Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) (4 page)

She fished for her keys in the pocket of her laptop case and slipped
them into her suit jacket while she headed for the parking garage.  Joe had
done her a favor.  He’d spared her one more conversation with him.

But nice move, gentleman
, she thought,
not offering the lady a ride in your
fancy chauffeured car.

Even after her ill-advised attempt to amuse him on the plane.

The game was on.  She knew it and he knew it.  They were obviously
going to see which of them would bend before they broke.

Sarah had grown stronger in the past six years, not weaker.  If he
thought he was still dealing with the young woman she used to be, now was his
time to learn.

She had been through a lot since their last year of law school, as
anyone reading the newspapers would know.  Even before then, she had to scrap
her way through one trial after another, and through the competitive hierarchy
of one of the most prestigious—at one time—law firms in L.A.  The girl Joe had
known in law school couldn’t have handled that pressure—look how easily she
fell apart just because a guy like him dumped her.

But Sarah wasn’t that girl anymore.  And she knew she would handle the
Joe situation completely differently now if she had a second chance.

Sarah unlocked the door to the car her father found for her back in
April.  It was old, but it ran well, thanks to his skills as a mechanic, and
Sarah wasn’t too proud to drive a twenty-year-old car.  It suited her lifestyle
now.

When the firm imploded, all of her perks instantly disappeared.  Gone were
the leased Mercedes and the generous gas allowance; gone was her expense
account that she sometimes had trouble spending by the end of each month; gone
was the free gym membership that had finally introduced her to the wonders of
exercise; and gone was the salary that made her secure enough financially that
her parents finally let her start helping them with money.  Gone, all gone in
the space of a single day.

Sarah flipped on the radio to one of the talk stations that regularly
gave traffic news.  She slowly made her way out of the airport gridlock into
the gridlock that would take her home.  Finally she unlocked her front door and
returned to the sanctuary of her one-bedroom apartment.

She liked her little apartment.  Every time she walked into it, she
appreciated how clean and friendly it seemed—especially after a particularly
hard day spent fighting with people from morning until night.  It all washed
off of her, it seemed, the minute she walked through her door.

She spent her first week in the place painting everything white.  From
the walls, to the wooden paneling on one side of the living room, to the
built-in cabinets and the wooden frames on all of her windows.  She painted red
accents here and there, but mostly she just wanted to see the clean.  To know
that everything in there was nice and new and something she bought just for
her.

When she first started making money—real money—Sarah sat down and made
a list.  She called it her
Flourish
list:  anything and everything she
had ever wanted, but didn’t really need.

It included things like a pillow-top mattress.  Plush towels.  High
thread-count sheets.  Red velvet pillows and a beautiful, white faux-fur throw
she saw in a catalog draped over a white upholstered couch.  She made a point
to buy all three of those, including the exact couch.  Triple-wicked, scented
candles.  Sweet-smelling bath salts.  A long list that she felt a little
foolish making, yet at the same time it made her feel deliciously pampered even
to sit there and think about it.

She had held off for so many years buying herself the kinds of things
she dreamed about:  even something as simple as pretty, lacy underwear, bought
at full retail price instead of from a discount store.  Every time she checked
off another item on the list, she felt more prosperous.  And what was most
shocking, by the time she got to the end of it, was that the entire spree cost
her less than three thousand dollars.  Somehow she thought it would cost closer
to ten thousand—maybe even more.  She had built it up so much in her mind, it
seemed an unreachable goal back when she had practically nothing.

She still remembered too vividly that day in college when she looked at
her bank statement and saw a balance of $4.32.  Back then, spending three thousand
dollars on luxuries might as well have been ten thousand—fifty thousand, for
how impossible it seemed.  But these were different times, she told herself
with joy.  She had finally made it.  And furnishing her perfect apartment was
one of the happiest experiences of her life.

She didn’t regret any of it now—not a single purchase.  Even though she
could have used those thousands of dollars over the past six months.  But she had
to believe she would find her feet again one day.  And when she did, she didn’t
want to have to start over, pulling herself up from the kind of impoverished
life she had grown so accustomed to since her childhood.  She accepted that her
rapid rise was over—there was no other way to see it.  What she didn’t want to
accept was the idea that she might start sliding backward to where she came
from in the first place.

The food she ate at the airport wasn’t sitting well in her belly. 
Sarah pulled out the ingredients for a smoothie—organic orange juice, a frozen
banana, frozen strawberries and raspberries and blueberries—and whirled them
all in her blender.  Then she took sips here and there as she changed out of
her battle suit and wiped off all her makeup.  She pulled a shower cap over her
still-behaving hair and stepped into her bathtub shower.  And replayed portions
of the day as the warm water washed it all away.

***

Sarah set her alarm for four o’clock the next morning to give herself
time to exercise.  She never used to be that way.  She’d roll out of bed, drink
a huge mug of coffee, and answer her e-mails before she even started to dress.

But becoming a partner had reformed her.  Her immediate boss, Richard,
sat her down the day he made the offer and told her she needed to make some
changes.

“We’re making you a team leader,” he said.  “Elevating you to partner. 
Not an equity partner,” Richard had continued before Sarah could even register
the news.  “So you won’t receive any of the firm’s profits, but we consider
this level of partnership an important step to full status, once you’ve proven
yourself.”

He assigned her a team of five younger litigators.  From then on, Sarah
would be responsible for all of their files, all of their cases, and for making
sure they turned in time sheets for every minute of their time by the end of
every day.

“If you don’t write down the time, it never happened,” Richard said.  “We
only get paid for what we bill.”  Sarah had heard that speech many times.  She
always had more billable hours than any of the other associates.  It was one of
the factors, Richard said, they’d considered when promoting her.  “We know you
understand money, Sarah.”

She agreed that she did.

And then she proved it by negotiating an even higher salary than the
last team leader had been given.

“We have one concern,” Richard told her.  “We need our team leaders to
be in top form.  The job comes with a lot of stress—you already know that.  But
being partner is going to double, triple that stress.  You understand?”

“Of course.”

“You’re not much for working out, I take it.”

Sarah tried not to feel insulted.  She thought she looked pretty good: 
same slim body she had maintained since high school, always turned out in
professional-looking clothes and hairstyle.

“Our insurance premiums go down if all the key employees have gym
memberships,” Richard told her.  “So that’s included in your package.  We have
a list of different ones you can go to—you can find one close to the office or
close to your house.  But we’d like to see you meeting with a personal trainer
at least twice a week.”

“I’d rather work,” Sarah said, assuming that was the right answer.

Richard shook his head.  “You need to stay focused.  Even-keeled. 
We’ve heard a few complaints that you’re sometimes too hard on people.  Hard is
good—don’t get me wrong,” he said before she could defend herself.  “We
wouldn’t put you in charge if you couldn’t lead.  But it’s good for everybody
if those of us in power take a little time to sweat off some of the pressure,
you understand?”

Sarah had no desire to waste time at some gym when she could be billing,
but she wasn’t going to argue.  If the firm thought it would make her a better
leader, so be it.  She would put in the minimum time with a trainer in case
anyone checked up on her, then she’d work extra hours to make up for it.

Because nothing was going to interfere with this promotion.  It had
come much sooner than she ever could have hoped:  right before her twenty-ninth
birthday.

Sarah loved responsibility—always had.  Not so much bossing people
around, but instead being the problem-solver in any group.  Figuring things
out.  Some people worked for praise, she noticed over the years, but she took
much more value out of being proud of herself.  She liked knowing she was the
most reliable person she knew—except for her parents, who had given her that training
in the first place.  But as far as any other lawyer she’d ever met—and before
that, any other student she met—Sarah felt comfortable believing she worked
harder and smarter than any of them.

Her five months as partner in the firm she had been working for since
law school was one of the favorite periods of her life.  She would wake up
sometimes at three-thirty in the morning because she was so excited to get to
work.  It meant she often passed out dead tired by nine o’clock at night, but
she loved knowing she was up before anyone else, working long before dawn.

On April 6, she arrived at seven AM and began working on a Motion to
Dismiss.  She had already checked the status reports from her team members
before she even came in, and knew she would have a few hours to herself now to
work on her own cases.

The agents swarmed the building.  One minute the only people she noticed
outside the glass wall of her office were the attorneys and staff she saw every
day, and the next there were navy blue uniformed men and women everywhere,
seizing papers and files, emptying cabinets, and ordering people away from the
shredders that stood conveniently beside every desk.

Sarah rose slowly, her legs unsteady.  She was tempted at first to stay
in her office, hidden behind the wooden door, but she realized that wasn’t her
way.  No matter how horrible things would be once she confronted what was
happening, she was a partner, she was a team leader, she was Sarah Henley.  And
Sarah Henley
stepped up.

She could see now the bright yellow lettering on the agents’ uniforms: 
FBI.

As one of the female agents moved toward Sarah’s office, sweeping the
contents of one of the secretaries’ desks into a sturdy cardboard box, Sarah
asked, “Would you please tell me what’s going on?”

“Who are you?” the agent asked.

Sarah gave her name and position.

The agent pulled a list from her pants pocket and quickly scanned it. 
“Henley, you’re to go to the fourth floor.”

“What’s on the fourth floor?” Sarah asked, fighting hard to sound calm.

“Command post,” the agent answered.  “We have to interview you before
we can release you.”

“Interview me about what?  What is all this?”

“Ma’am, if you’ll just proceed to the fourth floor—”

“Please,” Sarah said, her voice finally betraying her fear.  “Just tell
me what’s going on.  Why are you here?”

The agent studied her for a moment, then answered, “Allegations of
securities fraud, tax fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.”

“Money laun . . . oh my God.”  Sarah’s legs started to fail her.  She
braced herself against the edge of her desk.  “Wh-who?”

“They’ll give you more information downstairs, Miss Henley.  Now I’m
going to have to ask you to vacate this office,” the agent said, already angling
past Sarah.

“Can I—”  Sarah cleared her throat.  She saw one of the young lawyers
on her team staring at her wide-eyed from beyond the door, her face as white as
Sarah’s.

Sarah forced herself to remain calm.  “What can I bring with me?”

“Just your personal effects, ma’am,” the agent answered.  She was
already disconnecting Sarah’s computer.

Sarah wanted to throw up.  A group of her litigators and staff now stood
clustered in her doorway, watching.

The agent pointed to Sarah’s purse.  “Anything related to this firm’s
cases in there?”

Sarah shook her head.

“How about in there?” the agent asked, pointing to Sarah’s laptop case.

This time Sarah nodded.

“You’ll have to leave those,” the agent said.  “Let’s go through them.”

Sarah’s hands shook as she pulled out the files she had been working on
the night before.  The notes she’d made about the Motion to Dismiss she was
going to work on all morning.  Time sheets she had printed out for the past
week to check her team members’ progress.