Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) (5 page)

“Thank you, ma’am,” the agent said.  “I’ll have to ask you to leave
now.”

Sarah slung her purse over her shoulder, and picked up her laptop case.

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to leave the laptop,” the agent said.

“But . . . it has my personal information on it, too,” Sarah said. 
“Personal e-mails, financial records—”

“That’s fine,” the agent said.  “We’ll return it to you when we’ve
retrieved the information we need.”

Sarah’s face felt slick with sweat.  She walked on wobbly legs to the
door of her office.

“Sarah?” one of her team members said.  “What are we going to do?”

Sarah shook her head.  “It’s over,” she said, more to herself than to
the other lawyer.  Isn’t that what all this meant? she wondered.  Wasn’t the
entire career she worked so hard to build now suddenly and irrevocably over?

“Good luck,” she told the cluster of people watching her.  She swallowed
and forced herself to look each of them in the eyes.  “I really mean that—good
luck to all of you.”

The interview at the “command post” lasted approximately twenty
minutes.  The agent in charge asked whether Sarah had worked with a particular
collection of lawyers at the firm, and whether she ever worked for a particular
list of clients.

The only name she said yes to was the attorney who promoted her:  Richard.

“Did you ever work directly with him for any of these clients?”

Sarah shook her head.  She knew the client names, but they were too big
and important for her to have been trusted with their files yet.  Thank God.

The agent let her go, warning her they might need to be in touch again
in the future.

Sarah nodded blankly.  From what she counted as the agent read off the
attorney names, there seemed to be twenty-two members of her firm involved. 
Almost all of them at the very top of the heap.  Thank goodness no one from her
own team had made it onto that list.

Sarah left the fourth floor, rode the elevator down to the garage, and
then walked away from the life she had meticulously built from her first
interview during her second year of law school.

No, she corrected herself as she shuffled toward her car—a car that
would be confiscated within a week as the feds seized more of the firm’s
assets—Sarah had just lost everything she’d worked for since she was a
teenager.  Since the night she helped her mom clean the insurance agency
office, and saw the ad for a secretarial position the owners were planning to
place the next morning.  Sarah called as soon as they opened the next day and
pretended she just happened to be looking for a job.  She never told anyone at
the agency that her mother was their cleaning woman, or that Sarah had been her
helper since she was a little girl.

And now look at her, she thought that day:  the little girl in her
grown-up suit, turning the ignition on her grown-up car, holding back the flood
of tears that she promised herself she could drown in as soon as she made it
safely back to the sanctuary of her pretty little grown-up apartment.

Sarah’s heart had been broken twice in her life:  first by Joe Burke,
second by her job.

But maybe this chance she’d been given would help knit together the
wounds from both.  Get her back on her feet, earning money, building a fresh
résumé once again.

And finally helping her erase whatever last vestiges of Joe Burke might
still lay hiding in her heart.  She’d thought there were none until she saw him
that morning.  Now she had to admit there were still splinters of him
everywhere.  She would find each one and pull it out.  And in the end, even if
it took all five months, she would walk away feeling whole and new again.

Finally free of the first and only man she ever loved.

Six

The traffic on the way to the deposition in Pasadena the next morning wasn’t
too bad, so she couldn’t blame her anger on that.

But she could easily blame it on how well-rested Joe looked, how nicely
he smiled at his client, that familiar laugh of his she heard just as she opened
the door to the hotel conference room.

Joe looked up, met her eye, then went back to talking to the young
woman sitting next to him.  She must have been in her early twenties, Sarah
guessed, and whatever damage had been done to her hair had been long enough ago
that it looked thick and lustrous now, covering her shoulders like a brown faux-fur
throw, and Sarah had the brief thought that she would happily set it on fire
again herself for the way the young woman was staring at Joe.

Hero worship.  Sarah had seen it before.  Not from anyone she had
represented, but usually from women gazing with that same sort of stupid look,
a stupid grin to go with it, at some smooth-talking lawyer who said all the
right things and seemed to know all the answers.

Sarah wasn’t having any of that.

“How’s it going today, Number Eight?” she asked Burke.

He took his time shifting his eyes from the young woman to Sarah. 
“Just fine, Seven.”  Then he went back to smiling at whatever his client was
saying.

Sarah grunted in disgust.

“What’s seven and eight?” Paul Chapman wanted to know.

“I.Q.” Sarah answered.  Then she went back to unpacking her laptop and
files.

“You two know each other?” Chapman asked.  “Before this?”

“No,” they both answered.

Chapman looked from Sarah to Joe.  Then he smiled like the last kid to
be let in on a joke.  “I don’t get it.”

“I used to play professional ball,” Joe said.  “Sarah obviously looked
me up.  Eight—it was my jersey.”

“What kind of ball?” Chapman asked.

Joe looked to Sarah for that one.

“Volley,” she said without missing a beat.  “Shall we get to it,
gentleman?  And ladies,” she added, nodding to the court reporter and Joe’s
attractive, worshipful client.

“Did you really play volleyball?” the young woman asked.  “Me, too!”

“No kidding,” Sarah muttered.

She couldn’t help seeing the amusement on Joe’s face.  She planned to
wipe that off before the morning was over.

***

“Where were you born, Miss Lee?”

“Objection, relevance,” Sarah said.

Chapman turned to her.  “Excuse me?”

“Just making my record.”

She waited until his next inane question—“What were your parents’
occupations?”—and objected again.

“Are you going to do that the whole deposition?” Chapman asked her.

“Yes, I am.”

“Off the record,” Chapman said to the court reporter, who promptly
lifted her hands from the keyboard.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“You spent two hours on irrelevant questions yesterday,” Sarah
answered, “and so I’m making my record.  If the time comes when I need to bring
this before a judge, I want to make sure I’ve preserved all my objections.”

“You can’t keep doing that,” Chapman said.

“Of course I can,” Sarah answered, motioning for him to continue.

Chapman scowled, then told the court reporter they were back on.

“Where did you go to high school, Miss Lee?”

“Objection.”

And so the next few hours unfolded.

After a break, it was Sarah’s turn.  Rather than ask her few simple
questions from the day before, she decided to expand her line of inquiry.

“Miss Lee, hi.  I’m Sarah Henley, defending Mason Manufacturing, the
subcontractor.”  She said it all quickly, just to tax the young woman’s brain. 
“You’ve made a claim for emotional distress—are you aware of that?”

Joe’s client looked at him uncertainly.

“I can show you the complaint,” Sarah offered, already handing the file
across the table.

Joe flipped through the pleading and pointed to where there was a
separate claim for emotional distress.

“Yes,” Miss Lee said.

“Yes, what?” Sarah asked.

“Yes, I am aware I asked for that,” the young woman answered, scowling
at Sarah.

Joe leaned over and whispered something to his client.

“The record will reflect that Mr. Burke is whispering to his client,”
Sarah said.

Joe cast her a look of disapproval, but didn’t say anything.

“Now, Miss Lee,” Sarah continued, “can you please describe for me all
of the elements of your emotional distress claim?”

“All the . . . elements?” she asked.

“Yes,” Sarah said.

Again the young woman looked to Joe.  He said, “Off the record.”  Then,
“Sarah, where are you going with this?”

“Investigating the claim,” she said.

“Lawyers write the pleadings, their clients don’t,” he said.

“Are you saying you didn’t discuss the lawsuit with your client before
filing it on her behalf?  Back on,” she told the court reporter.

Joe did not look happy, Sarah thought.  Good.

“Miss Lee, what kind of emotional distress did you experience as a
direct result of the incident you described to Mr. Chapman here?”

“Well . . . I was . . . ”  Again she looked to Joe.

“Were you scared?” he suggested.  “Sad?  Depressed?”

“Record will reflect plaintiff’s counsel is answering for his client,”
Sarah said.

“I’m not answering for her,” Joe said, “I’m clarifying your question.”

“The record stands,” Sarah said.  “Miss Lee, did you seek any psychological
counseling as a result of your emotional distress?”

“Psychological?” the young woman said.  “You mean like a psychiatrist?”

“Psychiatrist,” Sarah recited quickly, “psychologist, psychotherapist,
therapist, trained counselor . . . ”

“Oh . . . no.”  The young woman turned her eyes to Joe again, obviously
hoping for some kind of help.

But he was too busy staring at Sarah.

“So, no medical expenses to support your claim of distress?” she asked.

“No, but I was really scared,” the young woman said.  “Really, really
scared.”

Finally Joe turned and gave his client an encouraging smile.  “Remember
what you told me about being afraid to use even a blow dryer for several
months?” he asked.

“Off the record,” Sarah said.  “Would counsel be more comfortable if he
could stick his hand up his client’s backside and move her lips for her?”

“Sarah!” Joe growled, pushing his chair away from the table.  “Can I
speak to you outside?”

“Certainly,” she said.

Sarah casually closed the lid on her laptop, then took her time
following Joe out into the hall.  She felt the flush of triumph flooding
through her veins.  She’d gotten to him.  And it was only day two.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked her.

“My job,” she answered pleasantly.

“Like hell you are,” he said.  “You’re harassing my client.”

“And you’re trying to answer every question for her.  She’s a big girl,
Burke.  Plaintiffs have to be able to back up their own claims.”

“You’re over the line, and you know it.”

“Take it up with the judge.”  Sarah started to open the door again, but
Joe shoved it closed.

“Is this is how it’s going to be?” he asked.

Sarah didn’t bother pretending she didn’t know what he meant.  “Worried,
Number Eight?”

“They only let you beat me because the chief judge liked your tits.”

Sarah’s eyes widened in surprise.  “Ha!  So there it is! 
That’s
what you’ve been telling yourself all these years?”

“I don’t think about it, Sarah.  Obviously you do.  Whenever you’re
ready to stop pouting and act like a real lawyer again, you come back in there
and let’s keep working.”

He yanked open the door and left her standing alone in the hall.

Fuming.

That hadn’t gone the way she’d envisioned it—at
all.
  And now he
was sitting in there smug and superior, probably holding Miss Lee’s hand and
comforting her over the terrible treatment she received from that bad lady
lawyer.

Disgusting, Sarah thought.  And not something she could let continue.

She pulled open the door and calmly returned to her seat.  She opened
her laptop again, pretended to consult her notes, then asked, “Is there any
history of mental infirmity in your family?”

***

Chapman caught up to her as she waited at the stoplight outside the
hotel.  There were several different restaurants in the plaza across the
street, and Sarah was starving.

“That was good stuff,” Chapman said, chuckling.  “Have to say, thought
you were being a real obstructionist bitch with all your objections to my
stuff, but the way you handled that girl?”  He shook his head and chuckled
again.  “Man.”

The fact that the worst lawyer in the room was complimenting her did
nothing to make Sarah feel better.  She knew she’d gone too far—she knew it the
minute she asked her first question.