by Claire Adams
“Robert?” with an obvious question mark at the end,
“Dawson, Robert Dawson!” he said, obviously offended. “Surely you haven’t forgotten me already.”
“Oh, Mr. Dawson, I’m so sorry. Of course I haven’t forgotten you. Your first name just threw me off. How can I help you?”
“I want to throw out an offer for that juvenile delinquent in a man’s body your firm is representing. What say we meet for a drink and talk about it?”
I almost laughed aloud, but I caught myself. For the sake of Nelson and the other clients I represented, I couldn’t afford to insult him outright.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dawson, but I have a full plate this afternoon. Perhaps you can tell me what you are offering and I can pass it on to my client.”
Dawson cleared his throat and the tone of his voice changed to borderline hostile as he said, “I suppose you big time corporate lawyers fancy yourselves better than the average lawyer, too good to slum it with the prosecutor who could maybe make your life easier if you gave him the chance.”
I was silent. I was sorely tempted to give this nasty little man a piece of my mind. How dare he try to suggest that I would even consider trading favors with the likes of him? When I didn’t reply after a few moments, he said, “But anyways, tell that little rich boy you represent that I am offering five years if he pleads guilty to misdemeanor accepting a bribe.”
“Five years? Are you serious?” I asked, almost certain I had heard him wrong or he had made a mistake.
“He can get ten if the jury convicts at trial,” Dawson said.
“He can get nothing if we get an acquittal,” I said with confidence in my voice. “I think we’ll take our chances.”
“Okay, but don’t forget to offer it to your client. He might want to save himself and his family some embarrassment and skip the trial.”
“Oh, I won’t forget, but don’t lose any sleep waiting for me to call you back on it. My client didn’t do anything wrong. He doesn’t want to plead guilty to anything, and he won’t accept any jail time. You have a nice day, Mr. Dawson,” I said, emphasizing the “Mr.” to make sure he knew we were more foe than friend. After my conversation with Dawson, I was no longer in the mood to call Jack for a reunion chat. Instead, I buzzed Adam’s office.
“Yes?”
“Hi, are you busy?”
“No, just unwinding after that awful meeting.”
“I take it all didn’t go well?”
“I don’t know. Brigham seems to think we are miracle workers, instead of lawyers. He wants us to run off the press and calm the politicians. Alex is working his magic on the politician angle for us, but I’m not sure what to do about the press at this point.”
Alex was Alex Fritz. He was Adam’s best friend from college and currently one of the front runners for the Democratic seat that had recently opened up in the House of Representatives. Alex was strongly connected in the political community and even had ties to the White House. He was helping Adam to connect with the people involved in the scandal over Brigham being one of the President’s lead campaign funders. He was also charged with the task of severing the ties between the currently offending oil company and the presidential campaign.
“Anyways, how did your morning in court turn out?” he asked me.
“It was great! The judge agreed that the confession was bogus since Nelson had mentioned his attorney and threw it out. Then, just a few moments ago, the world’s sleaziest prosecutor called and offered us a deal.”
“Great! Was the deal something you think Nelson will consider?”
“Absolutely not, he’s offering five years if Nelson pleads to conspiracy to accept a bribe. Nelson will never go for it. But, it does mean that Dawson is nervous. He knows that without the confession, his case is on shaky ground or he wouldn’t have offered anything.”
“True,” Adam said thoughtfully. “He could get ten years or more if we do convict, you know.”
“Yes, I do know that. I won’t play games with his life, but I won’t see him locked up for five years for doing nothing more than being a spoiled little rich boy.”
“I respect that,” Adam told her. “By the way, are you free for dinner?”
“With you? Always,” I said with a grin. “Your place or mine?”
“How about Romaletti’s?” Adam said, surprising me.
“Romaletti’s, really? Is this a business dinner?” I asked suspiciously.
“No, it’s an ‘I’m tired of pretending, too’ dinner. The hell with Marjorie and the hell with her lawyer, I want to take my gorgeous girlfriend out for dinner. That is, if she’d like to go with me.”
“I would love that, thank you!” I told him with real enthusiasm,
“No, thank you,” he said. “I realized today after another exhausting and volatile conversation with Marjorie that you’re right. She's probably not going away any time soon. I’m going to try like hell to stop letting her get in the way of my life, of our life.”
I was ecstatic to hear it. We made plans to meet in Adam’s office later since we both still had piles of work to do. I called Nico and a paralegal named Sarah into my office and we spent the rest of the day working on Nelson’s case. Kyla came in later after I finished prepping for a real estate case I was working on. The message from Jack was put on the back burner of my things to do list as I shuffled through motions and briefs and looked forward to my first public dinner with Adam that was not work related.
CHAPTER FOUR
ADAM
The rest of my day after I finally manned up and told Alicia I wanted to take her out to dinner flew by. It dawned on me all at once that I was sick to death of sneaking around like I was cheating on someone. My marriage with Marjorie had been over for years before we finally separated. We had been separated for six months before Alicia and I ever started seeing each other. We weren’t doing anything wrong, and I was tired of feeling like we were. Besides, the thoughts I’d had this morning about Alicia getting tired of it all and leaving me had haunted me all day. It would crush me to lose her.
I was buried in paperwork when I finally pushed it back across the antique oak desk and decided to call it a night. So far, there were thirteen plaintiffs in the case against Brigham Oil, and the numbers grew daily. They were being sued by the EPA for unsafe practices, by several local fishermen that were claiming lost revenue over not being able to fish in the waters after the spill, by a representative of people from a village in the area that were not able to drink the water, and the list went on. I had actually begun to worry that it may have been a mistake to take it on. But, tonight was about me and Alicia. I wasn’t going to allow Marjorie or Brigham to ruin it for me.
My penthouse is on Fifth Avenue, quite a ways from the office. I keep suits at the office, though, so I grabbed one out of the closet and used the executive lounge to get ready for my night out with Alicia. She’d left me a message that she was leaving about an hour before. I felt a little silly at my age, but I was really excited about taking her out. It felt like a first date. At forty years old, I was damned lucky a young, beautiful woman like Alicia wanted me. I knew that I had to do this more often, she deserved it and if I didn’t start, she’d find someone that would. I wanted her to finally be able to stop feeling like the “other” woman, although that was never really what she was.
When she opened the door to her apartment, my mouth went dry. I almost forgot how much I wanted to take her out and took her to bed instead. She had her auburn hair down and curled around her face. It brushed against her soft bare shoulders and the thin straps of the dark burgundy dress she was wearing. It was cut conservatively, but it accentuated every one of her hot curves. It stopped just above her knee and also showcased her long, shapely legs that ended in a pair of matching stilettos on her small, sexy feet. I pictured them up on my shoulders in those shoes while I fucked her and my cock did a dance in my pants.
“Wow, you look amazing.”
She actually blushed. “
Thank you, so do you.” When she turned to get her bag, I saw the back of the dress was wide open to her waist. I had no idea how I was going to keep my hands off of her in public half the night. We’d have to eat fast. She grabbed her bag and coat, and I put my hand against her bare back and led her into the elevator. It took every ounce of impulse control I could muster not to take her down and fuck her right there and again in the Lincoln Town car. I was actually almost relieved to see how busy Romaletti’s was. It would make me behave, at least.
Marco, the grandson of the original owner, came out to greet us. He was a client of our firm and ever since I had saved the restaurant from a bogus lawsuit a few years earlier that could have put them out of business, Marco treated me like a visiting dignitary when I came in. “Mr. Hanson, so very nice to see you,” he said in a thick Italian accent, “and who is this ravishing young lady?”
“Marco, this is my girlfriend, Ms. Alicia Winston,”
Marco took Alicia’s small hand in his large arthritic one and brought it up to his lips, kissing the back of it gently. With a bow, he said, “Welcome to my restaurant, Bella. Please, choose anything you would like from the menu and I will make sure it is cooked to absolute perfection for you and Mr. Hanson, and tonight is my treat. Come,”
We followed him to a table across the room. In the center was a “Reserved” tag. It sat next to a large, picture window that looked out onto a small man made pond. Marco kept the pond stocked with gloriously-colored Koi fish and ducks and a gaggle of swan glided across its mirrored surface.
“Oh, it’s beautiful,” Alicia said as Marco held out her chair for her to be seated. She looked out on the pond and watched in fascination as the moonbeams danced off the surface and the colors of the Koi underneath glimmered like a rainbow.
“It’s my pride and joy,” Marco said before leaving us to get our waiter. He bowed at the waist once more before going and said, “If not for Mr. Hanson, it would have been lost to me. Please, enjoy yourselves tonight.” We thanked him again as he left and our waiter approached with a wine list right away.
I looked at it and then told Alicia, “I don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood for a real celebration tonight.”
She readily agreed, and I ordered a bottle of the restaurant’s best champagne. The waiter returned promptly with a bottle and two flutes. He filled Alicia’s and then mine and then handed us both a menu before setting the bottle back in the brass ice bucket and leaving us to make our choices. I picked up my champagne glass, and holding it up in Alicia’s direction, I said, “To us.” She picked hers up and clinked it to mine and said,
“To us.”
We sipped our champagne and after ordering our meals, we talked about Alicia’s parents’ upcoming visit to the States. It was so nice to be out in public with her and talking about things that had nothing to do with work at all. When our food came, we indulged in rich, homemade bread and the fabulous pasta and steaks that Marco had made just for us. Afterwards, even though we were both so bloated we could hardly move, we shared a piece of cheesecake.
Once we were both uncomfortably stuffed, we decided we needed to walk some of it off. Marco let us out the side door and we took a stroll around the pond in the moonlight. Alicia was as excited as a child as she pointed out the multi-colored Koi and the beautiful white swans. I smiled as I watched her pretty hazel eyes dance. I wanted to make her happy like that forever. She made me feel young again, and she was everything that I had always wanted in a woman.
I knew now that Marjorie had been a terrible mistake, and often wondered what had taken me so long to realize it. Marjorie is, was, and always will be a social climber whose name and position on the social registry was more important to her than anything else. Standing here next to Alicia, watching her revel in the beauty and wonder of something as simple as a bunch of fish and some ducks, made me love her more than I had ever thought possible. Surprising even myself, I asked her,
“How do you feel about ice skating?”
“Really?” Alicia almost squealed. “I love to ice skate. I haven’t been for years!”
“Let’s go then,” I told her with a smile.
We went back inside to get our coats and thank Marco. I tried to pay our bill, but Marco said he would be insulted at the very thought of accepting my money. After helping Alicia on with her coat, I dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the table for the waiter and we stepped outside into the frigid cold November night. The driver had the seats of the car warmed and the heater on before we got in, so the ride to Rockefeller Center was warm and cozy. Alicia rode snuggled in the crook of my arm until the huge lighted tree came into view. She sat up and like a child at Christmastime, pressed her face to the window to look at it.
“I love the tree!” she exclaimed with pure delight. “When I was a girl, I used to watch the lighting of the tree on television with my mother. I just knew I’d live here someday when I grew up. Mother cringed every time I would mention it.”
“I’ll bet they miss you.”
Alicia turned to look at me. “They do, and I miss them so badly sometimes. But this place, New York, it’s in my blood now. I don’t think I could ever live anywhere else. I can’t wait to see my parents when they come to visit, though, and introduce them to you!”
“I hope they’re more pleased with your choice in men than they were with your choice of cities to live in.”
Alicia laughed and said playfully, “Me, too.”
The driver stopped near the ropes that framed the entrance to the frozen pond sitting in the shadow of the gigantic Christmas tree. Alicia and I made our way to the kiosk where we could rent our skates. On the way, I bought us a cup of hot chocolate from a vendor. “Are you warm enough?” I asked her.
“I’m freezing,” she said with a smile, “but I don’t care.”
I laughed and said, “Come on, let’s go stand by the bonfire while we drink this, maybe you’ll defrost a bit.” We stood near the roaring outdoor fire, sipping our chocolate and listening to the sounds of the live band that played near the Christmas tree and the people having fun all around us. I pulled Alicia up on her tip-toes and kissed her softly on the lips. “You ready?” I asked her.
“In a minute,” she said. She went back up on her toes and kissed me again. This one was longer, and deeper. “Okay,” she said, pulling back and leaving me breathless after a minute, “I’m warm now.”
I was just plain hot. She made my blood boil with desire every time she touched me. I tried to will my rising erection down as I took her by the hand and led her to a bench where we sat so we could put on our skates. There was a little stand nearby and I ran over to it quickly and bought her a pair of furry gloves and a scarf.
“Thank you,” she told me. “But what about you? You don’t have any gloves.”
“You’ll just have to keep me warm,” I told her. We finished putting on our skates, and I led her out on the ice. I hadn’t been skating in a long while, but it came back quickly. Alicia was doing well, too. We held hands and skated around the oval rink, watching the young children all bundled in their colorful parkas, falling down and getting right back up with a smile on their faces.
“This reminds me of a pond near the royal property back home. My father had permission from the crown to fish there. He took me skating there a few times when I was little.”
“Did you ever meet any of the royal family?”
“No. My mother is distant cousins with the queen, but too far removed for us to be considered ‘royals.’ Mum and Daddy still cling to the titles, though. It’s kind of embarrassing for me.”
“I wouldn’t be embarrassed by it. We have a right to be proud of our heritage, don’t you think?”
“I do, I just don’t like all the snobbery that comes along with it.”
It was amazing to me. A woman like Marjorie who came from practically nothing with an entitled and superior attitude and a woman like Alicia who had every reason to be a snob and wasn’t in the least.
&
nbsp; We skated until we both had to finally admit our legs had probably had enough for one day. It was getting late, and we had both worked a long day. It was the best time I’d had in a long time, though, and as much as I wanted to get her home and make love to her, I was still reluctant to see it end.
When we were back in the cozy warmth of the car, she said, “I can’t even begin to thank you for tonight. I had such a good time.”
“I should be thanking you,” I told her.
“For what?”
“For being so patient with me this long and sticking around, and for giving the things I grew up looking at every day a fresh new look for me through your pretty eyes. Thank you, Alicia, I mean it. Tonight was great and we are going to have a lot more great times to come. I want to experience everything I’ve never done and even things I have with you. You see the wonder in everything like a child, but yet here you are, a sexy, beautiful, intelligent woman. You’re an enigma.”
She laughed and said, “I’ve been called a few things in my time…” and then added, more seriously, “I want to see everything with you; I want us to see everything together.”
I pulled her to me and we kissed passionately, finally coming up for air as the car pulled up in front of my building. The doorman opened the car door and helped Alicia out and held the door open for me as he greeted us both. He called the elevator down for us and said goodnight as he pushed the button for the top floor. Alicia and I kissed again in the elevator, and we were still kissing when the doors slid open. I walked us out backwards to the penthouse door and held her against it while I slid the key into the lock. I tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t turn. What the hell? I tried it again, it was like I had the wrong key, but I knew this was the right one.
“Is something wrong?” Alicia asked.
“I’m not sure. My key isn’t…” The door flew open, and Marjorie stood there in a silk robe and a diamond necklace that I’d bought her for our fifth anniversary.
