Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) (2 page)

“Where were you born?  . . . What are your parents’ names? . . . Where
did you go to high school? . . . Do you have any degrees? . . . Describe your
work experience . . . When were you married? . . . How many children? . . . Their
ages?”

Sarah could barely contain her irritation.  The deposition could be
over in one hour, two at most—even with her questions as well as Chapman’s—if
only he’d get to the real issue at hand:

When did you buy your hair iron?  Where?  How many
times per week did you use it?  When did it catch on fire?  What happened
then?  What injuries, if any, did you sustain?  What expenses, if any, did you
incur?

Out, deposition over, on to the airport.

At one point, when Chapman actually had the idiocy to ask the woman
whether she tried to call the toll-free number on the Atheena Hair Glory
website to ask them what to do in case her hair caught on fire, Sarah looked up
and caught Joe smiling at her.  She narrowed her eyes, and just for something
to do, said, “Objection.”

Chapman turned to her, obviously out of sorts.  It was the first time
either Sarah or Joe had said anything to interrupt his brilliant line of
questioning.

“On what basis?” Chapman asked.

“Sustained,” Joe said, even though only a judge had the power to do
that.  “Are you almost done, Paul?  I think we could all use a break.”

Chapman flipped through his notes. 
Notes
, Sarah thought, as if
he couldn’t ask those useless questions from memory.  How did a guy like that
get to be a partner in one of the largest insurance defense firms in L.A.?  But
Sarah knew very well the inequities of a climb up the ladder of a firm.  She
had been a partner once, too.  Briefly, for what it was worth.

And that turned out to be not much at all.

“Have you done anything to try to restore the damaged hair?” Chapman
asked the woman.

“Like what?” she shot back.  “Get a damn wig?”

“Yes,” Chapman answered, undeterred by the woman’s tone, “something
like that.”

“Hats,” the woman said.  “Lots of ugly-ass hats.”

“Okay, thank you, Darlene,” Joe said, gently touching the woman’s arm. 
“I think we need a break here.  Back in fifteen?”

Sarah stood up and stretched, then turned over her legal pad and closed
the lid to her laptop before heading out into the hallway.  The court reporter
joined her as they both went in search of a restroom.

“I’m Marcela,” the court reporter said, offering her hand.

“Sarah Henley—but you already know that,” Sarah added with a smile.  The
court reporter would have listed the names of all the attorneys present at the
beginning of her deposition transcript.

Unlike some lawyers she had met over the years, Sarah always made a
point of being nice to the support staff, whether they were court reporters,
bailiffs, legal assistants, law clerks—anyone and everyone who did the
behind-the-scenes work that she knew made the machinery hum.  Having spent
years as a secretary herself, she understood the value of a good assistant.

“Hope you don’t mind me saying this,” Marcela said, “but it’s nice to
see a woman in there for a change.”

“Thanks,” Sarah said, pushing open the door to the bathroom.  “It’s
nice having you in there, too.  Balances out the macho.”

“That poor woman,” Marcela said, shaking her head.

Sarah smiled politely.  “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to talk to you
about that.”

“Oh!  Of course,” Marcela said, clearly embarrassed.  She disappeared
into one of the stalls.  “I’m sorry,” she continued from inside.  “I shouldn’t
have said anything.”

The bathroom door swung open again, and Joe Burke’s client entered. 
She frowned when she saw Sarah, and quickly went to one of the empty stalls. 
Sarah was used to opposing parties hating her—of course she was the enemy, the
evil lawyer, all of that.  It went with the territory.  She rarely took it
personally.

But she’d also stopped trying to make sure everyone liked her.  If
people thought she was evil, so be it.  If they thought she was a bitch, oh
well.  Like her mother always said, “You’re not a bite of candy.  Not
everybody’s going to love you.”

Sarah checked her hair, her makeup, her suit, and satisfied that she
still looked put together, quickly moved to the last empty stall before the
other two women could emerge.  She stayed where she was until she heard them both
leave.  Then she came out and spent a few extra minutes washing her hands and
looking herself in the eye in the mirror.

He’s just a man.  He’s no one special.  He was six
years ago.

No,
Sarah
corrected herself,
five years, ten months, and three days
.

She gave herself a mean, steely gaze in the mirror.

“Go show him,” she whispered to herself.

Although she knew what she really meant was,
Make him suffer.

Two

“Hello, Mrs. Franklin, thank you for coming in today,” Sarah began. 
“My name is Sarah Henley.  I’m the attorney for Mason Manufacturing.  They
provided the heating element for the Atheena hair iron you purchased.”

Darlene Franklin folded her arms over her chest and glared at Sarah.

“Speaking personally,” Sarah continued, “I’m very sorry for what you
went through.  I’m sure that had to be horrible.”

She could see the woman soften.  Just a little.

“Is that official?” Joe asked.

“As I said,” Sarah repeated without looking at him, “I was speaking
personally, woman to woman.  Now, Mrs. Franklin,” she went on before Joe could
make any more of that statement—which really was just a tactic to make his
client feel more comfortable and hopefully less hostile—“I only have a few
questions for you, then we can let you be on your way.”

She smiled, but Mrs. Franklin did not smile back.  That was fine.

Sarah asked her few simple questions—fewer than ten of them—then smiled
again at Joe’s client and thanked her for her time.

The court reporter waited for Joe, to see if he had any questions of
his own.

“We’re done,” he said.  “Thank you.”  He took a few minutes to escort
his client from the room, then returned, checking his watch.  “Next one’s at
one o’clock, then I assume we’re all on the same five-thirty flight.  Think you
can condense some of your questions, Paul, so we can make it?”

“I’ll take as much time as I need,” Chapman answered.

“Of course.”  Joe looked at Sarah, obviously expecting her to signal in
some way that she, too, thought Chapman was an idiot.  Instead she resumed
typing her notes from the deposition.

“How about you, Sarah?” Joe asked.  “Are you on the five-thirty?”

“I don’t know,” she said without looking up, “probably.”  Although she
knew very well she had chosen that flight instead of the one two hours later. 
She hoped to have a light dinner somewhere cheap, then go to bed at a decent
hour so she could wake up early enough to work out before the next morning’s
deposition.  But none of that was Joe’s business.

The court reporter finished putting away her equipment.  Sarah looked
up and smiled.  “Thank you, Marcela.  We appreciate your work.”

“You’ll see me again,” Marcela said.  “Our company got the contract for
all of the west coast depositions.  I’ll be at some of them next week.”

“See you then,” Sarah said.  She accidentally caught Joe’s eye, and quickly
looked back at her laptop screen.

“Sarah, can I talk to you for a minute?” Joe asked.

“Not right now,” she said.  She typed a few more lines, just as cover.

“Sarah?”

“What?” she answered, not bothering to hide her annoyance.

“Can I interest you in lunch?”

“No, thank you.”

“You buying?” Paul Chapman asked him.

“No,” Joe said.  “I was going to make Sarah pay.”

Funny
, she
thought, looking him straight in the eye,
I was thinking the same thing
about you.

Three

The woman at the afternoon deposition had hair not that different from
Sarah’s.  It was that same dark auburn, not the lighter shade of red Sarah
always thought was so pretty.  It had the same thick texture, and even though
the woman had obviously blown it straight, Sarah could imagine the thousand
crazy, mini spirals just waiting to pop out again the minute her hair was wet.

“It used to be long,” the woman told Chapman after he finished an
hour’s worth of irrelevant questions and finally got around to asking about her
hair.  “Even longer than hers,” she said, pointing at Sarah.  “I was growing it
out since high school.  People said it was my nicest feature.  Then that iron
thing of yours caught it on fire and now all I’ve got left is this . . . ”

She held up a hank of the shortened ends, but Chapman couldn’t be
bothered to look.

“Did you call the toll-free number on the Atheena website?” he asked.

“Did I what?”

“The toll-free number,” he said.  “It’s there for a reason.  It’s under
Customer Service.”

“No, I didn’t call some
number
,” the woman snapped, her anger
practically steaming out through her pores.  “A friend of mine had to rush me
to Urgent Care.  My scalp was
burned
.  You could smell the hair—it was
disgusting.  They had to cut a whole bunch of it off—even the part that was
okay—so they could put bandages all over my head.  And then I still had scabs all
over for weeks—”

“Mm-hm, mm-hm,” Chapman answered, sounding bored and still not looking up
from his notes.

Sarah saw the woman turn to Joe and give him a look that asked,
Am I
allowed to punch him?

As soon as Chapman finished, Sarah jumped right in.  “Ms. McIntyre, I’m
sorry we didn’t get to hear your whole story before.  Please start at the
beginning again and walk us through it, moment by moment.  You said you felt
the unit getting hotter . . . ”

Sarah enjoyed the psychology of law as much as she enjoyed law itself. 
She liked trying to understand what people wanted and needed in every situation
so she could mold a case to her advantage.

And just as Sarah expected she would, Joe’s client seemed to calm
down—to sound less hostile—the more Sarah let her talk.  She had seen it before
with people involved in law suits:  this desperate and angry need to make someone
listen, to feel like they’d finally been heard.

It was why some parties refused to settle until they had their “day in
court.”  Sometimes all it took was that one day.  They just wanted the
formality of sitting at a table next to their lawyer, with their opponent at a
table nearby, and a judge sitting behind the raised bench in front of them. 
They wanted to see the faces of a jury looking at them sympathetically.  They
wanted to see all the trappings of law they’d grown up watching on TV:  the
Hear
ye, hear ye, all rise, the Honorable So-and-So presiding
, even though that
wasn’t how it was in the real world.

And more times than not, just that one day was enough.  Litigation was
nerve-wracking.  People didn’t realize how stressful it was to actually be part
of the pageantry of court.  To have to sit there silent and unemotional while
people told lies about you.

That was how it always sounded, Sarah knew:  like lies.  It was the
nature of law to pit one person’s story against another person’s completely
different one, but lay people didn’t understand how brutal that would feel
while they had to be on their best behavior in front of a judge and jury.

So even though many lawyers gave up trying to settle a case once they
began their opening statements, Sarah always scheduled time at the end of that
first day of trial to meet again with her opponent to see if the client had changed
his or her mind.  If not that day, then Sarah would try again once the client
had had a chance to testify. 
Just listen to me!
their whole attitudes
seemed to scream. 
I want someone to hear my story!
  So Sarah listened,
and it had been one of the secrets of her success.

When Ms. McIntyre finally finished taking Sarah through the events,
step by step, Sarah asked her a few more questions about where she purchased
the product and when.

“Thank you,” Sarah said.  “No further questions.”  She saved the work
on her laptop and immediately began packing it away along with her files.  She
could catch up on her notes at the airport.

She purposely didn’t look over at Joe.  She had felt his eyes on her
the entire time she questioned his client, and she felt tempted to check for
his reaction:  did he approve of the way she was handling it?  Did he think she
was good?  Did he still think she was smart?

Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care . . .

She knew the secret to remaining immune to him was to keep her defenses
on high alert every second the two of them were together.  Sarah had no
intention of melting into a little puddle at his feet, desperate for any sort
of acknowledgment or compliment.