Page 4 of Take What Hurts

“Can you just pull over here and let me out?” She had tried for cool, calm, and collected but knew she’d hit on panicked as she heard the words come out of her mouth. The Uber driver, apparently unperturbed, looked lazily at her in the rearview as she gathered her bag and phone.

“It’s still like a mile and a half away.”

“Yeah, dude. I got that. My meeting is in ten minutes, so either I get out and run for it now or I can kiss my job goodbye in the hour it takes us to crawl the extra mile.”

The Uber driver shrugged and motioned with his hand out the door. As she climbed out of the car, he called, “Don’t forget to tip.” Elliott sighed and rolled her eyes. She waved at the guy in acquiescence and ran, her bag thumping against her thigh on every second step. Twenty minutes later, Elliott was at the building—sweating, panting, and not looking remotely professional.

She took a breath and headed to the elevator, trying to dust the airport grime off the sleeve of her blazer again and running her hand through her hair—a fruitless attempt to make it sit flat, which it never did, but she wasn’t a quitter. She returned her attention for the thirtieth time that morning to the sleeve of her jacket and despaired that the underside was still showing the signs of having been dragged unceremoniously along the airport floor and down the aisle of the plane.

It was her favorite—her “power suit,” as Hannah referred to it. Made of navy merino wool, it was the most expensive ensemble she owned, and she felt powerful when she wore it—although less so today, she thought with a roll of her eyes. Nothing for it, she shoved her arm through the sleeve and hoped no one would notice.

She hit the button for the fifteenth floor, where the concierge said the conference rooms were, and tried not to pick at the skin of her fingers. Her thumb was already bleeding from the agonizing crawl from San Francisco International, and she sucked on it, the metallic taste settling in her mouth. It continued to bleed as the doors opened and raised voices floated down the corridor.

“Fucking hell,” she murmured, breaking into a half run.

She hurried down the corridor to the conference rooms and squeezed her eyes closed briefly, praying with every molecule in her body that there was another couple engaged in a heated argument in another room. She stopped at a door where the voices had reached a crescendo. The sign on the door said Jenkins, and she sighed—whoever said praying helped them was a fucking liar—swallowed hard, and took a deep breath before she pulled the door open.

Three sets of eyes darted to where Elliott stood in the doorway. On the right side of the table was Matilda. Her client. Red faced. Eyes wide. Fists clenched and teeth bared. A disaster, basically. On the left side was Anna. The antithesis of Matilda, Anna slouched in the reclined boardroom chair. She wore an uncaring, unemotive, lazy smirk. Like a cat that had already eaten the canary, her blunt nails tapping lightly on the polished oak tabletop. Next to her, her lawyer⁠—

No.

No, no.

The edges of the room disappeared, and her vision narrowed like a goddamned tunnel until the lawyer sitting at the table was the only thing she could see. Because staring at her, eyes wide and mouth open slightly—dazed, if Elliott had to guess—was the woman from the airport. Whom Elliott had thought about to the exclusion of most other things since yesterday evening. Whom Elliott had searched for to no avail after they parted ways to sort out their flight situations. Whom—and Elliott would never admit this to another living soul—Elliott had thought about when she climbed into the too-soft hotel bed the previous evening, exhausted but entirely turned on, and whose face she’d pictured as she’d come all over her fingers in record time, sans bullet vibrator.

Yeah. That woman. The woman who was now blushing from her hairline to the part of her chest exposed by her blouse and who, Elliott now knew for sure, was entirely out of her league.

In every way.

The air in the room was thick. Elliott’s breath quickened, her tunneled vision went fuzzy around the edges, and, yeah, the memory of what she’d done the night before inconveniently flashed through her mind. Her cheeks heated as the ringing in her ears intensified and⁠—

“Where have you been?” Vision and sound returned to her in a blazing, jarring rush as Matilda’s voice rang out in the silence of the room.

Elliott’s eyes moved from the woman, who was still the most beautiful thing Elliott had ever laid eyes on, with her blond hair positively shining in the sunlight streaming through the window, to Matilda.

Matilda was a professional pianist who had bulldozed onto the music scene on the West Coast around ten years ago. She had fallen off the map two years ago, according to an article on her Elliott had found in the Times. Nobody was sure why. Apparently, she was a little eccentric—which tracked for a musician neck deep in a messy divorce with an ex who was, on face value, a hanger-on acting as a manager.

She blinked and shook her head before saying, “I’m so sorry, Matilda. I was stuck in traffic coming from the airport. I couldn’t get on a flight until this morning because of the snow in Seattle.” Elliott watched her client’s shoulders descend and her eyes soften in what Elliott supposed was sympathy.

Anna had requested the parties meet in San Francisco, much to the chagrin of Elliott and Matilda. Neither had been happy about having to travel to California for what should have been a simple roundtable, but Matilda had reluctantly agreed out of a deep-seated desire to simply make this case go away. Elliott returned her gaze to Anna’s lawyer, and Elliott realized she still didn’t know this woman’s name. Her chest tightened with the realization that she’d prepared to come up against an entirely different lawyer, and she rubbed the back of her neck against the irritation that clawed at the skin there.

“I’m sorry, Ms.—”

“—Williams,” the woman said smoothly, and Elliott’s stomach flipped pleasantly. “Mackenzie Williams, and you should refer to me as Mackenzie, please.”

Elliott nodded once. “Right, Mackenzie. Sorry, I was expecting Mr.—”

“—Clark. Yes. A last-minute change, I’m afraid.” Mackenzie did that thing Elliott had noticed during their conversation at the airport where she raised one singular eyebrow. Elliott felt it in her whole body—that heated spark of electricity. Fuck, get it together. “And you are?” Mackenzie asked with a small tilt of her head.

“Right, sorry, right. Um.” Elliott’s eyes bounced between each of the three women. The two clients were staring at her with curious expressions on their faces. Matilda looked mildly worried—and rightly so, given her lawyer was clammed up over a question as simple as what her own name was. She was fucking this up. Already. She swallowed the rising self-loathing and focused on Mackenzie’s gorgeous, if not intimidating, smile. Elliott watched the way the right side of her lips ticked up slightly higher than the left and tried not to swoon.

“Do you not know your own name? What’s wrong with you?” Anna snapped. Elliott’s eyes darted to her and took in the sardonic mirth that lined the parts of her face not affected by Botox and filler. “This will be easier than I thought.” She laughed, head turning toward her lawyer, seemingly looking for approval. Mackenzie ignored her, but Elliott noticed the way her mouth flattened almost imperceptibly, enough to give away her irritation. Her eyes didn’t waver from Elliott, and the heat in Elliott’s cheeks crept up her forehead into her hairline accordingly.

Sure this poised and professional lawyer now knew Elliott had a screw loose, Elliott dropped her eyes to the vacant seat next to her client and shuffled forward. “Sorry,” she mumbled at the floor. “I’m Elliott. Elliott Jackson. Call me Elliott.”

“Elliott,” Mackenzie murmured with a nod, almost to herself, before her eyes darted away and she scribbled something on her legal pad—presumably Elliott’s name. “Not Jerry Wilkins.” She smirked.

Elliott breathed out a laugh. “No, my apologies.”