Mistress, Inc. (14 page)
Authors: Niobia Bryant
Chapter 10
J
essa rose to her feet and turned as her attorney, Lincoln Manning, strode into his Manhattan corner office. She smiled at him. “Lincoln Manning is never late,” she teased, as he paused long enough in her path to kiss her cheek before taking his seat behind his leather-topped desk.
essa rose to her feet and turned as her attorney, Lincoln Manning, strode into his Manhattan corner office. She smiled at him. “Lincoln Manning is never late,” she teased, as he paused long enough in her path to kiss her cheek before taking his seat behind his leather-topped desk.
He smoothed his tie as he walked his chair up closer to his desk. “Actually, I was on a phone conference with my paralegal and one of the firm’s partners and an attorney who is highly skilled in estate law,” he said.
Jessa tilted her head to the side as she eyed the man.
“Your chances of this even making it to court are slim to none,” Lincoln said, picking up his pen to work between his fingers as he leaned back in his chair. “The absence of a will would have made the estate intestate and it would have been handled by the probate court, and once the heir was born you would have had a better chance of halting the probate proceedings until the lawsuit was resolved.”
Jessa eyed her attorney and friend. “So what’s the bottom line?”
Lincoln leaned forward and locked his eyes with hers. “If—and it’s a big if—it made it before a judge, the cost of the legal fees would not be sufficient for the amount you may or may not recover from his estate, which is sizable but hardly seven figures.”
Jessa uncrossed one leg and crossed the other. “How long have we been friends, Lincoln?” she asked.
He smiled broadly. “So long that I barely remember how long.”
“And do you think I give up so easily on
anything
I want?” Jessa asked in her husky voice.
anything
I want?” Jessa asked in her husky voice.
Lincoln eyed her for a long time.
Jessa never flinched.
“Can I assume you really only wanted a lawyer and friend, and that’s why you gave up so easily on me?” he asked.
Jessa closed her eyes, shook her head, and threw her hands up to the ceiling. “Do you know I have been hit on, propositioned, and offered amazing things more now than any other time in my life. And the really jacked-up part about it? I am not looking for love or sex or affairs or flings or anything ... not even with a cute lawyer who is a cool-ass friend,” she finished softly.
Lincoln patted his hands against his desktop. “The offer is on the table.”
“Duly noted, counselor,” she flirted.
Lincoln made a serious face. “Don’t do that,” he said sternly.
Jessa flung her head back and laughed.
They fell into a comfortable silence.
“Jessa,” Lincoln said, leaning back in his chair again. “Let this go. Have your baby. Be happy. Collect social security. Tell his parents so they can help you and your child. Just move on,” he advised.
Jessa was shaking her head before he even finished. “People want me dead for loving a married man who eventually tried to kill me because I ended it. That woman has called my child a bastard every chance she gets. She cheated on him first and filed for divorce, and now she’s sitting pretty on her ass counting everything he left behind. If he had enough balls not to kill himself and he knew about this baby, he would have made sure that this child was taken care of. I know that and she knows that.
Fuck
her.”
Fuck
her.”
Jessa paused and licked the gloss from her lips. “I won’t push this until I’m broke or I look a fool, but I’m not giving up yet. She’s not going to win this easy.”
“You may need to pull his parents into this on your side,” he said.
Jessa truly didn’t want the involvement of Eric’s parents and had barely considered them once she decided to have the baby. “They helped to shape Eric into the lunatic that tried to kill me,” she told him. “I don’t want their influence on this child,” she insisted.
“But you may need them to help establish paternity,” Lincoln explained. “It would be easier to do it through them than exhuming the body.”
Jessa eyes widened. “You mean they would pull his dead ass out of the grave?” she asked in astonishment.
“Yes, ma’am, and it ain’t cheap,” he assured her.
She frowned. Deeply.
Lincoln held up his hands. “I will handle the deposition today, but we have to bring an estate lawyer on to the case to make sure you get the best representation possible,” he said, looking down at his leather Piaget watch. “They should be in the conference room by now. Ready?”
Jessa rose just as Lincoln stood up and came around his desk with leather folders in his hands. “Question is: Are they ready for me?” she asked smoothly before she preceded him out of the office.
Jessa and Jaime stared each other down from across the conference table as their attorneys volleyed back and forth about the validity of a lawsuit and the lack of precedent. Jessa had to bite her bottom lip to keep from snarling at her ex-friend as she remembered the wench calling her child a bastard. She once asked the woman for forgiveness, but now Jessa could care less about Jaime.
Fuck her and fuck everybody in her world.
Fuck her and fuck everybody in her world.
Jaime’s eyes said, “I hate you.”
Jessa prayed her eyes conveyed, “You’re late, bitch.”
“Why are we even going through all this drama when there’s no proof she’s even pregnant?” Jaime asked, her eyes still locked with Jessa as she reached down into her bag on the floor and slapped a pregnancy kit on the table before sliding it across the table to Jessa with plenty of force.
Jessa smirked as she easily shifted and allowed the box to go spinning off the table to the floor behind her. “Silly bitch,” Jessa mouthed, making sure the other woman could read her lips.
Jaime jumped up to her feet, but her attorney reached his hand out to steer her back down into her seat.
Jessa never flinched. She absolutely refused to let her enemy see her sweat even if her entire body was a riot of nerves.
“Ms. Hall, your attorney has a copy of the medical report confirming that Ms. Bell is indeed pregnant,” Lincoln told her. “You do agree that the time frame matches up to the time that you discovered Ms. Bell was involved in an intimate relationship with your husband?”
Jaime’s lawyer whispered something in Jaime’s ear before she said, “Yes, Mrs. Bell made sure to alert me to the fact that she was sleeping with my husband.”
“What were your husband’s thoughts on having children ?” Lincoln asked, making notes on his legal pad.
“We were waiting to have children. Our life was mapped out and kids wasn’t on the schedule for a few years,” Jaime said, looking and sounding belligerent.
“But you do believe that your husband wanted children?”
“With
me?
Yes,” she stressed. “With a mistress? No.”
me?
Yes,” she stressed. “With a mistress? No.”
Jessa fought the urge to throw out a snide remark.
“Do you think if your husband was aware of the child that he would have made provisions for the baby in the will?” Lincoln asked.
Jaime smirked and shook her head. “I can’t speak for a dead man who didn’t make the best decisions ... obviously.”
Lincoln reached for Jessa’s hand under the table and patted it reassuringly. It was balled into a fist with her red lacquered nails nearly piercing the flesh of her palm. His small show of comfort evoked emotions in her that caused tears to fill her eyes. She blinked them away.
“But you do acknowledge that there is a possibility that Eric Hall is the father of Jessa Bell’s baby?” Lincoln asked, redirecting his line of questioning.
“What I acknowledge is that I cannot believe a woman I called friend is so low and so slack to actually sue me behind this bullshit, as if fucking my husband behind my back wasn’t enough?” Jaime chewed out, her eyes blazing as she glared at Jessa. “Are you obsessed with me? Do you want to be me, Jessa? First Eric, then Pleasure, and now you want the inheritance my husband left me.”
Jessa laughed at her. A good rich, belly laugh that was completely mocking and definitely letting Jaime know just how foolish Jessa Bell thought she was. “Jaime, please, you don’t even know who you are or what you want, so who can mimic you—a grown woman in her thirties going through the self-discovery that most women make in their late teens. Please, don’t be silly.”
“Ladies, please,” Jaime’s attorney said. “The sooner we finish this deposition the better, so that you two can return to your corners.”
“I agree,” Lincoln said before leaning over to whisper in Jaime’s ear.
“Just keep cool, Jessa, this is almost over,” he said.
She nodded.
“If you are truly interested in continuing with this matter, I think that not only proof of pregnancy is necessary but also proof of paternity,” Jaime’s lawyer said.
“Postnatal, not prenatal; there are too many risks to the pregnancy,” Lincoln insisted.
“You expect us to wait all those months until she gives birth ... then she should have waited to bring this matter up at all,” Jaime’s attorney scoffed. “I am sorry, but if you continue forward with this, we will request a court-approved paternity test as soon as possible.”
“So that means your client is willing to give permission for exhuming the body?” Lincoln countered.
“No, I am not,” Jaime stressed. “Why am I taking on the burden of my husband’s bastard?”
Jessa jumped to her feet and picked up her glass of water to throw in Jaime’s face in one swift movement that the woman didn’t see coming until her face and hair were all wet.
Jaime gasped and then knocked her glass of water across the table to send water splashing against some of Lincoln’s papers and Jessa’s black pencil skirt.
“All right, counselor, that’s it. Let’s go, Jaime.” Her attorney gathered his papers into his briefcase and grabbed Jaime’s elbow to escort her out of the conference room.
“Jessa, you two cannot act like this during a professional meeting,” Lincoln scolded her as he used a napkin to absorb some of the moisture from his papers. “Come on. Throwing water? You’re a grown-ass woman. What you been watching,
Basketball Wives?
”
Basketball Wives?
”
“I apologize, Lincoln,” she told him truthfully as she dropped back down into her chair. “She brings out the worst in me.”
“I thought you told me you’re going to church and reading the Bible and trying to get saved?” Lincoln sat down in the chair next to her again. “I’ve seen all the contracts and know about the money—the good money—you’re making recently. I know about the insurance policy Marc left. These people want you to risk a miscarriage to prove the paternity. Man, let this shit go.”
Jessa said nothing as she turned her head to look out the window.
Soon Lincoln gathered up his papers and walked to the door. “Stay as long as you want; they don’t need this conference room until after lunch,” he said before leaving.
Once Jessa finally took her leave from Lincoln’s office she headed straight home and spent the rest of the day in bed. She felt like she needed to rejuvenate mentally and physically. She didn’t spare one thought on Jaime and the impending lawsuit. She gave herself a vacation from it.
The next morning she packed her bag and waited for her car service to arrive to drive her into New York for her week of business meetings and promotions. Leaving her bags by the door, she made herself a small bowl of cinnamon and brown sugar oatmeal with lots of walnuts as she took her prenatal vitamin. That reminded her to pack it, and she was just sticking the bottle into her purse when her cell phone rang.
Jessa pulled it out and answered the call. “Morning, Keegan,” she said, looking through the large window over her sink at Aria walking Kingston to his car. Her belly was round in the robe she wore as Kingston kissed her neck intimately before bending to kiss her belly as well, then climbing into his car and reversing out of the driveway. Aria stood there and watched his car until it was out of sight before she turned and made her way back up the stairs and into her house.
They were the picture of happily ever after. A team. When she gave birth he would be there to support her, coach her, and love her through it.
Who will be there for me?
“Can you believe that Viagra addict is denying his affair!”
Jessa leaned back from the phone as Keegan screeched in anger. “Whoa! What happened?”
“My shitty ex-husband is saying he left the marriage because I was no longer satisfying him in any aspect and he is denying having an affair.” Keegan sniffed and Jessa knew she was crying. “He is trying not to pay me major alimony. That lying, limp-dick, cheating son of a bitch.”
Jessa made a face. “I’m sorry, Keegan. What are you going to do?” she asked, tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder as she emptied the steaming oatmeal from the small pot and into a bowl. “Do you have proof he cheated?”
Jessa paused at the hilarity of the conversation for a moment. A former mistress advises an ex-mistress turned wife on how to prove the existence of her husband’s mistress. If she wasn’t in the middle of the conversation, she would side-eye herself.
“No, but I wish I did, sugar drop,” Keegan sighed. “That bastard just left here—”
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