The Cost of Happiness: A Contemporary Romance

by Braden, Magdalen

  “So you’re going to play the age card again, hmm?” She giggled. “Spill it, then.”

  “Spill what?”

  “Your age.”

  “Thirty-four, almost thirty-five.” His eyes narrowed, waiting.

  “Hah. I’m amazed you took this job.” She laughed. “Why not go straight to the nursing home?”

  “Oh, I have a few good years in me yet.” He got up, making an elaborate pantomime of straightening out stiff joints. “C’mon, brat, I’ll drive you home.”

  That stopped her cold. Clearly an order rather than an offer.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  Dan was surprised on Monday afternoon to get a call from Wallace Leith’s secretary requesting his presence in the great man’s office. When Dan got there, he could see that status has its privileges. From Wally’s northwest corner office—which was twice the size of Dan’s and decorated in tasteful antiques and Oriental rugs—the view stretched from the dark honey stone of the Greek Revival art museum, along the Schuylkill River and Boathouse Row, past the tree line of Fairmont Park to the hazy horizon of the Main Line and beyond. Dan watched the Philadelphia Zoo balloon rise with more tourists on board. It still wasn’t as high as Wally’s office.

  Wally leaned back in his massive leather desk chair. There was a bone-thin woman sitting on the sofa along the south wall. She glared at Dan when they made eye contact.

  “Dan, good to see you. Have you met Darlene McAndrews?”

  “We’ve spoken on the phone,” Dan said pleasantly. He shook her hand in much the same spirit as he greeted lawyers defending scumbag clients. Wait to hear what they have to say before eviscerating them.

  “Yes, well, Darlene has a concern,” Wally said, his voice so carefully neutral that Dan couldn’t tell what the hell was going on. “Ordinarily, Darlene here would have spoken to Anne van Oostrum—our litigation coordinator—but Anne’s out today.”

  So it landed on the chairman’s desk? How bad was this going to be?

  “Darlene?” Wally nodded at the paralegal coordinator, whose mouth was pressed to a single red line of disapproval.

  “Mr. Howard—” she began.

  Dan settled back in his chair. He bestowed his sunniest smile on her. “Call me Dan.”

  She nodded in annoyance. “I was checking the paralegal time accounts this morning and I noticed that Meghan Mattson has billed—” She made a show of consulting some papers she had in her hand. But she had these numbers memorized, Dan could tell. Her smoking gun, and she just couldn’t wait to pull the trigger. “Ah, yes, she billed eighteen hours this weekend. And that’s on a case we haven’t even officially opened a billing code for.”

  Dan’s mouth widened into a happy grin. “Impressive, isn’t it, how quickly she worked to get me the information and legal research I asked for.”

  Her toothpick torso nearly levitated off the sofa, she was so incensed. She looked like a cobra, weaving slightly and ready to strike.

  “Are you saying she was authorized to do this work? Because I have to tell you, we’ve had problems with that one…”

  “That one? Are you referring to Ms. Mattson?” Dan asked quietly.

  Darlene made a noise in her throat that reminded Dan of his sister’s cat coughing up a fur ball. She addressed Wally. “I should never have agreed to hire her as a paralegal. She’s trouble. I said so from the beginning.”

  Dan didn’t bother to look at Wally. “I don’t understand, Ms. McAndrews. Are you suggesting it’s trouble for the firm to have an incredibly bright, agile mind working here—in any capacity? I should think it would be to Fergusson and Leith’s benefit to have the smartest person in any position. From mail clerk to—well, to the chairman.”

  “Look, Dan.” She spat his name like it was bitter on her tongue. “I’ve been here a lot longer than you. I’m not impressed by your background or your defense of Meghan. She upsets my paralegals.”

  What the hell—? “Your paralegals?”

  Wally interjected. “I’m sure Darlene meant the firm’s paralegals. She’s very protective of them, you understand, Dan.”

  Dan looked over at Wally, who was backlit by the afternoon sun. Impossible to read his expression. “But Meghan’s not quite like the other paralegals, is she, Wally?”

  “My point exactly.” Darlene stabbed the air with a bony finger. She had the Wicked Witch persona down pat. “She’s different. I don’t want different. I want stable and Meghan’s unstable.”

  Dan’s head was reeling. How was that not defamatory? Was Darlene really that crazy? And why wasn’t Wally jumping down this woman’s throat?

  He waited for Wally to say something, but when a beat passed in silence, Dan decided it was time to channel Blackjack McIntyre.

  “Ms. McAndrews, for your sake, I’m glad that only Wally and I have heard your comments about Meghan. I’ve not litigated a defamation lawsuit—maybe Wally has, I don’t know—but the smartest move would be to keep your more…strident, shall we say?…comments about Meghan Mattson to yourself. For my part, I’m trying to land an important client for the firm. Meghan’s work has armed me with essential research and technical information I need when we see the client later this week. As soon as they sign the retainer agreement, you’ll have a billing number for the hours she worked this weekend.”

  “We? Are you proposing to take Meghan on a client visit? Absolutely not. She can’t leave the building,” Darlene turned to Wally for support in her outrage.

  “Dan…” Wally started.

  “Meghan’s the paralegal for Complex Litigation, isn’t she?” Dan kept his body relaxed, his facial expression pleasant.

  No one replied.

  “So I believe she’s my paralegal to use in any way that advances the Complex Litigation team’s cases. She’s up to date in her work on the other cases. I’ve decided that I need her to land ProCell as a client.”

  Wally leaned forward and rested his hands on the immaculate desk blotter. “I spoke with Lou Trioli. He’s expecting a junior associate to accompany you.”

  Shit. Had he left Lou with that impression?

  Dan shrugged, as though he wasn’t responsible for Lou Trioli’s misunderstanding. “Think how happy he’ll be when our bill shows Meghan’s time is charged at sixty dollars an hour, not a hundred and sixty.”

  “Dan, that’s hardly the point,” Wally said.

  “Okay, then tell me. What is the point?”

  “I believe Ms. Mattson’s rather unusual history puts her—and the firm—in a delicate position.” Wally’s eyes softened. “She’s trained as a lawyer, she was hired as a summer associate, and now she’s a paralegal. We cannot present her to a client even as a summer associate let alone a licensed attorney.”

  “And I haven’t done that. I don’t know what Trioli told you, but I know what I told him. Meghan’s a first-rate legal mind, among the best I’ve ever met. And that’s from someone used to working with Jack McIntyre. I can assure you, if Blackjack had Meghan working in his office, he’d throw everything he could at her. It’s the smart thing to do.”

  Wally’s head tilted in a gesture of kindly rebuke. Darlene licked her lips, literally. Dan imagined her tongue was forked.

  “It’s different now,” Wally said. “We have clients, and we need to be circumspect in how we proceed.”

  Time for the gloves to come off. “Wally, are you telling me that paralegals never make visits to clients’ offices?”

  Wally frowned. “No. Such visits have happened, of course.”

  “And does the firm want ProCell as a litigation client? I ask because Georgia wasn’t very vigorous in her efforts to land them. Maybe that was a decision made higher up.”

  Wally’s mouth pinched. “No, of course we want ProCell’s business.”

  “Okay. Last point. Trioli’s excited about the chance that we’ll get his company out of the class action entirely, or at least severed from the big boys in the cell phone market. His best chance is if Meghan works on this case.
”

  “Now, Dan…” Wally looked pained.

  “I’ll send up her memos, the ones she produced this weekend. You make the call, Wally. I doubt you can name a senior associate with better analytical skills. If, after looking at her work, you say she can’t go, then I won’t argue. I’ll travel to Boston on my own. But I’m taking her memos with me.”

  Wally nodded. After a brief sigh, he turned to Darlene. “Would you excuse us? I need to speak to Dan privately.”

  Darlene, whose mood had plummeted during Dan’s speech, perked up—presumably at the hope that Dan and Meghan might still get in trouble. Dan and Wally stood as she slithered out of the room.

  Repellent woman.

  After they resumed their seats, Wally said, “Here’s the thing. It’s not just Darlene I have to worry about. Forget the associates who’ll be pissed off that you’re taking the paralegal instead of them. Forget the other partners who’ll be annoyed if you land a major case on your own with only a paralegal at your side—although I need to remind you, you’ll want those partners’ votes when the time comes to apply for an equity stake in the firm.”

  Dan nodded. He kept forgetting he still had hoops to jump through before he was admitted to the club. At Justice, once a case was assigned to an AUSA, no one much cared how you got the necessary result.

  Wally shook his head wearily. “No, I’ve got Human Resources to worry about.”

  “What the hell does HR have to do with this?”

  “We had a case about fifteen years ago. One of the partners—I won’t say who—took a paralegal with him to see a client in Pittsburgh. I gather their affair was open knowledge, although of course the partner’s wife and children weren’t privy to that detail.”

  Wally rotated his chair to admire the view. “The partner in question is a huge Phillies fan. Season tickets, the whole package. The Phils were playing the Pirates during the time he and his inamorata were in Pittsburgh.”

  Dan smiled at Wally’s old-fashioned term for “bimbo.”

  Wally sighed. “Bad luck for the partner—he and the paralegal made it on TV during the broadcast, which his wife and teenage son were watching back here in Philly. I didn’t see it myself, but I’ve been informed it was quite the close-up. No one could be confused about the nature of their relationship.”

  “Shit,” Dan muttered. That wasn’t the ending he thought Wally was heading to.

  “Precisely.”

  Dan thought hard. He didn’t want to overstate his reassurance. “I live alone, so no one to betray.”

  Wally swung back to face Dan. “You miss the point. Consider Ms. Mattson. You’ve dangled legal work in front of her. Oh, I know what’s really going on. She’s a gem in the rough and you’re thrilled you’ve found her.”

  “Have you met her?”

  Wally shook his head.

  Dan leaned forward. “I did, back when she was at Franklin Law. She blew her opponent out of Moot Court, and as the opponent was Blackjack’s niece, it was an impressive performance.” Dan curled his hands around the arms of his chair. “I don’t know what happened to Meghan personally. I just know that her misfortune means I’ve been handed a Supreme Court clerk as a perk of my job. I have a lot of incentive to keep her happy as the team’s paralegal. I won’t screw that up, I promise you. Just don’t tell me I have to lock her in that paralegal role and not use her for anything else.”

  “I’m not telling you that. I’m telling you to be very, very careful. You’ve already made an enemy of Darlene. Which…” Wally rolled his eyes. “Isn’t that hard to do. Nonetheless, you need to get with the firm culture. Don’t piss everyone off in your first month, okay?”

  Dan nodded. He shifted, ready to leave, but Wally wasn’t done.

  “One last thing. She’s staff. I appreciate that you and she are both unattached. Ordinarily, I turn a blind eye to internal romantic shenanigans. But Meghan’s situation is special. And you’ve just gotten here and already been handed a plum job. Before you know it, I’ll have more than Darlene interrupting my afternoon with complaints of how inappropriate you are being.”

  Dan felt small. Young and small. A very unpleasant reminder of his childhood dealings with his father. He opened his mouth to say something—anything—when Wally went on.

  “What happens if the two of you get close? Can you be sure she won’t misconstrue your attentions? Maybe she thinks it’s a quid pro quo for her being allowed to work on more interesting matters than data entry.”

  Dan’s stomach was somewhere down around his knees. He couldn’t deny he was attracted to Meghan. And if he said she wasn’t the type to cry wolf, he’d look like a fool. “Wally, I just want to land ProCell, get the case against them thrown out of court, and come home. You forget, I’m still trying to get settled here. I assure you, the only thing I want is to generate billable hours for Fergusson and Leith.”

  Wally stood. “Good to hear. Have fun in Massachusetts.”

  Chapter Seven

  As far as Dan could tell, the firm was nuts.

  He tried to wrap his brain around the institutional insanity as he made his way from the rarefied air on the forty-fifth floor back to his modest office.

  He didn’t regret the move from Justice, which—if he was being honest—had its own quirks and foibles. Mostly he enjoyed the people he’d met in his first week at Fergusson. The partners were cordial, the associates—apart from Vicky—were friendly and helpful. A lot of smart people worked at Fergusson, and as long as they used their intelligence in constructive ways, Dan was happy in their company. He had a vague awareness of people’s specific personality traits but mostly, his colleagues’ rougher edges seemed to slip by him without a trace.

  This nonsense about Meghan as “unstable” came as an unpleasant surprise. How could an administrator like Darlene dislike Meghan and deliberately poison a partner’s opinion of his own paralegal? Meghan had figured out that being unusual wasn’t always a good thing. She clearly tried to keep a low profile, not making waves, concentrating on getting the work done. Dan’s actions—his defense of her—had muddied the waters, and that would make her work more difficult. He owed it to her to protect her from the Vickys and Darlenes of the firm.

  As Dan trotted down the stairs, he began to understand how much leaving law school had cost her. Not just a legal career, although hopefully that was just a dream deferred—a brain like hers really should be better occupied than entering medical data in pacemaker defect cases. Instead of being one of the best and brightest on a partner track, she worked in a windowless office and seemed not only surprised when a partner wanted her opinion, but worried that she’d get in trouble for offering it. It was an injustice that Meghan Mattson wasn’t allowed to feel good about her own contributions.

  Injustice. Dan felt that familiar burn inside him. He hated injustice. He couldn’t right it all—even he wasn’t that stupid. When it was smack-dab in front of him, though, it made him crazy. Darlene McAndrews made him crazy. When a law firm allowed a kiss-ass like Vicky to make it as far as she had, Dan refused to play along. Let someone else mistake that sort of eagerness for real enthusiasm.

  Well, he was going to take full advantage of Meghan’s legal mind. If he was the only lawyer in the firm who saw her potential, then he’d happily exploit her for his own purposes. She could dazzle him with her legal acumen any time. He’d protect her from the vipers in the firm. He welcomed the challenge.

  He strode down the hall, still fuming about Darlene’s effort to bad-mouth Meghan. He nearly ran into Meghan, he was that annoyed.

  “Sorry.” He reached out to steady her, then thought of Wally’s cautionary tale. Even an innocent gesture might reveal how attracted to Meghan Dan was. His arms dropped.

  “Oh, hi,” Meghan started. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  He felt awkward all of a sudden, like he was about to hear something he wouldn’t like. He’d had those conversations before. They made his stomach sour.

  “What?”

>   She followed him into his office. “If you don’t want—what I mean is, if you’ve changed your mind about having me work on the ProCell case… You know, writing memos, and… Well, if you don’t want me to go to Boston, for example.”

  He stared at her. “You heard?”

  She gave him the kindly look a patient kindergarten teacher might employ. “It’s a law firm, not the CIA. Word gets around pretty quickly.”

  “Darlene should be shot. No, wait, she should die from a thousand paper cuts.”

  “Hey, I’m the problem here. Don’t take this on for my sake. I’ll stay in Philly.”

  He didn’t know whether to laugh or get mad. He decided on anger. “Look, I don’t know all the details of what happened to make you drop out of law school. I respect your privacy. Just—stop being such a martyr about it. I’ll run interference with Darlene and the partnership. If anyone asks you, tell them you’re following my orders.”

  “Uh. Okay.” Her voice squeaked a little.

  Oh, hell. “I’m sorry. You’re just trying to do the right thing. I get that.” He stared out at the office buildings to the south. He wondered if lawyers in those offices were having the same problems he was. He tried another tack. “Let’s have a deal, you and I.”

  “What sort of deal?”

  “I want you to behave like a lawyer when you’re around me. Think like a lawyer, talk like a lawyer, act like you own the room. I’ll protect you from Darlene.”

  “That’s the deal?”

  “Part of it. Here’s the rest. Help me negotiate the law firm politics. You’re a quick study. I got it wrong with Darlene. I don’t want to make that mistake again.”

  “You’re a partner. You’re her boss.”

  “Even I know it doesn’t work that way. Never piss off the administrative staff, never annoy someone in the mailroom, and never ever incur the wrath of the paralegals.”

  Meghan laughed. “Lest the file you desperately need mailed to opposing counsel unaccountably goes missing.”