The December Deception

by Dana Volney

  She spotted Henry at a table in the left dining room at Brahman’s Steakhouse. She strutted over with her head held high and her little black sequined “going out” purse under her arm.

  Henry stood when they locked eyes.

  “Lorelei.” He pulled out the chair next to his.

  She held back her surprise. He rarely called her anything but Ms. Sullivan these days.

  “Henry.” The ends of her lips turned up. She wasn’t going to let the awkwardness of having him in her personal space show. She only occasionally saw him out of the office, when Fisher and Silver, their mutual best friends respectively, invited them somewhere. And that hadn’t happened in a while, due to the workload and Henry insisting they take on more pro bono cases this time of year.

  He sat next to her in jeans that were perfectly tailored to his thick lines, a blue-plaid button-up collar showing under a navy sweater, and shined coffee-colored loafers. The man had a style about him Lorelei ate up. He was classic preppy in casual settings and looked good in a suit at the office.

  Yet, tonight, he didn’t slouch in his chair or seem in any way relaxed. Usually, when they joined Fisher and Silver, Henry seemed looser and more into his surroundings. Tonight, he looked strained. If they hadn’t been in a restaurant, she’d have thought they were in court.

  There might’ve been a time she’d had a crush on him, but that was short-lived. She was too old to act like a lovesick teenager. He was her boss. She was an adult. And adults wanted things like making partner at a law firm. She respected Henry. He was a hell of a lawyer. And she was going to be the first partner he brought on. Her billable hours, her wins, her everything went into proving as much. Nothing else mattered.

  Besides, the men she always dated were tall, blonde, and skilled at any hands-on job that required heavy machinery. Henry wasn’t even her type.

  “This is my father, Dwight, and my mother, Viola.” Henry motioned to the respective adults sitting at the head and on the other side of the table. “And my brother Trent and his wife, Alicia.” They were across the table. “Then there’s my nephews, Alex, Anders, and Arthur.”

  “Hello. It’s nice to meet all of you.” She would’ve preferred to shake everyone’s hands—show them she wasn’t weak in any way—but that ship had sailed.

  “Uncle H.” The oldest boy, who couldn’t be more than eight, had a big-toothed, sweet grin on his little round face. “Your girlfriend is pretty.” The child snickered to his next oldest brother.

  “We’re colleagues, Alex.” Henry didn’t bat an eye or turn red as he stated the fact.

  “The pleasure is all ours to meet our top-billing lawyer in Casper.” Dwight chuckled once. “Besides my son.” Dwight was a smooth talker, with slicked-back white hair and a chunky silver class ring from the University of Wyoming on his pinkie.

  “I love what I do, and it shows.” She was going to have to dial down the cheesy.

  “How long have you been with us?” Trent asked. He wore a black button-up with a green vest over it. His wife matched in an all-black dress.

  “More than two years now. I clerked for Judge Sydney in Cheyenne on an internship while in college. Before that, I did office work for a local lawyer.” She always, always left out the name of said lawyer. Once people found out who she was associated with, not only professionally but by blood, things went one of two ways. Neither she cared for.

  “Judge Sydney is respected in more than just Wyoming.” Dwight was back in the conversation as he opened his menu. “You must know someone with pull to get a position there.”

  She shrugged off this last statement. “I learned a lot from him. He’s a great mentor.” In fact, she still spoke with him, but only at her parents’ parties now.

  “Alicia, didn’t you work for Judge Sydney?” Dwight asked his daughter-in-law.

  “No. Judge Mackey in Gillette, before he went down to the Wyoming Supreme Court.” Alicia’s pronunciation sounded unexpectedly prissy. Lorelei studied the woman. Very straight, nearly black hair was layered around Alicia’s long face and fell to mid-breast. She wasn’t someone Lorelei would’ve been naturally drawn to in a social setting—her look screamed high maintenance. “I was going to follow him, but then Trent and I decided to start a family.”

  “Where are you now?” Lorelei asked. The woman was clearly still very much dialed in to the legal world.

  “I’m with the DA’s office in Buffalo.”

  “The enemy.” Trent flashed a football team captain’s smile and lightly kissed his wife’s cheek.

  “At least Trent has a wife who is very successful.” Dwight locked eyes with Henry, and the entire table seemed to busy themselves all of a sudden.

  She hadn’t expected this family dynamic. Henry was the most alpha man she’d ever met—sure of himself, persistent, calm under pressure, and a risk taker. Henry was strategic in his decisions. She’d witnessed it a hundred times. She would love to stop time and pick his brain without him remembering someday.

  “We’ll be announcing exciting growth news for Hale Law come Christmas Eve,” Dwight continued, although no one around the table was making eye contact with each other.

  Lorelei’s stomach flipped. News? Dwight slid his gaze from Henry and connected with her stare.

  “I can’t wait to hear.” She picked up her water glass and sipped. If she said anything more, she’d smile too much and start talking about how she liked working at Hale Law and was ready for the next step. The man hadn’t said specifically what the news was, so it was best she didn’t make presumptions. Outwardly. Inwardly, this was a good sign.

  The waiter appeared to take their drink orders. She ordered red wine. She wanted to be as calm on the inside as she acted on the outside. She wasn’t fidgeting. She wasn’t bouncing her knee or pulling her brows together. Let the night go where it may. But that wasn’t in her DNA, and not taking control was nearly making her mind go a hundred miles an hour, and her need to squirm was strong. She scratched her arm instead.

  “Do you have family in town?” Viola asked after setting her menu down in front of her and resting her hands in her lap.

  “My parents are here, and then my Aunt Tilly has a dude ranch outside of Buffalo about forty miles,” Lorelei replied. “My cousins live in others states though.”

  “What’s the name?” Dwight asked.

  “Bristow Dude Ranch. She’s had it for as long as I can remember. Beautiful place right by the Big Horns.”

  The waiter came back with hot rolls and took their orders. Everyone picked at the bread, and Lorelei patiently waited for her turn at the butter.

  “We’ve been to your family’s ranch.” Alicia drank her water without leaving one smudge of her dark reddish-purple lipstick on the glass. “The boys got to ride the horses and feed them.”

  “Fantastic time.” Trent bobbed his head. “We rented a cabin over spring break. A stay-cation when Arthur was still young and we didn’t want to have to fly anywhere.”

  “I knew your uncle.” Dwight didn’t look so high and mighty now. “Helluva guy.” He tipped his whiskey glass toward her and nodded like people do when they want to express condolences.

  The sharp memory of her uncle pinched at the corners of her eyes. Her uncle had been a great man. His sudden heart attack fourteen months ago had taken them all by surprise. He’d died in the barn when he and Jack, the ranch foreman, were putting up the horses for the night.

  She raised her own glass to toast him. “I’ll drink to that.”

  Viola and Alicia started a private conversation about the boys, and Lorelei just sat there, the wind knocked out of her sails. She hated when she was caught off guard about topics that still stung so deeply.

  But Henry’s blue eyes held sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks,” she whispered.

  “I haven’t been up to the ranch, but I’ll have to check it out next time I’m up there.”

  He was close to her—if she moved just right their arms would brush. He had
n’t shifted his seat, but there was warmth radiating from him in this moment that she’d not noticed before.

  She crossed her legs away from him, aware not to touch him by accident. “The holidays are the best because Aunt Tilly decorates everything she can reach with years and years of holiday cheer. It’s a sight.”

  “Maybe for New Year’s then.” His eyes seemed to smile back at her—and not the happiness he usually exhibited when one of them had done well on a case. This was different. It felt different, too, holding some type of familiarity she’d never thought she and Henry had.

  The ranch was great any time of the year, and New Year’s would be a perfect getaway. Especially if he was looking for the cozy, romantic type of vacation. To her knowledge, he wasn’t dating anyone though.

  A plate of steak appeared between them and broke the moment. If it even was a moment.

  “You’re holding out on us,” Dwight accused as he pointed his fork in her direction.

  “Excuse me?” She sure was doing a bang-up job of showing how intelligent and partner-worthy she was.

  “Your uncle was Tim Bristow, so that means your mother is Francis Bristow.”

  Two years. She’d gone a whopping two years in Casper on her own without people associating the two. Which was a feat, considering Casper wasn’t all that large and people loved to gossip.

  “Yes. She is.” All eyes were on her now, and she felt the weight. The assumed judgments of her mother’s legacy burned into her skin.

  “Well, then, ladies and gentlemen, we’re in the presence of greatness.” Dwight’s gaze pulled from her and settled on Henry. “Did you know?”

  “I did not. No.” A muscle flexed on the side of Henry’s jaw.

  She tried to catch Henry’s stare to give him an apologetic face, but he only glanced at her briefly. She wasn’t sorry she hadn’t told him—she wished it were still a secret—but it sucked that his father was using it against him.

  “She doesn’t practice anymore,” she said, trying to correct this situation.

  “I thought she worked on the big Laskey case last year,” Dwight pressed. “Wasn’t there a settlement of two billion against the Braleband Company in a case no one thought was even going to go to trial?”

  “She consulted. She takes a select few clients a year.” The clients usually had to induce some sort of emotional connection, because when Francis Bristow Sullivan worked a case, she gave it her all. In the Braleband case, Francis had glommed on to the part where children were getting sick as a consequence of the lack of control over the company’s manufacturing plant. Lorelei had paid little attention to the case in the news. If she wanted information, she just asked her mother.

  One of the kids at the table, or rather under it, started crying. Thank God for small miracles. The focus was no longer on Lorelei or her mother.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Henry asked, his voice lowered, before taking a bite of his steak.

  “For exactly why you’d imagine,” she deadpanned.

  “Any advantage is a chance to win.”

  Did he seriously believe that? Because while he said Hale Law was his firm, it was really a branch of the main office in Buffalo. He’d used his family’s name and, quite frankly, didn’t seem happy about that choice all the time.

  She opened her mouth to come back with a quip like, “Then I guess I’ll just sit back and stop billing so many hours because my mother is Francis Bristow,” or, “Maybe I should just change my name to Francis Bristow Jr. and really lap it up.” Instead, Lorelei took a bite of her wedge side salad. Angering him would put her way behind on the vote count. Although, from the shiny dollar signs she saw flashing in Dwight’s and Trent’s eyes, she might not need Henry on her side.

  But she wanted things in life because of her abilities, not her mother’s. They weren’t the same person. She let out a deep breath. Except, in her case, they actually were. They both loved the law, and Lorelei prided herself on being really good at what she did. It didn’t hurt that if she was stuck or had to work out a problem she could call her mother.

  Dinner wrapped up with polite smiles and nodding as she tried to follow their inside stories and jokes. Henry even loosened up a little; she thought she saw him smile again when she and his mother started talking about the likelihood that most Pinterest pictures were Photoshopped because the projects were impossible to replicate. There was never another opportunity to talk about the firm, which might’ve been for the best, given the tension around the table before. Now that they knew who her mother was, she’d never know if any promotion on the horizon was because she was a hard worker or because her mother was.

  But she’d have an answer to one of her questions soon—Christmas Eve was only a couple days away.

  Lorelei walked out of the restaurant with Viola. “Thanks for having me tonight.”

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” Viola asked.

  “I haven’t had a day off in a while, so I’m not sure yet.” Today was the closest Lorelei had come to a full day off in two months, and she’d basically spent it cleaning up her inbox.

  “I’ll be baking and starting a batch of my famous holiday Kahlua. You should come by. Maybe bring a favorite holiday recipe of your own, and we’ll make it.”

  Henry didn’t acknowledge his mom’s invitation, though he was right in front of them. Surely, he’d heard. But he didn’t turn around to protest. And more face time with Dwight and Trent would be good.

  “I don’t want to intrude on your family time.”

  “Nonsense. We’d love to have you. I’m starting at two o’clock. Who knows what the men will be doing.” She caught Henry’s arm and entwined it with her own. “Although, I can usually count on this one to help me.” She patted Henry’s chest, pride beaming through her blue-gray gaze.

  All of the hours Lorelei had been putting in had taken their toll on her ability to keep up on household chores, friends, and, well, herself. When was the last time she’d read a book for fun and not research? Recharging during this vacation was a must. Tonight had been easy, but she wasn’t sure she’d made the right impression. Henry didn’t talk much about his family. Now that she’d met them, maybe she could do better tomorrow.

  Henry’s gaze met hers, a smile lighting his eyes.

  “All right. You got me. I rarely say no to sweets.”

  It would be her second cookie day of the season, but this round could bring something sweeter than sugar. It could bring victory.

  Chapter Three

  Henry answered the door in his rubber-soled house shoes. “Welco—” He stopped as a snowball hit Lorelei on the side of her face. Her eyes widened, and without hesitation she bent down, scooped snow, swiveled, and chucked a ball right at his nephews.

  “You don’t want to take me on, boys,” she yelled after them. “I have yet to lose a snowball fight.” She turned back to him, a wide grin in place.

  He stepped to the side to let her enter his home as she wiped melting snow from the side of her cheek and jacket.

  “They are rascals. Sorry about the attack.” He glanced out of the door before shutting it. “They must be back from chopping down the Christmas tree.”

  “Ah, they are boys on vacation playing in the snow. They were all smiles when I walked up.”

  It was two o’clock exactly. No shock she was on time. But this wasn’t the uptight Lorelei he’d expected. She took off her red fluffy coat and matching knitted scarf to unveil a navy vest over a green-and-yellow plaid button-up with jeans and brown boots. And her hair was down. Wavy and auburn and luscious.

  She started to take off her shoes by his front doormat.

  “No, don’t worry about taking off your boots. You’d be the only one.” He shook his head. His floors were visibly dirty.

  “It’s been that rough, huh?”

  He’d hoped he could keep his weariness in check. Too late. “The holidays are always a bag of fun.” He led her down the hall to the left, where his kitchen and dining room connect
ed. The living room was to the right. It was more like a sitting room—no television.

  “I heard from Silver. They got to the hotel in Reykjavik okay,” he said. She stopped beside him near the granite-topped island in the kitchen. Her perfume, a nice subtle blend of white flowers, cedar, and honey, snuck through the remnants of the chili lunch he’d made.

  “I still think they are not right in the head to go from one cold climate to another for vacation.”

  Fisher had, a picture to Henry of the couple in fluffy coats and smiles surrounded by iced buildings earlier. Picturesque, yes. Crazy, also yes.

  “I guess Iceland is the place to be these days.”

  Every continent was on Henry’s bucket list. So far, he’d crossed off one.

  “Nice place you have here.” Lorelei looked around, and suddenly he was very conscious of what his place said about him and what she’d think.

  He’d really never put effort into decorating, hence a lot of blank wall space. He had some pictures, trinkets, and mementos he’d collected over the years, but the place was far from having a look or design. Definitely the bachelor pad of a guy who worked too much. His home office, on the other hand, was where he kept anything that meant something—collectibles from his childhood, pictures of his family.

  “Where’s the rest of the family?” Lorelei asked.

  “Mom’s upstairs. She’ll be down in a minute. The rest are probably out there trying to figure out what to do with the tree.”

  “I see.” She nodded her head slowly and averted her gaze to his empty walls again.

  Was that disappointment? Ah, yeah, how could he be so daft? She’d said yes to cookies to get more of the face time she thought she needed. She hadn’t been as much of a buffer as he’d have liked at dinner last night—his dad had still gone for a jab and there was the bombshell about her mother.

  “Lorelei!” His mother rounded the corner from the stairs. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m ready to get my hands in some dough.”