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“Why not? Like anyone else could hold a candle to you?” I smirk. Mike is the Le Fou to my Gaston, and I love him for it.
I know I have a damn good shot at the new junior partner position opening up. I had a long talk with Ed Foster, senior partner, last night, where he’d shared some of his private label scotch which he usually only breaks out when a big case is won. He’d clapped me on the back, laughed with me, and even invited me to his hunting cabin upstate for the weekend.
So yeah… it is in the bag.
But I’m trying to be humble.
Mike’s right. I’ve been here the longest. I have a more favorable track record of case outcomes than any other associate here. And though I don’t like to throw my Ivy League pedigree around, but I did graduate from Harvard and then Yale Law at the top of my class. I’m a shoo-in.
Except there’s one thing stopping me from saying it aloud.
As if on cue, that one thing appears in the doorway in her sedate gray suit and blouse.
Holding her legal pad tight to her chest, she meets my eyes for a split second before scanning the room. She frowns when she realizes the only open spot is the seat next to me.
Sighing as if being this close to me is a sentence in front of the firing squad, she marches over. Ordinarily, I’d pull it out for any other associate because the chairs are heavy and unwieldy.
But I won’t do it for Tenley Bayliss.
Knowing her, if I did, she’d give me eye-daggers and snap at me that she’s perfectly capable of pulling out her own chair. She’s one of those women’s lib-types who would rather have a door slammed in her face than be forced to thank a man for holding it open for her. Fiercely independent and unapologetic about it.
Not to mention, she hates me.
All the men here, really, but me, especially.
And the feeling is mutual.
Talk about an ass-kissing, brown-nosing, perfect little snot. She started at Foster and Foster six months after I did, and since then, there’s been a fire under her perfect heart-shaped ass to prove herself.
She’s in her office when I get here in the morning, and she’s still there when I leave at night. I think she has less of a life than I do, which is saying something. And either she’s oblivious to the fact that no one in the office likes her, or making friends isn’t something she wants to do. She’s always pointing out flaws in our arguments, contradicting us, trying to look like the smart one by throwing us under the bus so she can win brownie points with the Fosters.
The worst part? She’s almost always right.
The woman is a shark.
The Foster brothers love her because she’s a legal robot, living and breathing the law as if it’s the only thing on her mind. No denying she does everything right, without breaking a sweat, and has had some really good wins lately.
Tenley struggles to pull out the chair, then sits and walks the chair under the table until she’s right up next to it, pen at the ready to take her nerdy little notes.
Teacher’s pet.
Takes one to know one, if I’m being fair.
She stares almost with reverence at Ed Foster as he walks through the door and sits at the other head of the table. Meanwhile, everyone glares at her, unable to hide their disgust over her fawning. She doesn’t notice. For all her smarts, the girl cannot read the room at all. That or she simply doesn’t care.
I’m inclined to believe the latter.
Ed starts the meeting as he usually does, making idle small talk, and we all laugh and tease one another, which is great for team building and relieving stress.
Not Tenley, though. She’s quiet, and by the time I look over at her notebook, she already has half a page of notes.
On what? What the hell is she taking notes for?
“Enough of that,” Ed says, tenting his hands fingers in front of him. “What we need to talk about is the Stokes child custody case. Mr. Stokes isn’t coming to town, correct? Do we have his statement?”
Mike nods. “We have it on tape.”
“Did you transcribe it?” Ed asks.
“It’s a little hard,” Mike admits. “It’s not the best quality, sounded like there was some machinery in the background. But I’ve pieced it together as best I could.”
“I don’t think that’ll hold up,” Tenley points out. “Not against the ‘mirror the tape’ rule.”
Everyone stares her way.
Mike gives her a smug look. “Well, you haven’t heard the tape. I’ve done due diligence to make sure—”
“Actually, I did hear the tape,” she says, sitting up straighter and directing her response to Ed. “And the transcript that gets distributed to the jury should not be an amalgam of the recording and the hearsay testimony of persons present at the conversation. And that’s what your transcript is. It won’t hold up in court. If I were the judge, I’d throw the whole thing out on account of that alone.”
