by L. D. Davis
Emmy had pulled her hair back into a ponytail and rolled her sleeves of her blouse up to her elbows. The first few buttons were unbuttoned, giving me the smallest glimpse of ample cleavage. I had seen plenty of her boobs since she moved in with Lucas, but seeing her with a kid attached to her breast wasn’t even a little bit attractive, but seeing her clothed but sporting a little bit of cleavage was hot.
“This looks great,” I said with a big grin on my face as I looked around at all of the work she had done.
“We still have a very long way to go,” she sighed. “And your files are a mess. I have Kacey fixing some of it, but it's going to take a while.”
I nodded and watched her as she bit her lip and looked around the office, mentally ticking things off on her agenda.
“I have to be in court in a little while,” I said. “I'll be back to get you around five.”
“No,” she said with a wave. “Just get Lucas and go home. I will be fine getting back.”
I wanted to object. I didn’t want her overdoing it on her first day, but before I could speak, my fourth lawyer Lanna, and Craig came noisily into the office, bickering. It was a common thing for them. Lanna was only a few years older than Craig. They actually had become very close friends since Lanna started working at the firm, but they were constantly going at it. Most of the time it was amusing to watch.
I introduced them to Emmy. I wanted to tell her that I wanted her to leave at five, but when she turned her head to look at the client reception area she had set up, I just barely saw the tiniest curve of her mouth. She was in her element and it had been a very long time since she was able to find something satisfying outside of Lucas. Who was I to squash that?
“Don’t work too late,” I smiled at her.
I forced myself to walk out of the door before I did something ridiculous, like wrap my arms around her and giver a big bear hug of thanks.
***
When Emmy came home from work that night, she looked exhausted, but accomplished. She hugged and kissed Lucas for so long, I worried that she may not want to leave him again, but then I realized we never discussed how long she would be working for me. Maybe I’d bring it up over the uneaten dinner from last night that I had set on the table for us. Truthfully, I needed her for more than just a day. I knew if anyone could get us on track at the firm, it was Emmy, and I was still angry with myself for not seeing past my own anger and pain to ask her sooner. I really needed her, and I knew just how to sweeten the deal.
“My mom made you another apple pie,” I said to her as she practically mauled our son with affection. “She said it's a gift for returning to work.”
“If I didn't know any better, I'd say that your mother wants me to stay fat,” she said with a slight frown.
Fat? My eyes traveled over her heavy breasts, curvy hips and luscious ass.
“You're not fat,” I said, holding back a smile. “But if you don't want the pie, I will gladly take it off of your hands.”
“Touch my pie and I'll break your fingers,” she warned. “Lucas, say night-night to daddy.”
My heart beat a little harder at her words. Emmy usually simply announced that she was putting Lucas to bed before taking him from me, and she never ever referred to me as daddy, at least never within my earshot. The ice between us was chipping away faster than I could have hoped for. My regrets for not attempting to mend our relationship sooner were strong.
Emmy went into the bedroom to put Lucas to bed. I knew he’d be out soon, because he was falling asleep before she got home. I purposely kept him awake so that she would have a few minutes with him. After a few minutes I started to worry that maybe Em was going to stay in the bedroom and not come out for dinner. I didn’t want to revert back to nights of tense silence. Now that I have had a dose of old Emmy, I wanted more. I wasn’t sure how much more I wanted though. I was still hurt by her actions of the past, but I was willing to move past it enough for us to at least be friends, and we weren’t going to be able to be friends if she hid out in the bedroom every night.
I walked over to the bedroom door, intending to drag her out by her hair if necessary and make her sit and eat dinner with me. I pushed open the door gently and quietly, not wanting to disturb Lucas if he was not yet asleep, but before I could open the door more than a few inches, I saw her.
Emmy was standing near the bathroom door, pulling her slacks down over her thighs. The pants dropped to the floor a second later, leaving her clad in a pair of green cotton panties and her white blouse. I should have turned away and went back to the dining room, but I was frozen in place as she began to unbutton the blouse. She peeled it off and that also fell to the floor at her feet. A moment later the matching green bra was off, but when she started to pull off her panties, I somehow made myself walk silently away.
I forced myself into the kitchen to start cleaning up imaginary messes. I tried to ignore the erection in my lounge pants and prayed that Emmy wouldn’t see it when she came out of the bedroom. I had to get my head together. There was no denying that Emmy was attractive, and even when my dislike for her was at its height, I couldn’t ignore that fact, but I had to put things in perspective. Anything beyond friendship for the two of us would be disastrous. Even a roll in the hay would be unacceptable—enjoyable—but unacceptable. The fact of the matter was the cheating and withholding Lucas from me were too big of infractions for me to be anything but Emmy’s friend.
I reheated dinner again and had just set it down on the table when Emmy came out of the bedroom dressed in flannel pajamas. I was glad I didn’t have to drag her out by her hair.
She looked hesitant to sit down with me. The only time we sat at the table together was when we were with other people, never alone.
“Are you ready to quit yet?” I asked her, hoping she wouldn’t say that she was done after one day.
“I was ready to quit when I walked in the door.”
“Sorry,” I said sincerely. “There just hasn't been time to set up.”
“Kacey and Craig both could have been helping with that,” she said in her all business tone.
“Maybe so, but in Craig's defense, he's one paralegal working for four attorneys.”
“Fair enough. I think Kacey worked more today than the total time she's been with you.”
“I guess Steve and I should have handled her better,” I admitted. “I think she thought this would be a free ride because Steve's her uncle.”
“You can't afford free loaders. I think she will work out though. I need to ask you if it's okay that I hire a cleaning company to come in and clean three nights a week.”
“I can't afford it,” I said, trying to hide how much it bothered me that I couldn’t afford to hire more help. I prided myself in taking care of my employees and my family, but the truth was that money was getting tight. I didn’t really want Emmy to know how tight, especially since I had vowed to take care of Lucas.
“I can,” she said quietly. “I'll pay for it.”
Was she serious?
“No, I can't let you do that.”
She spoke as if I had not just answered her in the negative, as if I had not spoken at all. “And I want to hire a few more people. You need at least one more paralegal.”
“There's no money for that,” I patiently reminded her.
“There's my money,” she said casually.
“No. I won't do that.”
Hell no, I wouldn’t do that. I was the man of this household and there was no way I was going to let my—or the mother of my son support us.
“Let's be frank,” Emmy said before forking some pasta into her mouth. I waited patiently for her to finish chewing and continue with her frankness. “If your firm doesn't get its shit together, you're going to drown. Chicago is full of other small firms that already have their shit together and that’s where the clients will go. I can even help you bring in upscale clientele, but you have to have your shit together first.”
She was right. I didn’t want her
to know how bad off I was, but Em knew her shit. Why she chose to work for others when she could easily be the boss was beyond me. Taking her money, however, was a huge matter of pride for me. I could probably convince her that she really couldn’t afford to help me.
“I know your family is well off, but do you personally have that kind of money? I doubt it,” I said to her.
“You don't know that. We've never discussed my finances before.”
“So, let's discuss them.”
She looked at the bracelet on her wrist. I had seen her wear it before, but it always seemed like it was weighing her down. She would fidget with it often, frowning and sighing. Before I moved back to Chicago, I had never seen the bracelet before. I imagined that Kyle had given it to her, and that bothered me more than I would expect.
“I am a trust fund baby,” she said, glancing warily at me. “I've been getting an ‘allowance' dumped into an account every four months since I was eighteen. My parents paid for my education, my car, and all of my needs until I got out of college. I've always worked and saved most of what I earned. My family doesn't flaunt their wealth, and unless you looked a little deeper, you probably didn't know that we not only have our one 'plantation' in Louisiana, but several spread out in other states. Your cotton undershirt probably originated on one of my family's farms. My father is highly invested in oil and a couple of other resources. The bar I love so much? It's mine. I own it, and it does well.”
The shock I felt would have knocked me on my ass if I wasn’t already sitting down. I didn’t go to that bar very often with Emmy, but I knew she spent a lot of time there. It irked me a little that she had failed to tell me that she owned the place. I dated her for about eight months and we were friends for a few years before that. Why was it such a big fucking secret that she owned the bar? I wanted to ask her about that, but she wasn’t finished telling me about her apparent significant personal wealth.
“When Donya was modeling, she paid me to handle her finances,” she continued. “Then other models paid me to handle their finances. When I first started working at Sterling, I bought stock as soon as I could. I sold it soon after I left, and they were doing extremely well.”
She paused and looked at me as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to continue. I was pretty sure there wasn’t much more she could tell me that could further shock me. I was wrong.
“I also left with…with compensation,” she said hesitantly.
“Like a severance package?” I asked. I was still trying to recover from everything else she had just told me.
“Something like that.” She paused before taking a deep breath and rushing her next words. “Walter Sterling paid me to go away.”
I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly. I thought she said that Walter Sterling paid her to go away, but that would be a bribe. Emmy obviously didn’t need a bribe, nor was the Emmy I knew that morally corrupt to accept one, but when she looked at me for a reaction, I realized she had really said what I thought I heard her say.
“Are you fucking serious?” I exploded. “You took a bribe?”
“Yep,” she said. I could tell that there was more she wasn’t telling me. “I was going to return it, but after…after what happened before I left Jersey, I decided to keep it. I haven't touched any of it.”
What the hell did happen? Was she going to tell me what Kyle did to her? It had to be something significant if Walter Sterling felt it necessary to bribe her.
“What happened?” I asked leaning forward.
She softly shook her head, closing me off from that part of herself. I was disappointed, but I didn’t want to push her, even though I felt kind of angry with her for taking a bribe, for hiding the bar from me—from hiding her wealth from me.
“I don't want to talk about that,” she said. “My point is, I want to help you and I'm perfectly capable of helping you. You should let me.”
Fuck.
My brain was in overload with all I had just learned. As much as I wanted to focus on the secrets that were withheld for all of this time, there would be more time for that later. I had to seriously consider what she was offering. It seemed even more important to me now more than ever to be the one to support my son, and Emmy to some degree—whether she needed it or not. Yes, it was about my pride, but I always believed that men should be the primary support for their families, and regardless of Emmy’s large bank account, I didn’t want to be upstaged. If I took a loan, which was already chipping away at my pride, I could get the firm to the level it needed to be to succeed. I could then pay back the loan and continue to support Lucas and Emmy.
“A loan,” I forced myself to say. “Everything you spend, I pay back, with interest.”
“No interest.”
“With interest,” I said firmly, unwilling to yield on this.
“One percent.”
What? One percent? One percent was like peeing in the ocean and she knew it.
“Eight percent,” I said.
“Two and a half,” she countered.
“Seven and a half.”
“Four.”
Her stubbornness was going to drive me fucking crazy.
“Six and three quarters,” I insisted, trying not to lose my patience.
“Five percent is the highest I'll allow,” she said with finality. “You're being ridiculous.”
“You're being too generous,” I argued.
She was quiet for a moment. She looked at me and quietly said, “I feel like I owe you something.”
After the way I had treated her for the past few months, she actually felt as if she owed me?
“You gave me a kid, Em. You don't owe me anything.”
“What if he grows up and turns out to be a loser?”
I tried not to laugh, because I knew she was rather serious.
“Then I may insist on some compensation. Until then, you don't owe me anything. So, I'll accept a capped loan, with five and a half percent interest.”
“Capped? I don't know how much I'll have to spend in your crappy office,” she said doubtfully. I loved that she didn’t feel any need to be polite about the state of my office.
“Then I suggest you set a budget, Miss Grayne,” I said to her.
“Fine,” she said. She stood up and collected our plates. I followed her into the kitchen. I pulled a beer out of the fridge and leaned against the counter as she started to load the dishes into the dishwasher.
“You agreed to that too fast.”
“No, a budget is fine.” She said too easily and began to wipe down the counters and stove before getting a beer.
“So, what kind of budget did you have in mind?” I prodded.
“Oh, I don't know,” she said with a shrug. “Not much.”
“I don't believe you. How much is not much?”
“Well…” she started slowly. “You need more staff, more equipment and furniture, advertising, and money just to function for your clients.”
“How much, Em?” I demanded.
She shrugged. “I guess…one and a half million.”
I choked on my beer and she watched me with mild amusement. If I didn’t have to address this million-dollar shit, I would have done something else to amuse her. It had been too long since I saw a genuine sign of amusement out of her. “One and a half million dollars!”
“I can do two or three,” she said in a high voice, trying to stop her lips from forming a smile. Now she was fucking with me, but if I let it go she would seriously try to spend two or three million dollars. Who the hell in this day and age just had a few mil lying around? Apparently my baby’s mama.
“I thought maybe a hundred grand, at most two fifty,” I objected. “Not over a million!”
“I said I can do two or three!” She threw up a hand.
“You're crazy,” I said, shaking my head. “Two fifty, and no more.”
“What's wrong with one mil?” she asked.
“Did you ever consider the possibility that I won't be able to pay tha
t back?”
“You will,” she gently insisted.
“You're insane,” I said with a frown. Borrowing money from a bank was one thing, but borrowing this kind of money from Emmy despite her financial situation made me uneasy.
She sighed and looked at me with pleading eyes. “I really want to do this, Luke.”
“It's a lot of money, Emmy.”
She shrugged and proceeded to stare me down. I stared back, trying to look as formidable as possible under the circumstances, but her pretty brown and green eyes burned into my own eyes and straight through my head. Shamefully, I looked away first.
“Okay,” I said grudgingly.
“Okay,” she said, trying to hide how triumphant I knew she felt.
“Can we have pie now?” I sulked.
“Of course,” she said, and then it happened. She gave me a full-blown smile that made the shame I felt in taking her money well worth the price.
Chapter Eight
Emmy attempted to slip back to her old ways. The following night after Lucas was asleep and the kitchen was clean, she silently began slipping into the bedroom without so much as a glance at me on the couch. It pissed me off a little bit, because we had a great working day together. So much was accomplished and we even had lunch at my desk together. Even though we were working throughout the meal and nothing personal was discussed, it was nice to be around her without heavy tension or the energy it took to ignore her and forget her name. We even ate dinner together again—takeout pizza, wings, soda, and leftover pie for dessert. She was on the quiet side, but we were talking, bullshitting about nothing in particular. But now she was trying to just slip away.
“Hey,” I said to her just before she stepped inside the bedroom.
She paused and looked at me with some apprehension. I guess I didn’t blame her. I knew she wasn’t quite used to our sudden burst of comradery. It was going to take some time for her to trust that I wouldn’t revert back to being a complete and utter assfuck. Now that I had her attention, how was I going to keep it? Make up some fake task for her to help me with?
