AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I followed him to a nearby table and sat down with him.
I could always use a friend, especially since I really didn’t have many. I’d been too focused on my career to make friends or have boyfriends. I’d always been so laser-focused on getting to be partner somewhere that I seemed to have lost my ability to socialize. Roarke was being ridiculous. Mark definitely wasn’t a snake. He was a good guy.
Roarke never came to the cafeteria, so he wouldn’t see me eating with Mark, either.
Mark talked for what seemed like hours before I was finished with my spaghetti and meatballs. For a nice guy, he sure liked to talk about himself and his hobbies. My eyes were nearly crossing from trying to listen to him, so I smiled politely and picked up my tray.
“Got to get back to the case,” I said, and I decided right then and there that I’d be completing the Martinez case with or without Roarke. If he wanted to act like an asshole, I’d defend Mrs. Martinez myself. She didn’t deserve her children taken from her, and I was going to prove it.
Fuck Roarke Brentwood. Who needs him?
ROARKE
I avoidedMagda like the plague for a week. We didn’t have anything pressing due on the Martinez case and I had plenty of other work to do for the firm. Hell, I’d resorted to signing paperwork with a pen instead of with a stamp because I didn’t want to have to face anything dealing with Magda Riley. Richard watched me like a hawk, and I supposed it was because things seemed a little dramatic with Magda, even in the office. Things were obviously tense between us, and everyone could see that, including her father.
I still couldn’t believe that she had lied to me so blatantly. She knew that Richard Webster was my best friend, knew that he was my partner in the law firm. She said she didn’t get in on nepotism, and despite how angry I was, she probably didn’t. She was a good lawyer. I could see that just by working with her on the Martinez case. She’d found things that I would have never found on my own, like the trust fund that Mrs. Martinez had set up before the marriage.
She was detail-oriented and driven in the courtroom, and even though I was upset about her lying to me, she did deserve partner.
I just didn’t know if I could stay on as partner myself. This was why I didn’t date people that I worked with. You don’t shit where you eat. I should have listened to that old adage. This firm had been basically my whole life ever since my divorce from Grace, and now it was like I dreaded even coming here. I didn’t want to see Magda but Ididwant to see Magda, and every time I saw Mark fucking Windham knocking on her doorjamb, I wanted to scream.
She had said she wasn’t seeing Mark, tried to prove it to me, but I still wasn’t convinced. She certainly still spent a lot of time talking to him in the office. She locked herself inside but she always let Mark in, which made my heart pound inside my chest. At this point, it was pointless to lie to myself and pretend that I wasn’t jealous. I was. Crazy-jealous, in fact. I hadn’t felt this way since I was young, with my first wife, Carla.
I’d always been a little possessive in the bedroom, but it didn’t carry over to relationships unless I wasreallyattached. Carla had been my first love, my high school sweetheart, so it stood to reason that I’d be jealous of her.
Magda, on the other hand? I’d just let myself get in too deep. I hadn’t even liked her when Richard first suggested me to be on the Martinez case with her and feel her out for partner. I’d been so sure that I wouldn’t recommend her for partner, but now...
Now I knew that the right thing to do was to recommend her. I sighed, running my hand over my face and looking out of my blinds over at Magda’s office. I stiffened. Just like every time I looked over at Magda’s office, Mark was standing there at her doorway, talking to her.
With the way the building was set up, I couldn’t see into Magda’s office from mine, so I didn’t know what she was saying back to him. He was smiling like the Cheshire cat, though, so it must have been something nice.
I walked over to shut my blinds, not wanting to see it anymore, and I heard a knock on my door.
It was Richard and he came inside and closed the door behind him.
“What’s up?” I asked, and Richard gave me a look.
“Whatever’s going on with you and Magda, I need you to tighten up,” Richard said.
I snorted. “Nothing’s going on with me and your baby girl, don’t worry.”
“Who said I’m worried? Magda can take care of herself,” he said easily. “But all this staring her down in the office and giving Mark Windham the death glare isn’t going to work out long-term. I need you two to come together, especially since I’m recommending her for partner.”
I bristled, but Richard was right. Shewasgoing to be partner, and we would have to learn how to work together. I’d have to not want her, not lose my mind when she started seeing someone else. It seemed impossible.
“I’ll talk to her,” I muttered, but I had no plans on doing so anytime soon.
Those plans changed, though, when Mark Windham went into her office and closed the door. My body stood up as if with its own will and I stalked over to Magda’s office, banging on the door. I knew what Magda and I had gotten up to with her door closed and the blinds shut, and I wasn’t about to allow that to happen with Mark fucking Windham.
Magda took a moment to come to the door and I raised my arm to knock again before she opened it, seeming irritated.
“What the hell do you want?”
“I need you to come to my office,” I said, glaring at Mark as he smirked at me like the cat that ate the canary. If they weren’t seeing each other, he certainly wanted to get into her pants, and I wasn’t going to let that happen if I could help it. I might be able to push down my feelings for Magda a little while longer, but I couldn’t push down the jealousy I felt about Mark.
It didn’t help that I just felt deep in my bones that he was a douchebag. I knew he was just trying to sleep with her, and she deserved better. Hell, she deserved better than me, too, if I was honest. Things were too messy. She lied to me and I had too much baggage to forgive her for it. Even if I confessed everything I was feeling, it wouldn’t happen for us.
We didn’t have a future.
