The Cost of Happiness: A Contemporary Romance

by Braden, Magdalen

  “Hey, Meghan.”

  She turned. Crap. Dan Howard was trotting up to her.

  “Do you live in the Museum District too?” He came to stand next to her, his attention on the pedestrian crossing signal.

  “I was going to the library.” She looked up again. “Now I’m thinking I should get home before it starts to rain.”

  The light changed and they started to cross. Why didn’t she turn around and head home? She could wait another day before getting a new novel. Before she could change direction, though, Dan had started talking.

  “I used to rent in Olde City. I finally decided to buy—just a condo. It has a great view of the Art Museum. How about you?”

  He was looking at her. She didn’t want to make eye contact so she kept her attention on the sidewalk. “Me what?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “West Philly. I’m in the same place I rented for law school.”

  She caught his nod in her peripheral vision. “Inertia. Me too.”

  Meghan wasn’t sure her situation was inertia but maybe it was. Like how she was still walking with her boss when she would do better heading for home.

  “I really should get—” Just as the “going” part of her speech was on her lips, the rain started. Meghan jumped underneath one of the trees across from the cathedral and shrugged off her backpack to fumble for her umbrella.

  Dan Howard joined her. “Smart woman. I never think to bring an umbrella.” He grinned at the pint-sized collapsible umbrella. “Not that it would do me much good.”

  She looked up at him. He was taller than her image of him from moot court. Maybe because she didn’t allow herself to think about that day, or any of the days before she signed her law career away. Tall and far too good-looking. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen in a person.

  She fiddled with her umbrella’s handle.

  “Hold on.” He ran out from under the tree and waved down a taxi. “Here,” he called, holding open the back door.

  Shit. Meghan dashed for the cab and scrambled into the back seat. She slid over to sit behind the driver, leaving room for Dan to get in.

  “Where do you live?” he asked.

  “Forty-third and Spruce.” After he’d told the driver, Meghan protested. “You don’t have to take me home.”

  There was that grin again. “My pleasure. I didn’t bring an umbrella, remember? And we weren’t both going to fit under that thing.”

  “Thank you.” Meghan felt awkward. He was her boss, responsible for virtually all her assignments, evaluations, the works. If he didn’t want her on his team, she’d lose her job. She watched as the rain intensified.

  He stretched his legs toward the hump between the front seats. “Are you from Philly originally?”

  “Iowa.”

  “Really? I’ve never been there. I picture lots of farmland and no hills.”

  “I’m from Keokuk, which is in the southeast corner, along the Mississippi.”

  “That must be beautiful.”

  Meghan smoothed her hands down her thighs. “It is. Particularly in summer.”

  “I’m from Maine. My mother works for state government and my dad’s a surgeon.”

  The exchange of family stories. It reminded her of having to talk to Kassie. “I’m pretty much the only one left.” The only sane one, at least.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She glanced over at him. From the look in his eyes, it seemed he really was sorry for her. Even his tone evoked the divide between them. He had family he loved, a pristine résumé as an Assistant US Attorney, a great job. By contrast, she was fortunate not to be on trial, prosecuted by his counterpart in Chicago.

  She thought about scrambling out of the cab the next time it stopped at a light. The rain, now a downpour, dissuaded her.

  “How did you come to be in Philly?” she asked.

  “I was working at a Wall Street firm when I realized I wanted to prosecute the bad guys. I applied to the Justice Department and ended up here.”

  “Do you miss New York?”

  “Not at all.” He laughed. “Philadelphia suits me. I found New York far too frenetic.”

  “I’ve never been to New York.” Wow. Where had that come from? She didn’t share things like that, and on the heels of admitting she was basically an orphan… Not cool.

  “You should go. I have favorite bits. Central Park, of course. Ellis Island. Battery City. The brownstones on the Upper West Side. The Brooklyn Bridge. I just don’t miss living there.”

  “Where did you live when you were in New York?”

  “We had an apartment in Brooklyn.”

  Meghan took a deep breath to ease the tension in her chest. It was a relief—no, really, it was—to hear that he was married. She looked at his hand. Even if he didn’t wear a ring. And had flirted with her after the moot court competition.

  Shit. She had no business checking out his ring finger.

  “I’m not in that relationship anymore, or dating anyone,” he offered.

  Still flirting. Not good. He must be like this with every woman. Meghan had seen how Vicky had been sniffing around him. Chances were they’d be seen in the coffee shop giggling over their macchiatos by next week.

  That image—of Dan Howard and the unpleasant Vicky—made Meghan’s stomach turn over.

  Nonetheless, he needed to be reminded of her situation. She angled her torso toward him. “Mr. Howard.”

  “Dan.”

  “Right. Dan. Here’s the thing. You’re my boss and I need this job.” She slanted him a look of reproach. Inside, she could feel her loneliness and longing press at her from deep down. She squashed it ruthlessly. These days she couldn’t afford to want anything.

  He pulled back until he was pressing against the cab’s door. “Of course. I just—I mean, I didn’t want you to think…” He pushed his hands over the top of his head. “I don’t know. I’m sorry if I was inappropriate.”

  “No, really. It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. I just need to be clear why I’m not looking to be friends.”

  “Yeah, sure. Of course. I’m so sorry I put you in that position.” He looked straight ahead, clearly unhappy.

  Meghan swallowed and closed her eyes for a moment. Could she have fucked this up any worse? Nope, pretty sure she’d done her worst. Short of jumping him as soon as the taxi headed west she’d done about all she could. Luckily the cab was already at 30th Street Station so they were pretty close to her place.

  “I’m reading—well, rereading actually—the Dorothy Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries,” she volunteered.

  “I think I read those in the summers during high school.” His voice registered relief that she’d pulled the conversation back.

  “Me too. They hold up, don’t they? Admittedly, there are some distressingly antiquated stereotypes mixed in with the stiff upper lips, but that doesn’t worry me too much. She was a product of a different time and place.”

  The rest of the cab ride was spent discussing cultural anachronisms in books.

  The envelope sat on Meghan’s kitchen table, taunting her. Okay, let’s not anthropomorphize the damned thing. It’s just some paper inside an envelope. She’d gotten the same thing last month. It should be easy by now. Rip it open, write the check, detach the stub and mail it after payday.

  Oddly, having her paycheck garnished to pay the restitution was easy by comparison. That was a debt of honor, one she could respect. And anyway, it came out of her paycheck automatically. It was harder to miss money she never actually saw in her bank balance.

  This envelope—her law school loans—stood for everything that had gone wrong in the past five years. It was supposed to have been a great accomplishment, getting into Franklin Law. It was a top-ten law school and she was a kid from Iowa.

  A law degree represented a chance to do good work and have a stable life. She had been determined to go, even though there was no way she could pay the tuition through hard work, as she had with colleg
e. Everyone said, “Just take out loans,” so she had. She’d gotten some scholarship money, true, and that helped. A little. Most of the cost was paid by loans. Nearly $60,000 for those two years. As soon as she dropped out, the loans came due.

  If she could have stayed in school, she’d have graduated near the top of her class. The clerkship she’d been offered wouldn’t pay a lot right out of law school. But after that she’d be making good money as a lawyer. Roughly four times what she made as a paralegal. She wouldn’t have noticed the garnishment then—paying her mother’s restitution would have been easy with that much money coming in.

  She stopped staring at the envelope, sighed and got her checkbook. This was part of the monthly ritual. She’d cried the first time she’d written the loan repayment check. Not this month. It was just money. She’d worked all through college and taken the extra time to complete her degree debt-free. Well, she’d get back to law school eventually. No need to cry about a delay.

  Meghan deliberately straightened her posture. Time to count her blessings—another part of the monthly ritual. She liked her one-bedroom apartment, and it was a blessing that she could afford to stay in it. She walked to work. It was only about thirty blocks and she actually enjoyed the exercise most days. Saved her the cost of a SEPTA bus pass, not to mention an expensive gym membership. And the costs associated with a car, she reminded herself wryly. Better for the environment, as well.

  There. See? Nothing to get worked up about. When she went to read her novel, though, she remembered the aborted trip to the library, which brought Dan Howard into her mind, golden-brown hair and flame-blue eyes. That sly smile. He might as well have walked into the apartment with her, his presence was so vivid.

  Four months forgetting her little moot court crush on him—all that progress gone. Four months reminding herself that he was probably one of those guys who likes women, all women, and whose attentions are easily misconstrued. Four months telling herself that he would be married, involved, dating, unavailable…and even if he wasn’t any of those things, he was out of her league.

  Look at him. Not Blackjack McIntyre handsome, maybe, but really good-looking. And not so old. She was twenty-seven. He had to be less than ten years older. But completely out of reach for a girl who only left Iowa two years ago. Especially now that he was her boss.

  Meghan paced her living room as she tried to banish the image of Dan Howard laughing at her umbrella and instead remember him from that morning’s meeting. He hadn’t humiliated her, certainly not intentionally, but it still stung knowing that either she told him why she’d left school, or she let the gossip mill handle it.

  She stopped pacing and looked out her window at the little park between Spruce House and the school parking lot. Another thing to be grateful for. Her apartment was shaded by the huge sycamores on 43rd Street.

  Be thankful for what you have. Don’t wish for the moon.

  Meghan could hear her grandfather’s voice, steady and resolute in the face of his daughter’s craziness. Pops had kept Meghan focused on what needed to be done.

  I won’t let you down, Pops.

  Meghan had been at her desk for just a few minutes when Dan appeared at her door, a paper cup of coffee in his hand.

  He’s just my boss.

  She couldn’t help noticing how different he was from Georgia, who probably couldn’t have found Meghan’s office with a map and a trail of breadcrumbs. Georgia would have gotten her secretary to phone Meghan with the message that she needed to go to Georgia’s office. Dan had walked the sixty feet all on his own. Clearly not yet in sync with law firm ways.

  “Have you heard anything about Davis versus Argus Industries?” he asked.

  “I heard we haven’t been retained.” Actually, what Meghan heard was that Georgia hadn’t even contacted the client before she left.

  “Have you had a chance to look at the complaint?”

  She had, but no one had asked her to. Thinking about possible defenses was the sort of legal analysis that Meghan knew could get her into trouble with the “real” lawyers in Litigation. “I’ve seen it,” she said cautiously.

  Dan took a sip of his coffee, his blue eyes trained on her face the whole time. Finally he said, “Let’s get something straight. Maybe no one else here knows who you are and what you’re capable of, but I do.”

  What could she say? “Okay.”

  “So if I ask you if you’ve read a complaint, I’m inviting you to tell me what you think. Nothing you say will be held against you unless you say something stupid. And I don’t think you say stupid stuff very often.”

  “Thank you.” She glanced at him. He wasn’t smiling. “I think.”

  “Good. Now, about the case.” He grabbed one of Meghan’s lined pads and flipped pages over until he got to a blank sheet.

  She thought back to the case. “Davis is potentially huge. The plaintiffs allege that for ten years cell phone manufacturers conspired with service providers to pad customers’ bills by a penny or so on certain text messages. The court hasn’t approved it as a class action yet, but if it does we’re talking tens of millions of cell phone users. There are six defendants, all manufacturers of cell phones. Our client would be ProCell, which has the third largest share of the market. We already handle their patent work, but they’ve tended to go with Boston firms for litigation.”

  “Would be?”

  “I don’t believe Fergusson competed in the beauty contest.” She waited to see if Dan knew the term for the competition by law firms to get a client to retain them. He didn’t ask, so presumably he knew.

  “Let me guess. Georgia didn’t want to bother while she had one foot in Washington.”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Meghan said, keeping her gaze on her folded hands. “But I checked the court docket this morning. No one’s yet entered an appearance on ProCell’s behalf.”

  “Fair enough. Go on.”

  “Okay. The plaintiffs claim an odd combination of hardware and software problems resulted in increased charges for text messaging. If they won on every count, the damages could be massive.”

  “Ah, but we think ProCell has some defenses, don’t we?” He smiled at her.

  She couldn’t help it—she beamed back at him. “Right. That’s what makes it such a great case. In order for the plaintiffs to prevail, they need to show that our phones had both the hardware and software problems and that the problems worked together in a particular way to result in the erroneous charges. If ProCell phones didn’t have the same problems as the other manufacturers, they’d have a defense. That could be hard for them to claim because of the intellectual property and antitrust issues.”

  “Right,” he nodded. “How would ProCell know if Argus and the others had the same design flaws unless they were either infringing each other’s patents or colluding?”

  “Well, there could have been licensing deals all around so that everyone shared each other’s technology,” Meghan pointed out. “Some of that happens with cell phone manufacturers and cell phone providers, otherwise you wouldn’t know whether your phone would work with your preferred provider. But this case arises from fourth-generation technology, which was pretty basic back in the day. The six firms were all competing for market share, so in theory there shouldn’t be any antitrust implications. Plus, the Federal Trade Commission gave all six defendants a clean bill of health. It was the Federal Communications Commission that fined the companies, based on some shaky conclusions about billing irregularities.”

  Dan nodded. “Okay, so it was cheaper to pay the FCC’s fines than argue with the federal government. Then some big-time plaintiff’s lawyer gets all the FCC and FTC’s reports. After doing no original work of its own, the law firm files the class action lawsuit, piggy-backing on the government’s investigation to allege consumer fraud. What annoys me is how screwed up the economics of these cases are—our client has already paid the fine, which should be punishment enough, but now has to defend against the class action law
suit. Even if the plaintiffs win, each individual cell phone owner gets a dollar or so, while the plaintiffs’ lawyers get huge windfalls from next-to-no effort. The defendants all have to charge a bit more to pay for the cost of litigation, which means the consumers have to hand back the buck fifty they got the year before. Who really benefits from this—other than the plaintiffs’ attorneys?”

  Meghan laughed. “So why aren’t you a plaintiffs’ lawyer?”

  Dan’s expression sobered. “Because I don’t want to make money that way.”

  “Instead, you want to defend the wrongdoers?” She liked teasing him.

  “What I’d really like is for the money to go to the federal agencies that do all the heavy lifting in these cases. Then they could pay their staff attorneys real salaries. That would be a job I’d take.”

  “But not at the paltry salaries they currently offer.” Meghan pursed her lips. “The glory of nailing the bastards isn’t compensation enough, I guess.”

  Dan held up his hands. “Okay, you got me. After six years with Justice, I like what the private sector is willing to pay me if I become an equity partner. Still, I told Wallace Leith I wouldn’t have made the move if it hadn’t been for the opportunity to work on this sort of case. I consider the plaintiffs’ bar to be only a couple of steps above white-collar criminals. Beating them will feel really good.” He winked at her.

  “And that blind item at Philly Law Life dot com about you getting tired waiting for Blackjack McIntyre to quit—that wouldn’t have anything to do with your decision to leave the public sector?” Meghan made her eyes go round mentioning this scurrilous gossip. That website was funny but who knew if any of it was true.

  “I can neither confirm nor deny that.” He smiled. “But I don’t think you’re stupid to quote them.”

  The rush of pleasure warmed her from her chest to the roots of her hair. She suspected she was blushing.

  “Oh, Dan. Here you are,” Vicky’s bony hip leaned against the door. “I have a quick question if you’ve got a moment.”

  After flicking a glance over his shoulder, Dan rolled his eyes at Meghan. She grabbed the notepad out of his hands.