Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) (30 page)

Thirty-two

She couldn’t keep away from him for long, she realized.  She needed
physical contact with him, needed whatever reassurance she could gain from
tucking her feet under his thighs, from having him reach out and hold her hand.

“Tell me what you know,” Joe said, and she did.

When she finished, he said, “That’s only part of it.”

“Then tell me the whole thing,” Sarah said.  “Don’t make me guess.” 
She understood how Angie felt earlier in the day, trying to drag the
information out of Sarah one question at a time.

Joe pulled Sarah’s legs over his lap and wrapped his arms around them. 
Apparently he needed more physical contact for the conversation, too, Sarah
thought.  It reminded her of how they used to be when they studied together. 
They sometimes sat just like this, like puppies in a pile, each reading their
own books and notes until it was time to take a break and engage in something far
less intellectual and much more fun.  Then back to the books.

“It started this summer,” Joe said.  “One of the lawyers in our office
quit, and someone needed to take over his cases.  I’d just settled a big class
action suit, so I had the time.

“I knew Milton,” he said, referring to Al Milton, one of the two head
partners in the firm, “but I’d never worked with him before.  He always worked
with a particular set of associates who were more senior than I was.  But there
was a lot going on in the case at the time—motions, depositions, huge discovery
output—and he must have figured he could use someone like me on the periphery
without really involving me in the case as a whole.  It was a big risk.  And
now it’s about to blow up in his face.”

“Too much background,” Sarah said impatiently.  “Tell me what
happened.”

“What happened was I had to cover the deposition of one of our
plaintiffs,” Joe said.  “He was this optometrist from San Diego, very
aggressive, pugnacious guy, and as soon as the deposition was over he took me
aside and asked me where his money was.”

“What money?”

“He said he was late on his car payment.  I told him that was
unfortunate, but what did he want me to do about it?  He said I’d better pull
out my phone and call Milton and tell him to send the goddamn money today.  It
was the third month in a row he was late.”

“Wait a minute,” Sarah said.  “So your firm was making this guy’s car
payment?  You can’t do that, can you?”

“No.  We’re not supposed to have any financial dealings with a client,
other than giving him the recovery from a case,” Joe said.  “But it wasn’t just
the car.  The firm was also covering a lot of his other expenses, and the guy was
tired of waiting for his money.”

“So what did you tell him?”

“I pretended I knew all about it,” Joe said.  “I asked him for a list
of everything he was owed, I wrote it down, and said I’d call Milton that night. 
Then I told him how sorry I was for any inconvenience, especially since Milton
said this guy was our top client and I was supposed to treat him like a king
and give him whatever he wanted.”

“Did the guy buy it?”

“You bet,” Joe said.  “Probably because it was exactly what he wanted
to hear.  So then I took him out for a very expensive meal and lots of liquor,
and I was the best listener you’ve ever seen.  The guy never stopped talking.

“Speaking of food,” Joe said, patting her leg, “I need some.  I worked
through lunch.  Can we take a five-minute break here?”

“Sure.”  Sarah swung her legs off his lap and moved toward the kitchen
to reheat their dinner.

She felt easier now—so much easier she realized she was actually hungry
herself.  Even though Joe’s story made her feel anxious, she could tell from
the way he was telling it that she didn’t need to worry about him—not the way
she had.  He was clean, she felt sure of it.  And that mattered more to her
than anything.

Joe joined her in the kitchen and wrapped his arms around her from
behind while she transferred food into microwavable dishes.

“This seems familiar,” he said, kissing the back of her neck.

Sarah had had the same thought.  She started the microwave, then
twisted around to face him.  They were both expert at making the most of a
five-minute break.  It was something they practiced often as they studied for
finals.

Joe untied her sweater and immediately slipped a hand underneath her
cami.

“No bra,” he murmured.  “Thank you.”  He teased his thumb over her
already erect nipple and let his other hand drift down her back and inside the
waistband of her pants.  “Nothing here, either,” he observed.  “Very
thoughtful.”  Then he pushed her pants past her hips.

Sarah had dressed for her own comfort, not his—especially since the
last thing on her mind when she dressed for her confrontation with him was that
they might end up in her kitchen just like this—but now she was happy for the
convenience.  She had just widened her legs so he could explore further, when
the microwave dinged.

“Hold,” she said breathily as she dragged her mouth away from his, hating
that she had to trade out the dishes and hit start again before she could let
Joe resume, too.  But the pause only lasted seconds.

She undid his belt and pulled open the buttons on his jeans.  Then she
glanced at the timer on the microwave.  “Two more minutes.”

“Go for it,” Joe growled, and Sarah reached in to stroke him at the
same time his fingers worked their charms on her.  When the microwave dinged
again, Sarah pulled away from him, feeling completely disheveled and keyed up,
and smiled as she tugged her shirt down and her pants back up.

Joe groaned, but he knew the rules.  He left his jeans unbuttoned and
pulled his T-shirt over the top.  Sarah assumed it was the best he could do at
the moment.

She made him sit at the table rather than risk lasagna sauce on her
white couch.  They were both still breathing hard, but that was part of the
game.  She pulled her chair up close to Joe’s so she could still drape one leg
over his.  He rested his hand on her shin, and the two of them ate while he
continued his story.

“Turns out we employed his whole family,” Joe said.

“What do you mean?”

“His mother, brother, sister-in-law, a few cousins—all of them on the
firm payroll, all of them repeat plaintiffs in a whole variety of class action
suits.  He told me Milton would call them up, tell them which stocks to buy in
which tech companies, then the firm would send them out the money to cover the
cost of the investment.”

“Totally illegal,” Sarah said.

“Completely,” Joe confirmed.  “Then once the stock went down, the firm
would file a lawsuit immediately, and start paying for these people’s monthly
expenses to keep them happy while they went through the whole process of
litigation.”

“Why?” Sarah asked.  “Your firm seems like it has plenty of work.  Why
would Milton gamble like that?”

“Because there’s huge money in it,” Joe said.  “With these class action
suits, if you’re the first to file, you usually end up as the lead attorney,
which means you get the bulk of the fees.  So Milton created a stable of
plaintiffs, always ready to go.  It brought him in millions every year.”

Sarah shook her head.  “It still doesn’t seem worth it.”

“To you,” Joe pointed out.  “But some of these guys . . . they just
don’t know when to stop.  They need
five
beach houses, not just four,
they need two yachts, two private jets—it gets crazy.”

Sarah thought of her own bank account at one time, with its balance of
$4.32.  All she had ever wanted was security—to have enough.  Even her
Flourish
list was laughably modest, compared to the kinds of things Joe was talking
about.  She just didn’t understand the mentality of someone like Milton, who
would risk prison and the loss of his law license just to buy himself another
jet.

“So now you had all that information,” Sarah said.  “Now what?”

Joe took his time scraping up the last of his lasagna before leaning
back and looking at her.

“Well, that’s where you come in.”

“Me?”

“You have to know I followed everything that happened to you last
April.”

Sarah set down her fork.  “Oh.”  She’d suddenly lost her appetite.  She
had the feeling she wasn’t going to like what she was about to hear next.

She slid her leg off Joe’s lap and then took him by the hand, leading
him back into the living room.  She pulled the faux-fur blanket off the back of
the couch and laid it over both of them as she curled up next to him again.

“Okay,” she said, “go.”

“I know it was a nightmare for you,” Joe said.  “You don’t know how
many times I thought about contacting you, saying something . . . ”

“I wouldn’t have wanted you to,” Sarah said, knowing it was true.  She
would have felt even more humiliated—and more of a failure—than she already did
if Joe had suddenly reappeared.  It would have compounded her misery a
hundredfold.

“I figured,” Joe said.  “That’s why I didn’t.  But Sarah, I thought
about you all the time.  Not just then, but in all the years since law school. 
You know that, don’t you?”

Sarah looked down.  She felt a hardness in her throat.  But she wrapped
her fingers around Joe’s and forced herself to look up again.  She kissed him
softly on the lips, the same way he’d kissed her that afternoon in the mountain
medical clinic.  Then she smiled.  “Go on.  Don’t distract me.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer.  “I didn’t
want to go through that,” he said.  “The feds rushing in, the whole firm
collapsing around me.  So I took steps.”

“Steps,” Sarah said.  “Such as?”

“I wrote a memo.  A long one.  To Milton and the other partners.  I
laid out in detail everything the optometrist had told me, and everything I
found once I started investigating on my own.  Now that I knew the names of all
his family members, I could find them in the firm’s files.  They’d been on the
payroll for years.  So I put that in the memo, too.  Then I sent it.”

“Why did you do it that way?” Sarah asked.  “What did you think it
would get you?”

“Some protection, for one thing,” Joe said, “in case anyone wanted to
accuse me of being involved.  But I also had at least a slim hope that none of
the other partners knew what Milton was up to, and they’d crack down on him and
do something about it.”

“But they didn’t, I assume.”

“No, they cracked down on me instead.”

“What happened?” Sarah asked.

“Purgatory.”

Sarah drew back and looked into his face.  “Wait a minute—that’s why
you were on the road?”

“Yep.”

“I remember I asked you if they were trying to make you quit.”

“Right,” Joe said.  “And they were.  They were afraid to fire me, but
if they gave me the world’s crappiest assignment—”

“Traveling from city to city with Paul Chapman—”

Joe smiled.  “And then you showed up.  From then on, it was perfect.”

“Somehow I doubt you felt that way at first,” Sarah said.  “Not with
the way I was treating you.”

“I didn’t care,” he answered.  “You could be as hostile as you wanted. 
I was just so happy to be with you again.”

Sarah shook her head.  And thought of what she’d said to Angie about
returning after that first, excruciating workout: 
What can I say?  I obviously
love pain.

No
, Angie
had corrected her,
it’s because you commit.

Was that what this was? Sarah wondered, looking at Joe.  Had he really
been so happy to see her he was willing to put up with two months of her anger
before finally breaking through it only the week before?  Or was it just the
natural outcome of the two of them being thrown together again, day after day,
week after week, until finally Sarah’s defenses wore down?

She didn’t like to think of it that way, but she also didn’t want to blindly
romanticize the situation.  The truth was, if she had never taken that job with
Mickey’s firm, she and Joe would have continued along their separate paths and
probably never seen each other again.

“Red?”

“What?”

“You have that look.  What’s going on in that clever brain of yours?”

“You don’t want to know,” she said.

“I always do.”  He loosened his grip on her waist so she could turn to
face him.  “Tell me.  I’m done with all these secrets.”

“Then why did you keep this one?” she asked quietly.  “Why didn’t you
tell me yourself?  You think I liked hearing about it from Mickey today?”

“I couldn’t say anything,” Joe answered.  “I’m a witness now—a star
witness, they tell me.”

“Who tells you?”

“The U.S. Attorney’s office.  One of the paralegals at my firm saw the
memo and turned it over to a friend of hers who works there.  Next thing I
knew, I got a call, then had a meeting, then more phone calls . . . and now I’m
at the top of their list to testify.  Which should keep me in the news for a
little while.”