"You always did anything I wanted," I tell her. "And you still do."
"That's why you married me," she says.
“Sure is,” I agree. “But not just because of that. For a lot of other reasons too. Your smile, your big brain and your amazing ass, to name just a few.”
“Are you sure you didn’t get those last two mixed up?” she jokes.
Suddenly, in the middle of laughing, we hear a noise that makes both of us jump. The old days of sneaking around and being afraid of getting caught are still engrained in us— both the thrill of it and the fear of it. But then I realize we aren't the ones who have anything to worry about.
"That noise is coming from Ron’s office," I tell Madilyn, pointing at the corner office just down the hall. It's the only one that’s almost as big as mine.
"Oh my God."
Not able to stop ourselves, we tiptoe over towards the closed door and listen. As we stand under the name card that says “Cameron Sanchez, Esq.,” there’s no doubt what’s going on inside.
"Are those the same sounds we just made?" Madilyn whispers, suppressing a laugh. “And for the same reason?”
"They sure are."
"He and his secretary Ruby have been getting close," Madilyn says, as we stop spying on the love birds and head towards the elevators. "She's probably one of the most down to earth people I’ve ever met, so I approve of him for her. But I still can’t believe it. She’s his not- so- secret office fling and his wedding date, and then they come back here to fuck?"
"What can I say?" I ask her, with a mischievous grin, thinking, Atta boy, Ron.
Maybe if he's lucky she'll be a keeper and they'll get married and have a kid. And live happily fucking ever after, just like me and the new associate I knowingly hand picked to be my pet and also ended up choosing to be my wife and mother of my child.
"He learned from the very best."
THE END.
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Copyright 2017 by Juliana Conners; All Rights Reserved.
Published by Swann Song Books.
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This book is a work of fiction and any similarities to real places, people or events are entirely coincidental. This book may not be reproduced or distributed in any format except for short quotes for review purposes, without the express written consent of the author.
***
“I want to do to you what spring does to the cherry trees.”
Pablo Neruda, Poem XIV: Every Day You Play
***
To M, Q, S and MW.
And to Lauren V., with thanks for all you do and with happy birthday wishes!
***
Chapter 1 – Cameron
Today is not a good fucking day. In fact, it’s the worst day I’ve had in a while.
First, I lost a fucking hearing today and I almost never lose hearings. It’s all because of a new judge on the bench— Baez— who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. His ruling came out of nowhere and makes no sense at all. This argument should have been a surefire win. But thanks to Baez, I lost.
Sure, I’ll win on appeal. That’s definitely a sure thing, because the court of appeals justices are smart— unlike that new idiot Baez— and it doesn’t hurt that I play golf with three out of five of them once or twice a month, and made hefty donations to their campaigns.
I’ll turn this one around. I never lose in the long run because I only take winning cases and I’m a damn good lawyer. One of the best there is. But I hate losing even in the short term. And worse, I hate coming back to the office after I lose a fucking case.
The second shitty thing that happened today is that everyone is staring at me and whispering under their breath as I’m forced to take my little walk of shame from the elevator in the lobby to my office on the partners’ floor. The secretaries’ eyes are downcast while the partners raise their eyebrows at me in a jeering manner. Everyone’s thinking the same damn thing.
“Woah buddy, heard you took a beating today,” someone calls out.
I know from his voice, without having to turn around and look, who said it. Fucking Asher Marks. My best friend and law partner. He’s the only one other than me who has the balls to say what everyone else is thinking. Usually I admire this trait of his but I don’t fucking need to hear his bullshit right now.
“Make sure to exercise your preemptive strike on Baez,” I announce loudly to everyone in the office, ignoring the fucking shit-eating grin on Asher’s face.
“Oh sure, blame it on the judge,” Asher says. “It couldn’t possibly be due to anything you did or didn’t do.”
“I’m serious,” I hurl back at him, and everyone. “Judge Baez is as plaintiff-friendly as they come.”
On my way back to the office, I’d shot out an email to a trial lawyers’ list I belong to, asking about Judge Baez. Granted, I should have done that a lot earlier— while I was preparing for the hearing. Asher’s right on that count but I’m not about to admit it.
The former judge— Elliot— that I am used to appearing in front of had fallen ill right in the middle of this case and is on an indefinite leave of absence. Judge Baez was appointed interim judge and I should have looked into whether or not to strike him during the first ten days after notification of his appointment, which the rules allow me to do.
But I’d heard that Judge Elliot had just checked himself into rehab for the eighth fucking time, and he’s always back better than ever after his standard twenty-eight days are up. I figured no judge could be dumb enough to grant summary judgment this early on in the case and that it wasn’t worth the hassle of paperwork.
Turns out I was obviously fucking very wrong. A flurry of email responses had come in, letting me know that this interim Judge Baez is a bleeding heart pro-plaintiff’s guy through and through. He had already granted lots of judgments in the plaintiffs’ favor in cases against big corporations left and right in the fifteen days he’d been on the bench.
And of course, I’m representing a big corporation. Because I make a shit ton of money, and big corporations have the ability to keep it that way.
Don’t get me wrong, I do pro bono work too. And I take on cases I believe in. Like right now I’m about to represent the manufacturer of toys for kids with disabilities. His name is Damien Hudson.
There’s not a lot of money in such cases. But I believe in the guy’s work. I want to help.
But obviously, I have bills to pay too. Big ones. Like the one for my fucking yacht. And my jet skis. And my jet that takes me to the yacht and the jet skis. Therefore, in general I represent the biggest, filthy rich and often downright scummy corporations. And apparently, this Judge Baez has a problem with that.
“Oh sure, you just lost the case because the judge has a soft spot for the little guy,” Asher laughs. “Good thing Volcan Corp. has the money and the resources to fight this unfair ruling. How dare the court be so unjust against a giant entity used to stomping its way to victory?”
He just can’t let it go. I know he’s joking— giving me a hard time because he knows I’ll win on appeal and we’ll get even more money along the way from the legal bills our client will have to pay to fight Judge Baez’s original crazy decision— but I’m not in the fucking mood.
“Judge Baez is seriously not someone we want on any of our cases,” I tell him. “Not that you would know what the hell has been going on in them lately anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he growls at me, but I just turn away.
Asher knows exactly what I fucking mean. He’s been too busy fucking Madilyn, his latest bright and shiny new associate— whom he likes to refer to as his “mentee” but is really his office plaything— to pay at
tention to anything going on in this firm.
His firm, my firm and Reed’s firm. That we started together even though Asher is always the one who takes— and gets— all the credit for it. And which has so much respect for me that everyone is secretly laughing at me because I just lost one case for the stupidest reason ever: a bleeding heart judge who’s too new to know how things work.
I clear my throat.
“Listen up everybody,” I call out.
The secretaries sitting in their cubicles finally lift up their eyes to meet mine, although a bit hesitantly.
“I want everyone to search through all of our active files and find any of them that have Baez assigned as the judge. We’re going to need to file Motions to Recuse for Cause in all of them. We’ll cite his bias and the fact that all he’s done since taking the bench is rule against corporations such as our clients. Does everyone understand?”
There’s a mumbling of “Yes, Sir” that ripples through the office, as the secretaries dutifully pull up their case lists on their computers and search for Baez. At first, they’re rather reluctant but as I stand there looking at each and every one of them, their typing gets more urgent from the sound of things and their throats start clearing nervously.
Good. They’re finally taking me seriously, even if Asher isn’t. That’ll give them something better to do than sitting around watching cat videos on Youtube or messaging their friends on Facebook to tell them about how their boss and co-founder of the firm, Cameron Sanchez, just lost a case and is now losing his shit over it and making their lives harder because of it.
“I’ll go search the file room,” says a pleasant voice out of nowhere, sounding calm and collected despite my harsh attempts to scare the ever-living bejesus into my staff. “I’ll be right back with all the Baez files.”
“How are you going to do that?” I ask her, looking up and down at the person who had just said it.
I’m not just looking at her because she’s fucking hot but also because she sounds so brazen in her promise and confident in her abilities.
I know this chick. Kind of. Her name’s Ruby.
She’s what we call a floater— a secretary or assistant of sorts who fills in where needed and does any task required of her, without being assigned to any certain attorney. Those kinds of jobs are one of the lowest of the low around here— although being a “runner”/delivery boy, a mailroom clerk or the janitor might be a bit lower on the totem pole.
Normally I wouldn’t have known her from anyone but she kind of fucking stands out. She has brown hair with some streaks of purple dye running through it like these kids think is okay to wear to work these days.
I don’t know why no one around here has made her fix that but I’m kind of glad they haven’t. Because on her it looks kind of fucking hot. Like I just want to run my hands through those streaks in her hair while I pull it back and tell her to do what I want.
And she also has a banging fucking body. And that’s how I know her name. Because some of the other guys call her “Ruby Don’t You Wanna,” which is what they call any hot girl around here that they wish they could fuck.
All the partners have commented on how much they’d like to hit that but then everyone always says Asher is the only one who would ever be stupid enough to try. Except that he prefers new associate lawyers, not assistants and certainly not floaters.
But yeah. I’d like to hit that. I’d love some of that Ruby Don’t You Wanna. She’s got curves in all the right places and a round yet somehow still tight ass that bounces like a little fitness ball when she walks.
And she’s fucking young— she looks like a teenager although they say she’s twenty. Sure, I’d hit that. If I could. And I’d hit it a lot better than all the other partners could, too.
I’m not as dumb as Asher though. I bang plenty of chicks outside the office but I don’t like to shit where I eat. Even though I’d love to eat her undoubtedly juicy little pussy. And I don’t like to mix business with pleasure, even though I’m sure my ten-inch cock could give her plenty of pleasure.
I’ve never had things as easy as Asher and I know I can’t take what I’ve built for granted. Even though I’d like to tie this Ruby girl up, I know it would have the power to take me down. So, I won’t. I just wish I could.
Chapter 2 – Cameron
I look at the smirk on Asher’s face and wish I really could just go around taking the chances that he does. With the complete shameless attitude that he does.
Asher thinks that he single-handedly built this firm and that he’s invincible against anything ever destroying it, even his own actions. He and I go way back— he was my friend in fucking middle school— so I cut him a lot of slack but I think his voracious appetite and playboy ways with the women he hires and supervises could land him in hot water. I’m always the one picking up the pieces and helping him out of the fucking jams he gets himself into.
Asher doesn’t know how easy he has everything. He’s not from the barrio like me— the part of town that is literally referred to as the “War Zone” in Albuquerque. He’s from the posh Northeast Heights neighborhood my mama had to drive to every day— first to scrub rich peoples’ floors and then to drop me off on her way at the private school I had been awarded a scholarship to attend, for being smart and good at tests but mostly for driving up their diversity numbers.
Asher’s parents had plenty of money to send him to the school I was lucky enough to have my way paid for me to be able to attend— a fact that none of my rich benefactors ever stopped rubbing in my fucking face for the entire six years I was there.
“Excuse me?” Ruby asks me now, raising an eyebrow at me in a more serious way than Asher just had.
For the first time, I notice what a very interesting shade of blue her eyes are: sky-blue mixed with gray. So, they look like a day that’s cloudy but about to get better. Like you can see the sun poking out from behind the clouds.
I can’t believe I just had that fucking thought. Luckily it was only to myself or everyone would have yet another reason to be fucking laughing at me today.
“How is it that you think you can so easily pull all the cases that have that one judge?” I ask Ruby.
She’s a relatively new floater and I’m sure she doesn’t understand how our filing system works. Although it’s pretty fucking self-explanatory if she would take a little bit of time away from listening to whatever undoubtedly in bad fucking taste music is always playing out of the headphones she wears and spend some time in the file room.
The files are arranged on the shelves in the filing room as anyone might expect: fucking alphabetically by client. Not in any way that has anything to do with the fucking judge on the case.
“Well when I first started I had a lot of free time on my hands,” she answers me, shrugging. “Still do, actually. So, I decided to do something productive in the file room that could make it easier to find files by additional ways instead of only alphabetically by last name.”
Now it’s my turn to raise my eyebrows at her, in near disbelief.
“And how is that?” I ask her. “In what other ways did you arrange the files, and how exactly would you be able to do that?”
“I know, right?” she asks, smiling as if she’s very proud of herself for devising something innovative. “I had the same question. Like, at first, I was wishing we didn’t even have to file things physically, since it doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore. Thanks to computers we have everything filed electronically and can arrange or search for them in all sorts of different ways. And that’s what I dislike about Pinterest.”
“Pinterest?” I ask her.
I’m vaguely familiar with the site, but I thought it was something that housewives or nannies used to collect pictures of their cooking or knitting projects. I didn’t know that someone fresh out of their teenage years would use Pinterest.
“Yeah, I use it for photos of album covers from bands that I like,” she says, “And I get annoyed that I can only so
rt things by boards. That’s it. So, I can have a band board, or a genre of music board, or a type of cover board, but if I want the same album to go in all three of them, I have to add it to every single board. It really should have tag options like Evernote.”
“Evernote,” I say, just as dumb-founded as when she mentioned Pinterest.
I’m a bit more familiar with Evernote but I thought it was something for tech junkies or executives who like to meticulously track their notes and documents. Again, not something I think a twenty-year-old would be interested in.
“Yeah, so I thought I’d make something that combines Pinterest and Evernote,” she says. “I’m working on it already, in fact.”
“In the filing room?” I ask her.
“No.”
She laughs, and I have to admit I fucking love the sound of it. And I love that she’s laughing about something I said, even if it’s because what I said made me sound like a fucking idiot. She’s still laughing because of me.
“I mean, yes,” she says, smiling. “I did something like that in the filing room. But I’m coding an app that does it too, for, like, on the computer.”
“I see,” I tell her. “You… code?”
I hadn’t realized that was part of a floater’s job description.
“Yes,” she says. “Well, in my spare time.”
She shrugs and looks away, as if she’s a little embarrassed. Or maybe like she doesn’t want to tell me anything else about what she does in her spare time. I suddenly realize she could have a boyfriend and I feel fucking outraged.
“Interesting,” Asher comments, and I instinctively feel a little fucking possessive.
I know he’s head over heels in lust with his new pet, Madilyn, and he only ever “mentors” one woman at a time.
But still.
I’m the one who started talking to this interesting assistant and I’m not going to let Asher mess that up for me. Even if I won’t explore my more basic instincts with her.
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