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ROARKE
“Left!”A woman’s voice called out as I was jogging around the park and I moved over slightly, taking a look to see if there was anything worth looking out at. A pair of long legs in a pair of yoga shorts jogged by me, and I looked up at her face to grin at her.
The woman I’d been appreciating had black curls and bright blue eyes, and I nearly stopped in my tracks. Oh no. Nother.
“Getting slow in your old age?” Magda Riley taunted, sprinting past me, and I rolled my eyes. I put my head down and sped up, trying to catch up with her, but she was over a decade younger than me and I had a sore knee so I only managed a few hundred feet at her speed, slowing down to rest near a bench.
Her laugh was audible for way too long after she was out of sight, and I groaned, annoyed. Magda was a fellow lawyer at my firm, and the word was that she was out for partner. I couldn’t imagine we would give it to her. Not because she was a woman, of course, but because she was young and inexperienced. Sure, she’d won a few cases for the firm but that firm was my baby and I wasn’t going to let just anyone make partner.
Magda annoyed me. She was like any other beautiful woman, thinking that she could slide by on her looks alone. She wasn’t a bad lawyer, but she wasn’t very experienced and she was arrogant enough that she thought she had nothing left to learn, even from those who had been in the game longer than her. She thought she knew better than me, who had over a decade of experience on her, and always had something to say when I talked to her about a case.
When I was in a good mood, I found it a little amusing, but most of the time, she just irritated me.
If this wasn’t her, I might find her sass and confidence a bit of a turn-on. I had a thing for powerful women. I’d never been the type to sit back and let things happen to me. I’d always taken the risk, and unfortunately, it hadn’t paid off when it came to matters of the heart. In the end, I knew that it probably wasn’t the women I was choosing, but something about me. Love was one of those things I wanted and yearned to live but just wasn’t very good at.
Knowing that didn’t stop me from hoping to settle down again. Hoping to find someone who was just right for me. I didn’t know if that person was out there, but I hadn’t lost hope yet. And sure, I wasn’t always easy to live with. I was what people perceived as arrogant and I thrived in chaos. But most of all, I lived and breathed my job.
If I were to find love and make it last, I needed to find someone just as dedicated to her career as I was to mine. Someone who would understand me. Who would support me. Who would love me regardless of my flaws, not resent me for them.
I looked at my watch and noticed I had half an hour until the meeting with my partner, so I headed home to shower and dress in my most expensive three-piece suit.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I appreciated how far I’d come. Life hadn’t always been easy for me. I might have a lot of money now, but I remembered what it was like not knowing where my next meal was coming from. Don’t get me wrong, I loved to pamper myself with cars and clothes and expensive things, but deep down I was still the same kid that had come from Valdosta.
My hair had almost dried when I got to the office, and my best friend and partner, Richard Webster, called me in right away.
“Roarke,” he greeted, standing up to shake my hand.
I shook it firmly, making eye contact, something I prided myself in doing with anyone I came across, friend or foe. As a lawyer, you needed to be trusted, and no one trusted someone who couldn’t look them in the eye.
“Richard,” I said coolly.
Richard frowned. “Why are you acting all weird?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Like I’m your boss or something?”
I rolled my neck around on my shoulders, trying to crack it. “Oh, I dunno, maybe because you’re allowing Magda Riley to throw her hat in the ring for partner without running it by me first. Thought maybe you’d been promoted without my knowledge because last I heard, we were partners.Equalpartners.”
Richard sighed. “She deserves it, Roarke, and we need a woman on our team. In divorce law, women tend to win more cases, you know the statistics.”
I nodded. “Sure, but there are other women up for the position who have more experience, so why her?”
“Listen, I didn’t call you here for that,” he said, deftly avoiding the question. “We’ve got a case that seems right up your alley, so I thought I’d run it by you first.” He handed me a fairly thick file folder, and I flipped through it, seeing the notes “no prenup” and “infidelity.”
Working as a divorce lawyer made sense since I’d been divorced three times. I’d definitely done my due diligence looking for love, maybe not always in the right places, but now that I was older, I liked to think I was getting wiser, and setting my standards higher. Though I was still looking, I was fine with being alone for now, because I needed the time to regroup after that last disaster of a marriage. So, for now, it was a lot easier just to deal with other people’s marriages and divorces than worry about my own love life.
“We’re representing the wife?” I asked, hoping that he’d say no since, from the notes, I was learning that she was the one that had been unfaithful. That would sway a judge to give her very little of the marital assets.
Webster nodded and I groaned inwardly, flipping through more of the file. We didn’t have any dirt on the husband, and from all accounts, he’d been a wonderful, supportive husband.
Great. My partner had just accepted an impossible case, and was expecting miracles, I guessed.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Webster said, and I raised an eyebrow. I seriously doubted that. “It’s a hard case, so I thought this would be perfect for you to see Magda’s skills first-hand.”
“What do you mean, perfect for me to see Magda’s skills first-hand?”
“I mean, I think you should partner up. This is a perfect opportunity. Give her first chair and put her to the test. See if she rises to the challenge. Maybe she’ll surprise you into giving her that partnership.”
