“Please prep me,” I say. “I want to nail this and being here and working will keep my mind off other things.”
“You aren’t pregnant,” she assures me and picks up her coffee. “Tell me about the hot man that actually convinced you to have some fun.”
“No,” I say, because the story of Cole’s existence might be out, but he’s still my dirty little secret.
***
An hour and a half later, I have peed in a cup and given blood, and suffered through a pelvic exam. I’m now dressed again and judging from this visit, that’s the way I need to stay. My doctor, a stunning woman in her forties with blonde hair and blue eyes, rejoins me after. “All tests are negative,” she says, after shutting the door and perching on her rolling stool, while I sit in the chair by the exam table. “It’s been a month, almost five weeks by the date you’ve given me; you used a condom, you’re safe. The urine test would be showing the pregnancy by now.”
She reviews a long list of possibilities as to why I haven’t had my cycle. “We can put you on a birth control pill,” she concludes. “That regulates your periods and hormones.”
We discuss this option and decide on that path because I just need to control whatever I can control, starting with my body which I let control me that night with Cole. “Wait to start it until we get the blood test back just to be safe,” she says, “but that’s really just a precaution. I don’t believe you’re pregnant.” She hands me a prescription and just like that I’m on birth control with absolutely no sex life at all. And clearly no business picking up men and playing games.
I exit to the street, and think of Cole with that brunette in the bar. I felt like I really connected with Cole. Like I was different to him and he absolutely was to me. I liked remembering that night that way. Why did I go to the bar last night and ruin that perfect memory? I really wish I had never seen them. I wish I could just remember being the Cinderella that got spanked by one hell of a hot man.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Cole
Houston, TX
Saturday night…
I sit in the living room of my penthouse hotel room in downtown Houston listening to Jane and Charlie, junior co-counsels on the case, sitting on either side of me arguing over points in my opening statement. I stand up and watch the floor-to-ceiling windows wrapping the open space, the sun beginning to dip beneath the horizon, red, yellow, and blue swirling together in a complex manner.
“He didn’t kill her,” Jane snaps at Charlie.
Her, being my client’s wife.
“He had blood all over his hands and face,” Charlie argues.
Jane makes a frustrated sound. Charlie is my age, Italian, vocal, and established. He loves to play devil’s advocate, which makes him one hell of a second chair. Jane is young, pretty, and needs to learn restraint. I’m not convinced she can control a courtroom. I catch myself on that one. Age isn’t the issue. She’s Lori’s age and Lori possesses extreme restraint and I have no doubt that she rules a courtroom when she’s present. The spanking was a mistake, at least that night, that cost me any future with Lori. I made her feel like I would demand the control she feels she needs.
“Of course he had blood on his face and hands,” Jane argues. “He ran to her and hugged her. He was frantic on the 911 call.”
I turn and face them. “He didn’t kill her,” I say. “And the blood he had all over him isn’t an indication of guilt, but innocence. No one who loves someone could leave them on the floor with a knife in their chest, and not pull it out and hold them close. And that’s exactly what I’m going to say in my opening statement.”
And I’m going to make it seem like I know what love is. I don’t. I only know this new obsession I have with Lori, but I’ll use that. She’ll help me with this case. She’ll allow me to connect to the passion a man would have for a woman he can’t bear to never see again. Something I have never felt ever in my life, until Lori. Perhaps it’s me wanting what I can’t have, the chase, and all that manly bullshit. Or maybe it’s her.
***
Lori
New York City, NY
I sit in Cat and Reese’s living room, listening as Reese’s team and Cat, who always helps him with his cases, as they debate the details on a case about to head to trial. The client is a woman who killed her husband, who beat her regularly, and there are witnesses, photos, and calls by neighbors to the police. The prosecution says that he threatened her family and so she slowly poisoned him. She says she didn’t do it. She loved him. She loved him desperately.
“You’re sure she didn’t do this, boss?” Elsa, one of Reese’s co-counsels asks, an older version of Cat’s blonde confident beauty. She sits in the chair to my left.
“I don’t represent guilty people,” Reese says, from an ottoman he’s pulled to the center of the room. “You know that. Next question.” When Reese says move on, in his intense attorney mode, you move on. He’s good-looking and tall, dark and handsome, funny at times, a bit like Cole, only different. Cole is different. I shake off that thought without further definition.
The man had another woman two nights ago. It’s time to forget him.
“What’s another source of the poison in question?” Richard asks, from the chair to my right. He’s the second co-counsel, who is handsome, confident, and currently running fingers through his longish wavy brown hair, as if thinking about his own questions.
“What about a food source?” Elsa says. “If we can find a food source high in that toxin, we can create reasonable doubt.”
“It might create doubt,” Cat says, shaking her head in the spot next to me, “or just come off desperate and farfetched.”
She’s right. It would, and I’m supposed to just be listening in, under a confidentiality employment agreement, of course, but I participate in my mind. I think of the person we’re defending and somehow that leads me to my father. He didn’t just make a bad financial investment with my uncle. The truth is he gambled, and got in trouble. His best friend at the time was in love with my mother and tried to get my father help, and her out, until he was cured. He ended up being painted as the enemy.
“It’s reasonable doubt,” Elsa argues. “If we get the jury asking what other source of toxin is in the food, we’ll nail this. Just get them thinking about pesticides with the data that shows how eroded our food is from them, and we kill this case.”
But it’s not a slam dunk, I think. Again, I go back to my father and his best friend and the connection clicks in my mind. Reese and his team are asking the wrong questions and giving the wrong answers. “Who loved her the way she loved him?” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “Who would kill for her?”
The entire room turns to look at me, Reese’s intense stare landing on me the hardest. And the man’s stare really is intense. Like Cole’s stare—intense, piercing, probing. A man of power who looks at you and pins you with his presence. “Continue with that thought,” he says.
“If you really believe she didn’t do this,” I say, “and obviously, you do, then that toxin got in his body by a human hand and intentionally. Who wanted to save her, and she wouldn’t let them?”
Reese stares at me a couple of more moments and then points a finger in the air. “This is it. We need to find that person and now. I’m going to see my client.” He looks at Cat. “I need you to work that magic you work to get people talking.”
“Of course,” Cat says, standing up.
Reese looks at me. “Help them chase this from here. And that interview Wednesday. You’ll have another recommendation from me before it takes place. I need to hire you.”
Cat squeezes my hand and gives me a smile. “I’ll call you when we leave her house.”
I nod, and Elsa and Richard look at me. Our debate and research begin, and it’s invigorating. I feel like I’m back at Stanford. I feel like I’m me again. A long time later, I stand at the floor-to-ceiling windows of Cat and Reese’s apartment, staring
out over the pitch-black sky, speckled with New York City lights. My father wasn’t a Prince Charming, but he did love my mother and she loved him.
The truth is, without Cole, I might not be in touch with my version of Prince Charming enough to think through this case. It’s in the eyes of the beholder that we define our perfect fantasy. Cole gave me that for a night. I’m going to choose to block out the part where he was with another woman he was picking up at the same bar. Unless I see him again. Then, I’m pretty sure I’ll land a properly placed knee. Or unless that blood test says I’m pregnant. Then I’ll find him. Otherwise, he’ll have to find me, and since he’s moved on, that’s not going to happen.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lori
Tuesday morning…
I’m in Cat’s kitchen making coffee when my cell phone rings. I set my cup down and run to the island to grab it. Cat comes running and stops on the other side of the island, well aware of the call I’m waiting on. I spy the doctor’s office on caller ID, with a stomach flip, and nod to her. “Hello,” I answer.
There is a greeting, and the nurse identifies herself before I hear, “Your test is negative.”
“Oh, thank God,” I breathe out, with Cat doing the same a second later. “Not that having a baby is a bad thing,” I quickly add. “It’s just not well-timed for me.” Especially, I add silently, since I don’t even know how to find the would-be father, besides asking the bartender at the bar to leave him a message, which would be a long shot.
“Of course,” she says. “That’s understandable. The doctor said if you haven’t started your period by Friday, go ahead and get going on the birth control pill. Otherwise, follow the instructions given at the office.”
We disconnect, and Cat watches me closely. “You’re happy, right?”
“Yes,” I say firmly. “I’m happy.”
I no longer have any reason to find Cole. It’s the end of the story of the “us” that never existed.
Asshole, why’d you have to be a manwhore?
***
Cole
Houston, TX
After a two-day delay in the court date, the case begins. I listen to the nonsense the prosecution ends with, pleased at how they play into my hand. This is my game and when it’s my turn, I work the room. I begin my opening statement: “The prosecution will have you believe that blood and a knife damns my client. If you believe that then I want you to go someplace difficult with me right now. I want you to think of the person you love the most in this world. Your child, your spouse, your sibling, whoever it may be.”
“I want you to think about hugging them, loving them, smiling with them. I need you to just embrace how good that feels. Now, do it without allowing yourself to pause to think because you wouldn’t in a crisis. You walk in your front door and that person you love with all of your heart is on the floor bleeding with a knife in their chest. I’ve gone through this in my head and over and over and I know what I would do. I would run to that loved one and try to find a sign of life. I may or may not pull out the knife. In the moment, I think we can all say we’d do what felt right, what we believed would save our loved one’s life. I, for one, would call 911, just as my client called 911, and then I’d offer aid. Any chance I had, I’d hold my loved one. I’d hold them and hold them and hold them, praying that it wouldn’t be the last time. If my client is guilty for doing those things, then I say I too would be guilty because I would do those things. The prosecution has nothing else to convict him on. So, ask yourself, would the very same thing that I would do, which I suspect many of you would do in the same circumstances, convince you that Callum Moore killed his wife? The prosecution has to give you proof he killed her. All they want to do is punish him for loving her. I hope you will not.”
Recess is called after I leave the floor. I head to the back of the courthouse, out the private exit, and I do what I do at breaks. I make a path to the side door, step outside and plan to think through what comes next. The assistant DA, Carrie Monroe, a pretty blonde with an attitude, and legs that go on forever, is waiting on me. I know this specific detail of her legs because we’ve been friends with benefits on occasion. “You did good in there. We should celebrate tonight.”
A woman who knows how to just fuck and move on with no strings attached should be a definitive “yes,” a way to get Lori out of my head. I wait for the familiar stir of lust, and it doesn’t come.
“Not tonight.”
“When then?” she persists. “You’re moving.”
“I’m focused on this case with plans to be on a plane to New York City the day after it ends.”
She blanches. “Wait. Are you saying goodbye now?”
“I am.”
“Okay. Huh. Well I don’t know what to say.” She purses her lips. “Fine. You were still sexy as hell in there, Cole. I love watching you. I’ll just do it from afar.” She closes the space between us and kisses my cheek. “Good luck, but you won’t need it. You always win.” She leaves then, and holy hell. I’m not sorry. I wouldn’t have said no to Carrie before that night in New York with Lori. What kind of wicked spell am I under?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cole
Two weeks later…
I sit on a private jet waiting for take-off on my way to New York, my MacBook fired up with the headlines: Cole Brooks wins again with his client exonerated of the murder of his wife. Hotshot Brooks cornered the victim’s business partner on the stand, caught him in a lie, and hammered him into a dramatic confession.
That’s the way to leave Houston with a bang, I think, flipping to a new screen and pulling up the digital contract that officially merges my firm with a New York firm run by a close friend, and the best damn attorney I know, next to me, of course. I shut the lid to my MacBook and my cell phone rings. I glance down and find my new partner, and oldest friend’s number on the caller ID. “Reese Summer,” I say. “Or is it partner now?”
“Partner it is,” he says. “You got the executive contracts, I assume?”
“I did and I’m on the plane now waiting for take-off.”
“Is your apartment ready? I know your remodel got dicey.”
“The movers left days ago and my assistant, or rather ex-assistant considering, she is on a plane to Paris right now, assures me that the key is waiting for me and I’m ready to move in tonight.”
“It’s Wednesday. We’ll see you Friday night at the office for the client meet-and-greet?”
“You’ll see me tomorrow. I have work to do. I need to get my staff in order by Monday. I’ll check in when I land.” We disconnect and the plane’s engines roar to life.
The restraints my father placed on our growth are gone, and a chapter of my life ends and a new one begins. New York is where I belong now. Funny thing is I wasn’t sure I believed that until it welcomed me in an extra special way.
I pull the note Lori left me from my pocket and read it again: Hello and everything that followed was perfect. I didn’t want to ruin perfect with a bad goodbye. My lips curve. The thing about coming off a win for me is it’s like a conquest that makes me really want another. And her name is Lori. At least, that’s what she told me.
***
Lori
After hours of trying to track down leads for her book, with her deadline approaching, and another new book on the horizon, Cat and I are on her living room floor, both in jeans and socked feet with a box of chocolate between us. It’s an empty box of chocolate since she’s worried about her book and I’m worried about why I haven’t heard any news on the outcome of my interview. “How’s your mom?” Cat asks.
“Dating,” I say. “I think. I don’t know. She said she met someone.” I roll to my side to face her. “Why haven’t I heard anything?”
She rolls to face me as well and doesn’t ask what I’m talking about. She knows. “You’ll hear soon.”
“Just knowing I’m not out of the running would be nice,” I say. “When I left I fe
lt good. There were six of them in the interview.”
“You said you do well in groups. You’re a trial attorney. Of course you do.”
“I’m not a trial attorney yet,” I remind her.
“You connected with Judge Griffin, the lead decision maker,” she reminds me. “That is huge and—I think you might be getting some news soon.”
I sit up. “What do you know?”
She sits up too. “I can’t tell.”
“Cat!”
She laughs, and the front door opens. “That’s Reese.” She pushes to her feet and I join her.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
She glances over at me. “You’ll see.”
Reese appears in front of us, in his tailored suit, and glances down at the chocolate. “I take it you two don’t want to order pizza?”
“Pizza sounds good,” Cat says. “Or champagne. Show her.”
“Show me what?!” I demand.
He hands me an envelope. I quickly open it and blink at what I see. “This says I am awarded the full scholarship available by the program, with monthly installments.” I look between them. “This just means I make it to the next round, right? This is what I would get if I am actually awarded. Monthly installments instead of a lump sum, which is fine, of course. It’s an amazing opportunity.”
“You were awarded,” Reese says. “With the merger of my firm with the Texas firm, we joined the consortium. It was in the works even before I brought this up to you, but it’s why I brought it up to you. We’re in line for first pick for the next candidate, and I told them I want you.”
I don’t let myself get excited. “I—thank you, but—I have so many questions. It takes six months, right? So, you requested me, but I have to finish the process?”
“We fast-tracked you. The entire panel believed you are a talent that needs to see her rising star now, not later.”
Excitement starts to build. “I’m awarded? I’m accepted?”
“Yes,” Reese confirms. “You are indeed accepted and awarded.”