When Lightning Strikes Twice (12 page)

As Rachel had hoped, listening to the show was an ideal diversion. A dirigible factory? The urge to cry was replaced by sheer incredulity as the debate raged on.

“Look what I have for you, Katie.” Wade placed a giant-sized chocolate chip muffin on the top of Katie’s desk.

“My favorite!” Katie exclaimed eagerly. “And from Brunner’s Bakery, too, my most favorite place!”

Wade was aware of that. He’d made a special trip this morning, driving several miles out of his way, to the bakery in Haddonfield to buy this muffin. He knew the younger Sheely siblings were quite receptive to bribery. He and Tim had done enough of it over the years—to buy silence, to gain privacy, to get information.

Information was what he was currently seeking.

Katie swung around in her chair and began to pull the wrapper from the muffin. The phone rang, and she answered it, only to instantly disconnect the caller. “They can call back later,” she said airily. “I want to eat this while it’s still warm.”

Wade winced. When the phone rang again, he answered it and dealt with the caller himself while Katie ate her muffin.

“Dana was really upset when I dropped her off yesterday,” he said casually, tucking the message he’d written into the pocket of his suitcoat.

“Yeah, she sure was mad,” Katie agreed, chomping into the muffin. “And then I had to go open my big mouth and now she’s ticked off at Tricia and Tricia is ready to kill me.”

“Tricia?” Wade stifled a groan. He wasn’t in the mood to follow Katie on one of her pointless flights of ideas. “Did Dana tell you why she was so angry?” he asked bluntly, trying to keep her on track.

“You don’t know either?”

It seemed his bakery bribe had been a wasted effort. Katie was as in the dark about Dana as he was. Wade sighed his frustration.

“Looked like you were pretty mad, too—the way you peeled out of there at a hundred miles an hour! Man!” Katie sounded impressed.

“I did not ‘peel out’
or
speed,” Wade said tightly. Her admiration of what could only be described as juvenile behavior irritated him. “You must have me confused with your hotshot brother Brendan, who was doing both in Dana’s car.”

“Sure.” Katie snickered. “Next you’ll be saying you weren’t mad either,”

Wade walked to the window and gazed out at the lush lawn and towering trees in Lakeview Park, bordering the small man-made lake that had given the town its name. “By the time I got home yesterday, I couldn’t remember exactly why I was so furious.”

The admission alarmed him as much as this current scene he was trapped in—having a heart-to-heart talk with Katie who was scanning the entertainment section of the newspaper, more interested in celebrity gossip than anything he might say.

And yet he couldn’t seem to stop talking. “I called your house last night—I actually got through in the five seconds between Emily’s phone calls, and Anthony told me that Dana wouldn’t talk to me.”

It was still bothering him. Sixteen-year-old Anthony Sheely, currently caught up in a dark, brooding, alienated-artist phase had sounded as if he were relishing the melodrama and his own part as messenger. “Dana says she doesn’t want to speak to you,” Anthony had announced in theatrically resonant tones. “She says you know why.”

Could she actually be holding a grudge? He couldn’t remember the last time they had parted in anger. They’d always kidded each other, true, but neither took offense. Certainly not lasting offense.

“Well, just don’t ask me what Tricia said because then
both Dana and Tricia would gang up on me,” warned Katie. “And you’d probably be mad, too. So consider my lips zipped!”

“I don’t care what Tricia said.” Exasperated, Wade willed himself to be patient. He hitched a leg onto the corner of her desk and treated her to a buddy-to-buddy smile. “Katie, how close is Dana to Quint Cormack?”

Katie licked chocolate off her fingers. “He’s her boss.”

Wade’s smile turned into a grimace. This was bordering on hopeless. “I
know
he’s her boss but is she—are they—” His voice trailed off. Trying to subtly pump Katie for information was not working, but he wasn’t sure how blatant he should go.

The possibility of Dana being involved with her boss had occurred to him last night and steadily nagged at him since. True, she was dating Rich Vicker, but he knew that relationship wasn’t serious—maybe she was even using it in an attempt to make Cormack jealous?

Until last night, the idea of Dana having a clandestine affair with her boss—or anyone else—would’ve struck him as absurd. She was not secretive, especially not with him, her best pal Wade. But learning that she’d kept John Pedersen’s appointments with the Cormack firm from him had altered his perceptions.

Dana was fully capable of keeping a secret from him. But why would she want to keep an affair with Cormack quiet?

As a longtime Sheely family satellite, the answer came to him immediately. If Dana and Cormack were having a fling, she would
never
want her parents to find out. Quint Cormack was divorced, and Bob and Mary Jean Sheely were as inflexible as the Pope himself on the issue of divorce.

Vaguely, then with growing clarity, Wade remembered the uproar a couple years back when Tricia Sheely had dated a divorced claims adjustor in the insurance agency where she worked.

“If you date someone who’s divorced, it could lead to
marrying someone who’s divorced, and that marriage could lead to excommunication,”
the older Sheelys had said. And shouted. While visiting Dana and the Sheelys during that period, he’d overheard her folks lecturing Tricia over the phone countless times.

Finally Tricia had stopped dating the guy, and only then was she back in her parents’ good graces. No, a savvy offspring wouldn’t want Ma and Pa Sheely to know anything at all about a relationship with a divorced person.

Did Dana think he would snitch to her parents if she confided in him? Wade felt hurt. Then he thought how much he loathed the idea of her with Quinton Cormack. Divorce had nothing to do with it, he assured himself; he simply hated that conniving, client-stealing weasel’s guts. To his dismay, Wade realized that he was entirely capable of telling Bob and Mary Jean Sheely exactly what their darling daughter was up to. And with whom!

He watched Katie polish off the last crumbs of the muffin and daintily wipe her mouth. “Katie, would you know if Dana is—dating Quint Cormack?” he asked brusquely. He waited, stiff and tense, for her answer.

Which he couldn’t quite interpret.

“Whoa, wait’ll Tricia hears that!” Katie burst into laughter. “She won’t be mad at me anymore, she—Oh hi, Rachel.” The girl looked up and greeted a dour Rachel, who had entered the office and stood staring at them.

“Hey, Rach,” murmured Wade unenthusiastically.

He recalled Dana telling him that his cousin had somehow ended up baby-sitting for Quint Cormack’s child yesterday, but he decided not to mention it. Not with Rachel looking grimmer than the Grim Reaper on a pickup mission.

“Aren’t you, like, roasting to death in that?” Katie asked, eyeing Rachel’s dove gray turtleneck jersey that she wore under her navy pin-striped suit jacket. Katie was in a sleeveless chambray blouse and a demin miniskirt, in deference to the presummer heat.

“Rachel never sweats,” Wade drawled. “She could
wear that outfit in a sauna, and she still wouldn’t perspire.”

Rachel tugged the high cotton neck of her jersey even higher. “It’s supposed to get cooler today,” she arguedly weakly.

“Yeah, the temperature is supposed to plummet the whole way down to seventy-five,” taunted Wade. “Brrr. Time to bring out the long-johns.”

‘There is no time for anyone to stand around and socialize!” Eve Saxon marched into the office like a five-star general reviewing a less-than-acceptable line of troops. “This is an office, not a chat room! Is it too much to expect the workday to begin with work? Is that a concept any of you can grasp?”

Katie jumped to attention. Wade and Rachel exchanged apprehensive glances. A day that began with a terse, tense Aunt Eve boded ill for everyone.

And Eve did look and sound terse and tense this morning, which was unusual. Eve Saxon almost always maintained her composure, saving her rare displays of emotion for the courtroom where they were calculated to have the intended effect on a judge or jury.

Her anxiety building, Rachel tried to guess what had caused her aunt to “blow her cool” as Katie would say. Something must be very wrong indeed.

After all, Aunt Eve had remained calm when Rachel lost the Pedersen case, although the verdict had galled her. And five months ago, though it hadn’t pleased her, Eve had graciously endured the unwelcome fiftieth birthday bash her brothers and their wives had insisted upon hosting for her. Eve could easily pass for forty, even her late thirties. And she had, until that birthday party, indisputably revealed her age to all.

Rachel covertly studied her aunt, whose skin was smooth and unlined, her makeup artfully applied. An amber-colored rinse had gradually lightened her once-dark hair to conceal and blend with whatever gray had dared to appear. Her hair was cut in a short, chic style that flattered her classic features.

Rachel knew her aunt worked out in a gym at least four days a week, often more, and her body was firm and slim and shapely. The beautiful raspberry-colored suit she wore this morning accentuated her figure to designer perfection. Rachel admired the color and the fit of the suit. She would never dare wear raspberry or anything figure-enhancing for fear of appearing to be a nonserious bimbo, but Aunt Eve had the stately polish, and the age, to carry it off.

Rachel wanted to compliment Eve on her suit, which she hadn’t seen before, but the icy glitter in the older woman’s eye warned her that their aunt-niece roles had been supplanted by their partner-associate status.

And from the way Eve’s eyes flicked over the trio in front of her, none of them passed muster. “Is there coffee in the conference room?” demanded Eve.

Katie nodded her head.

“Who made it?” Eve snapped. “You?”

“N-No, ma’am. Margaret did,” Katie replied, naming one of the two Saxon Associate secretaries.

“Good. Rachel, Wade, come into the conference room with me right now. Katie”—Eve turned back to the girl—”We are not to be interrupted. Especially, not by you. Do you understand?”

“I won’t come near you,” Katie promised fervently.

The three Saxons entered the formal, finely appointed conference room at the end of the small corridor. Eve closed the door behind them and fairly raced to the coffeepot, which stood on the antique cherrywood credenza. “God, this better not be decaf,” she muttered.

“You know that Margaret is a traditionalist,” Wade said lightly. “If it’s not high-test, powered with caffeine, it’s not worth making or drinking.”

“I’m in full agreement with her today.” Eve poured herself a cup and took a bracing swallow.

“Aunt Eve, maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but you’re not your usual congenial self this morning.” Wade flashed his winning, boyish smile, the one he’d perfected
over the years, the one that never failed to charm its recipient.

It failed this morning. Eve glared at him. “A brillant observation. How perceptive you are, Wade. If you applied such talents to your career, we might actually have a chance of winning a case around here. Let me amend that to include keeping our clients, too. Because the way things are going now, we might as well stand aside and watch our clients and our chances to win a case fly out the door while—”

“Aunt Eve, what’s happened?” Rachel cut in, more than a little alarmed by her aunt’s uncharacteristic tirade. She had seen Eve exasperated or irritated with Wade, but she’d never ripped into him like this.

“I was getting to that, but you interrupted me!” Eve turned her wrath on her niece. “Am I going to be allowed to finish, or do you intend to break in with more useless questions?”

“I apologize, I won’t interrupt again,” Rachel murmured, sliding into a chair.

Her aunt continued her diatribe and Rachel’s spirits, already low after a confused, nearly sleepless night, sunk to a depth that made the pits seem like high altitude. Bad enough that she’d staggered into the bathroom this morning after the blast from her alarm clock made her feel as if she’d been shot in the head. Worse was to follow. She’d glanced in the mirror while brushing her teeth and nearly swallowed her toothbrush whole because on her neck …

Rachel blushed and drew her neck deeper into her shirt. On her neck was a sizable purple bruise, a bite mark, impossible not to notice, impossible to hide unless one resorted to a turtleneck jersey that was totally inappropriate for today’s warm weather. She knew what the mark was, of course. She remembered the exact moment Quint Cormack had given it to her. A shiver went through her, and she could almost feel his teeth on her skin, sensually biting and sucking.

The erotic memory faded quickly in the harsh light of
day. She was humiliated, she looked like she’d had a run-in with Dracula last night. At the advanced age of twenty-eight she had her very first … Rachel cringed. She had never even said the word “hickey” aloud, and now she was sporting one.

Her first impulse was to march into Quint’s office and show him the damage he’d inflicted. The prospect held a certain appeal, and the thought of seeing Quint made her jittery and giddy with anticipation. So jittery and giddy it scared her. She was acting like an infatuated schoolgirl! Of course she wouldn’t go to Quint’s office this morning; she would go to her own.

Which she did, arriving just in time to hear Wade ask Katie Sheely if her sister Dana was dating Quint Cormack. The mark of his passion on her neck had actually begun to throb like a painful wound as Rachel pictured Quint and Dana Sheely together. Kissing and touching the way—

“Have you heard a single word I’ve said, Rachel?” Eve’s voice cut through her mournful reverie.

Rachel didn’t bother to he, she knew the truth was written on her blank face. Eve looked like she wanted to dismember both her niece and nephew, and while Rachel didn’t really blame her, she couldn’t help but wish her aunt had chosen any other morning but this one to regret taking her brothers’ children into her highly successful practice. Her
previously
highly successful practice.