And sexy as fuck.
No.
“Over my dead body,” I shout back to Sully, pulling a T-shirt from another drawer and tugging it overhead. I put my socks and shoes on next, then head into the bathroom to brush my teeth.
Sully’s voice is barely audible through the sound of my electric toothbrush and the stream of hot water in the sink, but mixed in with his laughter, I hear, “Or under it!”.
For the next two minutes, I contemplate Sully’s words, trying not to let them get under my skin. When the toothbrush powers itself off, I spit into the sink, then take a scoopful of water and splash it onto my face. Grabbing the hand towel, I dry off, dragging my gaze to my reflection in the mirror.
Fuck.
He’s right. They all look similar toher.
I’m not even going to try to unpack that right now.
“Look, all I’m saying is maybe you can’t find anyone who strikes your fancy because you’re looking far, when you should be looking near.” Sully’s voice calls to me again. “And the way she looks at you when she thinks no one is watching…she’s totally DTF.”
Huffing out a lungful of annoyance, I yell back, “You’re nearly a thirty-year-old man, Sully. Stop using acronyms as a part of your daily speech.”
His laughter fills the silence in my apartment again, and I choose to ignore him for the rest of the time it takes me to finish my morning routine.
When I’m ready to hit the gym, I pick up my duffle bag and sling it over my shoulder, not bothering to engage in further conversation with the man sitting at my kitchen table who’s smiling from ear to ear. Sending a quick glare at him, I head to the door, knowing he’s already out of his seat and following me before I even reach for the knob.
“Mr. Paladino, I have those new case files you asked for,” my legal secretary, Lydia, pages through the dinosaur of a landline phone sitting on my desk, breaking my concentration on the email I’m reading over.
Jabbing the intercom button, I tell her, “Bring them in,” and return to the last line of the negotiation proposal on my screen.
I’ve only been at work for forty-five minutes, struggling to get into the right frame of mind for a long day of work. The gym didn’t clear my head like it normally does, Sully’s mention of the type of woman I’ve been gravitating toward fresh in my thoughts, doing something terribly uncomfortable to my heart. And my mind.
It’s making methink.
It’s making me think about her, and suddenly I’m weighing the pros and cons about my sister’s best friend.
As my office door opens, I close out of the browser and watch my secretary cross the room with about ten to twelve files in her hands. She’s in her mid-fifties and loves to mother me whenever I allow her the opportunity, and she’s damn good at her job.
“Anything worthwhile?” I ask as she sets the files down on my desk in the exact place she does every day.
Part of Lydia’s job is to review the documents sent in by prospective clients and create preliminary folders for me to review prior to booking consultations should I decide a case is worth moving forward with. Over the last two years, I’ve built a healthy reputation for myself, and unfortunately, I just don’t have the bandwidth to take on every client. There’s not enough hours in the day, or in the courtroom.
I can’t remember the last time I had a simple cut and dry divorce to help facilitate, but perhaps that is a punishment of my own choosing.
“More of the same. There is one in there, though”—she taps her unpolished fingernail against a file that’s sticking out slightly higher than the rest—“that might pique your interest. Evidently, the prospective client got married a year ago in Paris but wasn’t aware until her husband showed up on her doorstep a few days ago.”
This captures my attention, and I look up, locking eyes with my secretary. “How the hell does someone not know they’re married?”
Lydia shrugs. “Beats me. Happy reading—I’m going to take an early lunch and have coffee with my daughter.”
“No problem. Enjoy.” My eyes are cast downward, already flipping through files. She leaves me to it, shutting my office door quietly.
I’m curious about the prospective client she mentioned, but as always, I begin with the top file, working my way down. Skimming over the first one, I deduce it won’t be worthwhile. A standard divorce initiated by the wife stating irreconcilable differences. They have two children and are splitting the assets fifty-fifty. Seems incredibly straightforward and, frankly, quite boring, so I set it on my left, the side I designate for a ‘passing on’ pile.
As I flip the cover on the manila folder of the next file—the one Lydia told me about—my blood runs cold as a name I recognize sits at the top of the page in my secretary's curly handwriting.
Raina J. Lancaster
My fingers curl tighter around the fountain pen in my hand.
Come a-fucking-gain?
