Dating for Two (Matchmaking Mamas) (13 page)

“Not unless you decide you want me to represent this Wade character, too.”

“Not a chance,” she cried.

“Then we’re okay,” he said with a wink. “And like I said, try not to worry.”

“Easier said than done,” she answered, then explained part of the reason she was so anxious. “Wade doesn’t like taking no for an answer.”

“Neither do I,” Steve responded. “But this Wade character is going to have to learn how to do that. By the way, I will get back to you as soon as I know what’s going on,” he promised. “Speaking of which, where can I reach you?”

Erin took out the card that Rhonda had made up for the company with Imagine That’s logo, address and phone number on it. “You can reach me at work most of the time. Once in a while, I do go home, mostly to change my clothes,” she confessed. “You have my home number already.”

He tucked the card into the breast pocket of his smoke-gray suit jacket. “I’ll call you soon,” he told her.

Erin nodded as she left the office.

As he watched her turn down the hall and make her way to the elevator, Steve didn’t turn around and go back to his office again. Instead he went in search of one of his senior partners. Specifically, he wanted to talk to the man who was responsible for his being with the firm in the first place. He had a proposition to make to the man that involved taking on a case pro bono for the first time in a long time.

* * *

“You want us to take a pro bono case?” Gerald Donnal asked, seeming somewhat surprised by the request.

Steve stood in the senior partner’s office, making his case. “It’s either that, sir, or I’m going to have to take some of that vacation time I’ve accrued in the past two years. At this point, I’m not sure just how much time I’m going to need to take.”

Graying at the temples and widening around the waist, Gerald Donnal looked at him.

“Not that I don’t think you richly deserve some time off, Steven, but isn’t this rather sudden? And what does it have to do with a pro bono case?”

“Sudden, yes,” Steve admitted—he was a little surprised at how quickly he’d made up his mind about her. He was the type who didn’t accept half measures as “good enough.” “And if you don’t want to take this case pro bono,” Steve continued, “then I need some time off so I can handle it on my own time.”

“That important to you?” Donnal asked, clearly intrigued.

Steve was about to automatically deny the personal aspect of the question but decided that maybe Donnal had a better take on it than he did. The old man certainly had a keener eye.

“In a word, yes,” he told the senior partner.

“Then by all means, take the case pro bono,” Donnal said. “If it’s that important to you, then it’s that important to us. I trust your judgment, boy,” he assured him. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have an appointment with a grieving widow to determine just how ‘grieving’ this woman actually is.”

“I’ll get out of your hair,” Steve said, already walking toward the door. “And thanks.”

Donnal laughed, waving away the words. “Don’t mention it. You’ve brought in enough business for us to cut you a little slack. Hope this turns out as well as you think it will.”

“Oh, it will, Mr. Donnal,” he promised with enthusiasm. “I have a really good feeling about this and it will.”

Chapter Twelve

B
ecause he’d noted Erin’s discomfort in his office and he wanted her to be at ease, when Steve asked to get together with her, he suggested going back to the café where they’d gone right after their Career Day presentations at Jason’s class.

Rather than feel relaxed in the neutral setting, Erin was tense the moment she walked in and saw Steve already seated at a table.

He waved her over and as she crossed to him, she was convinced he’d chosen this public café as a meeting place because he was afraid she might be one of those women who caused a scene when she didn’t receive the information she wanted.

“I took the liberty of getting the same thing for you that you ordered last time,” he told her, indicating the coffee and turnover at her place setting.

Food was the furthest thing from her mind, despite the fact that she was surprised and touched that he even remembered what she’d had that day.

Taking a seat, she was about to tell him that she understood his deciding not to take the case when Steve told her, “The firm’s agreed to take on your case pro bono.”

Struck speechless for a moment, she managed to get out, “Really?”

He smiled at her. “Really.”

And then she played back his words and apprehension burrowed through her. “The firm,” she repeated. “But not you?”

He was quick to place her misunderstanding to rest. “Oh, definitely me,” he assured her. “I’ll be the one representing this case.”

Before she allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief, she had one last question to put to him. “Pro bono. Doesn’t that mean that there’ll be no charge?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

Erin shook her head. As much as she needed this, she had to turn it down. Her self-esteem dictated it. “Thank you, but no.”

“I don’t understand,” he told her.

“I’m desperate,” she told him honestly, “but not
that
desperate.” Her eyes met his. “I can’t and won’t accept charity.” She was surprised and touched by his offer. But she didn’t want to be in his debt. Still, the fact that he was actually offering to help gladdened her heart and managed to stir something within her that she told herself had no place here.

It stayed nonetheless.

“It’s not charity, Erin,” Steve insisted.

To her, charity had a very simple definition. “I’m not paying for your services, right?”

“Right,” he was forced to admit. “But—”

She cut Steve off, not allowing him to finish. “If that isn’t the definition of charity, then what would
you
call it?”

He never hesitated. “A fair trade. You told me that you go to the local hospitals on Christmas Eve and the first day of summer vacation to distribute those dinosaurs of yours, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“My helping you make this suit go away is to pay you back for that.” He wouldn’t be strictly honest with her if he didn’t tell her the second part. “And also to give the firm a write-off.”

That just proved her point. “In other words, charity,” Erin concluded.

“By allowing my firm to represent you and casting us in a good light, you’d be doing us a favor and we in turn would be doing one for you by exposing this blackmailer in sheep’s clothing,” he told her. On the way over here he’d thought of an avenue of strategy to try. “You mentioned that you had gotten some favorable press from the father of one of the kids in the cancer ward and that was how your career took off, right?”

She looked at him, confused. Where was he going with this? “Yes, but—”

As he spoke, he leaned in over the table and closer to her, shutting out the rest of the world. Even with a table between them, she was acutely aware of him, of the cologne he was wearing. Of the way his eyes crinkled slightly at the edges.

“What do you think about getting in touch with him, letting him know about the case?” Steve proposed.

“Why would I do that?” she asked. “He was nice enough to get me the publicity I needed to make people aware of my product at the time. I don’t want to repay him by asking him for another favor.”

He struggled not to stare at her. Was this woman for real? In the world he lived in, the women he’d encountered of late were all devious and self-serving. She was like the antiversion of those women. She was single-handedly restoring his faith in humanity in general, and women in particular.

“My guess is that he would be more than happy to do something positive for you after you brought joy into his son’s life. Not only that but this is the kind of human-interest story people respond to—altruism versus greed. It’s the stuff that reputations and promotions are made of.

“And in the meantime, I think that I’ll pay this Wade Baker a little visit after I get a few things straightened out first.”

For the first time since Mike had told her about the suit against her company, Erin felt hopeful, which in turn ushered in just the slightest feeling of relief. She was very tempted to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him. But that, she knew, would open a door to a place she realized she was afraid to go.

So why was she dwelling on it the way she was?

Get a grip, Erin,
she upbraided herself.

It didn’t help, didn’t change anything.

Her company was in trouble and here she was, fantasizing about the man who was offering to help. What was
wrong
with her?

“I don’t know what to say,” she told him.

Steve laughed. “Well, the words
thank you
come to mind.”

She shook her head. “That doesn’t seem nearly good enough.”

He merely smiled at her. “It’ll do for now.”

“And later?” she asked, since that was what his tone indicated, that there’d be more to do down the line.

“Is later,” he told her whimsically, adding a wink that went like an arrow straight into her stomach. She could feel her stomach tightening in anticipation—of what, she wasn’t sure. Nevertheless, anticipation was still there, heightening all her senses and placing them all on red alert.

“Meanwhile,” Steve continued as he finished the last of his turnover, “nothing’s changed, right? We’re still on for Sunday?”

She nodded in response. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she told him.

“That’s good.” He’d said that with more than a little enthusiasm. Realizing that she might think he was pressuring her and thereby making her feel that he was in the same sort of category that Baker was, Steve was quick to add, “Because I would really hate to have to disappoint Jason.”

Her eyes met his. The boy was not the first person who came to her mind when she thought about the possible cancellation of her date. But in order to keep this from progressing too rapidly or going down the wrong road, she murmured, “Same here,” as she quickly lowered her eyes again.

* * *

Steve called A.J. Clarke the moment he returned to his office.

A.J. and his partner, George Matthews, had been his law firm’s private investigators for the past five years. Both were excellent at what they did, but over time he had found A.J. to be the more approachable as well as flexible of the two.

“What’s up?” A.J. asked as he closed the office door behind him and crossed to the chair in front of Steve’s desk.

Steve got right down to it. “I need you to locate a Wade Baker for me. Not just where he lives but what his daily routine is. I want to find out where he works, who he interacts with. Does he have friends, or is he a loner? In short, I want a complete picture of Baker’s current day-to-day life.”

“You want a background check on him, as well?” A.J. asked.

Of average height, build and coloring, A.J. blended into the surrounding scenery better than anyone he had ever seen, which was in part what made the man so good at what he did. A.J. made no impression—except when he wanted to get up close and personal. Then the impression was
very
distinct. Despite his nondescript appearance, he was not a man to be taken lightly or dismissed.

Steve nodded. “Might not be a bad idea.” Knowing how busy the investigator tended to be, he added, “And I need this done ASAP. It’s for a case that needs to go away as quickly as possible.”

Getting up, A.J. nodded. He began backing out of the office. “Consider it gone already.”

It was well-known that A.J. made no promises he couldn’t keep. “Knew I could count on you,” Steve told the man with a satisfied smile.

* * *

“So should we start thinking about re-forming the company under a different logo?” Mike asked her the moment Erin walked back into their office.

The feeling growing inside her for the past forty minutes had been laced with optimism. She realized that she was putting her money on a positive outcome, but Steve really did make her feel that everything was going to be all right.

“I think we can hold off awhile on that,” she told Mike.

“You ran Baker over with your car?” Neal asked hopefully.

“No. But I did manage to get a lawyer to represent us,” she told the others. She opened the bottom drawer of her desk and dropped her purse into it.

“A lawyer?” Rhonda echoed.

“We can afford a lawyer?” Gypsy asked from the doorway, drawn into the room by the sound of voices.

“I thought you said we couldn’t,” Judith reminded her.

Turning around to face the administrative assistant, Erin corrected the misinformation before it began to escalate. “The lawyer’s taking the case pro bono.”

“Worked your magic on him, did you?” Mike’s laugh made it clear that the question was a rhetorical one.

Gypsy was apparently still trying to untangle the information. “Bono’s a lawyer?” she asked, confused, looking from Mike to Erin.

“Not Bono the singer,
bono,
” Erin emphasized, enunciating both the Irish singer’s name and the Latin term.

Rhonda stepped up to explain the term to the administrative assistant. “It means that Erin got someone to work for free on our behalf.”

“Just how did you manage that?” Christian asked.

“Remember that Career Day talk I gave at that elementary school the other day?” Erin asked.

“The one you almost didn’t go to?” Mike recalled. “Yeah. What about it?”

“The other speaker that day was a lawyer,” she told them, thinking that would answer any of their questions on the subject.

But clearly not for Mike. “And we want a lawyer who gives speeches to kindergartners?”

“Second graders,” she corrected, then added with feeling, “And we want this one.”

“Oh, so it’s like that, is it?” Mike asked, smirking.

The expression on his face told her that he was clearly interested. His interest sparked the others’, as well.

“It’s not like anything, Mike,” she insisted even though she wasn’t nearly as certain about that as she tried to sound. There was something about Steve that managed to seep through all her self-constructed barriers, barriers that were supposed to keep her safe. “He’s the only lawyer I know, so I called him to see if he had a suggestion or knew anyone who could help us get Wade to drop this stupid lawsuit. Steve wound up volunteering to help us, saying his company could do it pro bono because it needed a write-off.”

“Do we get to meet him?” Neal asked, clearly very interested.

She could just see how that would go. There’d be six people talking at Steve, most likely all at once. He’d be running for the hills within minutes.

“And risk him deciding
not
to take the case?” she responded. “Not a chance.”

“So when do we find out if it’s okay to go on working here?” Mike asked.

“Steve said that we should just continue working the way we always have. In other words, just act as if everything was all right,” she told them.

“Oh, so it’s ‘Steve’ now, is it?” Neal asked with an extrawide smile. “Good for you, Erin.”

She ignored Neal’s obvious meaning and just zeroed in on his initial comment, answering it as if it had been serious.

“As far as I know, that’s always been his name. Now let’s get back to filling those orders or even if we win the case, we won’t have a company to run, because we will have been forced to close our doors due to a failure to fill back orders. Understood?” she asked, looking from one person on the team to another.

It was Mike who spoke up first. “Understood,
mein Kapitän.
” He saluted her, then turned toward the others. “You heard the lady, guys. We have dinosaurs to bring to life. Let’s get cracking!”

Erin watched with a surge of emotion as everyone got busy and she silently prayed that Steve had a miracle in his bag of tricks. Otherwise, this would be a thing of the past all too soon.

* * *

The next day, no matter what else she was doing, Erin was aware that she lived for the phone. Or, more accurately put, she lived
to hear it ring
and bring her good news.

Each time it did ring, whether she was at work or at home, she would snatch up the receiver and the first thing out of her mouth was always his name.

By late afternoon, her nerves were frayed but she calculated that eventually, the odds had to be in her favor.

“Steve?”

There was a momentary pause on the other end of the line and then a deep male voice asked her, “How did you know it was me?”

Since she had picked up the landline’s receiver on the first ring, he assumed that the caller ID hadn’t had time to register yet. Was she just anticipating his call, or was there something more to it?

It was ludicrous to believe something like that, he told himself, and yet...

There was no “yet” and he couldn’t allow his imagination to get carried away.

“Lucky guess,” she answered evasively. The next moment, she dropped any attempt at sounding nonchalant. They both knew how very important the correct outcome to this case was to her. “So, any news about my case?”

“It’s progressing,” was all Steve said in response. He would have loved to have told her that things looked as if they were going well on his end. If, for some reason, it all fell apart at the last minute, then she would be even more devastated, in his opinion, than she would be if she kept her expectations in check.