Padding to the living room in his sock feet to collect his shoes and jacket, Jim decided he would do what Lauren asked for now. His mind wasn’t fully functional yet, and he definitely wasn’t able to argue in his defense.
What would he say anyhow? Sorry, I started to make love to you, then selfishly kept you from having an orgasm because I didn’t trust myself?
As he’d lain on the floor with her foot on his throat, Jim had realized the mistake he’d made, saw the depth of her anger and her pain. If he’d had it to do over again, he’d have pushed her over the edge and not held the intimacy back from both of them.
Lauren’s response to him was always mind-blowing, and his judgment with her always terrible.
Now she had also proved beyond all doubt he didn’t know her half as well as he’d thought he had. Jim wondered if anyone but he knew she had a temper like a striking snake and a bite just as deadly. And if they did, why the hell hadn’t someone warned him about it?
As he walked carefully to his car rubbing the bump on his head, Jim knew it was going to take some time to accept that the not-so-saintly Lauren McCarthy had put him on her kitchen floor without even breaking a sweat.
Chapter 6
At his offices around ten, Jim sat a conference table, passing the Whispering Pines contract to Ben and Casey to review.
“Look over this while I get us some water,” Jim said, standing carefully and walking slowly to the refrigerator in the wet bar he’d installed a few years ago. Pulling out three bottles of water, he slowly returned to the table to find Casey watching him walk.
“Did you fall in the shower this morning?” Casey asked. “I don’t remember you limping yesterday.”
Ben’s head came up from the papers. He peered over his reading glasses at Jim. “You didn’t hurt yourself lifting weights, did you?”
Jim laughed as he eased himself back down into the conference chair. He was hurting in a lot more places than he’d first felt this morning. He was probably going to be stiff as hell in a couple of days.
Jim shook his head negatively to answer both their questions. As he lifted a bottle to take a drink, he noted Casey and Ben were still waiting for him to answer.
“No, I didn’t fall in the shower or any other place. And no, I didn’t hurt myself lifting weights. I teased a she-cat and she used her claws on me. If I’m injured, it’s my own damn fault,” Jim said on a laugh.
“Is the she-cat’s name Lauren McCarthy?” Ben asked, smiling.
Jim snorted. “Yes. You know damn well it is. Has she studied martial arts?”
Both men just looked at him, their total surprise at the question written on their faces.
Jim shook his head and snorted in disgust, wondering again if Lauren had shown her dark side only to him.
“You have some reason to think Lauren knows martial arts?” Casey asked, watching Jim drink more of his water, his gaze on them while his mind was not. Casey recognized the lovesick look from seeing it on Kaiser’s face so often.
“Come on—tell us what’s up,” Ben said, laying his pen down and taking off his glasses. “We shared our stories with you. Fair is fair.”
“Says who?” Jim asked, continuing to drink his water. “I don’t remember anybody saying we had to share all our secrets.”
Casey looked at Ben wisely. “Translation—Gallagher lost the fight.”
“Oh hell no, I did not just lose,” Jim denied stiffly. “I was fucking annihilated. I’m six foot four and weigh two hundred and sixty five pounds, and yet this morning I got my ass handed to me. Lauren was mad, but I didn’t know how mad, until I was lying on her kitchen tiles with her bare foot across my throat.”
Casey grinned and laughed. “You’re making this up. You’re telling us some bullshit story because you’re too embarrassed to tell us the real one.”
“God’s truth,” Jim swore, glaring at them.
Ben studied Jim. Something about him was different this morning, but Ben couldn’t quite put his finger on what had changed.
“Regina has never talked about Lauren knowing martial arts. If it were true, I’m sure we would have heard about it. Those three women are open books to each other, and they’re too old to give a shit what other people think. I’m with Casey on this one. I think you’re making this up,” Ben said.
Jim looked at them both in total disbelief.
“I don’t get it. After all I’ve shared with you guys, this is the story you don’t believe?” he asked, incredulous they didn’t accept what he said right away. “Hell, Lauren might act sweet around you, but she’s shown me her dark side more than once now. I’m telling you, the woman used me and my Armani shirt to mop up a coffee spill in her kitchen this morning.”
“This morning?” Ben and Casey said together, looking at Jim with new eyes.
“I spent the night,” Jim said, sighing at the proud expressions on their faces. He’d not allowed himself close male friends in a while and had forgotten how fun it could be to talk about women. “Minds out of the gutter, guys. Lauren was drunk and I slept on the couch.”
Casey drummed fingers on the table as he studied Jim’s more relaxed expression. If Lauren really had done something to hurt the man, it seemed to have knocked some sense into him.
“Okay,” Casey said cheerfully, “for the sake of argument, let’s say she really did what you say she did. What did you do that was bad enough to push our sweet Lauren into taking such a strong level of action? From my experience, Lauren barely has a pulse about conflict. She is not as emotional as Alexa or Regina.”
Jim snorted. “Like hell, she’s not. Lauren has a mean temper too.”
Though his adamant tone got a laugh out of both Ben and Casey, Jim could tell they still didn’t believe him.
“Well, I don’t know, Casey. Jim did change Lauren’s emotional state the night of your engagement party when he put a hicky on her,” Ben told Casey with a shrug.
“Glad to know the details of my practically non-existent sex life are a matter of public record,” Jim said sarcastically, his face flushing.
“Can’t mark a woman and think it’s not going to get noticed, Jim, no matter where you hide the brands,” Ben told him, putting his reading glasses back on and peering over them again.
Noticing Jim’s wide eyes and deepening flush, Ben finally gave in to his laughter. “Relax. The whole world didn’t notice. Lauren told Regina and Alexa. I have on good authority Saint McCarthy hadn’t even so much as passionately kissed a guy in years, so a hicky was life altering at that point.”
“Yeah, that’s what Alexa calls her too. Saint McCarthy. I always thought that fit really well. What did you do to make a calm, gentle woman like Lauren so mad?” Casey probed.
Jim sighed and tried to think of how to briefly explain in a way that didn’t make him seem either inept or a jerk. “Let’s just say I learned the hard way not to tease an older woman by changing my mind in the middle of things.”
Casey winced. “Ouch. I guess I never had that problem. I don’t tease. Alexa doesn’t either.”
Jim looked at Ben just to see if he was planning to add his two cents to the discussion.
“Me neither. Regina—well, Regina gives detailed directions about what she wants. She doesn’t do coy,” Ben admitted. “Not even during role playing. Regina likes to be conquered.”
Jim closed his eyes. “Too much information Kaiser, but thanks—I guess,” he said on a sigh. “I didn’t mean it to work out the way it did this morning. My reservations about getting involved with her kicked in, but it was bad timing.”
Casey swore and tried really hard not to laugh. Whatever had really happened, and he didn’t for moment think Jim was telling the whole truth, it obviously was disturbing enough to have Jim thoroughly embarrassed. He had never known a man to blush so much.
“You’re my best client, Gallagher,” he said. “So I feel obligated to help you.”
“Best client? I’m your only client for the next year, Carter,”
Jim replied.
“Whatever. No one is going to respect you, especially me, if you keep getting your ass kicked by a woman every week.” Casey picked up his cell, looked through his contacts. When he found what he was looking for, he passed the phone over to Jim.
“This is a gym Alexa owns. They offer self-defense classes. There’s a guy named Allen Stedman who teaches them. If you’re interested in more than self-defense, Allen’s also got some good moves with women he might share with an old out-of-practice geezer like you.”
Jim threw his pen at Casey, who laughed and caught it like an arrow flying through the air. Jim picked up an unopened bottle of water and threw that too, disappointed when Casey caught it easily and opened it to take a drink.
“Now that my manhood is completely destroyed today, could we maybe focus on the contract? Hell, I need to get something positive done so I don’t go home and hang myself,” Jim said.
“Okay. Let’s fight then,” Ben said easily. “This paragraph on page five needs to be changed.”
*** *** ***
Later that afternoon, Jim’s threat about hanging himself was starting to look like a good way to end the evening. He sat at the same conference table he had used just that morning to hammer out the business details of his new contract with Ben and Casey, trying to sort out his personal life with the help of the Honorable Barrett Meniski. Barrett was the first person Jim had ever let completely into his life and he knew virtually everything about everything. He was also Jim’s personal attorney as well as his business one.
“Jim, I appreciate your faith in my work, but you have no idea the magnitude of what you’re asking of the Virginia legal system,” Barrett said. “Some of what you want has no precedent.”
“Precedents have to start somewhere. Look, I don’t care what it costs to get it done or what it costs to pay you to find a way to get it done. I just want it done. I need you to try,” Jim said.
“Help me understand then. Why do you have to marry this woman? Why can’t you draw up a cohabitation agreement and give her what you want her to have?” Barrett suggested.
“It’s not about material things, Barrett. I want to marry her. What we have is not an affair, not a cohabitation, and not some friendship-with-benefits. I want this woman to be my wife—a real wife.” Jim got up to pace to the window, staring out across the streets and late day traffic.
“Who is she then?” Barrett demanded, frustrated Jim was so obstinate about relationships. The man was too black and white for his own good. The world was full of gray. “Tell me the name of this paragon of virtue you absolutely have to marry to be sexually involved with.”
Jim turned back to Barrett. His reluctance to share had nothing to do with Barrett and everything to do with the fact he had never broached the subject of marriage to Lauren. He doubted his angry kitchen declaration this morning counted. She wasn’t the only one with a bad temper, but hell—she started their fight looking for the damn stripper. Knowing she woke up looking for the man in her house still pissed him off.
“Why do you have to know who she is?” Jim asked, his reluctance to reveal her obvious.
“It might help me get an idea of how to approach this. Is she a judge’s daughter? Is she notorious like Alexa Ranger? I know you dated her once.” Barrett watched Jim look away, but he continued, “Is the woman a nun coming out of a convent? Is she a stripper in a topless bar?”
Barrett listened to Jim sigh. He couldn’t let himself feel sorry for him. If he wanted his help, Jim was going to have to tell him the truth.
“Reputations are seen differently in court,” Barrett explained. “I’m sure I don’t have to explain that further to you.”
Jim walked back to the table and sat again. He looked at Barrett, trying to be sure before he told.
“Look, you can trust me to keep it a secret for as long as I can, but the court will eventually insist on talking to her—providing I find a judge even willing to listen to your case,” Barrett said.
“Lauren McCarthy,” Jim said finally, her name hanging in the air between them.
“Used to be Lauren McCarthy Smith, ex-wife of Jared Smith—Jared Smith the bastard who slept with my ex-wife,” Barrett exclaimed. “I’ll be damned.”
Jim nodded. “I didn’t want to use the connection to influence your decision to help me. I also haven’t talked about marriage to Lauren yet.”
“Lauren has a reputation of being a good woman. I know she doesn’t date much, doesn’t sleep around. She does a lot of charity work. My wife Jane helps her sometimes. I’m guessing most nights she’s home alone. I can see why you feel you need to marry her. Does she want to marry you?” Barrett asked, noting Jim’s unsure expression went from doubtful to determined in three seconds. Any man would understand what that meant.
“I haven’t asked her to marry me, but Lauren is mine,” Jim said firmly, absolutely convinced of it after last night and this morning, regardless of how angry she got at him. “I know how ludicrous it sounds given my situation, but there’s no polite expression for what I feel about her. Lauren deserves to be in a relationship with a man who can be completely hers. I need to find a way to make that happen if I can.”
“And what happens if I can’t get you legally divorced without you losing your rights as Cassandra’s primary caretaker?” Barrett asked.
“I can’t go there yet,” Jim told him. “I have to believe you’re going to find a way.”
Barrett stood and gathered up his things. “Jared Smith wasn’t the only man to grace my first wife’s bed in the three years I was legally bound to her but separated. Ellen and I stopped being really married long before the divorce paperwork was done. I started dating Jane as soon as I realized how I felt about her because my commitment to her was more important than the remaining legal one to Ellen. I have no guilt at all about what I did—or anything Jane and I did.”
Barrett held up his left hand where his wedding band resided. “Do you see this? This is an important symbol, but it only works with a woman who has the same ideas about it as I do. Hear me on this, Jim. My marriage to Ellen ended when she told me about sleeping with Smith. Cassandra stopped being your wife in any sense of the word the day she decided to be your sister and to consider herself Samuel’s wife,” Barrett declared. “I admire you like hell for how you’ve handled the situation and the life you’ve given her. Now damn it, stop feeling guilty and let yourself be happy with Lauren.”
Jim looked at his hands and not at Barrett.
“Jim,” Barrett said softly, realizing what his secretive client had not yet done. “For pity’s sake, tell Lauren McCarthy about Cassandra. If you can’t trust a good woman like Lauren with the truth, then this world isn’t worth living in at all.”
Jim nodded but didn’t answer. It was the same conclusion he had arrived at already himself.
Chapter 7
The reserved table at Lucinda’s had to be expanded Thursday night to seat the two arguing couples who were drawing the attention of everyone around them.
“The wedding is next weekend and Sydney is driving me crazy. I was looking forward to venting to Regina and Lauren tonight. Couldn’t whatever shenanigans you guys are planning wait a few more days?” Alexa asked, exasperated with the men.
“No,” Casey and Ben both answered at once. They looked at each other and rolled their eyes. They had been like a stereo system lately, both saying the same things at once.
Regina laughed and patted Ben on his knee. “You two are so cute together. You’ll be finishing each other’s sentences next.”
“Keep it up. I have two words for you Mrs. Kaiser—missionary position,” Ben warned sternly, before swinging his gaze back to Alexa.
“Don’t pretend you’re not interested in what’s really going on between Lauren and Mr. Mysterious,” Ben said. “Unlike the rest of us, they aren’t likely to make the papers where we can read about it. We have to find out the old-fashioned way through subterfuge and clever questioning.”
“Or you could just ask Lauren if whatever the hell Jim told you is true,” Regina said reasonably, sipping her drink.
Ben looked at his wife. “Your clients have spoiled you. Not everyone is ready to spill their guts all the time, you know. Maybe there’s still a lot you don’t know about men, Dr. Logan.”
“Oh? Are you offering to teach me?” Regina asked sweetly, thinking her husband still didn’t know all she knew about men. He might in a few years at the rate they were going though.
Ben started to say something in return, looked around a moment, then just settled on lifting his ice water to take long, cold drink while his wife chuckled at his side.
Casey looked at his wife-to-be. “By the way, why didn’t you tell me Lauren had been taking martial arts classes?”
Alexa shrugged and smiled, “Lauren is always taking classes. Turns out, Jim isn’t the only mysterious one. I’m finding Lauren doesn’t tell us a lot of things, such as the names of her dates for instance. I finally had to stop commenting on men so she wouldn’t literally follow in my footsteps. Even I was getting creeped out.”
Casey was momentarily distracted by needing to remind Alexa about certain facts between them. He waved a hand in front of Alexa’s face and chest. “This is a Carter force field. Other men do not exist for you any longer. You’re not even allowed stray thoughts about the past.”
Alexa laughed at his sincerity. “Fine. Give me something better to think about then,” she demanded.
Casey stood to leave with his hand under Alexa’s elbow.
“Sit down, Carter,” Ben ordered. “We have a job to do here.”
“Mission,” Alexa corrected with a giggle. “Casey likes to think of it as a mission.”
“Fine,” Ben said easily. “We have a mission, Carter.”
“Hey,” Lauren said, slipping into the empty chair between Ben and Casey. “We’ve been invaded by men this evening. What’s up with that?”
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