His Next Ex

by Maren Smith

  He had a vampire-repelling, wooden stake to build.

  Chapter 7

  Travis arrived at the entrance to the Law Offices of Gregor, Montgomery, and Papachriston bright and early the next morning. He was five minutes earlier, in fact, than his lawyer, Dan Gregor, who pulled up in a yellow taxi cab. He sighed when he saw Travis and reached into his coat pocket for his keys.

  “Latte?” Travis asked, extending one of the two cups he held.

  “You called me at six, you called me at eleven, and then you called me at two. I know for a fact you didn’t get as much sleep as I did, and yet you look,” Dan glared at him over the top of his glasses and in a dead pan tone said, “perky.”

  “Really?” Travis bounced up and down twice on the balls of his heels. “You know, I actually feel rather good as well. Not bad for only three and a half hours sleep.”

  Dan took the proffered latte. “Vampire,” he said, and opened the office door.

  “Well, that and I had three cups of coffee in the car on the way over here.”

  It took most of the morning to get the proper paperwork completed. Jamie arrived at half past noon to sign some of them, although Travis could tell she wasn’t fully comfortable with the idea. Her smile seemed weak; her attitude subdued. If he never saw her like this again, he decided, it would suit him just fine.

  “I just don’t see what good a restraining order is going to do,” she told him. “I couldn’t find him to serve him divorce papers. Who knows where he is now, or when I’ll see him again.”

  “Oh, I think I know where he’s going to be,” Travis said as Dan showed her where to sign. “Don’t worry. He’ll get his copy of these in record time.”

  When it came time for her to leave, Travis escorted her back downstairs to the lobby. He really must be besotted, he mused. When a man couldn’t walk beside a woman without wanting to be closer, without holding her hand as they went—he shook his head at himself. ‘Useless in love’ was right.

  “Thank you for the plant, by the way,” Jamie said.

  His eyebrows arched. “You’ve received it already?”

  “The florist arrived just as I was getting ready to leave the house. No one’s ever given me purple Hydrangeas before. They’re very beautiful.”

  “Not half as beautiful as the sight I awoke to this morning,” he told her.

  “Aw.” She playfully bumped shoulders with him as they walked through the lobby. “So much for ‘no touching,’ huh?”

  “Do you want to go back to that?” he asked. He was surprised at how neutral he sounded. Especially when his instinct was to grab her, bend her under his arm and apply a volley of stern smacks, each punctuated by a sharp ‘No’, to the well-worn seat of her jeans.

  After a moment, she looked up at him and smiled softly. “No. I don’t.”

  He relaxed slightly.

  “I know it’s not forever,” she said. “But I like the way it feels when you hold me in your arms.”

  It was right there on the tip of his tongue: ‘I love you,’ ‘You’re mine,’ ‘As of now, consider it for forever.’ God only knows what he might have said, lost in those intoxicating baby blues, if she hadn’t chosen that moment to lower her eyes and continue walking across the lobby.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when he caught up with her. “I probably shouldn’t have said that. I’ll make you uncomfortable.”

  “Why don’t you let me worry about my own comfort level.” He held the door for her. It was time to get back onto safer conversational grounds. “You’ve got enough to do worrying about your own.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I mean, I sent you flowers and you’re not sneezing. You haven’t broken out in hives. In fact, I’m beginning to suspect you might not be as allergic as you previously stated.”

  “No,” she admitted sheepishly. “I’m not.”

  “And chocolates? You can imbibe freely of those as well, I suppose.”

  “Well,” she winced slightly. “I do sometimes think about dieting. But I was telling the truth about the ocean. I really don’t like oceans.” She wrinkled her nose. “They smell like kelp.”

  “You told the truth about oceans; you lied about the rest.”

  “It sounds so wrong when you say it like that.” Jamie peeked up at him through her lashes, but there was a twinkling hint of teasing in his eyes that belied the seriousness of his words. She held up her finger and thumb a scant inch apart. “Maybe I only lied this much.”

  “Naughty, naughty girl.” He was careful to keep his tone solemn—if only mockingly so—enjoying her visual unease as she lowered her eyes again. “Whatever am I going to do with you?”

  Twin spots of color pinkened her cheeks. Jamie cleared her throat, her gaze darting from him to Ben, who had gotten out of the driver’s seat and was already coming around the car to open the door for her. “I, um…” she lowered her voice and for his ears alone said, “I can think of one or two things you could do. If you wanted to.”

  “Does it involve turning you facedown across my lap and paddling your little bare bottom until you’re dancing over my knee?”

  Her look turned a little worried. “Is it—I mean, are you going to do it very hard?”

  “Jamie, my love.” Travis stopped at the curb, turning as he did so and pulling her into his arms. “You are going to receive my total, undivided attention tonight, but I was thinking less about discipline and more about that slow, hot, erotic kind you read so often about. The kind you wanted the first time, but which your behavior didn’t warrant.”

  Jamie cleared her throat, picked an imaginary speck of fluff from off his lapel, and then brushed the area smooth with her hand. “Well, if that’s what you think is necessary…”

  “I do,” he said. “In fact, I’m wondering if we ought not get a baby sitter for Megan. I wouldn’t want your screams to frighten her.”

  That startled her, and she looked up at him with wide eyes.

  “But you just said it wasn’t going to be—” she broke off, her eyes darting just behind him to Ben, who stood on the sidewalk, holding the car door open and doing his best to be both invisible as well as oblivious to the entire conversation. She lowered her voice again. “—to be rump roast.”

  Travis leaned down. With his mouth just inches from hers, softly, silkily, he said, “It isn’t going to be that kind of screaming.” Then he kissed her, a brief but intimate taste of her that had Jamie’s face matching the color of her hair by the time he was through.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “My, what a becoming shade,” Travis said. “I’ll have to see if I can’t get another aspect of your anatomy to match.”

  He kissed her once more, before Jamie climbed into the back of the car and Ben closed the door.

  She must have been trying to figure out if he was serious or not, because as the car pulled away from the curb, Travis saw her turn in her seat to look back at him through the rear-view window. For her benefit alone, he made a show of slowly rubbing his hands together just to see her snap face-forward again and squirm in her seat. Travis chuckled all the way back to Gregor’s third floor office.

  ***

  In blatant contrast to Travis’s early-bird preparedness and Dan Gregor’s punctuality, Dale arrived twenty-three minutes late.

  “Where’s my money?” he asked as he came through the conference room door.

  Travis sat at the table with his back to the window and facing the door. Dan Gregor was at the head of the table to his right, pouring an extra glass of water, which he set before the empty chair closest to Dale. A fourth man was unobtrusively two chairs down on Travis’s left side. At a look from Travis, he picked up a briefcase and handed it across the table to him.

  “We never actually discussed how you wished to receive payment,” Travis said as he set the briefcase flat on the table. He popped the latches and opened the lid. “I have your disbursement in hundred-dollar bills.” He lay a sizeable brick of them in the center of the tab
le. “Or in fifties.” He set out two more bricks of equal size a short distance from the first. “Or, if you’ll forgive the presumption, an assortment of small, unmarked bills, which I believe better suits your mercenary purposes.”

  Travis turned the open briefcase around, displaying an assortment of tens and twenties, then leaned back, elbows on the armrests of his chair and hands folded before him. His expression one of stony indifference, he looked up at Dale and waited.

  Dale closed the office door. For several long seconds, he stood staring at the money, then he sniffed loudly. Nodding, he pulled out the vacant chair and sat down. He gestured across the table at the smaller bills. “Do I get to keep the briefcase?”

  “Sure,” Travis said flatly. “Why not.”

  Dale kind of half laughed, shook his head once and then glared at Travis. “It must really suck being you.”

  “At some times certainly more than others,” Travis said dryly. He gestured to the head of the table. “Allow me to introduce my chief council, Mister Dan Gregor.”

  The lawyer raised his head from his papers long enough to nod briskly, and Travis made the same gesture for the man at his left. “And this is Mister Todd Wilson…”

  “I don’t need to meet your lawyers,” Dale said.

  “Mister Wilson is my personal accountant, actually.”

  “Whatever.” Dale rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Dan slid a three-page contract across the table. Removing a pen from the inner pocket of his business suit jacket, he set it down on top of the stack. “Would you like me to explain the legalese?”

  “I can read,” Dale said shortly. Picking up the pen, he slid his finger down the page, skimming for the important words. “Me… Jamie and Megan… No more Daddy Dale, like I ever wanted to be in the first place.” He scoffed and turned the page. “You… Fifty thousand dollars.” He stopped. “Less obligations and expenses. What does that mean? Who said anything about obligations and expenses?”

  “You have an existing obligation to Megan as her sire—” Travis began, but Dale quickly cut him off.

  “Sperm donor,” he said tersely. “Let’s call it what it was. And anyway, there’s no telling if it was even my sperm that produced that rug rat. Any number of guys could be that kid’s father. You’ve seen Jamie. Men look at her all the time. Girls like that don’t know the meaning of ‘faithful.’ I was just idiot enough to stick a ring on her hand.” He looked at Travis. “Must be something in the water.”

  Travis snapped to his feet so quickly that Dale shoved warily back from the table and Dan held up one hand. “Okay, let’s calm down now…”

  As much as he would have liked to reach across the table, grab Dale by his smarmy neck and squeeze, Travis grabbed the money instead. He began placing the stacks back in his briefcase.

  “Hey!”

  Dale made the mistake of reaching across the table to snatch at the last stack of fifties before it, too, disappeared, and Travis caught his wrist. He slammed Dale’s hand down on the table. “She’s not yours; you said so yourself. Why should I give you anything?”

  “She’s mine,” Dale said quickly. “Jesus, all you have to do is look at her to tell. She’s got my eyes.”

  “Then be a man,” Travis growled. “Don’t blame Jamie because you’re too spineless to stand by your responsibilities.”

  He released Dale’s captured wrist, and Dale fell back in his chair.

  He immediately jumped up again, as though the seat had burned him, “I don’t need this Dead-Beat Dad lecture! Are you going to pay me or not?”

  “Are you going to sign?” Travis countered, throwing the last stack of fifties into his briefcase.

  Staring first at him, then after the disappearing money, Dale picked up the lawyer’s pen and turned back to the beginning of the contract. He initialed each section, then scribbled his signature at the bottom of the final page.

  “You must have a serious Jones for redheads,” he said, passing papers and pen back to Dan Gregor. “But fifty grand, hey. I can afford to be generous, right?”

  “Minus obligations and expenses,” Travis reminded. “You are going to pay back every penny you stole from Jamie’s bank account and credit cards.”

  “We were married. Half of everything she had was mine to take.”

  “You didn’t take half. You took all.”

  “And actually,” Dan interrupted, “that’s only true when you divorce, and if it’s so determined by the judge presiding over your case. That wouldn’t have included Jamie’s savings account, since it was in existence prior to your marriage and you never had authority to access it. Technically, what you did was bank fraud.”

  “Banks frown on that,” Travis said.

  “The credit card companies aren’t that happy with you, either,” Dan continued. “The cards were also never in your name, and you don’t get half the available balance upon divorce anyway.”

  “Felony,” Travis drawled, as he sat back down again. “That’s the legal term, I believe.”

  “Two counts on the credit cards, and one felony-one count of fraud with the bank.”

  “All right,” Dale threw his hands up. “What the hell. I’ll pay her back. Then we’ll be square, okay?”

  “Absolutely.” Travis stood up. As he snapped the briefcase of money closed, the accountant slid a thin, white envelope across the table to Dale.

  “What is this?” he asked. He looked up quickly as Travis lifted the briefcase off the table and starting towards the door. “Hey, where are you going?”

  “To work. I’ve wasted enough of my day on you.”

  “That’s my money!” Dale stood up, grabbing the envelope and shaking it at him. “I told you, I don’t take checks!”

  “Good for you,” Travis said and opened the conference room door.

  “That’s a bill, Mister Evans,” the accountant piped up cheerfully. “Once we deducted half of all Megan’s medical and living expenses, Jamie’s living expenses throughout her pregnancy, back-owed child support, the money you stole, plus the initial bounced check and banking fees caused when you emptied her bank accounts, that is. Now we could have turned the whole thing over to the courts at this point, but that route is more or less guaranteed to drag all parties through the system for at least six months and Mister Dorsett was concerned about missing his standing vacation appointments in the Bahamas, in which case he’d be so irritated that we’d be forced to have you audited.”

  Dale blinked.

  “So, we agreed to absorb the costs as a kind of long-term loan, which I’m sure you’ll find quite reasonable, under the circumstances. This figure,” he explained, taking the receipt from Dale’s envelope and circling one of the items with his pen, “represents one year’s worth of accrued interest charges—twelve percent,” he added with a modest shrug. “Which I found ludicrous, considering your credit report, but Mister Dorsett insisted we keep these proceedings friendly. And that simply leaves some sundry legal expenses—my services, Mister Gregor’s monetary involvement, notaries, that sort of thing—and so!” He clapped his hands briskly together and leaned back in his chair. “You owe the Dorsetts one dollar and thirty-eight cents.”

  “What!”

  “And, ah, considering the current state of your financial affairs,” the accountant said diplomatically. “I’m sure you’ll understand our position when I say that we don’t take checks either.”

  “I expect you to settle your account in full before you leave here today,” Travis said and walked out of the conference room.

  “You God-damn cheat!” Dale shouted after him. He chased Travis through the open doorway and would have grabbed his arm, but a man waiting in the lobby stepped between them and slapped a manila envelope into Dale’s hand.

  “Consider yourself served,” the man said, while Dale stared at both him, Travis and then the envelope in turn.

  “That would be the restraining order,” Travis smiled faintly. “Wonderful timing.�
��

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “Be careful who you play hardball with.” Travis poked the elevator’s down button. “Some of us actually enjoy the game. By the way, have you met Detectives Warst and Callahan?”

  Dale froze. His face became an expressionless mask as he followed Travis’s gesture. In the waiting area beyond the secretary’s desk two plainclothes officers were putting down their coffee cups and getting up from their chairs.

  “They’d like to talk to you. Not just about Jamie, surprise, surprise. But about your other wives as well.”

  “Nancy, April, Rebecca,” one of the detectives named off. “Jenny just filed a police report on you yesterday morning.”

  “She wasn’t a happy young lady,” the other added.

  “She wants her Mercedes back, too.”

  “It was a hard decision,” Travis said, “whether to do this or to introduce you to my ex-wife. But in the end, I decided I really didn’t hate her as much as I wanted to see you go to jail.” He smiled again, although there wasn’t much amusement in it. “Isn’t hardball fun?”

  “I’m not going to forget this,” Dale told him.

  “When you get out of prison, by all means, look me up. We’ll play again.”

  As Travis stepped onto the elevator, he heard the second detective reading Dale his Miranda rights. Briefcase in hand, he pressed the lobby button.

  It was shaping into a really good day.

  ***

  “What is it,” Greta asked as Travis stepped off the elevator, “about getting married that has caused your whole work ethic to go straight down the toilet in one big, old, blue-swirly flush?”

  He took the phone messages she handed him. “Haven’t you had that child yet?”

  “I’m holding out for the extra maternity leave and the new kiddie center you’re building to be finished first. Half of these messages are from Max Bicos, by the way. The next time he calls, I’m switching him straight to you and you can tell him you’re not here.”

  “I don’t plan to linger that long,” Travis told her. “I am merely here to grab some paperwork before I go home.”