. His jacket hung loose around his torso. He didn’t need padding and shaping to enhance his physique. His body was the perfect shape, without any help from fashion tailoring. “So Sean ended up with the peanut-butter and jelly and you ended up with the tuna fish? Erin, I fail to see why this is such a problem. All you have to do... No, Erin, I’m not saying it’s unimportant. But mix-ups happen. All you have to do is trade with Sean.... You can’t do that? His teacher won’t let you? But she’s... Oh, he has a substitute today. I see. And he got your apple juice and you got his grape juice, too. It sounds like a catastrophe....” He turned toward the table, sending everyone a helpless grin. His eyes lingered for a long moment on Gail, making remember more of what she wanted to forget: how earnest Erin had been in the sandbox, how determined, how resolute. How intense. She was definitely a girl who would see mixed-up lunches as a crisis.

  “The homework project,” Murphy said into the phone. “Well, when you have Mexico Day... I told you I’d come to Mexico Day, didn’t I?... No, I’m not going to bring gazpacho. Someone else... Erin, can we talk about this at home?... No, I promise you the tuna won’t make you sick. The mayonnaise can’t spoil in so little time.... No, don’t throw up. If you don’t want to eat the sandwich... Promise me you won’t throw up, okay? Promise?... Okay. I’ll see you tonight.” He hung up the phone and rolled his eyes. “She says she’s going to throw up,” he announced.

  “Is strange food, this tuna mayonnaise stuff,” Leo remarked. “Is not good for children. They need hot meal, good hot borscht to glue to skeleton.”

  Hammond cleared his throat. Murphy suppressed a grin.

  “I say wrong?” Leo glanced at Gail. “Glue to bones?”

  “Stick to the ribs,” she corrected him briskly. “And now, Leo, let me do the talking.”

  “You talk much better than I do, Miss Gosbozha Saunders. She is best good lawyer,” he added, nodding vigorously at Murphy and Hammond.

  “She’s good,” Murphy agreed, a touch of sly humor coloring his voice.

  “Well, let’s be good lawyers and resolve this situation,” she said briskly. “My client has been defamed. He wants redress. I’m sure we can come up with a dollar amount that can satisfy both sides.”

  “He has bandied about the amount of one million dollars,” Hammond snorted. “That does not satisfy me.”

  “Relax, Bob,” Murphy said, sliding into the seat next to Hammond. “He doesn’t have a solid command of the English language.”

  “In our complaint, I’ve outlined the losses my client has suffered because of your negligence,” Gail began, opening her folder.

  “Negligence?” Hammond scowled and glared at Murphy as if to say, what crap. “The reporter on that story did solid research. We printed nothing that wasn’t true.”

  “The article insinuated—”

  “The article doesn’t say Mr. Kopoluski was charged. It only mentioned his name in conjunction with his previous conviction—”

  “And in conjunction with a current crime wave, for whic
h Mr. Kopoluski bears no responsibility,” Gail asserted. “There was no need to mention Mr. Kopoluski’s name in the article. If the police thought he was involved, they would have charged him. They didn’t. Obviously, they have nothing on him.”

  “Other Eastern-European immigrants are involved,” Hammond argued. “The article reported the facts, nothing more.”

  “The article put my client’s name in a place that cost him his job and his reputation.”

  “I think,” Murphy broke in, his voice smooth and mellow, “we’re all in agreement on the particulars. What we need to do is find a settlement figure everyone can live with. Mr. Kopoluski has come up with the figure of one million dollars. The Gazette has counter-offered ten thousand dollars. Our mission today is to find a number somewhere between ten thousand and one million. We’re all reasonable people. Surely we can do that.”

  Gail gnashed her teeth. She hated when rich, suave lawyers pretended to be reasonable people. She knew all too well that Murphy could be unreasonable when he wanted. He’d unreasonably lassoed her into a stupid Daddy School bet. He’d unreasonably kissed her, several times.

  The sooner she and he located that magical number between ten thousand and one million, the sooner she could be done with him. “Two hundred thousand dollars,” she said.

  “Absolutely not!” Hammond roared.

  “I’m dropping eight hundred thousand dollars below our initial demand. You’d have to come up only one hundred ninety thousand dollars.”

  “Get serious! Dennis, explain to her that there’s no way we’re going to let her and Mr. Kopoluski extort that kind of money from us.” He glowered fiercely at her. “Have you ever heard of the Constitution, Ms. Saunders?”

  “I have indeed, Mr. Hammond. Among other things, it establishes the United States judicial system. If we can’t find a reasonable settlement here, my client and I can seek redress through the courts.”

  “This is ridiculous. We’re not going to court on this idiotic case.”