The Cost of Happiness: A Contemporary Romance (15 page)

Dan had always figured he just wasn’t as—well, as horny as other guys. He’d been shocked when his college roommate, a totally nerdy guy who seemed the antithesis of the sexist horndog type, admitted to Dan that he looked at every woman he saw—young, old, slim, fat, pretty, plain—and asked himself if he’d do her. The guy had really believed that all men did that, and for all Dan knew, maybe they did. He didn’t. Was that weird?

Dan had only dated a few women before law school, and he hadn’t felt like
this
in any of those situations. He hadn’t been breathless with a heightened awareness of another human being. He hadn’t experienced this headlong rush to be with someone, nor the stubborn reluctance to leave her. He loved talking with Meghan, about the case, or about office politics, or even what to eat at breakfast. Hell, he was happy just looking at her.

She glanced up as she finished with one guy, questions for Dan in her eyes: Did he want to take over? Was she doing okay? Had she missed something?

He smiled gently at her, both to reassure her and maybe just a teeny bit to mock her anxieties. He thought they were cute, particularly coming from someone whose grades at Franklin were almost certainly better than his had been at Harvard. Didn’t matter. If they’d been at school together, he’d have wanted to date her even as she’d raced off with all the academic honors.

Only they weren’t classmates. Nor even two lawyers at the same firm. He was her supervisor. He had to respect that. So why the hell did he feel this compulsion to risk his job—hell, and her job—by pursuing a romance?

Then she laughed at something the tech guy said, and Dan knew. The way Meghan approached problems sparkled—like the glint of a scalpel blade in the hands of a skilled surgeon. The day would come when plaintiffs’ lawyers would sweat when they saw her name as counsel of record. He’d have found her a challenging opposing counsel. He’d also have done anything he could to pursue a relationship.

In fact, he couldn’t think of any circumstance under which he wouldn’t have felt this way about her. Yes, even if one or both of them had been married. Ironic, wasn’t it?

“Um, Dan?” she asked him quietly. He didn’t look up—he’d learned that trick ages ago. Don’t reveal that you haven’t been following along. Instead, the trick is to look even more preoccupied.

After a moment, he finished writing something—he’d have to see later what he’d scribbled—and met her gaze. “I think you’ve got it covered.”

“I was just wondering if you needed more explanation from Mr. Liu here about how he thinks our experts can test the SMS technology they used ten years ago to prove it didn’t cause overbilling,” she said.

Ah, someone finally knew something. Dan tried to read Meghan’s expression. She didn’t need his help. Her eyes were coolly deferential.

He turned to the engineer, a pleasant, very young-looking Asian who seemed concerned that maybe he had been too technical. “Mr. Liu, I have a confession to make,” Dan started. “I don’t understand how my own cell phone works, let alone how a ProCell K-910 worked ten years ago. However, I do know precisely how well Ms. Mattson is doing with the more technical aspects of this case. I daresay eventually we’ll have a raft of experts, all of whom will want to talk to you in fluent geek-speak. A language I don’t understand, as you can tell.”

Mr. Liu—Dan had missed the fellow’s given name—relaxed and chuckled. “Yes, I see your point. And you are right—Ms. Mattson seems to grasp the basic concepts very well.”

Now it was Meghan’s turn to smile mildly at her notepad. Mr. Liu beamed at them both, and Dan was amused to see a rather paternal satisfaction on the other man’s face, pride that he’d succeeded in educating the muddle-brained lawyers.

Mr. Liu was the last one they had to talk to that afternoon. After he left the room, Dan said, “Tessa made us reservations on a mid-morning flight tomorrow, figuring that it would be easier to cancel the hotel rooms tonight if we were able to leave early than it would be to extend the stay if we needed to. So what do you think—stay here tonight and go home tomorrow morning, or figure we’ve seen all we’re going to see and talked to as many people as we are going to, and it’s safe to fly home tonight?”

Meghan did that stretchy thing of hers, which always seemed to include playing with her hair. This time she undid the clip and smooshed all the hair around on top of her head and held it there for a while. Dan was reminded of his nieces’ ability to play dress up with the oddest materials. Meghan hid behind her hair, played with it, ignored it even when it got tangled in the wind. She didn’t fuss with it in a girly, primping way, though, and he’d never noticed her pulling out a mirror to fix it.

She released the mane of brown hair and it tumbled around her shoulders. He bet it felt fantastic—he itched to reach over and stroke it. Then she bundled it up again in jerky, nervous movements, pulling his gaze to her nape. Her skin was pale, which contrasted with the darkness of the little bits of hair that she hadn’t caught up—they rested on her neck, delicate threads where his lips should be.

Whoa. Back to travel plans, okay?

“Uh, in case you hadn’t noticed, one of the techies brought us three more boxes of documents.” She gestured with her elbow at some boxes in the corner. “I’d rather have a chance to look those over tonight before we leave, in case I need to ask someone about them.”

“I must have been paying even less attention than I thought,” Dan admitted, looking at her elbow.

“No, it was while you were off talking to Lou, this morning. I’m sure you would have noticed them sitting there…eventually. It’s harder for men your age to keep track of things. You were probably thinking so hard about some elaborate scheme to get the client off the hook that you simply missed them.”

Dan waited for the knowing wink. Either she really believed that he’d been busy, or she had a good deadpan delivery. No way was he telling her what he had been thinking about.

“Let’s get some dinner, and then we’ll go through the contents. If we need more time tomorrow, Tessa will move our reservations to the afternoon,” he said.

At dinner, Dan sensed Meghan wanted to talk through the case. And as the only other conversation he wanted to have was flirtatious, he encouraged her to ramble on.

“Chun-Wei says that he’s certain all the tests will show that ProCell’s technology couldn’t have caused the overbilling. He’s run his own tests on some of the ProCell K-910 phones. He says he tried everything the FCC complained about, and got nothing.” she explained.

“Chun-Wei?”

“Mr. Liu—the last guy. The one I woke you up for,” she teased.

Dan sat up straight. “I believe you have already acknowledged that I was engrossed in the litigation strategy planning.”

“That’s your best defense?”

He laughed. “Well, I’m hardly going to admit to letting my mind wander.”

“Anyway, Chun-Wei has only been with ProCell for six years, so he admits he doesn’t know anything firsthand. Obviously, we can’t use his test results for anything, but it suggests an independent expert will find the same thing. Check this out, though. Chun-Wei says he had a ProCell K-910 back at MIT, and so he was familiar with the phone. He has some ideas how the other defendants’ versions of SMS differed. I’ll admit I glazed over a bit as he got into details.”

“Do his theories fit with what we were talking to Vince about?” Dan looked around the restaurant to see if anyone was listening.

“It may.” Meghan frowned. She seemed to pick up on his caution about talking in a public place. “I can explain more back at the hotel,” she finally said.

At the hotel, they settled back into the same seats as the night before, the papers from the three boxes coming out in carefully organized piles.

“I’m not seeing anything really exciting, are you?” he asked as he got up to get them two more sodas.

“No. We still have a box to go, though.” she said, pushing back her chair and rolling her shoulders.

Dan checked the clock—after ten. “All right, let’s go through that one and get it over with. I’m starting to feel phone fatigue.”

She laughed. “Only
starting
?”

She’d carefully repacked the documents from the second box and was setting out the file folders from the third box. Technical support calls, reports written by the engineers and more invoices, Dan noted. The fact was, he really didn’t want to find something exciting at this point. Looked like their first guess was right—they’d have to challenge the plaintiffs to prove as a threshold issue that ProCell’s technology even had the power to generate inflated charges. If it worked, ProCell would be out of the litigation a year or so earlier than the other defendants, and wouldn’t have to pay damages. A year’s worth of legal and expert witness fees would still be hefty, what with reports, depositions, interrogatories and the like. Frustrating, but he knew that was just how the legal system worked sometimes.

Half an hour later, they were both satisfied they’d gone through what they had, and found nothing. He got up and took his watch off instinctively—it was a habit from school, a demarcation between working and not working.

“You want another soda?” Dan asked.

He turned around to see Meghan doing her hair-swirling routine. Her back was turned to him. The sight of her slender fingers tangled in all that hair was both endearing and exciting.

Time to get her out of the room.

“No thanks,” she answered.

Dan realized he was standing in the middle of the room and couldn’t remember why. What had he offered her—? Oh, right. Another soda.

She was doing something with the boxes that surely didn’t need doing. He moved to stop her.

“Let me,” he said, reaching for the box on the table. His hand brushed against her arm. He flinched at the contact.

She backed away from the table, her head down and her hair shielding her face. Shyness? Or nerves?

Or does she feel what I feel?

No. Don’t go there.

He stacked the boxes on the floor by the window, then followed her to the door. There was a closet on the left, and the bathroom on the right, and a hallway’s width between. He reached for the door to open it for her. She’d grabbed it first, so his hand closed around hers. Neither of them moved.

He could hear her breathing. His heartbeat was almost as loud and there was a rushing in his head. He couldn’t figure out how to let go of her hand, now trapped between his fingers and the knob. His brain refused to solve the problem of how to open the door.

He could smell her now. She was warm, and her hair looked enticingly soft. He leaned towards her, and his other hand—the hand that wasn’t glued to hers on the doorknob—rose to touch her hair. It was even silkier than he’d imagined.

She made a noise. His brain gave up trying to solve the doorknob/hand problem and concentrated on identifying the noise. Protest? Assent? Pleasure? Distress?

“Meghan,” he breathed. It wasn’t really a question.

All the light was behind him, back in the main part of the hotel room, where the table and chairs and boxes and TV were. He couldn’t see her face, only her hair. He could feel her tension, and when she relaxed, he felt that too.

You have to tell me to stop,
he wanted to say out loud.

She turned into him, letting go of the doorknob, letting her face rest against his shirt, her hair brushing against his chin. He held her lightly. This wasn’t going to work. If his brain couldn’t figure out how to let go of a doorknob, there was no hope here.

He nuzzled the curve of her neck, smelling her hair and skin. She made that noise again, and this time he could tell it was a nice noise, an assent, pleasure.

And then they were kissing, and it wasn’t relaxed anymore. She felt so good, her lips, her tongue, her waist, her hips, the curve of her back. He pressed her against the wall next to the closet, bending down to taste her again and again. And she kissed him back, hard, harder than he’d thought she would. She strained against him, one arm up around his neck, the other hand pulling his shirt out of his waistband.

Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh yes.

Dan could feel the precise moment when all that lofty don’t-screw-this-up, do-the-right-thing crap flew out his head—he was having Meghan Mattson, and that was all there was to it. He reached under her top and found the lace of her bra, its clasp, her nipples, the weight of her breasts. Old instincts merged with a new craving for what made her unique. His kisses started to move to her neckline, which he pushed aside. Her skin was softness over strength.

He unbuttoned the top of her trousers and released the zipper. It slid down as his hand slipped in, cupping her abdomen and moving down. His other hand slipped over her ass. He would have pressed her closer to him, to his erection, but her hand was in the way, moving seductively and slowly along his length. The room was like a sauna, and he could feel himself melting even as he got harder.

A bed. They needed a bed. And…

Oh shit.

He said it again, this time out loud. “Oh, shit.” He left his hands where they were. In that instant everything felt different.

“What?” He could hear her confusion. His eyes were closed, his face alongside hers.

“No condoms,” he murmured. He knew she didn’t have any. He just knew.

She slumped back against the wall, and curled her arms around him, pulling her into him.

“That’s okay,” she tried to reassure him.

His brain clicked back on.
What did okay mean? “Okay, I’m on the pill and I magically know you don’t have any communicable diseases?” Or “That’s okay because it’s better if we stop, as we’re perilously close to acting out the cliché scene with the partner and the paralegal having an out-of-town fling?”

She spoke into his ear softly, intimately. “We can get condoms. I bet we can get them downstairs.”

Silence.

An awful roaring silence scared Meghan and made it impossible for her to move. Then Dan hugged her tight and laughed. She relaxed when she realized it was happy laughter.