Courting Trouble (7 page)

Cade scrubbed his hand over his eyes. “You need anything, Dad?” Cade asked.

“Me?” Hudd cocked his head. “No, son, I’m all right. But you? Well, boy, looks like if you want to win this case you’re gonna need a better poker face.”

A heat rose in his belly, an anger he couldn’t indulge. Nothing good came from anger directed at his father. Cade stopped short, always, from saying the unkindest of words to his dad, but his father fought all out. Slash and burn. Whatever Hudd thought, Hudd said, and if he’d ever had the slightest hint of discretion, the stroke had blown those neurons and synapses out of his brain. When Hudd wanted to spar, it was better to duck and weave than to try to land the heavy blows. Cade turned to the fireplace and took the wrought-iron poker from the tool rack. He squatted in front of the fire.

“Written all over your damn face. You’re still in love with that McGrath girl.”

“Is it?” Cade gave the bright red log a rough poke and embers sprayed upward toward the flue.

“Can’t go into a courtroom in love with opposing counsel. That woman will chew you up and spit you out. Make a fool of you, son. Just like before.”

The log burst into flame. The heat on Cade’s face matched the fire burning deep in his gut. A fool? His father thought he’d been a fool over Tulsa McGrath? He’d been a heartbroken teenager, in mad love with a girl. Cade’s left knee popped when he stood. He placed the poker back in the rack and turned slowly toward his dad. The right side of Hudd’s face hung limp and his arm curled in and rested on his lap. Why fight with a man who could barely walk?

“You’ll make sure the fire’s out when you go to bed?” Cade said.

His father grunted and dropped his gaze to the file. “Go on then if you don’t want to face the truth. Go on and run your little ol’ self off to bed.”

*

The cold night air worked its way deep into Tulsa’s bones. A hot shower, flannel pajamas, and fleece socks couldn’t chase away the chill. She shivered and snuggled deeper under the handmade block quilt, above her a multitude of glow-in-the-dark stars covered the ceiling of her childhood room.

The first time she snuck Cade Montgomery into her room he’d paused just inside Tulsa’s bedroom window and stared up at the glowing stars. With an impossible grin that matched her own because they’d actually pulled off him climbing the pine tree beside the house and shimmying through the window without being caught, he’d climbed into her bed wearing only his jeans. The zipper beneath her fingertips had slipped down with ease and he’d shucked off his Levi’s. There’d been no need for a quilt to keep warm that night.

Damn.

What if…
Why play that game?

For most of her adult life she had managed to evade two things she feared most: Cade Montgomery and Powder Springs.

“Aunt Tulsa?”

“Hmmm?” Tulsa turned toward the doorway where Ash stood backlit by the hall light. There stood the reason that Tulsa had braved Cade Montgomery and all her memories of Powder Springs. Ash. Ash’s safety. Ash’s future.

“Can I come in?”

“Of course, honey.” Tulsa threw back the covers and patted the spot next to her on the bed. Ash scampered across the room, looking more like a seven-year-old little girl in her nightgown than an adolescent.

“You put up the stars, didn’t you?” Ash tucked herself under the covers. She smelled fresh, like lavender soap. Her long dark hair spread out over the pillow.

“I did. The summer before high school.”

“I wondered how old you were when you did it. Did you like junior high?”

“Hated junior high. I was a walking hazard. The worst two years of my life.”

“But you liked high school?”

“Most of it. I had more fun than should have been allowed, but your great-grandma was really good about knowing what to get upset about and what to let slide.” Tulsa spread her fingers out over the surface of the quilt, hand-stitched by Grandma Margaret. “She took good care of us when… well…” Tulsa’s heart dropped in her chest. “…when there wasn’t anyone else.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Grandma Margaret? Sometimes, I miss—”

“I meant your mom.”

Tulsa’s heart clutched with the word. Her rib cage tightened and an achy feeling etched with pain lay just behind her lungs. Mom. Connie. Her mother was a shadow that drifted in and out of her childhood. How could Tulsa miss what she barely knew?

But she did.

She missed what a mother was supposed to be to a girl. Tulsa opened her mouth to speak, to answer, to respond to her niece in some intelligent way, but a hard lump lodged in her throat and tightened its grip, a stranglehold on her words. She couldn’t begin to explain to Ash all that Connie was and all that Connie couldn’t be—hell, Tulsa couldn’t explain it to herself.

In the dark of the room, Tulsa closed her eyes and breathed deep. With a steady breath the pain loosened in her heart. With a steady breath the grip on her ribs relaxed. With a steady breath the lump in her throat dissolved. Tulsa opened her eyes and turned her head toward Ash. She couldn’t discuss her own mother… not now… quite possibly not ever.

Finally, softly, Tulsa said, “You know your mom tries awful hard to do right by you.”

“Like getting arrested for shooting a shotgun at Dad?”

“That’s not exactly what happened. I believe your father never came out of the house.”

“And that makes it okay?”

“It most definitely does not make it okay, and I bet if you asked your mom she’d say that shooting at your Grandma Hopkins’s house was perhaps the dumbest thing she ever did.”

Ash shook her head back and forth and her long hair whispered across the pillow. “She’d say it was the second dumbest.”

“Really? And what was the dumbest?”

“That’s easy.” Ash stared at the stars on the ceiling. “According to Mom, the dumbest thing she ever did was sleep with my dad.”

Tulsa’s heart cracked with Ash’s words. The sweet girl was right. Savannah would say her relationship with Bobby Hopkins was her biggest mistake, but Ash left out one very important fact.

“It’s ironic then that the best thing to ever happen to your mom came out of the stupidest thing she ever did.”

Even in the dark of the room, Tulsa witnessed a tiny smile spread out over Ash’s beautiful face even while the girl’s bottom lip began to tremble.

“You know when I look at you, I don’t see your mom or your dad. When I look at you, I just see Ash McGrath. Like this wholly original creature that took the very best bits that two people had to offer and meshed them up to make the very best person those two people together could ever make.”

Tulsa tucked her arms under her head and turned to her niece. Ash still stared at the ceiling and a trickle of a tear fell from Ash’s eye.

“I just wish things were like before when Dad didn’t care where I was and Mom took him staying out of our lives for granted. You know? When I didn’t have to think about it. I didn’t have to worry.”

“Well, I know you will worry, because you’re a McGrath and worrying is what we do. We’re champion worriers.”

Ash’s eyes slid toward Tulsa.

“How ‘bout we make a deal. You promise to concentrate on school,” Tulsa said.

“And?”

“And I promise to tell you when it’s time to get worked up.”

“You promise?” Ash rubbed her fingertips beneath each of her eyes, scraping away her tears.

“I promise,” Tulsa said.

“I can do that,” Ash said and turned her gaze back to the stars.

Chapter Eight

Early morning sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the kitchen. Tulsa hoped that the bright light combined with strong coffee would chase the fog from her brain. Last night she’d slept, but not well. Shivering with cold, Tulsa woke at two in the morning to find Ash still sprawled beside her. A bed hog, Ash took up more than her fair share of the queen-sized bed and stole all the blankets. Being too kind of an aunt to rouse Ash, Tulsa had pattered down the long upstairs hallway to the fourth bedroom, which was reserved for Christmas ornaments, dusty school projects, and other familial detritus that no one was quite willing to throw out. She carved out a tiny bit of space on the bed and pulled a giant quilt over her.

Now, hours later, Tulsa was showered and ready for her day, but a haze of fatigue still clung to the edges of her mind. She sipped her coffee, willing the strong brew to take its eye-opening effect. In prep for the firm’s morning meeting, her laptop was open on the table before her. Her fingertips chased a lingering drop of coffee off her lips and a memory of Cade—his lips soft and warm, his body hard and hot—danced through her mind. Heat pulsed through her legs and up her spine. She shut her eyes to the morning light and let her mind linger on the kiss—Cade’s kiss. His hands racing up her back and entwining in her hair. Heat coiled deep within Tulsa and a tingle spread through her fingers.

She wanted him. She was weak when it came to Cade. Her fingers moved up from her lips and over her eyes. Cade made her think things… do things… believe things… things that she knew in this world weren’t true. Like the idea that ‘love conquered all’. Love didn’t. Couldn’t. She rubbed her fingertips across her forehead, trying to smooth out the tight furrows. She didn’t have the time or the energy for a man like Cade Montgomery.

Her computer beeped and she snapped back to the present. The conference room of McGrath, Phillips, and Lopez popped onto her screen. Fresh like a morning glory open to the sun, Emma, wearing a short-sleeved periwinkle-blue blouse with a pixie collar, perched beside the conference room table. Soft curls of shoulder-length white-blond hair framed her face.

“Morning, Tulsa! How is that twenty-degree weather in the Rockies?”

“I’ve got coffee and a fire,” Tulsa said. She tucked her curls behind her ears. “Plus pancakes at the Wooden Nickel once we’re finished, so I’m good.”

All business, Jo’s long, brisk strides ate up the conference-room floor. Her black hair was pulled straight back off her face into a tight bun. She wore a structured black suit cut close at the waist to accentuate her trim figure. Jo sat at the conference room table across from Emma.

“It’s two minutes after,” Jo said. “Let’s start.”

“Where’s Sylvia?”

Jo’s lips tightened and as if her entire body tugged upward with Tulsa’s inquiry, she sat straighter in her chair.

Tulsa tipped her head to the side and eyed her computer screen. “Is everything okay?” Their lead paralegal sat in the staff meeting each morning. Tulsa also wanted the name of the family-law attorney that she was going to hire for Savannah.

Emma stared at her meeting agenda and then looked through her eyelashes at Jo.

Anxiousness fluttered against the sides of Tulsa’s belly. Something was wrong—something was off—Sylvia was missing and the looks between Emma and Jo indicated there was some fact they didn’t want to disclose.

Jo faced the camera. “Sylvia will be in soon.” She cleared her throat and picked up the iPad that lay on the conference room table in front of her. “Let’s start.”

Tulsa pursed her lips into a tight knot but chose to remain silent. She was being handled by her partners. She’d give them until the end of the meeting to share whatever factoid they currently withheld. Tulsa glanced at the meeting agenda on her iPad. She forced her mind to focus on Emma and Jo’s reports. She listened to their updates on the active cases and gave her opinions. Finally they reached the last bullet point.

“Any luck on the associate front?” Tulsa asked. McGrath, Phillips, & Lopez was a busy firm and they needed another associate.

“We thought we found someone,” Emma said. “She’s ready to leave her big firm for a smaller one. Solid credentials. People love her—”

“But she went and got pregnant.” Jo’s tone was cool, dismissive of the idea that a woman would choose motherhood over career.

“It’s just the best news for her,” Emma gushed. “Once she has the baby she wants to stay home and do some contract work for a couple of years. But there is no way she’s switching firms before she goes on maternity leave.”

“So, we still need a full-time associate,” Tulsa said.

“Now,” Jo added. “The work isn’t going away. It’s like unhappy couples grow at an exponential rate.”

“Bad for them, good for business,” Tulsa said. She didn’t wish a divorce on anyone. She’d quite happily do adoptions and prenups for the rest of her career if suddenly all married couples were blissfully in love. But that wouldn’t happen. The statistics didn’t lie: Fifty percent of all marriages ended in divorce. And truly, most days, Tulsa thought it was more.

“You know…” Emma twirled a lock of her hair in her fingertips and her eyes searched the ceiling. “There is one attorney we went to law school with… Georgia Parker. Do you remember her?”

“Brown hair?” Tulsa asked.

“Short,” Jo said.

Emma nodded. “That’s her. Maybe I’ll give her a call.”

“Do it,” Jo said.

“What else?” Tulsa asked.

Emma whipped her head toward the screen as though she’d waited the entire meeting for this moment. A giant Cheshire grin ate up her face. “Ooooo, Tulsa, honey, do we have something to tell you.” Emma drew out her words like a tattletale just barely able to contain a story. “That Albie Hecht is a piece of work.”

Tulsa’s heartbeat kicked up a notch. “What happened?”

Jo ignored Emma’s salacious tone and picked at an invisible piece of lint on her lapel. “The divorce is back on.”

“Already?”

Emma leaned forward. “The details of just how and why. Well, they are absolutely delish. I’m guessing you haven’t seen
TMZ
today?”

TMZ?
Not the place a divorce attorney wanted her famous client to show up while she was two thousand miles away from LA. “Specifics, please.”

Emma licked her lips. Sweet adoption attorney that she was, Emma shared the nation’s prurient interest in celebrity private lives. “Albie walked in on Sonia.”

A similar scene had caused the original petition for dissolution of marriage to be filed months before—only then it had been Sonia walking in on Albie.