Five Ways to Fall (9 page)

Great.
Because today isn’t bad enough.

My humiliating one-night stand—a six-foot-three-ish smirking blond—is sitting in my chair, his feet propped up onto my desk, when I return from the bathroom.

Reese, zero. Universe . . .
I hate you.

“Why are you still here?” It’s almost ten at night and, aside from Jack and Mason, everyone has gone home.

Making a point of opening and closing the two side drawers of my desk, he says, “I was looking for that beef jerky.”

“I ate it.” I push my door shut with my foot and toss my purse onto my desk.

His eyes roll lazily over me from head to toe, not even bothering to hide it. “I thought we should talk.” And then he abruptly slides his legs off and stands, giving me a full view of his solid frame, which I try not to get caught noticing. Ben doesn’t overdress—not like Mason, who would wear a three-piece suit to bed if it was considered appropriate—but he’s got one of those bodies that everything hangs from well.

We trade places, Ben wandering around to the front of my desk, while I keep my distance by circling around the other side to take a seat in my now vacant chair.

“I never told Kent about what happened in my hotel room. I let them think I scored.”

An odd sense of relief swarms me. And surprise. I figured Ben was the type to tell a good story at others’ expense. But . . .“Mason?” I’d imagine that the disgust I feel with the idea of my stepbrother having sex goes both ways. Fortunately, I’ve never seen him so much as second-glance a female.

Ben dismisses that with a slight wave. “Oh,
he
knows what really happened, but he won’t say a thing.”

“Oh my God!” I cry out, my previous relief burning up with the sudden fire in my cheeks. I lay my forehead down on the cool desk.
Mason won’t say anything, my ass!

“Relax.” I hear footsteps approach and then a hand settles on the back of my neck. It has the opposite effect on me, my body going completely rigid. “I left out the part about the puking. And the crawling. I’m guessing you’re still a little sensitive about that.” I hear the humor in his voice. “How were you feeling the next day, anyway? You hit the ground pretty hard.”

“
Now
you’re concerned?” I spent the rest of my Cancún vacation with bruised knees and a cracked nail from where my toe must have caught the bed frame.

“I didn’t mean to laugh.” I look up in time to see a giant grin stretch out across his face, making his words hard to believe. “And if it’s any consolation, you have a phenomenal ass. I should know. I got a
really
good look at it.”

I groan inwardly. “Today’s not a good day for me, Ben.”

His hands lift in surrender. “Fair enough. I wanted to say that I’m sorry.” He rounds my desk again—it’s as if he’s circling his prey, but in a very casual, nonthreatening way—and stops in front of the personal pictures I’ve hung on the wall.

His finger swings to the picture of the rusted old blue Chevy. “What’s with you and vintage trucks?”

“I like them,” I say simply, not willing to elaborate further.

I quietly watch him evaluate things for another few minutes, until he suddenly asks, “Hey, do you want to go for lunch tomorrow? Seeing as you do a lot for Natasha and I’ll be working with her over the next few months, maybe we should start over.” He turns to peer at me with earnest blue eyes, his voice cracking under its sudden softness. “What do you say? Truce?”

Jack is always telling me that I need to make decisions based on common sense and not emotions. After spending a few weeks with Ben, my mortification will disappear.

Right?

So making peace with Ben now would be win-win.

Right?

I open my mouth.

And then I see that devilish twinkle and the corners of his mouth twitch. “They make extra-strong margaritas at Amigos, down the street. Just like you like them. I’ll bring a change of clothes, for after, of course.”

“Get out.” This is going to be hell.

“We could take a nice long
crawl
down the boardwalk, and then—”

“Fuck. Right. Off.” I hate him.

He grins, completely at ease, his attention grazing over my life-sized cardboard cutout of that stupid alien thing I ordered online a few weeks ago as a “fuck you” to Nelson, the annoying contracts lawyer down the hall. “Oh, come on, Reese. It’s not that big a deal. You need to learn how to laugh at yourself.”

Maybe if reality—in the form of a troll in a gingham dress—hadn’t just stuck its spike heel into my heart again, this wouldn’t bother me so much. But I walked in here already feeling pathetic. Now I’m beyond livid.

I feel the wicked smile stretch across my lips as I turn my attention to my monitor. “Enjoy your first few months here. I imagine June will be helping you out, seeing as her caseload is light. I think you’ll enjoy working with her.” He won’t. June talks to herself and has permanent pastrami breath. Her caseload is light because she’s every lawyer’s last pick. She’s slow as molasses.

He closes the distance until he’s hunched over the front of my desk, a frown flittering across his forehead. “I thought
you
were working for Natasha?”

Closing and piling Natasha’s case folders on top of each other, I push them to the edge, gesturing for Ben to pick them up. “Sorry, but Nelson came by earlier today, begging for my help, and I agreed. I’ll be tied up with him for the foreseeable future. Didn’t you know? I go where people need me the most.”

The thing I love most about Jack is that he has never assigned me to specific lawyers. He lets me go where the work is and my interests lie, treating me kind of like a freelance paralegal. I’m the only one who gets to do that and I’m pretty sure the other paralegals hate me for it, but I don’t care. I’m not here to make friends.

As irritating as Natasha can be, I tend to work with her most. She’s busy, her cases bring in a lot of money for the firm, and there’s usually a fight involved. I love a good fight.

When Natasha came by my desk this afternoon, she came ready to stroke my ego, telling me what a valuable asset I would be to her because she’s super busy and doesn’t have the extra time needed to help a new lawyer. Apparently the learning curve is steep and regardless of how smart Ben is—according to the chatter, he graduated near the top of his class—he’s in for a rude awakening.

And now, Nelson and I are going to be attached at the hip, whether he likes it or not. I’ve just decided.

“Huh.” Ben’s lip curls into a smirk. I think he just figured out what’s going on here. That he has royally fucked himself.

“But I’m sure you’ll do just fine without me, seeing as you’re so clever,” I offer with mock sincerity.

“I’m not worried, Reese. Disappointed. I think you would have enjoyed working with me.”

Fighting the urge to roll my eyes, I call out, “Close the door behind you.”

He leaves it wide open and strolls past my window, winking at me as he passes.

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 Mötley 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?”