They ordered their lunch and coffee, and then Paul asked her how the interview had gone. She told him about it, and that she was sure she had done great.
Paul laughed. “I wish I had your self-confidence.”
Fannie smiled and held her thumb and forefinger slightly apart. “I was this close to losing it right before I went in. I sat in the car for twenty minutes before I worked up the nerve to go inside.”
“You? I don’t believe it. What on Earth could have made my Fannie Riggs nervous?”
“His name is Mark Allen Lloyd,” she said.
Paul knew who Mark was. Fannie had told him about Mark long ago when they had first met in high school. She had also told him that Mark was an associate at the firm before she went for her interview.
“Oh wow, I almost forgot about him. How was it, seeing your childhood bully again face to face?”
“It was terrifying,” she said. “I seriously almost ran. It took everything in me to get out of that car and go in, and once I did, I realized that he didn’t even know who I was anymore.”
“He probably didn’t recognize you as a confident, independent strong, beautiful woman,” Paul said.
“Probably not,” Fannie told him with a grin. “Will you marry me?”
* * *
Fannie’s cell phone was ringing as she tried to unlock her apartment door and juggle a bag of groceries. She dropped her keys as she fished the phone out of her bag. When she saw the caller I.D., she dropped the groceries too.
“Hello?” she said, trying not to sound as anxious as she felt.
“Hi, Fannie? This is Mike Smyth.”
“Yes, this is Fannie. Hi, Mr. Smyth.”
“Please, Fannie, call me Mike. We’re going to be working together; we should be on a first-name basis. That is, if you’d still like to come to work for us?”
Fannie wanted to scream. She wanted to squeal and jump up and down like she did when she had been a little kid and was excited about something. She didn’t though. Instead, she worked on controlling her breathing. “Absolutely, Mike. Thank you. I’m really looking forward to it.”
“Good!” Mike said, enthusiastically. “How about eight o’clock on Monday morning. You can get in on our weekly meeting.”
“That sounds perfect,” she told him, screaming, “Yes, yes, yes!” inside her head. “I’ll be there. Thank you, again.”
Fannie hung up the phone, looked up and down the hall and when she didn’t see anyone there, she did a happy dance. She picked up her keys and her groceries then and went inside. She couldn’t wait to call her mom and dad, and Paul. Fannie finally had everything she wanted. Well, almost everything, she thought, as she heated up her take-out dinner for one.
Someone had seen Fannie’s dance. They had been hiding in the shadows near the stairwell watching her. As they watched her hang up her phone and wiggle those big hips around the watcher thought, “Go ahead and get all of your happy out now. Soon happiness will only be a fond memory.”
CHAPTER THREE
Monday morning rolled around quickly, but Fannie was ready for it. She had a new outfit that she had worked on all weekend. It was a dark green silk pantsuit. The top she wore under the jacket had a thick row of light green lace that peeked out just above the line of her jacket that was fitted at the waist and flared slightly over her hips, giving them a considerably slimmer appearance. She switched her things over from her black briefcase to the new green paisley one that she had bought over the weekend and slipped on her dark green pumps. She glanced at herself in the hallway mirror. She was ready.
“Look out, Mark Allen Lloyd, here I come,” she said aloud to the empty room.
* * *
Fannie walked back into the tall building in Near North Chicago. This time she was ready to take on the world. She smiled at the girl at the desk as she got on the elevator, pushing the number ten as she did. When the doors slid open on the tenth floor, Fannie Riggs, esquire, stepped off. She smiled at the woman who sat at the desk here as well and asked, “Would you mind pointing me toward where the Monday morning meeting would be?”
The woman told her to go down the long hall to her right until she got to conference room one. Then she said, “Welcome to the firm, Miss Riggs.”
Fannie smiled. “Thank you. And please, call me Fannie.”
Mike and his son, Trenton, were the only two in the conference room when Fannie got there. She was glad. She hated being the last one to walk into a room. Mike greeted her warmly and welcomed her. Trenton did the same. There were coffee, tea and bagels on the table and Mike told her to help herself. Fannie had too much nervous energy to eat, but she poured herself a cup of coffee. She had just sat down at the table when Mark and Harlan came in.
The woman who normally sat at the desk came in with them, tablet in hand. She sat next to Fannie. “We were never formally introduced. I’m Lisa Phelps. I’m Mr. Smyth’s administrative assistant.”
“Good to meet you,” Fannie told her. “I’m thrilled to be here.”
“I know they’re thrilled to have you,” Lisa told her. “You came highly recommended.”
Two other people came in, a young man and woman. Lisa told Fannie they were the firm’s paralegals, Dan and Susan. Mike looked around the room to make sure they were all there and then he said, “Okay people, let’s get started.”
Mark had been talking to Trenton and had yet to look in Fannie’s direction. When he did, she smiled at him. He smiled back, still showing no signs of recognition. Fannie couldn’t help but notice how attractive he was. His hair was almost black, and he had light blue eyes surrounded by long, dark lashes. It was funny, but Fannie didn’t remember him being good looking before. She smiled to herself as she thought that could have been because he was such a little shit back when she had known him.
Mike started the meeting out by saying, “Our first order of business is to welcome our new associate. I’d like you all to welcome Miss Fannie Riggs to our firm. She’s a recent graduate of Chicago University Law School, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude. She completed a very successful internship with Hanson, Parker and Franken recently and comes to us highly recommended.”
Fannie’s face felt warm, and she knew she was blushing as the others applauded and welcomed her. She glanced over at Mark, and he lifted his coffee cup and tipped it in her direction. She wondered if he would be so gracious if he actually remembered who she was.
Mike went on from there to discuss the two biggest cases their firm was working on. One of them was defending an accused drug dealer. Mike said that the D.A. was accusing the client of having ties to a Mexican drug cartel. The client, of course, denied this. Mike didn’t seem to care either way. He just wanted to know what the investigator had found out that they could use to discredit the witnesses in the case.
He looked around after he had asked the question and said, “Damnit! Where is Grant?”
No one seemed to know. Mike looked at Lisa then and said, “Go call him and tell him to get his ass to work.”
Lisa left and Mike went on. He asked Harlan and Mark where they were at on the murder case they were working.
“Almost ready to go to trial,” Mark told him. “Jury selection begins on Wednesday.”
“Great,” Mike said. “Make sure that Zane is there.” He looked at Fannie. “I’m sorry, Fannie. Grant is our investigator. He’s the best in the business, but he avoids these meetings like the black plague. Zane is our jury consultant. He’s also the best in the business. He’s an expert in human behavior.”
Fannie was taking notes as he talked. She wanted to make sure and remember names of people who she would be doing business with routinely. Mike seemed to approve of that. Mark glanced at her a few times, and once, Fannie caught him staring at her. She wondered if he was beginning to remember where he knew her from.
Lisa came back and whispered something to Mike that made him scowl. Apparently Grant, the investigator, wouldn’t be making the meeting.
Mike cal
led the meeting to a close, and took Fannie aside. “Why don’t you have Lisa direct you to personnel? They have paperwork for you to fill out. That will probably take most of the rest of your day. Tomorrow you can work with Mark. I’ll have him bring you up to speed on the case he’s working and you can sit in on the jury selection on Wednesday.”
“Sure, Mike. Thanks,” Fannie said. She was excited about being in on a murder case from the start, but the idea of working that closely with Mark made her a little nervous. She’d have to work through it though. She wasn’t going to screw this up.
On her way out to talk to Lisa, Fannie bumped into Susan, one of the paralegals as they were going out the door. “I’m sorry,” she said to the girl and smiled.
Susan didn’t look like she was planning to smile back, until she noticed that Lisa was looking at them. She smiled then, what looked like a forced smile. “It’s fine.” She walked away quickly then and left Fannie looking after her.
She forgot about it quickly, however, and went over to talk to Lisa. Lisa told her that personnel was on the third floor. Fannie walked over and was about to push the down button on the elevator when the doors slid open and out walked Crocodile Dundee.
The man looked so out of place in this upscale city building that Fannie assumed he must be a client, or maybe even a deliveryman. He was wearing faded jeans and dusty brown boots. His shirt was one hundred percent cotton, and one hundred percent not ironed. His hat was made of brown suede and was shaped just like the one that Paul Hogan wore in the Crocodile Dundee movies. The hatband even looked as if it could be made from a snakeskin. Other than his poor choice of attire, however, he was definitely nice to look at. His short-sleeved wrinkled shirt showed off his nicely developed biceps quite nicely.
He looked at Fannie and tipped his hat slightly in her direction. She smiled and gave him a nod. As the door to the elevator was sliding closed in front of her, she noticed how green his eyes were, and that he hadn’t looked away. Fannie was suddenly warm all over, and she felt like she needed a glass of cold water. When she got off on the third floor, she bent over and drank from the water fountain for a good two minutes before she felt her body cooling down. She shook off the image of the rugged-looking Aussie character and got back to business, spending most of the rest of the day doing paperwork so that she could get paid to do her new job.
* * *
Fannie woke up with butterflies in her stomach the next morning. She had to spend the day with Mark Lloyd. If someone had told her when she was thirteen years old that such a thing would ever happen, she would have told them that they were crazy. Here she was though, fixing herself an Alka-Seltzer cocktail first thing in the morning, before she’d even had her coffee, wondering if the outfit she had chosen for the day made her hips look too big.
After she showered, her stomach finally felt settled enough to have her coffee. She sipped it as she put on her outfit. She had chosen a white tank-ini, a pair of brown slacks and a chocolate blazer that came down low over her derriere in back. She applied her makeup and once her hair was blow dried, she carefully flat-ironed it, wondering why she was so eager to impress this guy. Since high school, Fannie had taken on a “Take me or leave me” attitude, and until now, no one had shaken it. She couldn’t believe that a few mean words that had been spoken over a decade ago could still shake her up. Okay, it was more than a few mean words. From what Fannie had seen in the media, nowadays a kid could get expelled from school for the things Mark had said to her back then.
Fannie called Paul before she left for work. Her confidence level needed a boost before she spent the day with her childhood bully. “Hey, I need some words of wisdom,” she said when he picked up the phone.
“You mean you need me to tell you that you are fabulous and amazing and that any man would be lucky to have you?” he asked.
Fannie laughed. “No, but that’s nice to hear too,” she said. “I have to work with Mark today. Should I just tell him who I am and get it over with?”
“If it matters that much to you, sweetheart,” he told her. “I’m surprised though. The Fannie that I know and love wouldn’t give a shit what he thought.”
She smiled. “I like your Fannie better than the one I’m sitting here with this morning. I think I’ll try going with yours. Hopefully mine will sit quietly and mind her own business.”
“You’re gonna knock ‘em dead, babe,” Paul told her. “I love you.”
“I love you too, thanks.” She felt better after hanging up. Paul always made her feel better. She didn’t even need him to tell her what to do. Just the fact that he was always willing to listen was enough.
CHAPTER FOUR
Fannie got to the office before Mark. Lisa took her to the office that would be hers and got her set up with a phone and computer. “There’s a store room down at the end of the hall where you’ll find paper and pens and other office supplies when you’re ready.”
Fannie thanked her and when Lisa left she sat down at the desk. The office was small, and only had one tiny little window, but Fannie was so excited about it that she wanted to do her happy dance again. The next minute, she was glad she hadn’t cut loose yet because Mark walked in.
“Good morning, Fannie,” he said. “What do you think of your office?”
“I love it,” she told him honestly.
“Good,” he said with a smile. “Your first job as a real-live attorney is pretty exciting.”
“I am ecstatic beyond words,” she said. “I’m super excited to hear about your murder case too.”
“Okay then, let’s get started,” he told her. “Why don’t we go to my office? I have my files and everything there.”
Fannie got up and followed him down the hall. His office was a little larger than hers, and she was a tiny bit jealous of his big window that looked out over the city. She told herself that she would get there one day. Mark sat down behind his desk and told her to have a seat in the leather chair that faced him.
“So,” he started. “Our client is a young woman who is accused of killing her husband, mother-in-law and sister-in-law and then burning down the house to destroy evidence. She’s only twenty-five years old, and the state of Illinois wants to put her behind bars for the rest of her life.”
“Did she do it?” Fannie asked him.
Mark grinned. Damn is he good-looking.
“I don’t know,” he told her. “We don’t ask. It’ll take you a while to get used to that, probably. You’ll have to remember what we’re taught in law school about how everyone deserves a solid defense.”
Fannie nodded. “Yes, it will take me some time to get used to not knowing. How did she allegedly kill them?”
“With a shotgun,” he told her. “They were all shot with a shotgun at close range and then kerosene was poured over the bodies and throughout the house. The perpetrator made a trail to the front door and lit the fire on his or her way out. Our client has an alibi. She was in Evanston at her company Christmas party.”
“They were killed at Christmas time? How awful for the family.”
“Yes, it was a terrible tragedy.”
“What evidence do they have against her?” Fannie asked.
“Well, the shotgun was found in the fire. They were able to lift a few prints off of it. One was the deceased husband’s and the other two were our client’s. They also have a witness who says they saw her leave the party at nine that night and return around eleven. The district attorney believes that would have given her enough time to drive home, kill the family, burn the house and drive back. She denies ever leaving, and we have our own witnesses who say she was there the entire time.”
“What does our client do for a living?” Fannie asked, curious about what kind of clientele the firm serves.
“She’s the manager of a large string of hotels that her father-in-law owns.”
“Does her father-in-law think that she’s guilty?” Fannie asked.
“I doubt it,” Mark told her. “He’s the one pay
ing for her defense.”
Mark let her read the history on the woman and the rest of the family while he returned a few phone calls. The husband’s father was extremely wealthy, and Fannie found it odd that the woman had worked for him, but the man’s son had not. Instead, the man their client was accused of killing was actually in the landscaping business, and according to the files, he hadn’t landscaped any of the hotels that his family owned. The father-in-law had been at the party their client attended that night as well, leaving Fannie to wonder why the husband, his mother and his sister had been at home.
When Mark was finished on the phone, Fannie asked if the client could explain that. It was something that any defense attorney would be ready for the prosecutor to ask about.
“She says that the mother-in-law wasn’t feeling well. She does admit that she and her husband had not been on the best of terms, and the father had cut the daughter off long ago. That’s what the prosecution is using against her. They are even trying to prove that our client was having an affair with her father-in-law. She denies that as well, saying that she is close to him like a daughter, but not in that way.”
“Are there any other suspects?” she asked.
“There’s an ex-business partner of the husband with a big grudge. He had allegedly cut him out of the landscaping business and never re-paid the investment that the partner had initially made. There was a lawsuit pending, but it hadn’t gone to court yet. We have Grant looking for him. He seems to have vanished, and the police think they have their killer so they’re not interested in finding him.”
Big Riggs (Trilogy Bundle) (BBW Erotic Romance) Page 2
