Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) (36 page)

Sarah draped her closest leg over Joe’s.  “Okay, go,” she told him.  “Don’t
leave anything out.”

“I let him gloat for a while,” Joe said.  “That seemed important.  He wanted
to make sure I understood how clever he was.”

“Good,” Sarah said.  Letting an opponent bask in some momentary triumph
was always a good foundation for then chipping away at his victory.

“He wanted information from me,” Joe continued.  “How long it had been
going on, whether I thought Chapman suspected, but you know me.”

“You didn’t say a thing.”

“Nope.  Then after a while, once he’d talked enough, I finally told him
he’d convinced me—I’d have to leave the case.”

Sarah had been expecting that.  It made strategic sense.

“I told him it might take me a day or two to find a replacement,” Joe
said, “but that I’d be gone sometime this week.”

“So Felix shows up day after tomorrow,” Sarah said, “you’re gone, and
Sollers thinks he won.”

“Yep.”

“Then you quit the firm at the same time and hope you’re out of there
before the indictments get served.”

“That’s the plan,” Joe said.

Sarah nodded.  “Good.  I think you handled it right.”  And she meant
it.  He’d done the right thing—for him.

But now came the hard part.

“I quit, too.”

Joe rounded on her.  “You what?”

“I sent an e-mail to Calvin.  I told him I have to leave the case.”

“Why?” Joe roared.  “Sarah, are you crazy?  Why would you do that?  Why
didn’t you at least wait to talk to me?”

“Because I knew you’d try to talk me out of it.”

“Damn right I would have!”  Joe ran a hand over his tired face.  “Sarah,
you didn’t have to do that.  All it takes is for one of us to quit—you know
that.  Sollers got what he wanted.  So why would you throw away your job, too?”

“Because it’s already over,” Sarah said.  “You understand that guy as
well as I do.  He’d always keep this hanging over my head—
our little secret
. 
Then one day he’d use it against me when he thought he could get some advantage
in the case.”

She looked him intensely in the eyes, willing him to understand.  “Joe,
I actually have a viable defense in this case.  Something I came up with that
nobody else has.  Do you think I’m going to jeopardize that for the client just
so I can hide something about my personal life?”

Joe groaned.  “There has to be some other solution.”

“There isn’t,” Sarah said.  “Believe me, I thought it through for hours
and hours this afternoon.  But I kept coming back to the same thing:  I’m not
going to be one of those people who pretends the law doesn’t apply to me.  Look
what happened to the partners in our firm—is that the kind of lawyers we want
to be?”

“This is a hell of a lot different, Sarah, and you know it.”

“You’re right, it is different.  But the fact is, Joe, we got caught. 
We’ve been doing something that is technically, ethically wrong, and now
there’s a price to pay for that.  And I’m willing to pay it.”

“Tell me how this is different from what I did after my mother died,”
Joe said.

“What?”  The comparison made no sense.

“Me punishing myself for not being there.  And look how I did it—by
pushing you away.  Do you think that was smart?”

“No,” she said carefully, “I think it was dumbest thing you’ve ever
done in your life.  But I’m not punishing myself by pushing you away.  I want
to pull you toward me, Joe.  A night like tonight?  I want that all the time. 
No more of this sneaking around, waiting for someone like Ryan Sollers to snap
a few pictures of us and hold them over our heads.  I want what we had before. 
I want a redo.  I think I’m entitled.”

Joe shook his head, but she could see a light glimmering somewhere in
his eyes.  She was getting through to him—she knew it.

“Do you remember that Negotiation class I took?”

Now it was Joe’s turn to seem confused.  “Yes, but what—”

“It has everything to do with this,” she answered before he could
finish.  “The professor—that guy Shefter—told us the most important thing in
any negotiation is to understand our bottom line.  Then to pile on a whole
basket of terms we don’t actually care about, so we can start giving them away,
one by one.

“So I asked myself that this afternoon,” Sarah continued.  “What is my
bottom line?  What can I absolutely not give away?  And I came up with two
things.”

She shifted position now, kneeling on either side of his thighs.  “One
of them is the interests of my client—I’m never going to sacrifice that.  And
the other one is you, Joe.  You have to know that now.”

He shook his head.  “Henley . . . ”

“That’s right,” Sarah said.  “It is Henley to you.  Because right now
I’m thinking like your opponent.  But in a few minutes, I’m going to start
acting like your lover again, so if you have anything else of a lawyer-like
nature to say to me, you’d better say it right now.”

“So it’s already done,” Joe said.  “You’ve already sent the e-mail,
there’s no room for interpretation.”

“No.  I think the phrase, ‘have to remove myself from this case due to
a personal conflict of interest’ is going to be pretty clear once Calvin
discusses it with Mickey.”

“You’re sure about this,” Joe said.

“I’m sure this is how it is,” Sarah answered, “and now we’ll just have
to see what happens.”

“I had a plan, you know,” Joe said.

“I’m sure you did.”  She shifted one knee, then another, crawling
higher up toward his hips.  “Anything else, Burke?”

“I think you’re beautiful.  And smart.  And sexy as hell.  And I agree
you’re entitled to a redo.  But Sarah, if we’re in this together, then we’re in
this together.  I still wish you’d talked to me about it first.”

“I couldn’t,” Sarah said.  “It wasn’t in my client’s interests.  And I
was still their attorney as of this evening, which meant it wasn’t any of your
business what I did.  Now that’s all I’m saying about it for the rest of the
night.  Off-duty.  Do you want me or not?”

Joe moved so quickly it shocked the breath from her lungs.  He flipped
her over onto her back and had her beneath him in a second, his knees pinning
her hips instead.

“So I’m part of your bottom line?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“That could be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Then I must be a very cold woman.”

“Far from it,” Joe said, then he set about to prove it.

***

Joe dropped her back at her hotel around five o’clock in the morning. 
He grumbled about the two of them having to leave his warm bed, but Sarah convinced
him fairly quickly that she was already back to business mode and it might be
dangerous to stand in her way.

He parked at side of the hotel closest to her room, and left the car
idling while he gave her a proper kiss.

“You’ll be all right today?”

Sarah nodded.  Already her stomach was twisting at the thought of what
messages awaited her.  She had deliberately left her phone off the night
before.  But now it was time to hear everyone’s reactions to the e-mail she’d
sent out.

“Are you flying home tonight?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know yet.”  She kissed him one more time, then got out and
prepared to go to work.

Back in her room, she booted up her laptop and turned on her phone.

Mickey had called her four times.

“You’d better be joking, Sarah.”

“Sarah, call me back right away.”

“Where are you—with him?  Call me back, damn it.”

“Do you understand I did you a
favor
?  How do you think this makes me look?  You
can’t keep your legs together for five min—”

She stopped listening after that.

There was a series of e-mails from the associates on her team. 
Questions about what was going on, what they were supposed to do now, what the
status of the case was, who should take over which of her assignments . . .

A short e-mail from Calvin stating simply,
“I’ll expect you to meet
with me immediately upon your return.  Please notify my secretary of the time.”

Sarah felt tired already.  She hadn’t gotten much sleep the night
before, but she was used to that by now.  What she needed, she decided, was
coffee—and strong, not just what she could brew up on the hotel coffee maker.

So she donned her warmest layers, including the hat and gloves she
bought with Joe what seemed like months ago instead of weeks, and took off in
the pre-dawn for the two-block walk to a Starbucks.  She wanted to feel the
cold air on her face and the long stretch of her limbs on a brisk walk as much
as she wanted the caffeine.

The first few sips of the dark roast hit her like a mallet and alerted
her mind that it had better shift into a higher gear for what Sarah expected of
it that day.  She walked back, sipping along the way, warming her hands on the
cup, and by the time she returned to her room felt better ready to face the
onslaught.

She had learned over the years not to give people options or to ask for
permission when she’d already made up her mind.  Not to say, “Would it be okay
. . . ?” when what she really meant was, “I’m doing X.”  Letting people think
they still had a chance to change her mind only led to fruitless, frustrating
conversations.  It was one of the reasons she hadn’t consulted Joe before
sending out her e-mail.  She had already decided it was the right thing to do.

So instead of writing back to her team, “Would one of you be able to
take over for me immediately, and fly to Spokane tonight for tomorrow’s deposition?”
she wrote,
“One of you needs to fly to Spokane tonight.  Please make this
arrangement among yourselves and book the plane ticket immediately.  I will not
be attending Wednesday’s deposition.”

Sarah sat back and looked at the e-mail before sending it off.  She
knew she had to be very careful with her words from now on.  Every one of them
would be scrutinized by someone—maybe even by the ethics committee of the Bar
at some point.  She was willing to face the consequences of her behavior, but
she saw no reason to make her situation worse.

With that in mind, she deleted the last line, and changed it to,
“Let
me know as soon as possible who will be attending Wednesday’s deposition.”
 
Joe had had the right attitude about not leaving the case or his firm until his
colleague Felix could take over.  Sarah couldn’t abandon the client, no matter
what.  She would have to wait until she knew for certain some other lawyer had
taken her place.

She pressed Send, then checked the clock.  The morning was already
flying.  She still needed to eat, shower, and dress for the morning’s
deposition.

A text popped onto her phone.

Are you there?

It looked like Mickey was awake.

Sarah thought about what she might say: 
Thanks for everything;
thanks for getting me that opportunity; I’m sorry it didn’t work out; I’m
sorry.

A text wasn’t going to do it.  A phone call probably wouldn’t, either.

Sarah left the phone on the desk and went to take a shower.

***

“Good morning.”  Ryan Sollers seemed especially cheerful.  “So nice to
see you today, Sarah.”

“Oh, you, too, Ryan,” Sarah said just as cheerfully.  She greeted the
court reporter more sincerely, then sat and unpacked her laptop.

“Sleep all right?” Ryan asked.

“It’s so nice of you to be concerned,” Sarah said.

Ryan grinned.  He seemed to think there was no reason to hide how much
he was enjoying himself.

Joe entered a few minutes later with a woman around Sarah’s mother’s
age.  She had short wiry hair that looked like it had never met a brush.

While Ryan began his seduction—“Can I get you anything, Ms. O’Connor? 
Coffee?  Water?  Are you comfortable?  How’s the temperature in here?”—Sarah
refreshed her e-mail.  There were already several from the associates.

The one named Bingham—the one Calvin had already mentioned would take
over for Sarah if and when there were more depositions in the new year—had
arranged a flight to Spokane that would arrive that night.

So Sarah was off the hook.

Or, put another way, she thought, she was now officially out of work.

She only half-listened while Sollers quizzed Joe’s client about every
aspect of her hair routine.  About every single flammable item near where she
set her hair iron down.  One by one, methodically going through the instruction
manual, all while pretending to have a pleasant conversation.

Sarah had harder things to think about.  She had been putting it off
until just this moment, when the final piece was in place, but now she knew she
had face the next step:

She was about to be poor again.