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Suspicion rose again. “She?”
“Oh, yeah.” Paul winced. “Should I have said that? Is that covered under the attorney-client thing where they can’t talk about each other?”
His brother had never grasped legal terminology. “That’s not how privilege works. You can and should tell me the name of the attorney you hired.”
Paul actually took a step back. “I think I should talk to her about that first.”
He wasn’t going to play this game. “Did you or did you not hire my girlfriend to represent you?”
“She’s looking over my contracts,” Paul said quickly. “And maybe making some phone calls, but that’s all.”
Of course. That whole “I’ve changed” speech was all bull to cover the fact that he was using Jayna. Quaid wasn’t sure what Paul intended to do, but it almost certainly had something to do with his mother’s plotting. “She’s not helping you.”
“It’s not really help,” Paul replied. “Help is something a friend does for free. I like Jayna, but she’s not very friendly. And she was annoyed when she had to pay for lunch because my credit card got declined. I think she’s going to put it on my bill. It’s a job. She’s assured me she’s going to charge her full rate. Should I be worried? How much is that?”
He turned away from his brother, anger rising in his gut. He wasn’t about to allow his family to put him in this position. They’d figured out their normal manipulations weren’t working, and now they’d changed their play. He wouldn’t let it happen. They weren’t going to use Jayna this way. “Itdoesn’t matter because you don’t have any damn money. You leave her alone or we’ll have trouble, you and I.”
“I thought we already had trouble. That’s why you moved out. I’m going to have money. I just have to close something,” Paul called out. “At least that’s what my lawyer says. I’m not sure what I’m closing.”
He didn’t care. His brother was a manipulator, and he’d found a way to force his way into Quaid’s life. Again. He would use Jayna and drag her into their trouble, too.
Had his mother come up with this plan? Or was it all Paul? It was a good play, but it wouldn’t work.
He jogged back across the park to the courthouse as Jayna went inside, the door closing behind her. She was about to turn down the hall when he managed to catch up.
“Give ’em hell today, Quaid!” Jerry Nichols owned the gardening center and rented out heavy equipment. He stood with his daughter, LaTonya, beside the reception center.
LaTonya frowned at her dad. “You are not going to one of Geraldine’s parties, Dad. Quaid, can’t you see how crazy this is?”
He thought it was a little crazy that this case was drawing bigger and bigger crowds. “See you two inside.” He had to catch Jayna.
“Hey,” he called out, making her stop and turn.
A bright smile hit her face before she glanced down at her watch. “Hey, you. How did things go with your mom? Don’t tell me now. We need to hustle. We’re supposed to be in court in five minutes.”
He didn’t need five minutes. “They went about the way I thought they would go. I just found out my brother forced you to have lunch with him and then convinced you to take on his case. I’m sorry he put you in a bad position.”
Her hand went to the tote bag around her shoulder. “Iwouldn’t say ‘forced.’ It’s no big deal. It’s a couple of contracts. Your brother’s not the brightest bulb, you know. Also, he needs a serious lesson in organization. I think there are two separate contracts in there, but they might have bred. And one of them has some jelly on it. I think it’s grape.”
That sounded like his brother. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take them and get them back to Paul.”
“Why would you do that?” Jayna asked.
How should he put this? He’d avoided most talk about his family with her, wanting to leave her out of their drama. It was far too soon in the relationship for her to find out how nasty his family dynamic could be. “Because he’s not truly interested in hiring you. He doesn’t have any money. This is his way to force me to do what he wants.”
“So he doesn’t want me to look into his contracts even though contracts are my specialty?”
Somewhere in the back of his mind, distant alarm bells had started to ring. Maybe it was the tone of her voice or the way her brows had risen. He still plunged ahead, his anger with his brother far greater than those warnings. “No, he’s trying to force me to do it.”
“But you don’t have to, because I’m going to do it.” She took a step back. “It’s a couple of contracts, Quaid. It’ll take me a few hours tops to go through them. Well, once I get them in the proper order. It’s a pretty simple situation.”
That was where she was wrong. “It’s never simple with my brother.”
“He needs to sign the paperwork on his house so they can set a closing date and get the ball rolling. He needs the money from the sale of that house, and he doesn’t understand how it works in any way.”
Ah, but Paul understood howheworked. “You can’t believe a word he says, baby. I know that he’s in trouble, andbringing you in is his way of dragging me into whatever scheme he’s working on. My mother asked me to handle this for Paul. That was why she was here.”
He wasn’t about to mention the part where his mom had told him all kinds of rumors about Jayna.
