Legally Yours
A Novel
Nicole French
Raglan Press
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or rendered fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright 2016 Raglan Press
All rights reserved.
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Kindle Edition
To my husband, who always thought I could do it.
And to my mom, the incurable romantic in the family.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Connect with Nicole French
Coming Soon
Chapter 1
I glanced over the top of my cubicle toward the window about ten feet away. The snow was coming down harder, in big, fat flakes that shone white against the black night and stuck to the pane whenever a sudden gust of wind slammed them into the building. I looked back at the clock on the opposite wall and sighed. You would never know by the looks of the office that it was almost nine o’clock.
The “Pit,” as everyone called the group of cubicles that housed temps and interns, was full of hopeful, third-year over-achievers like myself. The four of us still at the desks had one week left on the job before the trial was over. After working the standard summer internship at Sterling Grove’s full service law firm, I had been asked, along with the other three interns, to stay on through the fall when the firm took on a major trial case. The trial had finished up last week, and the firm had won, with some thanks due to the countless hours of document review and paperwork I’d been doing for the last four months. My hard work had paid off—like two of the other interns who’d already taken positions with the firm as of September, I’d been offered a position at the firm for after I had finished school and passed the bar exam. It was no small carrot—the firm was one of the largest full-service firms in Boston, and subsequently offered some of the most coveted positions for any new J.D.
Unlike most of the other interns, however, I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to work at Sterling Grove. It wasn’t that it wasn’t a good place to work (despite the first year associate hours that would be undoubtedly hellish). There was simply something missing. Two and a half years ago, I had shirked a job in investment banking for law school, hoping to find a career that would make me feel, well, complete. Law had seemed like a good idea—it was lucrative, analytical, and had the potential to do more for the world than just stockpiling money. Upon starting my classes, I quickly learned that I loved the philosophical elements of the law just as much as the practical—law school was a practice of existing somewhere in the middle.
The difficulty came in choosing a focus. Two and a half years later, when most of my classmates already had jobs locked for the following year, I still had absolutely no clue what I wanted to do with my degree. I had excelled in my classes and attracted three job offers through various internships, but had turned all of them down. Although I was interested in almost all of the classes, clinics, and internships I had participated in over the past two and a half years, nothing made me feel that “umph”, that one-hundred-percent knowledge that this was what I was supposed to do. Two and a half years later, I was still looking.
“I see you looking for a cab, Crosby.”
A face with a pair of thick black glasses, bright white teeth, and a thick mop of curly black hair popped over the cubicle barrier. I smiled, careful to avoid his eyes.
“I’m not looking for anything, Steve,” I said. “Anyway, I’m not sure I’m going anyway.”
“What?”
Steve Kramer, a third-year from Boston College, looked around briefly to make sure none of our supervising associates were in the large common room before skittering around the barrier to sit uncomfortably close to me on my desk, disregarding the legal pad under his butt. The two other interns who shared my cubicle glanced up with mild annoyance before leaning back to the papers strewn about their own desks.
“Dude,” Steve said as he grabbed the arms of my desk chair and rolled me to face him. “You gotta come. The trial is finally over. It’s our last drunken hurrah as interns together.” He didn’t seem to notice when I immediately rolled back to my original position.
“I know, but it’s already so late. Plus, the weather is turning to shit, and I really need to finish this brief tonight, you know?”
“Finishing a brief” was an easy way of using legal jargon that you didn’t want to spend time with them. To many in the profession, it was like saying you needed to wash your hair or walk your dog. Unfortunately, for all the promise Steve showed as a cutthroat attorney, he never seemed to clue into basic social cues from women.
“Come on, Crosby,” he cajoled, pulling my chair close to him again. “I’m not letting you go until you say yes. It’s our last time out together as interns to celebrate the end of this insane internship. You don’t even have to pay—Cherie knows the owner and got us all comp’d pitchers.”
It wasn’t really the end yet—we had a whole week. But considering the fact that classes were starting on Monday, it was more fitting to celebrate the end now instead of next Friday, when most of us would be more interested in getting ahead on course reading than tipping back shots.
Manny’s was a well-known bar in Chinatown and just a short cab ride away from the office. I wasn’t much of a drinker, which made me less than excited about going. Nor was I particularly interested in fending off the obvious advances of Steve, who had been trying to talk me into a date with him since September. He was decent-looking, but, like most of the men I’d been out with, just didn’t quite do it for me. Apparently I seemed to have the same problem with men that I did choosing a job.
I sighed.
“You know he’s not going to leave you alone until you say yes.”
I glanced over to a neighboring cubicle, where Eric, my classmate and another intern, hadn’t even looked up from his work to make the dry comment. I then looked back at Steve, who waggled his prominent eyebrows. I sighed again.
“Fine!” I said, and turned around to my desk. �
�I’m going, I’m going. Can I get back to work now?”
~
We arrived at the tail end of Happy Hour while the band was finishing their sound check. We weren’t alone—Manny’s attracted the twenty-something young professional crowd of Boston, most of whom consisted of lawyers, bankers, and graduate students working around Beacon Hill and downtown. The men wore the standard after-work uniform of suit pants and striped button-down shirts, their matching jackets tossed over the backs of chairs and their ties loosened around their collars as they tossed back cheap beer. The women were dressed much like myself, in pencil skirts and pantsuits, their blouses undone an extra button to make it clear this wasn’t an interview situation. I kept my buttons where they were.
I filed into the small booth that had been claimed by my cohorts and allowed Steve to hang my coat up on the hooks next to us. Steve and Cherie jetted off to the bar and returned shortly with a tray full of tequila shots and a pitcher of PBR. Everyone eagerly took one of the shot glasses and the accompanying limes. I was the last to take one after Steve looked pointedly at me. With a quick eye roll, I raised my shot along with everyone else.
“This is the end,” Steve intoned, mimicking the words of Jim Morrison. “My only friend, the end.”
“Shut up and drink,” jeered Cherie.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Steve protested, stopping everyone from drinking. “I bought the shots, I get to toast. Okay. It’s been a pleasure working with you all, and I’d just like to say: may you all finish the year without flunking out of law school on your last semester. May you all succeed and get filthy rich like I know you want to with these overpriced degrees. May you all make name partner within five years. Except not at Sterling, because that’s going to be me.”
We all yelled and threw balled up napkins and cardboard coasters at him before raising our glasses and gulping down the harsh liquor. It was the cheap stuff, of course, but it would no doubt accomplish everyone’s goals of getting as trashed as possibly while liquor was half price. Steve began to dole out PBR-filled pint glasses.
“Thanks, but I’m good,” I said, slipping out of the booth to his obvious disappointment. “Don’t worry, I’m just going to get my own drink.”
“Too good for the blue ribbon, huh?” Steve teased.
“Everyone’s too good for that horse piss,” I retorted with a grin before turning to make my way over to the bar, where I ordered a whiskey with a splash of water.
“Not a PBR fan?”
I turned to find a reasonably handsome guy leaning against the bar next to me. Like the other guys in the bar, he also wore a button-down and suit pants, with his sleeves rolled up his forearms to reveal an expensive and ostentatious watch. The top button of his blue striped shirt was undone, his dark blue tie was slightly askew. He was cute, in the young M.B.A.-kind of way, with close cut brown hair and a clean, square jaw lined with a trimmed goatee. He also held a glass of brown liquor, which he raised in acknowledgment of my drink.
“Not so much,” I said as I slipped the bartender my card and nodded that she could cash me out.
“Trevor,” he said, reaching out a hand to shake mine.
“Skylar,” I said. I took a sip of my whiskey and closed my eyes in pleasure. It wasn’t the best stuff in the world, but Manny’s kept a few decent bottles around.
“What are you guys celebrating over there?” Trevor asked.
“The end of a trial,” I replied as I opened my eyes. “We’re all law interns.”
“Ah,” Trevor said knowingly, although his lack of further response made it clear that he knew little about anything concerning law school. “I’m an analyst over at Chase.”
He said it in a way that was obviously meant to impress me, but I just nodded briefly. While he probably didn’t know much about my life, I was extremely familiar with his, having worked for a year at Goldman Sachs myself before applying to law school. One year had been enough to convince me I needed to do something else to make money that wouldn’t make me feel like I was losing my soul and sacrificing others’ in the process.
But despite his occupation, Trevor had a nice face and was smart enough to provide an engaging distraction from Steve’s obvious glances my way. I was in no hurry to return to the booth, and after talking with Trevor for two more drinks, I started thinking about other places we might go to do something else to celebrate the end of my internship.
It had been a long time—too long for someone my age who had no attachments and no hang-ups about casual sex. But I would have been lying if I said that any of those encounters were more than barely satisfying—most of them had simply scratched a strong, primal itch to be with another person, but also ended up with me scratching myself better, later, alone.
It didn’t help that when I did get attached, it was with the worst people on the planet. Out of the two major relationships I’d had, the first, my high school sweetheart, was currently serving time for aggravated assault. East New York wasn’t even a great place to live now—poor Robbie hadn’t stood a chance with the remains of the New York City mafia living within a five block radius of his house throughout our childhood. The second…well, let’s just say I avoided talking about him at all. Patrick’s serial philandering had left a scar that was still fairly raw.
So my classmates knew me as a loner, but that didn’t mean I wanted it to be that way. Just because things hadn’t worked out before didn’t mean they couldn’t in the future.
I looked up at Trevor, who was jabbering about some kind of deal he had made that week. He stopped when he looked down to find me staring at him.
“Something wrong?” he asked. “You need another drink?”
I looked down at the remnants of my third glass of whiskey, which was nearly empty. I had reached my self-imposed limit for the night, where I was tipsy but wouldn’t be hungover the next morning.
I pushed the glass away.
“Let’s dance,” I told him, and held out my hand so he could lead me to the back of the bar, where several people had started an impromptu dance floor next to the juke box. As the lazy riffs of “Beast of Burden” came on, Trevor pulled me into his chest and swayed awkwardly and out of sync with the music while Steve, Eric, and Cherie all watched with obvious interest. He smelled like cheap bourbon and body spray, but I enjoyed at least the way his arms wrapped tightly around my waist and the way the muscles of his chest felt beneath my cheek.
“Hey,” he said as the Stones launched into the chorus the second time. I looked up and he touched his nose to mine. All right, why not? I thought. Jagger asked if he was strong enough, and I closed my eyes as Trevor leaned down to kiss me.
His tongue slipped into my mouth and touched my tongue before darting out again. He did this again. And then again. It was…not pleasant. Like being kissed by a frog or a snake. When I pulled away, he moved his mouth, rubbery and wet, to my neck before leaning back with obvious, drunken desire gleaming in his muddy brown eyes.
“You’re really hot, you know that?” His words were slightly slurred. “I have a total thing for redheads, and you are seriously gorgeous.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. My long red hair, which was wavy, unruly, and roughly the color of an heirloom tomato, was almost always the subject of tired come-ons. I was proud of my natural hair color, but was like these guys couldn’t literally couldn’t see anything but the top of my head.
“You want to get out of here? My place is just off Newberry.” Like Chase, the street name was meant to impress—Newberry was a nice part of town, and expensive.
Five minutes ago, I might have said yes, but I had no intention of having sex with Captain Jabbing Tongue that night. I gently untangled myself from Trevor’s arms and was careful not to answer the question. “I’m going to stop in the ladies’ room.”
Trevor nodded happily. “I’ll just go close out my tab.”
I ducked through the crowd back to the booth, where Cherie hooted and Steve pretended not to notice I was there.
“I�
��m going to head out,” I told them as I quickly grabbed my coat from hooks next to the booth.
“Skylar’s gonna get some!” Cherie crowed, clearly worse for wear. “I saw you making out on the dance floor. Girl got a hot date!”
I snorted. “Hardly. Trying to get rid of one, if you know what I mean. I’ll see you guys on Monday. Tell Eric I said bye.”
Cherie and Steve waved slurred good-byes, although Steve’s was a bit lackluster. I checked the bar, where Trevor was patiently waiting for a bartender to ring him up. I waited until he had turned back to sign his tab, and then slipped around the other patrons of the now-crowded space and out the front door.
Outside I was met by the makings of a full-on Nor’easter as a blast of snow and wind pummeled me in the face. At least ten other people were standing on the curb, trying without any luck to hail cabs as they drove by, all of them occupied.
“Shit,” I muttered, checking to make sure Trevor hadn’t yet come out behind me. I buttoned up my wool pea coat and wound my scarf around my neck, wishing I had foregone fashion in favor of a pair of pants and my goose-down parka. It might have made me look like the Michelin Man, but at least I’d be warm right now. The nearest T-stop was at least ten blocks from here, and I was going to have to walk. Damn.
“Skylar!”
As one particularly cold gust nearly knocked me over, a cab stopped in front of the bar, revealing Eric peeking out the back window.
“Hey!” I greeted him as I stepped out to the car. “I thought you were already gone.”
“You’re never going to catch a cab right now. Need a lift? Caleb is dropping me at a friend’s place a few blocks away before he takes this one back to Chestnut Hill.” He nodded his head at the unfamiliar guy sitting in the front, who waved to me. “You could call for a car and wait at my friend’s place if you want. That is, unless you wanted to go home with Douchebag in there.” He nodded back toward the bar with a grin.
I followed his glance to where I could see Trevor pushing open the pub door. I turned back in a hurry. “Shove over and let me in, will you?”
Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1) Page 1
