Harvey looked at them, eager, ready for the next command. His eyes flicked from Meghan to Dan and back.
Meghan checked to see if Dan wanted to take over, but he just motioned for her to continue.
She didn’t need to look at her notes. “So what I’m wondering is if you recall whether Argus was right about having significantly different technology back then. I’ve got the article here, if it will help to refresh your memory.” She passed a reprint over to the engineer. She handed Dan a copy as well.
Harvey skimmed it, then read a couple of paragraphs again. “Hold on.” He fished in his briefcase, pulling out a sheaf of slightly grubby papers and two dog-eared notebooks. “I found some stuff in my basement. I haven’t looked at it yet.”
He flipped through the pages, reading some bits, backtracking, then skimming other sections.
Finally, his eyes widened. “Wow. You’re right. I totally forgot about this. See, text messaging was really new in the nineties. When I started in this industry, no one used it. We—ProCell—came to the party a little late, so we had to play catch-up. Argus really led the way. I remember we got worried—what if Argus had developed some super snazzy way of sending texts?”
He pointed to a specific page. “Engineering was under a lot of pressure to make sure that Argus and the other companies didn’t have such wonderful technology everyone would want to ditch our phones. So we kept tabs on their tech advances. Only, when we looked at it, we didn’t see anything great. If anything, we thought they’d screwed up a couple of things that we thought we’d got right.”
He stood up. “Here, I’ll show you.” He started flipping through notebooks crammed with drawings and annotated diagrams. “I kept everything,” he admitted shyly.
She felt Dan’s reaction to this news. Trust the seasoned prosecutor to be concerned with how Harvey would do as a witness. Dan was almost salivating at the chance to put the retired engineer on the stand.
Harvey held out a notebook, explaining what they were looking at. Meghan hadn’t a clue what the squiggles stood for.
She wanted to grin at Harvey, as though she and Dan were proud parents watching their son at a piano recital. At the same time, she needed him to think about the legal aspects of his work. “Here’s our question. If ProCell’s design was different from Argus and Tech 3’s, is it possible it didn’t cause overbilling?”
Harvey looked at the papers in his hand, and at the papers on the table. He stared off at a corner of the room, then back at the table. “I still don’t know what caused overbilling for any of the manufacturers,” he admitted. “If I assume that it happened, and if I assume that Argus and Tech 3 phones had SMS software that caused the problems, then I think there’s a good chance our technology didn’t have the same software glitch.”
She kept her eyes on Harvey even as Dan’s relief seemed to soften the mood in the room.
“You know what would be helpful,” Harvey said.
“What’s that?” Meghan asked.
“You guys are meeting with the current team tomorrow, right?”
“Unh-huh,” she nodded.
“Well, ask Dave Divichenko what happened to the Jenner C9000 phone. Jenner went out of business in 2002, victims of the crash. As I recall, their SMS technology was unusual, and I think we had our suspicions that Argus and Tech 3 tried to reverse engineer some of the Jenner designs. I think Dave might know something about that.”
“Did ProCell use the Jenner technology?” Dan asked.
Harvey shook his head. “In theory, Jenner had a great idea, but it seemed kind of far-out. ProCell’s always been a conservative company. Jenner’s tech leaped too many frogs for our taste.”
It wasn’t the silver bullet that they’d hoped for. Still, Meghan had a good feeling about this. Maybe the Jenner technology would be the wedge Dan could use to show the court ProCell was different from the other companies.
They thanked Harvey for his time. On the way out of the building, Dan made arrangements with Lou’s assistant to have all Harvey’s notes copied.
Meghan was surprised to find it was sunset when they drove to their hotel.
“I don’t know about you, but my brain is swimming in schematics and ten-year-old technology,” Dan said. “I can’t even remember what sort of cell phone I had then.”
“Well, I was too young—” And too poor. “—to have a cell phone back then.”
“Let me guess, you were in your crib,” he teased.
“That would make me twelve. You don’t want me to be twelve.” She was thinking he’d want her old enough for law school, but the moment the words were out of her mouth, she realized what she was suggesting.
“No,” he agreed solemnly. “I don’t want you to be twelve.”
She blushed in the dimness of the car and was glad Dan didn’t talk for the rest of the drive.
They worked while eating their takeout sandwiches, going through their notes and making new lists of questions for the next day. After an hour, Meghan’s hand was cramped from writing, and Dan was pacing back and forth between the table and the TV set.
“It’s frustrating not knowing the answer,” Dan said. “I’m used to knowing the answers and just working on how to prove it, or how to convince a judge, or how to educate a jury. This business, where the answers are literally hiding in some obsolete cell phone innards, makes me crazy.”
Meghan rubbed her hand and shook it as though it was wet, trying to ease the cramp. She was startled when Dan grabbed it and started to massage the palm. He was still talking about some case he had where the bank hadn’t been able to figure out how the fraud had been perpetrated. Meghan wasn’t listening. She was staring at her hand in his, overwhelmed by the sensation of being touched by him.
The room was suddenly very close and stuffy. She pulled her hand free as gently as she could. “Thanks,” she said in a whispery voice, not looking at him.
“Is it better?” he asked, concerned.
“Much better, thanks,” she said, picking up a pen and bending over the pad. Her skin was hot—she was pretty sure her cheeks would reveal what she was feeling. She let her hair fall forward.
“Uh, do you want a soda? Something stronger?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine, I’m good,” Meghan protested, looking only at the paper in front of her. She tried to think of something brilliant to say. She wanted desperately not to be the sort of girl who went fluttery when a man touched her hand. She despised those girls.
She didn’t always get what she wanted, though. That was the great life lesson she had to relearn, over and over and over.
She made a big show of picking up one of Harvey’s indecipherable documents and pretending to decipher it.
Chapter Nine
As he watched Meghan pore over some document, Dan reflected on how primal it was to hold someone’s hand. To touch their skin. Primal in a sexual way, of course, because skin is skin, and hands are so sensitive. Shaking hands to convey welcome, taking his grandmother’s hand to help her stand on her own, stroking the head of his newborn niece—all expressions enhanced by the spark of skin to skin. Being able to ease the pain in Meghan’s hand, an ache caused by her ceaseless effort to help him, the client, the firm. That felt good.
Only it went deeper than that. It may have been a long time, but Dan wasn’t dead inside. He wanted to touch her, so he’d grabbed the first opportunity. Pure instinct. He hadn’t thought about what he’d done, at first. It wasn’t until she pulled away and broke the connection that he remembered that nameless partner on the Jumbotron.
He couldn’t be that guy. He had to be better than that.
He pushed his hand through his hair, looking around wildly for a way to get more air into the room. He knew this feeling—overload. The case confused him, Meghan confused him, his own body—well, no, that reaction was pretty unambiguous. Still, his feelings confused him. He wanted Meghan to succeed, he wanted to rescue her, he wanted to touch her—a lot, and he also wanted to leave her alone
because that was quite obviously the right thing to do.
He wanted it all.
He’d not felt this way since… No, actually, he couldn’t think of a time when he’d felt like this before. Excited. Nervous. Simultaneously convinced he’d done a bad thing that was also a good thing. All because he’d touched her hand? Seriously? Could he be that Victorian in an era of hookups and booty calls and friends-with-privileges?
The window didn’t open, he discovered. He could fiddle with the thermostat, but he honestly wasn’t sure if he was too hot or too cold. He couldn’t bring himself to ask Meghan if she was too warm. Too much of a giveaway and anyway, she gave every appearance of being oblivious to his existence. He settled on getting a soda out of the minibar.
“You sure you don’t want one?” he asked as he popped the top.
“Um, well, okay,” she said from behind that curtain of hair.
“Ice?”
“Yes, please.” Still not looking at him.
He took the ice bucket out into the hall, looking for the ice machine on their floor. What was it about this woman that drove him crazy? He shouldn’t desire her, although his body was ready for a vigorous debate on that topic. It had taken a while, but he’d finally gotten to a point in his life where having sex outside of a relationship was like eating boring food—you could do it but it didn’t seem worth the effort.
The ice machine was tucked into a little room off the hallway on the far side of the elevators. Dan scooped some ice into the bucket, resisting the urge to run a cube over the back of his neck. Other parts of his body also seemed overheated. Again, no big surprise there.
As Dan got back to the suite, his nerves sounded the alarm. Meghan was in there. He could picture her hunched over, still reading something related to the case he suddenly didn’t care about. Through an open doorway was a bedroom, a large bed, nice sheets, a bathtub—not deep enough, his other brain pointed out—a shower, towels, soap. Just your standard hotel room, until you started to think about how and where you could have sex.
He paused outside the door.
Was he nuts? He had to stop this. She worked for him. She relied on him for her job, her security, her freedom from harassment. And not just harassment by assholes like Vicky and Darlene, but also harassment from horny lawyers like himself. Remember the Jumbotron.
Dan thought about Anne van Oostrum, Wally Leith, even the hateful Darlene. He could imagine them all frowning and saying, “tsk tsk.”
He took a deep breath, clutched the ice bucket to his chest and reached out to insert his key card. An image of Meghan interviewing the engineer stopped him.
Sexiest thing about her? Her brain. Oh, God, her brain. Watching Meghan work was like watching a bonfire flare and send out sparks. Several times during the day Dan could have sworn he and Meghan were thinking in tandem. He wasn’t used to working with someone who kept up with him. She even knew when to leap to the next issue, the next question to be asked.
And this was just work. What would she be like in bed? What would it be like to have that sort of unspoken communication when making love to a woman?
Sex could be really good here, his other brain pointed out. Think how nice full skin-on-skin contact would be along with the mental stuff.
He stifled his other brain and returned to the obvious arguments against having any relationship with her.
Against the rules.
Regardless of the rules, it risked being harassment.
She was his subordinate in a fairly conservative law firm, which could put her in an invidious position.
It was such a cliché—the partner and the paralegal. And a well-worn cliché, at that.
They didn’t really know each other on a personal level.
She might be dating someone.
And then there was the kicker—what if this was all just him? What if she didn’t feel the same full-moon insanity, this tidal pull towards each other? She didn’t seem the type to strip down and roll around at the first opportunity, and he’d not noticed any longing sidelong glances, or subtle body language.
He inserted the card and turned the doorknob. He was going crazy. Better he should apply all this energy to figuring out cell phones. Bluntly, they were both impossible problems. At least the client was paying him to solve the cell phone conundrum.
“Sorry that took so long. The ice machine is really hidden away.”
“Oh. There’s a map on the back of the door,” Meghan said without looking up.
“Never occurred to me to look.” Great. Now he’s an idiot as well as a slavering horndog.
Dan poured them drinks then joined Meghan at the table. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know. I need an electrical engineer to understand this stuff.” Meghan reached for her glass.
Her wrists were so delicate, pale-skinned and slightly bony. Dan reached for a document at random even as he caught himself staring at her forearms.
The rest of the evening was a teeter-totter of the cerebral and the carnal. Dan would lose himself in considerations of short message services until a flash of Meghan’s ear as she tucked her hair behind it triggered very long and intricate fantasies of what he would do if given the chance to caress her throat with his lips, his fingertips. It was a relief—and a delicious torture—when Meghan finally stretched and pushed away from the table.
“What time do we start tomorrow?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.
Dan made a show of consulting his notes. “Um, Lou expects us at nine-fifteen, and we start with the tech guys at nine-thirty. I’d like to get there early—a little bit before nine? Do you want breakfast in your room?”
She played with her hair, pulling it back and bundling it all on top of her head, a pose that did very nice things to her figure. He stared at her eyes, not even daring to look back at his notes, afraid his gaze would linger on the way down.
“Oh, no—that’s okay. I’ll meet you downstairs. How about seven-thirty?”
“Sounds good,” he managed.
“Right, then. I’m off.” She turned to leave. She hesitated, her back to him, then walked out the room.
Dan slumped as he heard the door latch. Then he reached for his phone.
Meghan could feel her shame and guilt heating her cheeks and clenching her gut as she let herself into her room.
What the hell had she been thinking? She’d behaved like a pimply middle schooler, giggling behind her hand at lunch, passing notes in homeroom and praying Jimmy would ask her to the prom. Thing was, Meghan hadn’t done any of that in middle school. Now, fifteen years later, she has to alternate between hiding behind her hair, and then thrusting her breasts at him? Not that she was overly endowed in that area, and not that he’d even noticed.
And in typical teenager fashion, she wanted to die on the spot. What a stupid time to be attracted to a man.
She threw open her suitcase, pulled out the zippered bag containing her toiletries, which she then scattered on the counter, looking for her toothbrush. She punished her gums vigorously while mentally reviewing all the reasons Dan Howard was not the right man to be interested in.
He was a partner and thus her boss, not to mention directly supervising her.
He had to be involved with someone, no matter what he said. Or he had a past or something. Bottom line, he probably wasn’t available.
He was a former Assistant US Attorney, which ought to make him an enemy. At the very least, it was an interesting irony, given that her mother was serving three-to-five in a federal prison and the asshole doing Dan’s job in Chicago had cost Meghan her legal career.
He was too nice for her.
Even if that last one was her insecurities talking, the rest of her reasons were ironclad. She brushed harder. It hurt but even the pain didn’t help. He was still there, smiling at her as he handed her a soda. Or—oh, God, yes—massaging her hand.
As Meghan lay in the huge hotel bed, between crisp sheets and with the light out, she allowed herself to think of all
the reasons why Dan Howard was precisely the man she wanted. Smart, funny, appreciative, great blue eyes, nice hands, sexy smile, sexy body, sexy laugh.
She flopped over, suddenly furious with herself. Why was she noticing how sexy a man could be? She’d been oblivious to the guys in law school, and then when her legal troubles got worse, she just wasn’t even thinking about stuff like that. Her life was simple for a reason, and dating, sex, and relationships were all more than she could handle. So why crush on her boss?
She flipped onto her back, the cool sheets feeling scratchy now. She knew she should turn on the light, or the TV, or the radio—anything was better than having her body itch with desire and desperation. She couldn’t have sex with Dan Howard. She shouldn’t even fantasize about him while satisfying herself. She knew that. He wasn’t interested in her—why should he be? She was too young and…and too dull, too gauche, too unattractive.
No, “unattractive” was too harsh. Well, she did have nice eyes, and her figure was pretty good if you didn’t want Pamela Anderson.
She rolled onto her stomach, clutching one of the spare pillows to her side. She really hadn’t thought this could happen with anyone at Fergusson. She’d put all that man-woman stuff out of her mind. When couples nuzzled each other on the street, Meghan barely noticed. She didn’t get misty when she saw a family in the park, the dad pushing the stroller or the mom with an infant, its feet dangling, strapped to her chest. Meghan assumed that some things weren’t for her. She was realistic—very few people got everything they wanted in life. The trick was to want slightly less than you were likely to get.
Now here she was, wishing her boss was interested in her sexually. That wasn’t just wanting the moon, that was wanting a berth on the next space shuttle.
He’d started to massage her hand again, at least in her mind. It was obviously an innocent gesture, one she had overreacted to. Dan probably hadn’t even noticed he was doing it. It was a nice guy thing, not a “Hey, baby” thing. Chivalrous, not lecherous.
The Cost of Happiness: A Contemporary Romance Page 9
