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Jessa tried to find the right words to cut through the mess piled between them and realized there weren’t any. “I know the divorce was—”
“Save it.” Gabby leaned in. “You’ve done your duty and played the good soldier. You can leave now.”
Before Jessa could respond, Covington popped up by her side. “Ms. Fielding, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Yeah, I got the office memo.”
He frowned. “Excuse me?”
The daughter joined them. “Mom?”
Jessa hadn’t been an official part of the divorce case team because that was the promise the firm had made to the court to overcome Gabby’s objection to the firm remaining on the case for Baines, but Jessa knew this was Kennedy. The divorce of wealthy, powerful people drew attention, and the Fieldings landed in that category.
“There are the lawyers who represented your dad in the divorce,” Gabby told her daughter.
Kennedy’s sniffling and teary-eyed look disappeared. “Should you be here?”
“They’re leaving.” Gabby handed Kennedy off to her uncle and watched Covington wander away. Her full attention centered on Jessa. “You can take your bullshit concern and go home.”
Jessa didn’t want to fight. She didn’t want a scene or any sort of confrontation. Her being there amounted to an uncomfortableobligation and nothing more. Even without working on the case, Jessa knew Gabby got screwed by a system run mostly by men who played golf together. The rules applied to her but were loosened for her ex so he could have the attorney he wanted—Covington, a man who treated divorce cases as open warfare without any emotion.
There was no way to repair even the limited relationship she’d had with Gabby before and make things easier for the friends they still shared. So Jessa stood there and took it. Part of her thought she owed that much to Gabby. Jessa had made some serious mistakes in the past... and Gabby was one of the people who knew that.
“How do you sleep at night?” Gabby asked.
Jessa got the question a lot. How could you represent that guy or that horrible woman? Don’t you care about the kids, the alimony, if I can eat? It was a part of the job she could barely tolerate.
But she did have a limit. Gabby might never have practiced law, but she’d gone to law school. She understood the concept of zealous representation even if she was pretending not to.
“I sleep fine.”
Gabby snorted. “Yeah, of course you do.”
Chapter Twelve
Gabby
Seeing Jessa put Gabby in a terrible mood. The slim redhead had a way of making everything worse.
The grumbling in Gabby’s head still lingered an hour later at the gravesite ceremony. The emotions ping-ponging inside her for more than a week stopped bouncing around and settled on hate. Heat had flooded through her as she watched Jessa climb into her boss’s fancy sedan and simmered even now.
Maybe she should be grateful to feel something other than confusion. Baines being gone had left a huge gaping hole in her life and in Kennedy’s. The end to the marriage had been terrible, but the years before came with a sprinkling of humor and good times. They’d built this life together, and she still couldn’t believe how quickly it had crumbled under her.
Her emotions bounced all over the place. None of them rose to the level of true grief, of weeping in pain over his loss, because she wouldn’t let herself think of anything but the questions about his death.
That probably explained why she’d become fixated on the man who lingered in the back of the church during the reception before the service. The same man who followed them to the private gravesite ceremony and stood away from the crowd now.
Any other time she would have ignored him. He probably wouldn’t have registered at all, but she was on edge. Every noise and movement caught her eye and dragged her mind away from the finality of the day. The stranger wore jeans and a blazer, a bit too casual and not what she’d expect from one of Baines’s business associates. His face didn’t look familiar at all.
She walked toward him, noting how his eyes grew larger the closer she got. “Are you a friend of Baines?”
Present tense. It would take weeks, maybe months, to think of him in the past tense.
“Uh... no. I’m a reporter.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” The tenuous hold on control snapped inside Gabby. She couldn’t think of a worse time for some big business angle to a story. “Why are you here?”
“Rob Greene.” He held out his hand.
