Bad Boy's Honor: An MMA Bad Boy Romance (35 page)

“Doc review,” I said, naming the project despised by all junior attorneys.

“Correct again,” Foster said with a smile. “It’s a shitty job, but someone has to do it. You’ll get loads of billable hours out of it though. Go talk to Marvin to get more details about the project. He’ll also show you how to use the appropriate software.”

“Thanks.” I had to expect this kind of work as a summer associate, but that didn’t mean I had to enjoy it.    

“This is time-sensitive as well. Looks like we’ll be spending many more nights together. Feel free to come by my office if you get bored. I’m sure I can think of a way to make your time here more satisfying.”    

“I’m more than capable of taking care of that myself,” I replied. “I haven’t needed you for the last eight months, and I don’t need you now.

“You still think about it, don’t you?”

“No,” I lied. “Never.”

“I’m not against the idea of a rematch,” Foster said, as if he was doing me a favor. “Sometimes after a long day of work I don’t have the energy to pick up anyone new. You’ll do as a bit of fun.”

“Well with an offer like that…” I walked out of the office and shut the door.

We couldn’t keep having that conversation. It was hard enough looking at him and not thinking about that night. It was next to impossible when he kept bringing it up.    

How had those lips brought me so much pleasure when they were now causing me so much grief? I shouldn’t even listen to him, but he was a hard man to ignore. He had… talents, I had to give him that much. But he was a prick.    

And what a prick. Seven inches long, nice and thick, and fucking gorgeous to behold.    

I turned my mind to the doc review project Foster had just given me, hoping it would act as a cold shower. It did, but as I’d discovered a lot over the last eight months, a cold shower was not enough to quench my desire for Foster.    

I couldn’t give in to him; he was my boss
and
my stepbrother—nearly—so he was completely off-bounds. That just made it worse. There was nothing like forbidden fruit.    

I’d had eight dry months. Eight months without a man. How much longer could I last? I was only human, and Foster was… Foster was impossible to resist.

After my first week of work, I needed a lot more than just a cup of coffee, but that was all I could convince Bryan to join me for. Unlike me, he actually had a loving partner who looked forward to seeing him at home. The closest I had to anyone who enjoyed seeing me was Foster, but that was just because he enjoyed torturing me.

I’d stayed late every night this week except Monday, and on two of the days I had been there past midnight. At least I didn’t have to work at the weekend though. Not
this
weekend anyway.

I’d taken full advantage of the free meals the firm provided for employees working past seven, but when combined with the lack of exercise, I was a little worried about my figure. I had a naturally slim physique, but beyond a certain point I put on weight like anyone else.  

How did Foster stay in such good shape? He must go to a gym nearby, but he seemed to be in the office more than me, so I had no idea where he found the time.

“Sorry I couldn’t get you a government job,” Bryan said as we sat down outside. D.C. tended to be dead after work on Fridays. Most people were heading out of the city, or popping home to get changed before a night out. Very few people in government jobs worked late on Fridays, or any night of the week for that matter, so the coffee shop near Bryan was almost deserted.  

I didn’t like sitting in the heat, but I’d been in an air conditioned office most of the week and this was a rare opportunity to breathe fresh air. Well, not
fresh
as such, but at least I was outdoors.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Everything worked out in the end. Sort of.”

“Sort of? Didn’t you land your dream job?”

“I guess. I’m grateful, obviously, but—”

“But the work isn’t an exciting as you’d hoped?”

“Doc review,” I said, knowing those two words would say all that needed to be said.

“Ah. Yeah, I hear that’s bad. Fortunately I don’t need to do much of that for the DOJ. Not that it’s all that exciting where I am either. Just lots of memos for the most part.”

“I would kill for a legal memo to sink my teeth into,” I said, only slightly exaggerating. “Anything that involves writing and legal analysis, instead of reading emails and clicking a button.”

“That’s weird,” Bryan said, setting his coffee down on the table. “Don’t all the big firms outsource doc review these days? I thought it was all done on the cheap by lawyers in less expensive parts of the country.”

“Yeah, I never had to do any at Cooper & Cooper. I guess Arrington & Hedges doesn’t do…”  

Foster.
God damnit, he had given me a project that I shouldn’t even have had.

“What’s wrong?” Bryan asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.”  

“How are the people there?” he asked. “If you get on with your colleagues then you’ll probably find time will go much quicker.”

“Most of them are fine.”

“Most?”

I sighed loudly, letting out some of the tension as I did so. Bryan gave me a weird look, but didn’t say anything.

“My boss is my stepbrother,” I said. “And he’s an ass.”

“I didn’t even know you had a stepbrother.”

“Technically, I don’t. Not yet, but I will soon.”

I told Bryan about my Dad’s engagement to Kathleen Arrington. They hadn’t talked much about wedding preparations, but Kathleen seemed like the type who would want a big wedding. At least that would delay the inevitable for a bit. But one day soon it would happen; Foster would be my stepbrother.  

The stepbrother I’d fucked.

“What’s so bad about this guy?” Bryan asked. “I’d have thought he’d be nice to you if you’re going to be his sister.”

“That’s because you’re assuming he’s a mature adult. He’s not. He’s a cocky, arrogant, immature jackass. He does my freaking head in, but I can’t avoid him. He calls me into his office every day.”  

“His name’s Foster Arrington?” Bryan asked, looking at his phone. He must have found Foster’s profile on the firm’s website.  

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“He has good reason to be confident. That’s one good looking guy. I’m as straight as they come, but even from this profile picture I can tell he’s a catch. Look how wide his shoulders are.”

“He’s not my type,” I said, refusing to look at the photo Bryan was showing me. Foster really wasn’t my type. Not if you judge my type by the kinds of boyfriends I’d had in the past. None of them had been anything like Foster.

But I suppose if you judged ‘type’ by the kind of man that had you wet between the legs just by smiling at you—or not even that—then Foster was definitely my type.  

“If you say so,” Bryan said, giving me a knowing look. Could he tell? I felt like my face was giving away everything I’d done with Foster, but that was probably just paranoia.

“Even if he is good looking, and I still insist that he’s average at best, he’s a complete prick. You should hear the way he talks to me.”

“What sort of things does he say?”

So many things. Every night this week he’d called me into his office once most people had left and he always said something inappropriate. That we should fuck again to pass the time. That I should bend over his desk while he decides what to do with my ass. That he’s hungry for something sweet and wants to go down on me. That I talk back too much and need something to fill my mouth.

“He’s just mean,” I said pathetically.  

“You might have to get used to that. Lawyers talk that way, it’s just part of the job.”

“I suppose. It just hurts coming from him, that’s all.”  

Bryan raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you don’t like him?”  

“Ew, gross. He’s going to be my stepbrother. I meant it’s a shame he couldn’t be nicer for the sake of being a happy family and all that.”

“Okay,” Bryan said, raising his hands in defeat. “If you say so.”

Damn it, was I that transparent? What if other people at work were picking up on it? That wasn’t likely. The other attorneys were far too consumed with billing as many hours as possible to notice any kind of sexual tension. If that’s what it was.

I still thought he was a genuine ass because of the way he’d acted with Dad and me, but he had a good side too.

Foster had been a cocky shit that night eight months ago, but there had been more to him than that. He been protective, supportive, and kind. Which was the real Foster and which was the act?

I’d find out soon enough. I just hoped I didn’t get hurt in the process.

I couldn’t keep this up much longer.  

Giving April that large doc review project to work on kept her in the office until late at night, and gave me plenty of excuses to call her into my office for some one-on-one time, but sooner or later I would have to outsource the work to someone cheaper.  

Usually a fifth-year associate wouldn’t get near client billing, but being the son of the managing partner did have some advantages. I wrote off most of April’s time. There was nothing wrong with the quality of her work, and she got more efficient with each passing day, but my clients wouldn’t pay $400 per hour for a summer associate to do doc review when they knew we could outsource it for less than half the price.

April craved a real assignment, something she could get her teeth stuck into, but I hated passing on work to inexperienced attorneys. My clients expected the best and, when I did the work myself, I knew that was what they got. If I let junior associates help, then mistakes would slip in.  

The classic error was quoting case law out of context. New attorneys like nothing more than finding a juicy quote in a case and then sticking it in a memo to nail the point they were trying to make. Unfortunately, they often didn’t bother to check whether the quote had any actual relevance to the facts at hand.

I’d once let that slip by me, but opposing counsel spotted it and their reply brief tore me a new one. Now I checked and double checked everything until I trusted the other attorney completely.  

How much could I trust April? I saw hatred in her eyes when she looked at me. I shouldn’t have acted like such a dick towards her father, but he deserved it for trying to mooch off my mother.  

However, as much as April hated me, she loved being a lawyer, or at least the idea of being a lawyer. Over the last week, she’d made the odd comment here and there which made it clear she was trying to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a hotshot corporate lawyer.

Not many kids dreamed of becoming a corporate lawyer, but given that I had also followed in my mom’s choice of career, I probably shouldn’t be too quick to criticize. I didn’t do it to keep Mom happy though.  

I was a lawyer to make money. Corporate law paid well, and being a fucking awesome corporate lawyer paid fucking awesomely well. When clients bypassed the designated partner and went straight to the associate you knew you were doing something right, and that had been happening with me for years.

Even if Mom hadn’t been managing partner, I’d still have gotten every pay raise I’d requested. The official lockstep pay scheme had long ago been broken with my salary and there were even a few partners who looked enviously at my pay. Served them right for being shit at rainmaking. The money was there for those who knew how to earn it, and I was definitely one of them.

As much as I would love to discipline April, I had something a lot sexier in mind than tearing her apart for not being a good lawyer. What work could I give April that she wouldn’t completely fuck up? I had a couple of projects in my inbox that could be delegated, but I had no real idea what April’s skill set was.  

I found her official application on the computer system and browsed through her resume. Career offices at law firms insisted on making all students use a certain template for their resume, so I could always tell what school someone went to just based on the outline of their resume. It made reading the things even more boring that it was already, however April’s did reveal a lot about her.  

April’s undergraduate GPA was stellar; easily good enough for her to have gone to one of the holy trifecta of Yale, Harvard, or Stanford law schools. Unless she’d completely fucked up the Law School Admission Test, she would have been accepted at a much better law school than the one she now attended.

The reason she chose her school was on the next line down. April had been granted a full-scholarship to cover the entire cost of tuition. No doubt that had been almost impossible to resist for someone whose family struggled financially. Going to Harvard would have been great, but it would have come with a debt that she’d have been paying of for decades.  

Her grades at law school put her in the top five percent, so she would likely graduate with top class honors. Unfortunately, law school grades were a poor predictor of a student’s ability as a lawyer.  

I browsed through the writing sample she’d provided. It was an objective memo on some niche legal issue surrounding workplace discrimination. I didn’t know much about that area, but I recognized good legal writing when I saw it.  

The memo was supposed to be objective, but in a few places she’d let her bias slip through. I could tell that she’d come to a conclusion first and then tried to fit the argument together to arrive at that conclusion. That didn’t mean the memo was inaccurate, but it would have been stronger if she’d remained more objective. Still, it was a common mistake by law students.  

April could handle this task. Besides, I owed her one. She’d lost her last job because I had been unable to resist punching that smarmy jackass who’d tried it on with her. I didn’t regret it. I only punched people who deserved it, and he had definitely deserved it.

I sent April an email summoning her to my office, and she appeared promptly a few minutes later. No doubt she welcomed the break from reading other people’s emails.

“What can I do for you?” she asked professionally.