Wrangling with the Laywer (8 page)

She, on the other hand, was standing in the direct glare of his attention. He buttoned his jacket with one hand, placing the other in his pocket as he casually approached her. His eyes were fixed on her face, narrowed but with the trademark warmth. She felt like she was starting to get scorch marks.

“What now? Are you heading back to the studio?”

She shook her head. “I know it sounds insane but I might go home and lie down for a while. Finn had a cold earlier in the week; I think might be getting the same thing.” She smiled wryly. “I don’t usually fall asleep in waiting rooms.”

“Veda will drive you.”

She shook her head. “I can take a cab-”

“I have some business to finish up here first, anyway. He’s going to be idling by the kerb; you may as well keep him busy.” He picked up his phone and pressed a button before holding it to his ear. He clasped her arm lightly as if preventing her from escaping. “Veda. I’m sending Miss Green down to you. Could you possibly drop her off in Brooklyn Heights?” He paused. “That’s the one. She’s not feeling great, so take good care of her.”

He snapped his phone shut. “There.”

Her cheeks felt unmistakably flushed now. She realised the stiffness from the meeting was probably muscle ache. “Thanks.” This was no time to argue. “I appreciate it.”

“Will your sister take Finn if you’re not up for it, or can I help to organise something?”

She searched his face. His voice was low and intimate, and she saw a flash of Alice’s father suddenly. She smiled gratefully, feeling marginally less intimidated by him. “Megan will be able to cover for me. I’ll probably ask her to keep him overnight so I can get some sleep.”

He nodded, satisfied.

Remembering that she was standing in the middle of a busy if hushed office space, with several pairs of curious eyes watching, she straightened her back and took a step away. Gabe’s sharp suit came into focus; she tried to remember if they had any unfinished business. “So I’ll see you here again on Friday morning.”

“Take it easy.”

She gave him a smile, turning towards the glass elevators. A heady mix of confusing emotions mingled with the approaching illness, making her feel slightly giddy on her feet. She found it amazing that the predatory Gabe who had been teasing her all morning could be the same as the caring man who insisted without preamble that his driver take her home. One minute he was using the full force of his masculinity to bear down on her, and the next he was rigidly protective. She had whiplash caused by her swing in response to each. Did he want her drawing inexorably close, or was he more amused to see her backing off in alarm a second later?

Frowning, she stepped inside the elevator, her eyes casually sweeping across the offices as she waited for the doors to close. A young office assistant casually entered one of the private conference rooms in front of her eye line.
Harper froze at the same time as the young woman literally flinched in surprise.  The breath evaporated in her lungs when she saw Gabe and a tall, blonde woman together inside the room. Gabe was leaning over her desk, not quite touching her, but almost. It was clear even from the flustered assistant’s reaction, who closed the door again, that they had been interrupted. Then the elevator doors shut finally, locking her in static silence.

Chapter Five

The preliminary hearing was an eye-opener for Harper. Though she knew a lot about the specifics of her case, and paid close attention to the items prioritised during her weekly catch-ups with Don and Gabe, she nonetheless knew very little about the complex world of law. When she and Gabe arrived at the courthouse on Friday afternoon to meet with two patent attorneys, for an alarming moment she thought that Gabe was taking a back seat on the case. She waited while the introductions were done before cornering him.

“I told you I wasn’t officially a patent specialist,” he responded lightly, answering an email on his phone as he spoke. “One has to gain qualifications, take a separate bar exam, for this type of nonsense.”

“Then why are you working the case?”

“Because I’m an exceptional case lawyer. The brand of law doesn’t matter as much as you might think.” He finished sending his email, giving her a patient smile. “These guys will keep me in line on the details of the law. I’ll be litigating.”

She shook her head, gazing down at the corridor. It was full of arrogant-looking lawyers and lost-looking clients. She gave herself up to it for a moment, still tired after her horrendous bout of ‘flu earlier in the week.

She heard him sigh. “We can cover all of this after the hearing.”

“It’s fine.” She smiled, walking over to the bench and sitting down.

“Fine?”

She looked up at him standing before her so confidently, suit jacket open to reveal a well-tailored vest buttoned over his lean stomach. His hands sat in his pockets; he looked like a man who answered to no one.

“I wouldn’t expect you to be able to code one of my programs to appreciate how it works,” she told him evenly. “I guess it’s the same principle here.”

He looked unconvinced. In fact, he looked concerned.

She turned away. The whiplash was gone. Lying in her bed with the ‘flu for five days had given her plenty of clarity on things. He was clearly cut from the same cloth as every other lawyer she’d met; successful, good-looking rich men in their prime who could have any woman they wanted. It wasn’t about the quality of the relationship for them any more than it was about the quality of the food at the restaurants they frequented. It was being able to take and discard the best life had to offer and
to be seen doing so. Being envied was all part of the package they’d worked so hard to attain. She didn’t resent him; it was just disappointing.

Disappointing because she knew that a hard-working single mother was not the best life had to offer.

Gabe took a stroll over to the main balcony to watch the crowds milling around downstairs. Clearly
Harper was not in the mood for conversation today. He glanced back at her where she sat at on the bench working. His eyes took in the way her slender ankle turned in a slow circle, moving those sexy black pumps around and around. She frowned over the dimly lit screen, her hair falling across her cheek and revealing the pleasing tilt of her nose and mouth. She chewed her lip compulsively when she was working; it was intensely distracting. He wondered how the guys in her office dealt with having such an attractive boss. He was pretty sure there weren’t many men out there who wouldn’t at least spend a few pleasant minutes wondering how soft that skin would feel writhing below him.

He felt his crotch tighten and forced his mind on to other, less stimulating topics. This was getting annoying; he’d really barely thought about her all week. He’d been busy at work, and busily catching up on his social life. True, it probably hadn’t been a great idea to get involved with Hannah again just to break it off a few days later. He hadn’t been thinking clearly; it was never good practice to return to scene of the crime when you had no plans to stick around and clean up. Still, he hadn’t expected her to take it so badly.
Nor had he anticipated that his new car would bear the brunt of Hannah’s anger. Expense aside, even once the paintwork on his Tesla was fixed the car would never be perfect again.

He turned, leaning his elbows on the polished wood. The problem with
Harper was that she wouldn’t enter into a casual relationship with him; he sensed it in his gut. While she seemed like one of the most logical and reasonable women he’d ever met, there was a vulnerable optimism about her that he couldn’t deny. Casual relationships unfortunately required low expectations and a thick skin. An actual relationship was out of the question, obviously. Casual sex would be fine if they were only on the case for a few weeks, but that would run the risk of entering into the casual relationship category if the case extended into months. There were still too many unknowns with the case to accurately predict whether or not he could seduce her and still escape unscathed. He blew air out of his mouth, blindly watching a group of journalists scurry past.

What, then, did he do with this frustrating, increasingly distracting desire for her? He might have been able to bury it this week in other activities, but he needed a longer-term strategy. Every time she came into his near vicinity, he felt his libido switch on like a light. There seemed to be no dimmer switch associated with it. The feeling was just intensifying the longer he spent with her. It didn’t help that he was becoming a lot more aware of her other admirers in the meantime. Don was ridiculously over-protective of her; case in point, he’d called Gabe last week to complain that the pressure of the patent case has somehow caused her ‘flu symptoms, telling Gabe to postpone the case for a while. Gabe worried his old college buddy might already be in love with her. Not to mention the cause of all of her strife,
Joe Davidson. The more he dug around, the more it was starting to sound very like Davidson was working out some serious emotional baggage with this case. Gabe didn’t want to find himself somehow caught up in this farce; the last thing she needed was a bunch of lovesick lawyers defending her against a lovesick ex.

He glanced over at her, his gaze narrow. She’d denied it outright when he’d asked her about her relationship with
Davidson. Everything Gabe knew about people, all of his instincts told him she was telling the truth. Unfortunately, all of his instincts told him that if he felt as sexually attracted to her as he did, Davidson had probably done so, too. Davidson may not have been quite as careful about it; he who had repeatedly used his position of power to score women at Harvard. Charm hadn’t been high on his list of attributes and still wasn’t by all accounts. The only conclusion was that he’d developed feelings for her, and she’d rejected him. Hell hath no fury...

“Haven’t you got anything better to do than hang around courthouses all day and stare at pretty girls?”

Gabe turned, seeing one of his young associates watching him. His eyes warmed with humour, and a small concession to having being caught red-handed. Fortunately Jamie Mulligan was not a threat; he was an enthusiastic kid from the wrong side of the tracks who’d worked tirelessly to make it into the firm. Gabe had endorsed him, eager to see some new blood added to the existing team of privileged Harvard grads. He trusted Jamie, and had been mentoring him as much as he could.

“For your information, I’m thinking over a particularly troublesome aspect of the case.” His brows lifted. “The one point I fear I may not be able to resolve satisfactorily.”

“That’d be a first.”

“What brings you all the way out here?”

Jamie slipped his hands into the trouser pockets of his infinitely cheaper suit. He had a boyishly pleasant face that was quick to humour. “Jones sent me on an errand to Judge Alcott. I thought I’d pop in on the patent hearing, pick up a few pointers. I thought it’d be started already?”

“Always looking to learn, that’s my boy.” He put his arm around the kid’s skinny shoulders. “Likely story. I know you’re here to meet to
Harper. I suppose we should get it over with.”

Finishing up a long email to a particularly troublesome investor, Harper was surprised to see the approachable, smiling face of a twenty-something man beaming at her when she looked up. His hand was outstretched. Gabe stood unobtrusively behind him with an opaque smile.

“Hi, I’m
Jamie Mulligan,” he told her effusively, his voicing rising at the end even though he hadn’t posed a question. “Gabe said he’d introduce me. I’m one of the associates at the firm.”

“Hi.” She placed her tablet aside and stood up, shaking his eager hand.

“I’m a huge, huge fan of Anna’s World.”

She smiled. It had been a long time since she’d heard that name. “You know, I heard they just upgraded the online multiplayer servers a few weeks ago. I couldn’t believe how many people are still playing it-”

“It’s a classic. I was addicted while I was at college-”

“Anna’s World?” Gabe sat down on the bench, eyeing them more expectantly than interestedly.

“It’s a game.” Jamie’s enthusiasm couldn’t be bounded. “Miss Green’s studios have made some the most kick-ass games out there. Anna’s World; Fall of Men; Combustion-”

“I started as a physics programmer at a video game studio,”
Harper supplied helpfully. She turned back to Jamie. “Call me Harper. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Call her Miss
Green.”

She turned back to Gabe, incredulous.

“It’s okay,” Jamie reassured her with a laugh. “It’s a mark of respect. I just wanted to say hi, let you know I was a fan of your work. Even the software apps. You’ve got Davidson and his mediocre mob on the run. I hope we can help you stick it to them.”

Gabe stood up again, amused now as he regarded
Harper meaningfully. “Okay, Jamie. It was nice of you to drop by. Maybe you could get us some coffee from the store across the street before you leave. And some fruit.” He pulled a couple of bills out of a clip and then replaced it in his pocket. “Get yourself a cab back to the office afterwards.”

“Thanks a lot, Gabe.”

Harper waited until the associate had left before she sat down. “How come he calls you Gabe? Isn’t that a mark of disrespect?”