Objection (4 page)

“How could
you?” Lorraine hisses at me. “I would have handled those
paychecks. You didn’t need to bring Matt into it. He must think
I’m an idiot.”

Or a liar
, I
think to myself, because I’m sure she left that detail out on
purpose, not ever thinking in a million years I’d bring it up.

“Sorry,
Lorraine,” I say with as much sincerity I can muster. “I’m
sure you would have handled it fine.”

Turning away from
her, I sit back down at the table and prepare to fill out the forms
that will now tie me to Matt Connover—extraordinary, one-time
lover… and now my boss.

At promptly 4:30 PM,
I present myself to Matt’s office. I practically had to have a
map drawn to it because his firm is so large. I found out during my
initiation tour that Connover and Crown employs thirty-eight lawyers
and fifty-two staff persons. Its main practice areas are corporate
and civil litigation, although there are also smaller practice areas
like elder law, criminal law and the such.

Apparently, Matt
built the firm from the ground up, starting it just a mere ten years
ago when he had graduated law school. Miss Anders hinted that Matt
was the majority owner, and Bill was more or less an original
investor, who was sort of just hanging on to a nominal amount of
ownership interest at this point.

Knocking, I hear him
say, “Come in,” and I steel myself to just about
anything. When I open the door, I see he’s still on the phone,
but he waves me in and points to a chair across from him. I settle in
and gaze around while he talks.

I take in the
understated elegance of his office decor. Browns, tans, and grays
seem to be his color preference, and his taste in furniture leans
toward the contemporary. Spying his degrees on the wall, I see he did
his undergraduate at Stanford and got his law degree at Harvard.

Freakin’
smarty pants.

Not that Columbia
was anything to sneeze at.

“No, we’re
not settling for that amount. Twenty-five is our bottom line. You
have until close of business tomorrow to decide and let me remind
you… I not only represent Mrs. Sanderson, but I also represent
each of her three children, and if you don’t pay the
twenty-five, then I’ll be filing Mrs. Sanderson’s suit
only. And after I’ve dragged your company through the
shit-storm that is our legal system for the next three years, I’ll
file the first child’s suit… and I’ll drag your
ass through the same shit-storm for the three years after that. Then
the next child’s, and then the next. I’ll have you tied
up in litigation long after you’re ready to retire from the
practice of law, and get this… I could give a fuck if I win
even one of those cases. The mere fact I’ll drown you in legal
expenses makes me go all tingly inside. So do yourself a favor, pay
the twenty-five and save yourself the heartburn.”

Matt listens for
just a few seconds, and then he says, “Very good. I expect the
check tomorrow by noon.”

He hangs up the
phone without a good-bye and immediately types a few notes on his
computer. While his long fingers work the keyboard over, I ruminate
on that conversation.

Damn, that was some
hot legal talk. I have no clue if his case had merit or not, but I
would have paid whatever he was telling me to pay after hearing that.

When Matt finally
stops typing and swivels his chair to face me, I say, “So…
sounds like you just settled a case for $25,000. Congrats.”

His face remains
impassive, not even a hint of a smile. He says, “Try
twenty-five million.”

“Excuse me?”
I say, stunned, because I surely misheard him.

“Twenty-five
million,” he reiterates, calm as day.

Clearing my throat
and trying to calculate what one-third of twenty-five million would
be, because… holy shit, that’s a huge legal fee, I ask,
“May I inquire as to what type of case?”

Standing from his
computer, Matt walks over to a mini-fridge and pulls out a bottled
water. He holds one up to me, but I shake my head no.

“Train
accident,” he says matter-of-factly. “Mrs. Sanderson and
her kids were on a train. They were all killed when a truck driver
who was drunk off his ass got his rig stuck on the tracks. Train
couldn’t stop. Kids and mom died a fiery death.”

“Oh,” I
say quietly. “That’s terrible. But hey… you should
be happy. What a settlement!”

“It was worth
more,” he says in disdain, but he doesn’t elucidate.
However, as an attorney, my interest is peaked way too greatly to let
it go at that.

“Then why
didn’t you settle for more? Seems like you had the upper hand.”

With a pained sigh,
Matt sits down behind his desk again, taking a sip of his water.
“Mrs. Sanderson’s husband doesn’t want to go to
court. At all. He says he just doesn’t have it in him to
relive the pain of what happened. So he gave me the authority to take
the one million they were offering today and told me to make the case
go away.”

“So you were
bluffing just then?”

“That I was,”
he confirms, sounding neither proud nor victorious.

I’m impressed
with Matt. His overt confidence was a key element in getting Mr.
Sanderson justice, but I’d also learned from Miss Anders that
Matt has an incredible reputation in the courtroom. He has a track
record to back up his bluff, and that was probably the key to getting
the case settled.

“I’m not
happy about you working here,” he says without preamble.

“I gathered
that by your icy welcome this morning. I get that you’re mad
about it. I guess I just can’t figure out why?”

His eyebrows raise,
and he looks at me, stunned. “You can’t figure out why
I’m mad? How about because I had my tongue between your legs
two days ago, or the fact we both almost overdosed on orgasms, or
maybe it’s because I got a fucking hard on the minute you
walked in that conference room door? Take your pick… there are
a variety of reasons why I’m mad.”

His words are
gritted out, but they have a sexy quality to them as well, and oh my
God… the fact he got a hard on from looking at me?

Wow.

Pleasure zings
through my body, with the knowledge that I still affect him that way.
However, it’s with a measured, logical tone, I say, “I’m
not sure why this is a problem? We spent a night together. It’s
over. We forget about it, and we go on.”

Matt rolls his eyes
at me as if I just said the dumbest thing in the world. “I
don’t need this shit in my business. I don’t need you
walking around all doe-eyed at me, hoping for something more.”

“
What
?”
I practically shriek at him, anger now surging hot in my veins. “What
makes you think I’ll be doing that?”

Egotistical moron!

He looks at me like
he can’t even believe I’d find fault with his reasoning.
“I’m just anticipating it. It’s a woman thing.”

Okay, now I’m
beyond pissed. Standing up from my chair, I walk up to the edge of
his desk and slap my palms on it. I lean forward and glare at him as
if laser beams are shooting from my eyes. The fact that this man is
my boss and holds my future employment in his hands does nothing to
diminish the nuclear blast of an ass-chewing I’m getting ready
to hand out.

“Listen, you
jackass,” I sneer at him, not caring one whit if this gets me
fired. “I can conduct myself in a businesslike manner, and
yeah… you got me to scream a few times the other night. But I
can guarantee you—you’re not the only man in New York
that can accomplish that feat. I’m certainly not in any danger
of walking around all… What did you call it? ‘Doe-eyed?’
I’m not even sure what the fuck that is.”

My breath is coming
out harshly, and I’m daring him to argue with me. He returns my
look with a wary gaze, and he chooses to hold his tongue.

Wise man.

“One last
thing,” I continue. “I’ll do my job, and I’ll
do it well. But if you so much as try to fire me or treat me any
differently because of our little encounter, I’ll sue you for
discrimination faster than you can blink. Are we clear?”

Matt stares at me
for a few seconds, his jaw popping back and forth. He’s angry,
but he finally grits out, “Crystal clear.”

I turn on my heel
and walk out his door.

I don’t see
Matt for the next two days at work, but the office calendar said he
was in Atlanta for a court hearing. I took the time to acclimate
myself to my office, meet as many of the other firm members as I
could, and work on the one, single case that I had to my name.

Most of my work as
an associate attorney with Lorraine was to basically do the grunt
work on her cases. I had one true case that was mine alone, and
that’s because Lorraine told me she wouldn’t touch it
with a ten-foot pole. Miss “I Only Represent Corporate America”
couldn’t bother herself to touch a regular old personal injury
case. In fact, she actually sneered at me when I told her I had taken
the case of one Mr. Larry Jackson.

I pretty much worked
the case myself, trying to figure things out as I went along.
Luckily, I had a Torts professor at Columbia that gladly dispensed
out advice to me as I needed it. One day… I’m assuming
out of sheer boredom, Lorraine asked me about the case. When I told
her my client had a rather severe brain injury and the economist I
hired had projected his medical and earning losses into the millions,
her face did take on a rather orgasmic look and, since then, she
didn’t think the case was all that stupid anymore.

You may wonder how I
ended up with such a delectable case being only one year out of law
school.

Well, it was pretty
easy.

Apparently, it’s
not
that
great of a case. My client claims a dump truck turned
left in front of him, and he had no time to stop. The dump truck
driver insists my client was speeding and didn’t have his
headlights on, even though it was almost half an hour before dawn,
when headlights would have been required.

The insurance
company even took great pride in showing me pictures of my client’s
speedometer showing the needle stuck at sixty-six miles per hour when
he was in a fifty-five mile per hour zone.

So, yeah… I
landed this case because seven other attorneys had turned it down.
They all said it was a dog… said there was no chance at
victory, which is depressing to say the least. But I am not ready to
give up.

I admit the
speedometer is an issue, and I haven’t quite figured that out
yet, but I did blow their claim clear out of the water that the
headlights weren’t on. I hired an expert that studied my
client’s headlights. He said the bulbs unequivocally proved the
lights were on because the filaments were bent, indicating there was
a heat source on at the time of impact. Had the lights been off and
thus cold, the filaments wouldn’t be so ‘bendy’—my
words, not the expert’s—and would have shattered instead.

Score one for the
recent law school grad who has only one case to her name and plenty
of time on her hands to try to figure this shit out.

On my third day at
my new law firm, I have a lovely conversation with my client’s
wife, Miranda, and tell her about my move to Connover and Crown. I
usually talk to Miranda because with Larry’s head injury, he
can’t remember three-quarters of the stuff I tell him anyway.
It’s a tragic side effect, and one that cost him his job as an
electrical engineer, which he had worked at for thirteen years. We
chat for quite awhile and then I sign off, promising to call her the
following week with an update.

Putting Larry’s
case aside, I pull out a thick stack of files that Lorraine wants me
to review for her—back to the grunt work. It’s at times
like this I could kick myself in the ass for ever wanting to be a
lawyer.

I get immersed into
the scintillating world of corporate finance—aka drool-inducing
law—and am just considering a break for a cup of coffee when
someone knocks on my door. I don’t even look up from the
arbitration clause I’m reviewing for like the hundredth time
because it’s so boring and merely say, “Come in.”