Page 11 of Feel It in the Air

“Mathletes were last year. This year was the art club.”

“Oh, well, yay for the artists.”

“Gus!”

Her shrill admonishment is deserved. I won’t deny it. And she deserves an apology.

“Sorry, continue.”

“Actually, I gotta run,” Ewan says, pushing back from the table. “I got a delivery due in ten and Johnny down in accounting says that I’m the only one who is allowed to sign for anything potentially lethal.”

“You own a bait and tackle shop. Isn’t everything in there ‘potentially lethal’ if you’re on the wrong end of it?” Jace laughs.

Ewan shrugs. “Camo gear, the orange safety vests and beanies, fish lures…”

“Unless you’re the fish,” Anton mutters.

Ewan shrugs, not bothering with a comeback, which surprises me a little. Then again, I can’t argue that the fish would side with the lures being lethal so, there’s that.

“Then if there’s nothing else…” I say.

I don’t give anyone a chance to counter that, following Ewan’s lead, pushing to my feet and nodding in the direction of my father. He nods in return, putting a silent but official end to the meeting. Thank goodness.

Now, I can get on with it.

Bursting back into the hall, I scan through my email, checking to see what else popped up while I was at Munch. Thankfully, not much. I focus in on the email from Carl Roberts in HR, the number of attachments making me dizzy. Yeah, that’s going to require an actual computer.

“Gus!”

I stop and turn on my heel, looking up to see Percy Adams, the head of our legal department, jogging toward me. A few years younger than Auggie, Percy has worked for Hayes since I was a kid, working his way up from associate to top dog. I’ll never forget the excitement of the Adams family moving to town, the pretty new girl in class sticking close to my side since our dads had introduced us at the company picnic that summer. She was my first real kiss that fall—and a first couple of other things later in life—but that’s not something that we talk about now that her dad and I are colleagues.

“Glad I caught you. Got a minute?”

“Not really. Just got out of Munch, and I’m rushing down to meet with Patrick Rawlins in payroll. Can it wait?”

“Actually, that’s perfect. I’m headed that way too. Just wanted to introduce you to our newest associate, who, I ironically left in payroll since I forgot some paperwork.” He holds up a folder, guilty smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “I think you’ll like her.”

“We have a new legal associate?”

My brow scrunches in confusion. I didn’t realize we were hiring one of those.

Percy nods, handing me the folder. I flip it open, scanning over the resume. Margeaux Finnegan.

“Yup. Graduated from Pepperdine in May and just passed the bar exam.”

“Whoa!”

I stop dead in my tracks. Legal is not my area of expertise. I leave that to Percy here. That said, there are a few things I do know, and this is one of them—we don’t hire new legal grads. We require experience. Practical experience. Percy explained why to me once. He had a whole rant about it. Something about how in order to take on the responsibilities of a company like Hayes, you needed to cut your teeth first. Or something like that.

“Since when do we hire new grads? What happened to all those requirements about so many years in practice and proving that you know the law? Can hold your own in court, not that we ever end up in court. But all that was the whole reason you wouldn’t hire that Gwyn woman, and she’d been a lawyer for, like, fifteen years.”

“This one’s different. Yes, she just graduated, but she spent the last year interning with Dexter Wynn out in LA.”

Dexter Wynn.

Okay, that does change things.

Again, all things legal is not my specialty, but I’ve been in business long enough to know the name Dexter Wynn. Mr. Intellectual Property Law himself. He’s an old law school buddy of Percy’s, the two of them still using each other regularly to consult on different cases. If this woman interned with Dexter Wynn, then I can see why Percy made an exception to his own rule. If there was ever a gold star of approval, that would be it.