Heart vs. Humbug

by MJ Rodgers

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your radio campaign against Scroogen is being taken seriously. People are making calls and writing letters. What better way to draw attention away from the seriousness of what you have to say then by making you and your radio station into a joke?”

  “I see. So the Scrooge had Merlin file that complaint with the FCC to make people laugh at me!”

  “I doubt Scroogen thought of it. It’s too smooth and slick. I think this was the brainchild of the Magician.”

  “The Magician?”

  “It’s what Scroogen’s attorney, Brett Merlin, is called in legal circles, because he makes his clients’ problems just disappear. Merlin’s big time. He only takes on the momentous corporate cases that are considered worthy of his mettle. Scroogen is small fry. I can’t understand why Merlin is representing him.”

  “You think that’s an important question?”

  “If there is one thing I’ve learned in my legal career, Mab, it’s that the players in any battle are what determine how big that battle is going to be. Today’s Tuesday. Since the Sunday edition of the Bremerton newspaper is the one with the highest circulation, more than likely that’s the edition in which Merlin has arranged for this foolish FCC story to be run.”

  “What can I do to stop the story?”

  “Trying to stop it would be a waste of time. We have to think of a way to cut it down and shove it to an obscure back page. Mab, do you know where Scroogen got all this money to buy up the land adjacent to your community center?”

  “He owns a septic installation and servicing company that ministers to much of Kitsap County.”

  Octavia rose to her feet and snatched up her shoulder bag. “And now he’s into land development. That raises one or two questions right there.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Octavia paused on her way to the door to swing around and answer her grandmother’s question.

  “To call A.J. She’s the head of a detective firm that my legal firm uses. I think it might be a good idea for her to do a background check on Scroogen.”

  “You can use my phone to call her, Octavia.”

  “No, I’ll use my car phone on the way to the Community Development Department. It’ll save some time. I want to do a little checking of my own on Scroogen’s construction permits for this condominium complex.”

  “Then you’ll be back in plenty of time for dinner.”

  “I’d better call you later and let you know.”

  “You expect to spend all day at the Building Department?”

  “No, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to discover why this magician has suddenly materialized on the scene.”

  * * *

  BRETT ANSWERED THE KNOCK on his hotel room door, impressed that room service had responded so quickly. When instead the gorgeous redhead who had been dancing in and out of his imaginings all day appeared on the other side, he blinked a few times to assure himself his eyes weren’t playing tricks.

  “Good evening, Mr. Merlin. I’m Octavia Osborne,” she announced with a thick, liquid voice as smooth and sweet as cherry brandy. “I want to talk to you.”

  She glided by him into the room—not waiting for an invitation—treating him to a tantalizing whiff of a subtle, sophisticated scent that reminded him of warm sands and seductive tropical breezes. Brett stayed where he was, holding the door purposely open.

  “How did you know I was here, Ms. Osborne? I’m not registered under my name.”

  “Yes, that was most inconsiderate of you. It took me several hours to track you down.”

  Brett assessed the situation. The lady’s bearing, speech and dress all exuded a classy, cultivated air. But it was seven o’clock at night, she had walked uninvited into his hotel room, and this could very well be an attempt at entrapment.

  It wouldn’t be the first time a woman had tried to get him into a compromising position for a little legal blackmail.

  “Relax, Mr. Merlin. I promise I will not attack you,” she said as though reading his thoughts. “Unless seriously provoked, of course.”

  She had turned to deliver those final words with the challenge of a smile playing around her full lips.

  Every legally encoded cell in Brett’s brain flashed alarm, exhorting him to immediately escort this woman out of his room.

  But her smile spoke to every red-blooded male cell in his body, overriding even his well-developed sense of circumspection. Brett closed the door and stood silently contemplating his unexpected guest.

  Octavia Osborne was stunning. He could think of no other word to describe her. She was over six feet in her high heels, with long, flowing flame-red hair, a glowing, golden complexion, and eyes so deep and startling a blue that he had only seen their like in the heart of the fabulous blue-white diamond he had fought so hard to possess.

  The moment he’d seen her at the KRIS radio station that morning, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. Brett kept her in his peripheral vision now as he walked over to where he had left his drink on the coffee table.

  Yes, she possessed that kind of dazzling sparkle that would always draw his eye, but he’d learned the hard way to pass up the breathtaking beauties of the flesh and make do with the plainer and saner—if less exciting—specimens of the female sex.

  He would not offer her a drink. He would do nothing to prolong her stay. He would hear what she had to say and then show her the door.

  She whirled gracefully out of her cape, the color of a flambéed peach, slipped off her matching gloves, then proceeded to commandeer the most comfortable chair in the room.

  He picked up his glass of Scotch from the coffee table, took a swig and sat across the room opposite her on the bench seat beneath the window.

  “How may I help you?” he asked.

  “I’m Mab Osborne’s granddaughter.”

  Yes, Brett had already noted they shared the same last name. And despite the more than forty years separating the two women, the same flame of Octavia’s hair was buried beneath the silver of Mab’s. Both women also possessed an elegant air in poise and carriage that marked the familial tie.

  “Why did you come here, Ms. Osborne?”

  “To stop you from making trouble for Mab, of course.”

  Brett wondered how. Would Octavia be like the many who had treated him to a bout of unsavory pleading and tears? Or like the few who had offered their bodies? He immediately pushed the tempting thoughts of the latter aside and decided to try to stave off whatever stratagem she had in mind.

  “Ms. Osborne, your concern for your grandmother is understandable. But coming here tonight to try to sway me to drop my complaint to the FCC is not the proper way to go about helping her.”

  “I don’t care about your complaint to the FCC. But I do care that you’re having the newspaper carry the story about this ridiculous FCC morals charge in order to bring ridicule to my grandmother.”

  Brett was a little surprised at Octavia’s words. He hadn’t expected her to figure out that it was the sensational attention of a news story he was after.

  “Ms. Osborne, I’m certain the newspaper will be happy to print your grandmother’s side of the story. All she has to do is call them.”

  “Yes, you would like that, wouldn’t you. The more space they give to this ridiculous morals charge the better, right?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Mr. Merlin, let’s deal with each other honestly, please. You’re Dole Scroogen’s attorney. You’ve deliberately set up this trumped-up morals charge to detract from my grandmother’s campaign against Scroogen’s building plans—plans that will seriously endanger the life-style of many elderly citizens.”

  So, Octavia Osborne knew he was a lawyer and that the FCC charge was merely a smokescreen to help Scroogen get on with his development plans.

  Was it Scroogen’s presence that morning in the radio station that had given the game away? Must have been. He’d told Dole to stay home an
d let him handle it. Fool should have listened to him. Now he had to deal with the damage control.

  Brett swallowed some Scotch and continued to maintain his civilized tone of polite distance, so important in these matters.

  “Ms. Osborne, I realize that change is always difficult to accept for those embedded in comfortable grooves.”

  “A community made up of people who know and care for one another is more than just a comfortable groove.”

  “Nevertheless, the law is on Mr. Scroogen’s side, and the law must prevail if progress is to be made.”

  “Progress? You call ripping apart the seniors’ simple and gentle way of life and replacing it with overpopulation and pollution progress? Scroogen’s great-aunt wanted the seniors to have use of her land. That’s why she gave them a ninety-nine-year lease. What Scroogen is doing circumvents his great aunt’s wishes. He is wrong. I urge you to rethink where your loyalties lie.”

  “Ms. Osborne, according to the law, it is your grandmother who is wrong. Mr. Scroogen received his great-aunt’s property without entanglements on her death. He has every right to do with his property as he pleases. And, as for my loyalties, they lie with my client. It is my sworn duty to fight for Dole Scroogen.”

  She surprised him completely then by laughing, full and luscious, a sound that filled the room with music and inexplicably tightened the muscles at the back of his neck and down his spine.

  “Your sworn duty,” she repeated, amusement still in her tone after she had gotten her laughter under control. “You say that as though you had no choice. Why are you, of all people, representing a man like Dole Scroogen?”

  “What do you mean ‘of all people’?”

  “I’ve approached you with candor and honesty, Mr. Merlin. I am disappointed that you do not choose to return them.”

  “And I am disappointed that you refuse to accept that Mr. Scroogen is within his legal rights to proceed with the building of the condominium complex and evicting the Silver Power League for nonpayment of what is clearly reasonable rent for the facilities they are inhabiting.”

  She was up and out of her chair in a flash. She crossed the distance between them with a deliberate, determined stride. She stopped directly in front of him. She stood hands on hips, feet planted. Combative blue eyes bore into him. Yet her voice remained warmly mellow and richly resonant.

  “Scroogen is trying to evict the seniors from the land that is rightfully theirs to use and from buildings that they built with their own money and moxie. He is determined to turn their sweet and sane neighborhood into yet another crowded, crime-filled Seattle suburb. And you dare talk to me about his legal rights? Where is your heart?”

  “The law has no room for a heart, Ms. Osborne. If human beings decided their fate based on their emotions instead of their minds, our civilization would descend into chaos.”

  “And if human beings decided their fate based only on their minds, they might as well be manikins. Mr. Merlin, the law came into being for the sole purpose of sustaining justice between human beings. But like everything else, unless the law is administered by people with hearts—as well as heads—even its great and lofty goal can be corrupted. What you are trying to do for Scroogen will not achieve justice. The man is both beneath contempt and certainly beneath your legal expertise.”

  Brett had to admit she spoke well. And he admired the fact that despite the considerable physical arsenal at her disposal, it was her words she wielded at him and not her feminine wiles.

  He turned away from the stunning beauty and fire of the lady to down the rest of his drink.

  “Who I choose to represent and why is my business.”

  “No, Mr. Merlin. By attacking my grandmother you have made it mine.”

  His eyes were drawn back to her face. The liquid richness of her voice had not altered. But both the toss of her fiery hair and the sudden blue sparks in her eyes conveyed pure threat. So far this conversation had been full of confrontation and totally lacking in the kind of feminine cajoling he had expected.

  Octavia Osborne had a strong will, and it was that will on which she relied. He found himself as stunned by her inner core as he had been by her outer packaging.

  Far too stunned.

  In a move that he knew to be both prudent and absolutely necessary, he got to his feet and started toward the door.

  “Let me show you out, Ms. Osborne. I’m certain your time is valuable and you don’t want to waste it here in a futile attempt to get me to drop my client.”

  She joined him at the door a moment later, hurtling her cape expertly across her shoulders and fitting her gloves to her fingers in quick, competent clasps.

  “You are making a very grave error representing that man, Mr. Merlin. You will be sorry.”

  “The law is on Mr. Scroogen’s side, and I am never sorry to represent the law. Nothing personal, Ms. Osborne.”

  She moved closer and looked him straight in the eye, a bold body position reserved only for the fiercest of fighters—or lovers. Her warmth and scent struck him like a blow below the belt, leaving him momentarily both mentally and physically winded.

  “If you do not leave my grandmother alone, I will go after your Scrooge of a client and grind him down until the size of his wallet makes even his heart look huge.”

  She leaned closer, her sweet breath blowing tantalizingly against his lips. “And everything about it will be personal, believe me.”

  She turned then and swept out of his hotel room on that subtle, sophisticated scent that swam in his head until his senses started to spin.

  By the time the blaring telephone registered in his ears, Brett realized it had probably gone through several ringing cycles.

  He forced himself out of his mental and physical fog, enormously irritated that he had let the woman affect him so strongly. He closed the hotel room door on the now empty hallway. Then he strode toward the phone, grabbed the receiver and said hello.

  “It’s Dole,” Scroogen announced on the other end of the line. “I just hung up on a damn irate anonymous caller on my home telephone number!”

  “Settle down, Dole. What did the caller say?”

  “That they were going to get me. I’m sure it was Mab Osborne’s voice, although she was trying to disguise it. I tell you, Merlin, this morals charge thing is not threatening enough. I want Mab Osborne off the air. She has to be silenced. Forever.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You heard me. I’m going to do whatever it takes to put an end to that woman. Whatever it takes.”

  Chapter Two

  Octavia strode down the dark hallway of the Seattle law offices of Justice Inc., heading for the one door under which the light still burned. She knocked.

  The voice on the other side responded instantly, crisply. She opened the door and stepped inside.

  Octavia’s senior partner, Adam Justice, sat behind his desk, his black hair still scrupulously in place, his white shirt unwrinkled, despite the fact that it was nearly midnight and Octavia knew he’d been here since dawn.

  “What brings you by so late?” Adam asked, putting down his pen and shifting his paperwork aside.

  Octavia had always liked that about Adam. No matter how busy or involved he was on a case, he never failed to stop what he was doing and give her his complete attention.

  She swung into a utilitarian steel-and-leather chair in front of his black metal desk. Like the man who inhabited it, this office had been stripped of all but necessary business essentials.

  “An attorney is causing some legal problems for my grandmother, and I need to spend time across the Sound in Bremerton to straighten it out.”

  “This attorney anyone we know?”

  “Brett Merlin. He’s representing a real Scrooge of a small businessman who has it in for my grandmother.”

  Adam was silent for a moment before responding.

  “Taking on the Magician won’t be easy,” he said.

  “I know,” Octavia agreed, t
hinking about her earlier meeting with Brett in his hotel room. She had hoped to reach him, but he had shown neither compassion nor compromise—a real letter-of-the-law kind of attorney.

  The law has no room for a heart. What a perfectly imbecilic thing to say!

  Octavia lifted her chin. “He’s about to find out that taking me on won’t be easy, either.”

  Her senior partner almost smiled. Almost.

  “I...see. But what I don’t see is why Brett Merlin would represent a small businessman against your grandmother. Not more than three weeks ago he was responsible for getting a record 55.5 million jury verdict favoring one of his big corporate clients here in Seattle.”

  “It’s a question that’s been on my mind, too, Adam. I’m going to have to rely on A.J. and her detective team to sleuth out the answer.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be happy to oblige. If you need my legal assistance or that of any of your fellow partners, you know you only have to ask.”

  “I appreciate that. But this is family and that makes it a very personal fight for me.”

  “You know how long you’ll be away?”

  “Probably through Christmas.”

  “Any cases you’re working on that need to be picked up by someone else?”

  “Just one. My associate can handle it. I’ve written a few notes to her and left the complete case file on her desk, along with a request to keep you informed of the progress.”

  Adam leaned back in his chair as she paused. Octavia knew he was waiting for her to tell him why she was here in person. They both knew there was more, that Octavia could have settled all this with a few telephone calls. She took a deep breath, knowing there was never going to be a “right” moment to broach the subject.

  “I want to retain you as my personal counsel, Adam.”

  A small frown creased Adam’s brow. “You want me to become your attorney? Officially?”

  “As of this moment.” Octavia pulled out a standard Justice Inc. office contract she had already signed and had notarized and passed it across the desk to him along with a check.

  Adam scanned the paperwork and check and leaned his forearms on his desk. His light eyes stared into hers.