The Cost of Happiness: A Contemporary Romance

by Braden, Magdalen

  Instead, he admired the fancy arch he’d constructed during the call. “I’ll work up some thoughts on who we’ll need to talk to and email that to you, okay? Make all the suggestions you can—we don’t want to make this trip twice. Oh, and get me up to speed on the pacemaker case.”

  “Sullivan versus Gerard Technologies.”

  “If you say so. I just know it’s about pacemakers.”

  She glanced up and then back to her pad. She scribbled things. Unless he missed something, she was already thinking through what she wanted to ask the ProCell team, while another part of her brain was organizing her thoughts on the pacemaker case. Natural-born lawyer. Just like that, he was grinning again.

  When she was ready to tell Dan about the pacemaker case, Meghan updated the database, printed out two clean copies of the summary and headed over to his office. He was on the phone but waved her in. She sat in the chair and looked around with some interest. Other than the plethora of toys on his desk, there didn’t seem to be a lot of Dan in the space yet—he could have been a partner from one of the branch offices, squatting here while stuck in Philadelphia. No family photos, for example. You’d have thought he’d have brought pictures in first thing. His lovely wife and wonderful children on the annual vacation back to the family compound in Maine, for example.

  He didn’t wear a wedding ring and there was that awkward moment in the cab on Monday night. Still, she figured he had to be married. He just seemed the type to have a house in the suburbs, a wife, two-point-four children and a dog. Then she remembered he lived by the museum. She edited her mental image. Now she saw him in a late-Victorian townhouse, on Spring Garden perhaps. The kind with a traditional façade, while the inside looked like a cross between an art gallery and an elegantly spare furniture display. Mid-century modern, she thought. Chrome and leather bent into architecturally compelling shapes. She smiled at the image of Dan folded like a pretzel in a chair that cost more than her annual salary.

  “What’s the joke?” he asked as he hung up the phone.

  She ducked her head awkwardly. “Nothing,” she mumbled, embarrassed to realize she was embarrassed. She covered by launching into an explanation of the pacemaker litigation.

  Dan played with another of his toys, a funny smile on his lips.

  After she covered the status of the case so far, she said, “The good news is that we get to argue the merits of each plaintiff’s case for damages. The devil’s in the details of each claim, as there are a lot of things that patients can do to mess up even a fully-functioning pacemaker. I’ve been keeping a database on each plaintiff as we get the forms in. I’m not concerned with the medical aspects of the case, just the defenses we might have. Did they keep a cell phone in a breast pocket? Did they try to tweak their own pacemaker—you’d be surprised how many people do—and cause the problem themselves? Did they use an arc welder?”

  Meghan looked up at his laughter.

  He was staring at her with his mouth open. “You’re kidding, right?”

  She kept her face impassive. “Oh, no. It seems arc welders and other bits of equipment can produce very powerful magnetic fields that interfere with the functioning of the pacemaker.”

  Dan tipped his chair back and put his feet on an open drawer sticking out from his desk. “Now, see? I did not know that. I’m telling you—this is what I love about being a lawyer. Where else can you learn stuff like that?”

  “Uh, you could be a cardiologist perhaps?”

  His eyes crinkled into that sunny-blue-sky/I’m-amused-with-you look. “Okay, Ms. Smarty-Pants, I’ll concede that. But riddle me this: On what other job can you learn about cell phone technology and the effect of arc welders on pacemakers on the same day? Hmmm?”

  Meghan pressed her lips together until the urge to laugh had passed. “I would imagine any number of places, including any of the…” She was about to say something about companies that make both pacemakers and cell phones—surely there was at least one, the technologies seemed like they might be related—when she thought of something. From the look on Dan’s face, it was possible he had thought of it too.

  “We need to ask—” she said.

  “I’ll add that to—” he began.

  They stared at each other. Finally, Dan turned to his computer and typed something in one of the documents he’d been working on.

  “I mean, what are the odds, right?” he asked rhetorically. “But it sure can’t hurt to ask the ProCell tech guys about any research they’ve done on the effect of their phones on pacemakers.” He turned back to grin at her. “This is fun, isn’t it?”

  Staring at his beaming face, Meghan had to agree. It was fun.

  “Hey, neighbor.”

  Meghan turned from her mailbox to see Kassie coming up the steps from the courtyard. “Oh, hi.” So much for thinking they’d never see each other again.

  Kassie opened her mailbox and pulled out the junk mail folded inside. “Catalogs.” She flipped through them. “And not very interesting ones, at that.”

  Meghan chuckled, then headed inside. “Have a great weekend.”

  “Hey, where are you going?” Kassie asked. “Okay, I can tell where you’re going. What I wanted to know is why don’t you come out with me? I got stood up.”

  “Stood up?” Kassie was precisely the sort of woman Meghan assumed guys went for.

  “Yeah. Someone I met last weekend at a Wharton mixer. He was a bit pompous, but seemed harmless enough. We’d agreed to meet at a bar downtown, then he never showed.”

  Meghan held the door open for Kassie. “I really should get upstairs and, uh, do some laundry. Or something.”

  “Or something?” Kassie plunked her fists on her hips, the catalogs clutched in one hand. “You’re turning me down on the basis of chores you can’t even name? That’s cold.”

  They walked up the stairs. “Sorry. I just don’t like to go out. And particularly not if I’m going to meet schmucky MBA students.” Meghan pulled her keys out, ready to get into her apartment and out of her work clothes.

  “Yeah, I agree he’s not much of an ad for the bar scene.”

  Meghan stopped by her door. “And honestly? I want to make some notes about a case I’m working on. I might even go into work over the weekend.”

  Kassie flipped her bangs out of her eyes. “Your boss breathing down your neck?”

  Meghan paused, thinking. “No.” She smiled. “He thinks it’s fun too.”

  “What’s fun?”

  “I don’t know. Thinking about the law, trying to figure out a way to make the facts work in our—well, in our client’s—favor.”

  Kassie leaned against her door. “Work is fun?”

  Meghan nodded. It was. And with Dan Howard heading up the team, she couldn’t wait to get back to it. “I normally do laundry on Saturdays, so I want to get it done tonight so I can go into the office tomorrow.” She could tell she must sound like a nut job, but she couldn’t wait to get back to the ProCell case.

  Kassie rolled her eyes. “Okay. I won’t keep you from your fun work, then. We’ll have to get together when it gets more boring.” She was about to turn away when she caught Meghan’s eye. “Unless it’s your boss who’s so much fun.”

  Meghan’s cheeks heated. “Bye.”

  For the rest of the evening, she tried to convince herself that Dan had nothing to do with her enjoyment of the case. She wasn’t very successful. Not when she kept remembering his blazing smile and hot summer sky eyes.

  Chapter Six

  The office felt odd after dark on a Sunday. Meghan could tell there were other people in the building—she could hear the elevators’ faint pings when they stopped at various floors. Her floor remained quiet. She walked to Dan’s office with the results of her work on the ProCell defense. She didn’t see any puddles of light from the other offices. Plus, no one had made coffee, normally a reliable indicator someone was in on a weekend.

  She was entering her hours into the firm’s billing program when she heard
some tapping just outside her office. She turned to see Dan in her doorway.

  “You scared me.” She scowled at him. “I’d just decided there was no one else on this floor, and then you materialize.”

  He hunched his shoulder in self-defense. “Hey, I tapped on the wall, so you’d know someone was coming. It’s not like I snuck up on you.”

  She turned back to her computer. “I’m just putting in my time, and then I’m off. Did you want something?”

  “Nope. I came in to get some files and I found this massive slab of paper on my desk,” he said, flopping the memos and documents she’d rubber-banded together. “What is this?” He sat in her other chair and started looking at what was in the stack.

  “Okay, the top document’s a memo covering all the relevant facts we have so far. Below that’s another memo on the legal research I found concerning the evidentiary standards for severing cases with multiple defendants. I threw in some research on the antitrust, intellectual property, and class action procedure issues that I could think of. It’s sketchy, though and it most likely misses more than it includes, but it’s a start. Finally, you’ve got a third memo on technological issues, everything I could find on the Internet and from other case law.”

  “I’m impressed. This is a lot.” He hesitated. “Um, did I assign this?”

  She couldn’t read his expression, which seemed more rueful than critical, but one never knew with partners. “No. I just thought it would be helpful. I mean, helpful for me. And since I was going to be doing it for myself, I thought it would be better to have copies for the file. That’s okay, right?” She heard the anxiety in her voice. When would she get past this fear that they were going to fire her? Add to that her desire to please him professionally and she was a bundle of nerves. Hell, everything about the ProCell case was outside her experience.

  Dan studied her for a moment, then pulled out one of the memos to read with more care. A minute later, he appeared to have forgotten she was there.

  Meghan considered explaining how scared she was of not doing a good enough job, that he’d quietly request someone else to work on his cases, and how that would feel like she’d been demoted. Maybe she’d done too much work without authorization, but she’d loved doing it.

  Then it hit her. “Oh, no—if it’s the time, I don’t have to bill any of it. I mean, I really was trying to get my head around the various aspects of the case, but there’s no reason why the client has to pay for my ignorance, I guess, so if you—”

  He didn’t look up. “Don’t be silly. Of course your time should be billed. Hell, it should probably be billed at a second-year associate’s rate, but I can think of a lot of reasons why it can’t be, so the client is getting a massive break on the legal costs. ProCell’s gain, I guess.”

  Meghan found she could breathe again.

  He leaned forward, still staring at her memos. Finally he lifted his head. “I don’t have a handle yet on the law firm mindset,” he admitted. “All I know is that you’re brilliant and capable and somehow your thinking on this case meshes with mine.”

  Meghan’s heart started pounding. She wanted to make that screeching tire noise and get him to repeat that part about her being brilliant, but there was something about his expression that freaked her out. She tried to keep her breathing steady while she waited for what was coming.

  “I got a phone call Friday afternoon from Darlene McAndrews. She’s your—supervisor?”

  “The paralegal coordinator,” she explained in a dead calm voice. “If you have problems with my work, you call her. If you need a paralegal, you can call her or the litigation administrator, either one.” Meghan wanted to scream at him to spit out what was going on, but she focused on her breathing and waited some more.

  “Right. Well, Darlene wanted to know how you were doing, did I have any concerns about your performance, did I want another paralegal assigned to any of my cases, that kind of stuff.”

  Meghan gripped the seat of her chair on either side of her legs. She felt swamped by her nerves, and the fear that something really bad was coming. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

  Dan glanced up at her, then looked back at the papers in his hands. “Okay, so I might have said something—I mean, I don’t know if something I said was off-limits.”

  Well, this relaxed Meghan somewhat. He was a partner, and a former AUSA. No matter what he said, there wasn’t that much Darlene could do about it. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “I was singing your praises, actually. I thought that wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary for her to hear.” He looked at her then, and it was the purest blue-sky laser-beam look ever. Her breath caught slightly before she forced it in and out, slowly. In and out.

  When she thought she could carry it off, she laughed a little. “Darlene is not my biggest fan, no.”

  That seemed to open the floodgates. Dan sat up and slapped the papers onto the table. “Well, why the hell not, I’d like to know. Okay, so you aren’t—oh, how did she put it?—a conventional paralegal. And I wanted to reach through the phone and throttle her. Plus she has that wispy voice with some fake Southern accent. Please tell me that accent is fake,” he pleaded.

  “Um, don’t know. As I say, we’re not exactly BFFs.”

  “Anyway, I’m afraid I got a bit, uh, testy with her.”

  Meghan began to enjoy this. She stifled a smile and quirked an eyebrow at him. “Testy?”

  He looked sheepish. “Okay, I went into full prosecutor mode. Didn’t she understand what a treasure you were, that I didn’t want a conventional paralegal, I wanted a smart paralegal and that she’d take you away from my cases over my dead body. That kind of thing.”

  She couldn’t help the smile spreading over her face. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to listen in.”

  “Not my finest hour. I can be nice when I try, although I’m afraid I react badly to aggressively stupid people.”

  “Oh, Darlene’s not stupid. You have to understand, she has an associate’s degree. I scare her, and I really don’t mean to, but supervising me isn’t that easy for her.”

  “I think you’re being too generous.” He took another tack. “Darlene said she could understand if I wanted a new paralegal. What was that about? What’s even remotely understandable about not working with you?”

  Meghan looked at the floor. “Not all partners wanted me on their cases.”

  “Why the hell not? I mean, I already figured out that Georgia was phoning it in for a while, working her political connections to get the job in Washington. That’s even more reason to want a really smart person working on your cases.”

  She sighed. “You’re right. You don’t understand the law firm mentality.” She unlocked her hands from the chair seat and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “I’m neither fish nor fowl, you know? I’m educated like a lawyer, but I’m not a lawyer so I can’t practice law. In fact, there has to be extra supervision to make sure I don’t ‘accidentally’ practice law without a license. So I can’t talk to clients directly, or if I do, it has to be very narrowly limited to matters appropriate for paralegal work.”

  “That was the reason you were so uptight on the phone with Trioli yesterday?”

  Meghan shrugged.

  Dan thought about this for a minute. “Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight. Fergusson hired you as a summer associate.”

  “Yes.”

  “As a summer associate, you’d have been asked to produce memos like these—” He pointed at the stack on the table.

  “Yes.”

  “And as part of the oh-so-exciting life of a summer associate, you’d have been included in things ‘real’ lawyers do, like, say, calls to the client.” Dan’s sarcasm warmed Meghan’s bruised ego, now that she could see where he was going.

  “Yes.”

  “So what the hell stops me from treating you like the summer associate you were four weeks ago?”

  “Law firm culture. It simply isn’t done
.”

  Dan snorted.

  Meghan lowered her voice to a soothing tone. “I understand their concerns. I’ve tried hard to show them that I understand their concerns. I really want to avoid triggering the crisis they’re all focused on. Only…it’s hard to prove a negative, you know? I can handle every case without a problem and it’ll never prove that I won’t overstep.”

  Dan was leaning back in his chair, considering all this. “How did you get a job as a paralegal anyway? Why didn’t they keep you on as a summer associate?”

  “I’d already left the firm. I’d cleared out my desk. Clearly I needed a new job, so I talked with our placement office.” She shrugged. “I was told someone at the law school called in a favor.” When she was offered the paralegal position, Meghan had been sullen and resentful, although she’d tried to say the right things and thank the right people. It had just been easier to put her head down and work, not really caring if she interacted with anyone at the firm. She didn’t tell Dan any of that. It hadn’t been her finest hour.

  “I dunno,” he said. “I keep thinking there has to be some way to allow you to work more as a quasi-lawyer. What do I know? I’m no expert on legal ethics.”

  “It’s okay,” she assured him. “I love my job, really. It’s mindless at times. I even like that part.”

  “You were born to be a lawyer. This paralegal bullshit is…well, bullshit.”

  She hesitated, then went on, “I—I’ll admit that I am enjoying this work.” She nodded at the stack of memos. “Enjoying it a lot. I just don’t mind the other work.”

  “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din,” he quoted.

  “Now that’s appropriate,” she teased. “Wasn’t Gunga Din some native servant or something?”

  “Oh, you know what I mean,” he snarled. “I bet Gunga Din was actually respectful to his elders and betters, brat.” His eyes were still sunny skies.