“Well, I certainly wouldn’t want anyone at the firm to know about my legal troubles,” Devin replied. “Especially if the video isn’t taken down as quickly as you think they might be. That alone would be cause for them to let me go.”
He could only imagine how a sex video would play with the conservative partners. “I don’t think you have to worry about that, Devin. There’s no file on you in the office. There’s no way my secretary can know about your case.”
“So you typed out those letters yourself?”
“I sure did. Lawyers make excellent writers. Look at John Grisham.”
Chapter 6
Devin smiled broadly as she shook the hands of Holt & Cotten’s founding partners in a firm, palm-to-palm grip that radiated confidence. She had a good feeling about the interview. Marianne Baxter had clearly liked her, and as David had told her, Marianne’s opinions mattered.
Still, she didn’t want to come off as cocky. “It was a pleasure meeting you both,” she said. “I want to reiterate my interest in the position. I have six years’ experience running an office and know about ordering supplies, doing payroll, payables, receivables…and I’ve always been fascinated by the law. I’m a quick learner, and I’ve always excelled at whatever I take on.” She followed David’s advice by briefly stressing her strong points, and it seemed to work, for their smiles seemed genuine.
Marianne was waiting outside of Mr. Holt’s office to see her out. Devin thanked her as well, adding, “I do hope to hear from you. I want to stress that because I’m presently not working, I’m available to start right away. There’s no need to delay while I give two weeks’ notice.”
At the reception area, she shook Marianne’s hand and bid Carla, the very pregnant current receptionist, farewell, adding, “Enjoy your time off with your baby.”
“Oh, thank you,” the pretty brunette happily replied.
Devin had hoped she’d see David while at the office, but she didn’t. She told herself that was just as well, since she’d likely be tempted to speak to him. No one at the firm could know that they were acquainted.
She checked the time. It was after four. Mama would be arriving soon. That worked out well for her as well. She felt, and David agreed, that Marianne and the partners didn’t need to know the firm’s cleaning woman was her mother unless she got the job.
While riding the elevator downstairs, she powered up her cell phone, breaking into a smile when she saw David’s text:
So, how’d it go?
Good, she texted back.
Can U meet me for dinner if I leave in the next 10 minutes?
Sure. Where should I meet U?
In front of the St. Regis. I’ll get a cab and pick you up.
Devin couldn’t resist texting back:
A cab?
His response came fast:
No time to order Uber.
She laughed out loud and was still smiling as she walked one block north to the St. Regis Hotel. She stood far away from the curb to stay out of the pedestrians’ way, and also away from the hotel’s front entrance, not wanting the doorman to chase her way. She amused herself by people-watching, constantly checking the front entrance for a bright yellow taxi. When she saw David’s lean form alight from one and wave his hand in no particular direction like a seaman with a beacon, she hurried forward. “Here I am,” she called when she was closer.
“Hey! Where did you—” he cut himself off, looking at her and appearing awestruck.
Devin smiled, knowing she looked different from what he was accustomed to seeing. At their previous meetings, she’d dressed casually but professionally in blazers, slacks, and flat shoes. For her interview she’d abandoned the collegiate look in favor of something more polished. She wore high-necked cranberry-colored blouse that buttoned down the back, navy blazer, and a cream-colored skirt with a navy sash at the waist. The skirt’s wraparound style and rounded corners gave her a more soft, feminine look that went well with the graceful folds of her blouse. Sheer cream hosiery and maroon wooden-heeled pumps with an Oxford design completed her ensemble. She had changed her hair from its usual casual, sedate bun to a simple, elegant French braid that ran down the back of her head, stopping between her shoulder blades. When pulled tightly, her hair appeared to have an overall straight texture with a few waves, which promptly became bushy when it was loose.
“You look great,” he said when he found his voice. “I’ll bet you knocked their socks off.”
Devin smiled as she gracefully climbed into the back seat of the taxi, sliding over to the far window. “I can only hope that senior management considers my face appropriate to represent Holt & Cotten to visitors.”
“They’re nuts if they don’t.” David spoke with a vehemence that surprised her. To the driver he said, “Columbus and Seventy-second.”
“You’ll never believe who just called me,” he said as the taxi pulled out into traffic.
Hope filled her heart. “Mr. Jessup?”
“No. I suspect he’s probably still in talks with his attorney. It was your ex, Joaquin.”
“Joe? What did he say?”
“That he received my letter and he’s contacted the site about taking down the video. He said they told him it’ll take a few days. He, um, sounded nervous.”
“He should,” she spat out. “I hope he wet his pants when he read your letter about taking legal action against him.”
David laughed. “I’m sure it came as a surprise.”
“I can guarantee you it did. The last thing he expected was for me to hire a lawyer.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I spent so many years of my life with him.”
“How long did the two of you date?”
“Five years.”
“Five years? That’s a long time. What made you break up?”
“His lack of ambition. He’s got a decent apartment with lower than market rent and a job with benefits, and he feels he’s set for life.”
“As someone who’s doing just that, I don’t see the problem,” he said with a smile.
“I don’t know anything about your living situation, David, but at least you have a career. You’re an attorney, and there will always be a need for those. Joe installs cable. I’m not sure that’s a very secure position nowadays, what with more and more people cutting the cord.” She grunted. “I know I can’t afford to have cable anymore. I watch TV through streaming. But if Joe should get laid off, he doesn’t know how to do anything else. When I talked to him about maybe learning some other profession, like carpentry or plumbing, he just shrugged it off. He doesn’t believe in expanding his mind or his horizons.”
“How’d he get an apartment below market rate?”
“It’s a one-room apartment that his grandfather lived in for years. His grandfather added him to the lease before he died a couple of years ago.”
“So he’s under rent control?”
“No. His grandfather hadn’t lived there that long. But he only pays about eight hundred a month.”
“You know,” David remarked, “a lot of people who go out for five years end up getting married.”
“We were on and off over that time, not together for five years straight,” she clarified. “The funny thing is, when I called it off for good, he proposed to me. I think he realized I meant it this time, and he obviously thought a proposal would make me change my mind. You see, I was part of his status quo. He always said he was too young to get married. He kept saying that even after he turned thirty,” she added. “I always felt it was just that he didn’t want to give up his apartment. When he proposed to me, he said he could move into my place and Mama could move to his.”
“That would guarantee he’d have his apartment to go back to if things didn’t work out between you,” David mused. “He and your mom would just play another round of musical apartments. But if things did work out, the two of you could stay at your place forever. A two-bedroom apartment would be large enough to raise two kids in, at least if they’re th
e same gender.”
“True, except I don’t have a two-bedroom apartment. Mama and I share a bedroom. It’s big enough to fit two double beds. We, uh, couldn’t afford two bedrooms,” she added, feeling a bit embarrassed. In a spurt of defensiveness, she informed him, “We’re actually lucky. Just the other day I overheard a woman telling her friend that her life is been miserable since her daughter had a baby, because they’re all crammed into a studio.” She gave David a defiant stare. “I’ll bet that shocks you, doesn’t it? You probably have no idea how some people have to live in this city because rents are so high.”
“I’m not shocked at all. I’m not naïve, Devin. I know there are thousands of people struggling to get by. But if you were to ask me if I ever was subjected to a cramped living situation, I’d have to say no.” He thought of how Amparo DaCosta came to clean the offices of Holt & Cotten along with other suites in the building after cleaning guestrooms at the Four Seasons all day. It didn’t seem fair for anyone to have to work that hard simply to be able to afford to pay their rent. He’d long heard cries about this the city having become too expensive for the working class. He’d dated plenty of women who lived with roommates for economical reasons, even though they each had a bedroom. New York might be considered the city that never slept, but like most large cities on the east and west coasts, it was an expensive city in which to live. But now that he’d gotten to know Devin, the inequity between rich and poor really bothered him. He remembered that as an undergrad, one of his friends, a sociology major, had read him a paper he’d been working on, in which he stated that public housing was never meant to be a permanent home for its occupants, but rather a place where people got on their feet and then left behind after a few years for nicer apartments or even houses in the suburbs. Now it appeared that once you got an apartment there you could never get out…
It occurred to him that Devin was speaking. “I’m sorry, can you say that again?”
“I was saying that you know everything about me and I know practically nothing about you,” she said. “I mean, I know you’re the attorney and I’m the client, but I’d still like to know a little something about you.”
“I’ll make a deal with you.”
“What kind of deal?”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know about me…if you promise to talk to me about what happened in the elevator yesterday.”
She gave him a sardonic smile. “Spoken like a true wheeler-dealer.” She thought for a few moments. The urge to know more about him overpowered her reluctance to talk about their kiss. “All right.”
“We’re almost here,” he said, glancing at a street sign as they passed Seventy-first Street. Elegant residential buildings lined one side of the street, Central Park the other. “Why don’t we wait until we’re seated?”
“Where’re we going, anyway?”
“A pizza place, but they have a little bit of everything.”
The cab pulled over at the corner of Columbus and Seventy-second, and they entered the restaurant that was just steps away. It was a homey place that didn’t serve alcohol. David was right, Devin thought as she studied the menu. In addition to pizza, the restaurant served burgers, salads, paninis, gyros, quesadillas, wraps, and chef’s special dinners. After some thought, she ordered the eggplant parmigiana dinner. David ordered the Cajun salmon.
“Okay,” he said after their frozen lemonades were delivered, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Why don’t you start by summarizing your life in a paragraph?” she suggested.
“Sure. I’m a native New Yorker, born here and lived here all my life. I’m the youngest of two boys. I went to Columbia for college and law school. I passed the bar on my first try and have been practicing law for about five years. I’m thirty-two years old and have never been married.”
“What type of law is your specialty?”
“Criminal, mostly. But I haven’t defended any murderers and rapists. I do mostly white-collar crime: embezzlers, insider traders, things like that.”
That didn’t surprise her. The average working stiff accused of a serious crime probably couldn’t afford to hire an attorney from Holt & Cotten.
Eager to keep the conversation going, she said, “Whereabouts in the city do you live?”
“East Forty-ninth, between Second and Third.”
“What is that, Murray Hill?” she guessed.
“Turtle Bay. My great grandfather bought a townhouse there back in the thirties. The actress Katharine Hepburn was one of our neighbors.”
Devin’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”
“Yes. I remember seeing her a couple of times when I was a kid. She’d come out after her household staff loaded up her station wagon for trips up to her estate in Connecticut. Eventually she went up there for good. I think that’s where she died. Anyway, somebody else owns the house now. It’s still a single residence townhouse, but my family’s house was divided into units soon after purchase. My grandparents had the lower level, parlor floor, and second floor. I lived with my parents and brother in a duplex on the third and fourth floors, and my grandparents stayed on the fifth floor and had use of the roof garden.”
She shot him a dubious look. “Your grandparents had to walk up five flights of steps?”
“There’s an elevator.”
“Oh.” She felt a little foolish for not knowing that, but what did she know about lifestyles of the wealthy?
“Not all townhouses have elevators, though,” David said.
“No wonder you said you were content to stay where you are.”
“It’s a nice setup. Now that my grandparents are gone, my parents live on the first three floors, my brother and his family have our old apartment, and I stay on the top, where my grandparents used to live.”
“So who gets to live in the main part of the house after your parents are…are no longer here?” Devin inquired. “You and your future family, or your brother and his family?”
“My parents have already told us that the terms of their wills call for the house to be made available equally for my brother and me. They suggested that we might want to remodel the house from three apartments to two. You see, my place is technically a duplex, but the second level consists only of one bedroom and a bath. The rest of it is outdoors. We’re to share the costs of any remodeling, and also of upkeep and taxes.”
So that was how the rich did it. “Sounds like a very sensible arrangement,” Devin said. She sighed. “It must be nice to know that you’ve got plenty of space and that you’ll always have a place to live.” Just as I thought. He comes from generations of money.
“I won’t deny it. I’ve been fortunate.”
“There’s something I don’t understand,” she said slowly. “You said your brother is older. Why is it that he wasn’t named after your father?”
“My brother’s named after our maternal grandfather, who was very ill at the time he was born and died a few months later. Mom didn’t have a brother, so she wanted to give him a namesake grandson. She knew that would make him happy, and apparently it did.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
David cleared his throat. “Can I answer any more questions for you?”
Devin moistened her lips nervously. She wished she could keep this conversation going, but she really couldn’t—he’d already given her the basics, and she’d just asked her only question. She just wanted to delay the discussion that lay ahead. She’d thought that agreeing to discuss their kiss would be worth finding out more about David, but now that the time had come, she wasn’t so sure.
“I can’t think of any,” she reluctantly admitted.
“In that case, I guess it’s my turn.”
She took a sip of her drink, and when she lowered it, he reached across the table to cover her hand with his. He obviously meant it to be reassuring, but his touch made her feel lightheaded. “Devin,” he began. “I’m in a bit of an awkward position. I realize I owe you an apology. I want
you to know I’m not in the habit of making intimate gestures toward my clients.”
She had to struggle to keep her voice even; her skin was tingling from his touch. “I understand, David, and I accept your apology. I think we can forget about it now.”
His gaze met hers with such intensity that she shivered. “The problem is that I can’t forget about it. Can you?”
She looked into his bright blue eyes, transfixed by them. She swallowed, feeling her Eve’s apple bob.
“I’m saying that even though I know I shouldn’t have kissed you, I’m not sorry that I did. I just wanted you to know how I feel. Forgive me for saying this, because it’s not exactly a gentlemanly thing for me to point out…but I think you enjoyed it every bit as much as I did.”
“You’re right…about that not being something a gentleman would say.”
Those blue eyes gazed at her intently. “Agreed, but can you look at me and tell me it’s not true?”
She averted her gaze.
“I thought so,” he said, his voice gentle rather than gloating. His fingers applied a gentle pressure to her hand. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Devin. Men and women have been attracted to each other since the beginning of time. What makes me ashamed about my behavior is that you came to me with having been the recipient of unwanted sexual advances in your workplace. I feel that by kissing you, I violated your trust, and I find that troubling.”
Devin could tell he was sincere, and his words suggested he was beating himself up. Suddenly she had an overpowering urge to comfort him. “Don’t blame yourself, David. It was an extraordinary set of circumstances. I actually thought that elevator was going to fall to the bottom and that we’d die in the crash.” She gave him a weak smile. “If I was going to die, I’d much rather do it wrapped in your arms than standing alone.”
After Office Hours Page 6
