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But that wasn’t a place I could go.
First, because it wasn’t professional.
Second, I wasn’t some shithead who took advantage of vulnerable women. That wasn’t my deal.
Aven had been stalked for months – to a degree that even she didn’t fully understand – and then had almost been raped in her own bedroom. Then she had needed to kill the man who had tormented her.
From the looks of things, she still hadn’t dealt with that, at least not from an emotional release standpoint.
She couldn’t be in her right mind right now.
It was wrong to lead her into a situation where she had to make a decision about something like sex when she couldn’t even sleep in her own bed at night.
“That’s a nice mood you’re wearing,” Jules greeted me, coffee in hand, somehow looking no less fresh and ready to take the day on now, after about eleven hours at work, than she had first thing this morning.
“Long day.”
“That you have to end with Fenway,” Jules agreed with a grimace.
The whole office barely tolerated the man. He had been the worst client to date, which was really saying something since we dealt with a lot of pains in the ass. He was more frustrating than anything, refusing to take anything serious, even if it was gravely so, not following direct orders, yanking our chains for kicks. But he was also a client with very deep pockets, and a habit of doing stupid crap without thinking of consequences, which frequently landed him at my door. Even after I told him a year before that my fee doubled – though that was only true for him. He hadn’t even blinked.
And, well, I might have disliked the man, but when he was bringing that kind of money to the table, you didn’t really have a choice but to take on his cases.
Sometimes running a business sucked.
Anytime Fenway Arlington came to my office was one of those times.
“Did you get any prelim on what he did this time?”
“It involved a yacht,” she told me, handing me a file. “That wasn’t his own. A wall he crashed it into. And a woman who had been on board who happens to be married to a Korol.”
“The Russian Korols?” I specified, looking up from the file suddenly.
“The one and only,” she agreed with a false smile. “He really likes to make you work for the money, doesn’t he?”
“Go home, Jules,” I told her, knowing she would be back in the office at seven-thirty in the morning regardless of when she went home and got to bed. “But keep your phone on,” I added as she went behind the desk to grab her purse and phone. “In case I need bail money for beating the shit out of him,” I specified. “Anyone around to walk you out?” I asked, knowing she wouldn’t have let anyone into the office if she was alone, that she was too smart for that. She sent me a slight brow lowering. “What?”
“The Ghost has become corporeal once again.”
Jules got along with all the guys well.
All except Gunner, who was referred to around the office as The Ghost. Granted, Gunner wasn’t exactly friendly. In fact, he had about all the charm of a lion on his fifth day without a kill. He was surly, impatient, and tended to bark things instead of say them. But those were things she put up with from all of us since she first started, and did so with no qualms.
But she and Gunner had somehow gotten off on a bad foot right from her first day of work, and had continued to avoid each other whenever possible, and snarl at one another whenever that wasn’t.
Luckily for the morale in the office, Gunner wasn’t around as much as most of us were.
“Alright, I’ll walk you out,” I agreed, holding a hand out to the door, knowing she was parked out front in the only spot that wouldn’t subject her to towing, leaving the rest of us to park in the back lot. This was agreed upon because, one, she was often the first in the office. And two, none of us wanted her walking down the alley alone late at night or early in the morning, especially in this part of town.
When I walked back in, there was Fenway Arlington, standing behind Jules’s desk, flipping through a pile of paperwork she had stacked there.
Fenway was young for the amount of trouble he had found himself in already. But, I guess, when you grew up richer than God and raised by housekeepers and valets, you had a lot more freedom to stir up shit early on in life, and then get in a habit of it even when you were pushing twenty-five.
At about six feet with somewhat long on top sandy brown hair and unassuming light brown eyes, and the classical bone structure that came from three generations of men marrying Russian models, wearing an immaculate black suit, you would never know from looking at him that he was a walking, talking tabloid story.
