“Why will things start looking bad?”
“Well, it’s possible they have evidence against us, and that is why they don’t want to share it. They want to bomb us during court with it.”
Rose felt her adrenaline pumping at the idea of a little courtroom drama. That was exactly what she needed to fill her boring day, and she couldn’t wait. Watching Noah in action would give her some great ideas for handling things when she finally had her own cases.
“That’s not legal, though. If they have the evidence, they need to give it to us.”
Rose was aware that she sounded very naive, and she didn’t mean for it to come out like that. She knew that there were ways around most of the laws, and she wasn’t above using those means to help her own clients when needed. But she didn’t like that others were also willing to use those means.
“Let’s just get in there and see how things go.”
It only took them a few minutes to walk to the courthouse. Noah was confident in his stride as they made their way into the room. Rose stood back a bit and followed him. She was confident in many aspects of her life, but a courtroom wasn’t quite where she felt confident yet.
There was electricity in the air as they entered the courtroom, and she felt all the energy that was flowing around them. It was exciting to be in there. She felt the excitement and wanted to be the one who got to talk to the judge, but she knew that there was no way for her to do that just yet and wasn’t even remotely ready to take on her own court case.
Rose wasn’t delusional like Bronx was. She knew that she would have to take the small cases and work the negotiation cases for many months before she would get to stand in front of a judge for her own case. But unlike Bronx, Rose was perfectly fine with taking the time that was needed so she could prove herself to both Noah and Elaine.
She looked up at the people in the courtroom and eyed them to see what everyone was doing. When she looked over at the plaintiff’s attorney, she realized he was in a wheelchair. Instantly, all Rose could think about was that he was specifically hired to elicit sympathy. She noticed the attorney slip a file into a pocket on the back of his chair, then he looked around to see if anyone had noticed what he had just done. Rose quickly looked down and continued to follow Noah to the table where she sat down next to him.
She felt like she was in the middle of a court television drama as she had watched the man hide the file. Certainly, it couldn’t be as easy as that? He wouldn’t have brought the file with him that they were trying to hide, but then again, if it was a television drama, that would be what would have happened. Rose couldn’t help smiling to herself as she thought out what the next step in the process was going to be.
The court session started, and Rose sat quietly as she observed Noah and his expert way of navigating the courtroom. She was in awe of how he objected strategically and continued to press forward when the judge tried to dismiss him. It was clear, though, that the judge wasn’t going to badger the plaintiff’s attorney over evidence if they said they didn’t have it.
Rose wasn’t sure how she would have handled anything differently. You certainly couldn’t start off by going for the jugular, that would make any lawyer seem like an ass. But Noah was building up and taking his time so much that he did seem like a bit of a pansy in Rose’s eyes. She wanted him to push harder and not to let them get their own way.
Noah was dressed sharply and looked the judge in his eyes as he made his case. Everything that Rose had learned about in schools was exactly what Noah was doing in the courtroom. She couldn’t think of anything she would have done differently, but perhaps not be as nice to the opposition as Noah had been.
Rose knew she wasn’t as nice as most other lawyers in her firm, and she was alright with that. Nice and winning didn’t go hand and hand, so she would just concentrate on winning cases, and that was enough for her.
But Noah had always been a nice guy. For as long as she could remember, Noah was the guy who sat back and let others take the glory while he sat there being the nice guy. She remembered being surprised that Noah was a lawyer at all when she first learned it from Derek. He just seemed like too nice a person to ever make a living in law.
Derek was a type A personality who always went after what he wanted. He didn’t sit on the sidelines and wait for things; instead, he pushed others aside to get his way. Rose had actually been much more like Noah when she was younger and even when Derek was alive.
There was a time in her life when Rose was considered sweet and nice. People actually liked to hang around her, and she liked to hang around them. Rose held dinner parties and even helped with the local charity, but no one in her life really knew her from back in those days except Noah. He knew more about her than almost anyone else in her life.
She was sweet and loving; everyone liked her, and everyone wanted to be around her. It wasn’t until after Derek died that Rose started to get a hardened shell around her that protected her from dealing with people. She understood the appeal of having that type of personality and didn’t think she could ever go back to the nice sweet girl she had once been. Bitchy women got things done and got what they wanted out of life, and that was exactly how she planned to rise to the top.
As she watched the court case, Rose did as Noah had suggested and handed him a file containing papers. The opposition did indeed seem very scared as the lawyer watched Rose closely to see what the papers were. It was funny to see how interested they were in the papers when it was really them who were hiding items from discovery.
Then Rose started to figure out what was going on; it was all in how Noah had been wording the request. She tried to think of a better way of wording it so they couldn’t refuse to produce the requested information. They were getting caught up in the specifics of the wording and finding any reason possible to deny they had further evidence.
“Stop asking for information on the patent. Instead, ask for any evidence that may be related to this case,” Rose whispered to Noah. “He has a file in his pack on his wheelchair.”
Rose expected that Noah would stand up and ask another discovery question or two that would lead to the opposition disclosing the evidence they had been hiding. Maybe he would even trick them into releasing the information, but what happened next, she hadn’t expected at all.
“Your honor, I believe the opposition is using word games to prevent them from disclosing the information that is in a file in his briefcase. I respectfully request all evidence that has anything to do with this case.”
Noah wasn’t his normal soft-hearted self as he stood before the judge and flat out accused the plaintiff’s attorney of not giving the required information. The shock on the attorneys’ faces was enough to prove that they were hiding something. But then the executives from the hospital that were sitting with the attorneys whispered something in one of their ears, and he reached behind him and gathered the folder he had been hiding.
The judge looked extremely unhappy about what was going on. They had already been in court for nearly an hour on what should have been a very simple hearing. Instead, the opposition lawyers had drawn the proceeding out into something that certainly did not make the judge happy at all. There was one thing that Rose knew from school without looking into any books to jog her memory; judges didn’t like it when you wasted their time.
“Mr. Phoenix, you have wasted a lot of this court’s time as well as your own and Mr. Conley’s. If I ever have you in my courtroom again, and I witness this behavior from you, you will be sanctioned. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Phoenix said.
As everyone emptied from the courtroom, Rose couldn’t help hugging Noah in excitement. They had gotten the information they needed, and it had been just as exciting as she had imagined it would be. She couldn’t wait to get into the courtroom again.
Rose wasn’t delusional, though; she had a lot of learning to do and knew when the day came for her to talk in court, she was going to be extremely nervous. Bu
t for the moment, their day in court felt like a victory, and she loved that feeling.
“You were incredible,” Rose said to Noah. “When you looked at him and accused him of lying like that. Wow, that was crazy.”
Noah smiled as he walked with a little bit of a swagger up the stairs toward his office. He was pretty damn impressed with himself, but also with Rose. Her insight into that lawyer had been right on and just what they needed to force him into disclosing the information. Noah knew the man was hiding something but just couldn’t see what he had been doing wrong.
The joy of having a second chair with you on a case was that there were always things that were missed. As a lawyer, you had several cases that were always being worked on. Sometimes you missed things because of the sheer volume of information that was constantly passing in front of you, but Noah was genuinely happy Rose had been there and helped him with the case, and he looked forward to working with her more.
Noah didn’t just want to work with Rose because she was good—he liked having her around. There was a closeness between them that drew him toward her. Thoughts of Rose distracted him throughout the day, and sometimes he thought the only way to calm those thoughts was to take her to bed for the night. But then he thought he might never be able to calm the thoughts if he ever had her in his bed for any time period at all.
“We make one hell of a team.”
“Yeah, we do!”
Rose felt like she was hyped up on adrenaline as they got to Noah’s office, but she wasn’t about to make it look bad on her with Elaine so close by. She stayed in the doorway and watched as his gorgeous blue eyes glistened toward her.
“Thanks for the help. Do you want to sit with me and go through this evidence?”
Rose did want to sit with him and review the evidence, but she had to think about her career. She needed to be taken seriously, and that wasn’t going to happen if she was always in Noah’s office working with him. Elaine was the main person Rose needed to impress, and being seen with Noah wasn’t going to do that at all.
“I’m going to go check in with Bronx on that other case. I’ll email you, though; I’d love to hear what’s in there.”
“Perfect, talk to you later,” Noah said as he sat down at his desk.
It was hard to read Noah. One minute, she was sure that he had a thing for her and wanted to date her, but the next minute, Noah seemed totally uninterested in her at all. Not like it mattered. Rose absolutely wasn’t going to let anything ever happen between her and Noah. He was Derek’s friend, it would feel like cheating or something like that. She would rather have him as a friend than ruin what it was they had between them.
Friends were hard for Rose to find, and Noah was a good one. She was happy to keep him in that spot and as her boss. Things were really starting to look up for her, and she finally felt in control of what was going on around her. It had only taken a few weeks at the firm, but everything seemed to be coming along. Her plan was working wonderfully.
She walked into the lunchroom to grab her food since she was trying to take better care of herself. There were several people sitting in there, but a couple that very quickly caught her attention.
“That Rose is only here because she’s fucking the boss. Did you see how he took her to court with him today? It’s so obvious,” one of the second year females said to another as Rose walked into the room.
“I’d let him take me anywhere he wanted,” the other woman replied.
Rose walked straight to the fridge, grabbed her lunch, and made her way to her desk. She didn’t really care what others had to say about her. She knew the truth, and she wasn’t sleeping with Noah.
Chapter 13
“Nice of you to show up,” Bronx said as Rose walked into the office.
“Yeah, well, I was busy working—unlike someone I know.”
“Oh, yeah, who would that be?” Bronx said as he turned around and aggressively leaned forward and looked at Rose.
He was only playing the part, but it was fun to see Rose get all worked up from what he said. Bronx had a sneaking suspicious she was even better in bed when she was angry. Not that she had been bad in bed at all. In fact, sex with Rose had been some of the best sex Bronx could remember having in a very long time.
The way their bodies moved together was perfection, and the more comfortable they got, the better the sex seemed to get as well. Bronx had been surprised that Rose had agreed to his proposition, but he was really excited at the same time. They were going to have one hell of a time together.
Rose fascinated him, everything about her was a mystery, and she didn’t let him close to her at all. That was exactly the opposite of what other girls were like. Most other girls just wanted to get as close as possible to him as they tried to snag him and keep him as a boyfriend. But Rose didn’t want a boyfriend, she didn’t want anything from Bronx but hot steamy sex, and he loved that.
“You know you’ve just been sitting on your ass down here all day. I bet you haven’t even filed that motion for Mrs. Stein yet. Whatever, I guess I’ll do it.”
Rose turned back around and started to pull a file up on her computer when Bronx threw a dated motion right in her lap. It had already been filed at the courthouse and time stamped from two hours prior. She smiled as she looked at it, but then turned around with a stern look at Bronx.
“Well, at least you can do something right,” she said as she got up to leave. “I’m going to eat my lunch in the park across the street. I need some peace and quiet to celebrate the win that Noah and I had.”
“You mean Mr. Conley?” Bronx asked with a grin.
“Yes, you know what I meant.”
Rose couldn’t stop calling Noah by his first name, and she hated that everyone thought she was being treated differently because she knew Noah. They were friends; it wasn’t something that Rose intended to hide, just like Bronx wasn’t hiding that he was the nephew to Elaine. It was life, and everyone else in the office was just going to have to deal with it.
Rose stormed out of the office and looked back to see if Bronx was going to follow her. She caught his eye briefly and motioned for him. His eyes lit up like a child at a candy store. She didn’t want the other guys to know that she and Bronx got along at all, and so far she thought they were doing a pretty damn good job of making a show of their dislike for one another.
“Am I supposed to follow you?” Bronx said as he caught up to her in the stairwell and pressed her against the wall. “Because all I could think about in there was throwing you on that table and fucking your brains out.”
“About time you showed up,” Rose said as she reached down for his pants and unzipped them. “Let’s make this quick.”
“Yes ma’am,” Bronx teased.
They moved down to the basement stairwell below the entrance to the street that hardly anyone actually used. Only a couple maintenance people ever came all the way down the stairs to where they were, so it was relatively safe as long as no one heard them. She was daring, but Rose didn’t want to lose her job over indecent exposure charges or something outrageous like that.
Bronx grabbed Rose and leaned her against the cement wall as he pressed her skirt up to her waist. Then he tried to gently slide her panties down, but they were snug, and his excitement got the best of him as he heard them tear in the process. He held the shattered piece of fabric in his hand as he shrugged and apologized.
“Sorry.”
“Fuck me already,” Rose demanded.
She was excited, her emotions were on high, and all she could think about was the release that an orgasm would get her. Not only had she been with Noah when they won their case, but she had listened to those rotten women in the break room. Rose didn’t like the emotional mix that was rushing through her body, and she needed to get rid of it as soon as possible.
Sex was the best way she knew to stop thinking about everything that was around her. Bronx and her little plan were turning out to be very useful in her need to get away from
her emotions. He didn’t ask questions; he didn’t require her to be nice to him or build up his ego. Bronx was just there and ready to fuck her when she wanted him; it was exactly what she needed in her life.
Rose hadn’t always turned to sex to deal with her emotions. When Derek was alive, they could sit and talk for hours about what was going on in their lives and how they felt. Of course, Derek didn’t really enjoy those talks all that much, but he did them for Rose. She missed him horribly, and if she didn’t stay busy, she knew she would end up sobbing on the floor of her apartment constantly. She didn’t have time for that kind of emotional rollercoaster, but she did have time for Bronx and a quickie in the stairwell.
The thought of screwing Bronx in the middle of their workplace was exhilarating and turned Rose on more than she had expected. They weren’t in the safety of a locked office; instead, they were only feet away from someone opening a door and running right into their naked butts.
Bronx slid inside of her and thrust hard as she felt the cold concrete against her face. She thrust her ass back toward him as he held on tight to her hips and moved in motion with Rose. She didn’t care at all how long it took, how fast or how short the sex was; all Rose cared about was that her body felt the release that it needed.
His hands were warm on her hips, and Bronx leaned over and started to kiss Rose on the back of the neck. She didn’t need the romance, though; it wasn’t about that for her. All she needed was his body inside of her, moving hers into ecstasy. Rose grabbed one of his hands and slid it into her skirt so he could play with her clit while he thrust. She didn’t have the time to mess around. Rose wanted her explosion, and Bronx was going to deliver it; even if she had to specifically guide him every step of the way.
Sure enough, only a minute later, she felt her legs getting weak as her body welcomed the delicious orgasm she had been waiting for. Rose closed her eyes and let out a moan as her body gave in to the nothingness of desire that she was in the midst of. The combination of adrenaline and being exposed like they were made the moment intense and made Rose want to do that again sometime.
Mine to Protect Page 49
