Chapter 8
BEN
My mama is always warning me that I have no common sense when it comes to women.
I’ve proven her right, yet again.
Why did I have to be such a jackass?
If I had just listened to Mason and shut my big mouth, Reese would be helping me figure out some of this shit. Now I’m stuck with June, a fifty-year-old woman who wears the same blue cardigan every day, constantly mutters under her breath, and has turned me off of luncheon meat forever.
Two weeks into my job at Warner, and I’m buried in paperwork. The number of ugly divorces and custody battles in the state of Florida only solidifies my resolve to stay the fuck away from anything that looks like a marriage. I haven’t left my office before midnight once this past week, and here I am on Saturday morning, dragging myself through the trenches, feeling less like the guy who finished near the top of my law class and more like the village idiot who should have stuck with kicking drunks out of Penny’s.
A knock pulls my attention to the door, where Jack looms with a coffee mug in one hand and a plate of muffins in the other. “I hear you’re a fan of Mrs. Cooke’s baking.” He sets the plate down on my desk. “God love the woman, but I wish she’d stop bringing this stuff to the office. I blame her for my weight gain.” He pats his soft belly for effect.
Mrs. Cooke, Jack’s assistant, is a heavy forty-five-year-old woman with short brown hair, a giant mole on her upper lip, and Coke-bottle glasses, who sweats profusely and probably won’t live past her sixtieth birthday if she doesn’t start eating better. But damn, can the woman bake. She’s almost as good as my mama.
Jack’s gray eyes survey the stacks of files on my desk. “How is everything? I see Natasha is keeping you busy?”
“She is.” I nod slowly. My office is starting to look like a storage locker and my fingers are covered in paper cuts. “Who knew there’d be so much paper in a digital world?”
“How are you liking it so far?”
Besides wanting to shoot myself in the head at least once a day? “Nothing I can’t handle.”
Jack smiles sympathetically. “I remember my first year. It was hell. I wanted to quit. But don’t worry—it’ll get better. Half the battle is having the right team behind you so you can focus on what’s important.”
First year. Great. “I’m going to hold you to that,” I chuckle, just as the rumble of a bike engine sounds outside my window.
“Ah, good. She came,” Jack murmurs, taking a sip of his coffee as he wanders over to look out on the Warner parking lot.
She? “Who?” I ask, curiosity getting the better of me. I join him at the window just in time to see this “she” slide her helmet off, her long blond hair spilling out over her shoulders. “Holy shit,” I blurt out, staring down at Reese as she straddles a Harley in a pair of jeans and a tight leather jacket, a rare tranquil look on her face as the engine idles, completely at ease, as if she were born to ride a motorcycle.
Looking hot as hell.
I feel Jack’s gaze on the side of my face and I realize I’m ogling his stepdaughter in front of him. Swallowing, I add quickly, “Those things are dangerous.”
Shaking his head as if in defeat, Jack mutters, “I know. You should have seen the piece of junk she was riding before I co-signed for this one with her. It’s the best one on the market for women.”
“You let her ride that?”
He snorts. “There’s no ‘letting’ Reese do anything. That girl has been making her own rules for as long as I’ve known her. At least this way I was able to get her to agree to some basic safety in return. She’s usually more agreeable when she feels like she’s making the decisions.”
Noted.
I wonder if that’s why he gives her free range over the cases she’s going to take on. Wandering back over to my desk, Jack picks up the framed picture of me. It’s Mama’s favorite—me at fourteen and in a blue-and-white football uniform, standing on the field next to her after having won my first freshman game as quarterback. “You play at all anymore?” Jack knows the basics about my football career from my interview.
“Here and there, for fun. I help my old high school coach out sometimes but I can’t run like I used to, with the pins in there.” I sigh. “It was good while it lasted.” I have buddies in the same boat as me, permanently benched from concussions and torn ligaments. Years later, they’re still not taking it well, hung up on the “what ifs,” depressed about their monotonous day jobs and their one-car garages. I try not to think like that. If I do, I’ll be a helluva lot more depressed than those guys. There were no “what ifs” for me. With my ranking and the scouts circling, I was a guaranteed draft into the NFL. All it took was one tackle to destroy my right knee. Took me right out of the game. Out of what I loved.
My dad nailed it when he said what goes around, comes around.
And man, did he ever enjoy saying that right to my face.
“I’m sure it was,” Jack agrees, setting the frame down gently. He strolls over and pokes his head out just as the elevator dings. “Reese?” We’re the only ones in the office, so the name echoes through the open space. There’s no doubt she heard him. The sound of footsteps approaches. My stomach does a weird flip of excitement as she appears in my doorway. During the week she wears nice office stuff. Today she’s in ripped jeans that hug her thighs and that nice round ass of hers. Beneath her unzipped jacket, I can see an old M?tley Crüe T-shirt that stretches across her tits. I’m not even sure if she ran a brush through her hair. Maybe that’s from the bike ride. It doesn’t matter, though. I like this look.
Of course, she doesn’t so much as glance in my direction, though I’m sure she knows I’m standing right here, staring at her. It is my office, after all.
She hasn’t spoken a word to me in two weeks, since that first day. She’s made every effort to be excessively busy on cases for Nelson, who, according to a very annoyed Natasha, she once declared she’d rather peel her fingertips off with a grater than work with.
“You got my note?” Jack asks.
“That’s why I’m here,” she says, her voice much softer and friendlier than anything ever directed at me. “What do you need help with?”
“I need my best paralegal to help my newest lawyer get on his feet. Natasha told me that Nelson’s been monopolizing your time. She and Ben are struggling to keep up with cases, so I’ve told Natasha that family law can have you a hundred percent for the next few weeks, if you don’t mind.”
I watch as she turns those shrewd eyes on me, narrowing slightly, clearly thinking I had something to do with this. I have to press my lips together tightly, fighting the urge to laugh. If I laugh, she’ll hate my guts. I need her to not hate my guts. Ideally, I need to find a way to make her love my guts. I get the impression she doesn’t even like most people, so this may be a challenge.
Jack pats her shoulder, his voice softening, as if coaxing a frightened animal out of a corner. “Help the poor guy out in whatever way you can. He’s practically sleeping here.”