by C. C. Wood
by
C.C. Wood
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Copyright © Crystal W. Wilson 2017
Kindle Edition
Cover by Jena Brignola, Bibliophile Productions
Editing by Tania Marinaro, Libros Evolution
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sign Up for C.C.’s Monthly Newsletter
Contact C.C.
Acknowledgements
About C.C.
Titles by C.C. Wood
Chapter One
Two Months Ago
The day he came back into my life began like any other.
I woke up and got ready for work, arriving at the office a half hour before the rest of the associates. I liked the hushed mornings before the office filled with people. The quiet gave me a chance to gather my thoughts and make my to-do list for the day. Once eight a.m. hit, my day would be organized chaos until six or seven in the evening.
It was a typical Wednesday. I had a ton of work that I wanted to complete before the weekend, even though I knew I’d still have to put in a few hours on Saturday. As a divorce attorney, I’d long ago become used to the extra hours, but I still tried to keep my weekends clear. It was an ongoing battle that I rarely won.
However, if I’d known what was about to happen, I probably would have called in sick.
At the light knock on my door, I glanced up at the clock and realized it was a quarter to nine. I’d already been at my desk for an hour and a half.
“Come in,” I called.
My assistant, Cynthia, opened the door, carrying a steaming mug of coffee. “Good morning,” she greeted me as she crossed the room. Deftly, she swept up the nearly empty cup sitting on my desk and replaced it with the fresh one.
“Morning, Cynthia. Thanks for the coffee.”
“I thought you would need another hit before you faced the staff meeting at nine.”
“Damn,” I murmured. “I’d completely forgotten about that.” I sipped the hot brew, closing my eyes and savoring the flavor. Since I held the staunch belief that my assistant had more important things to do other than bringing me coffee, I never expected her to serve me.
Still, she made a damn good mug of java.
Cynthia leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “I’m hearing rumors that there’s a new partner and they plan to introduce him to everyone at the meeting.”
I lifted a brow. “Really?”
Though I didn’t encourage participation in office gossip, Cynthia had a knack for sussing out the tidbits of truth and sharing them. There were times that being in the know prevented me from being blindsided.
She nodded. “Milton Buck is finally retiring for good.”
“He’s been saying that for the last five years,” I replied with a smile.
Milton Buck was nearly seventy years old and one of the founding partners of Platt, Cairns, and Buck, the firm where I worked. He’d been semi-retired for the last five years, meaning, he came into the office for six hours per day rather than the ten to twelve he once did. Milton swore that the abbreviated hours he kept in the office were the only reason his wife, Lucille, hadn’t driven him past the point of insanity. His wife had been begging him to retire completely for the past two years.
“Lucille finally talked him into it. Their daughter is about to have her first baby and she pointed out that he would never get to see their grandchild since he works so much.”
I laughed.
Cynthia continued. “I hear the new partner is young and he’s from New York, one of the top firms in the city. From what I caught, he was one of the best divorce attorneys in Dallas before he moved to New York and the partners have been trying to poach him for years. They jumped at the chance to scoop him up.”
I should have known then, but it never occurred to me that he would come back. He’d been so determined to go to New York that I’d truly believed he would never return to Dallas.
“So he’s replacing Milton?” I asked in shock. That would definitely be an unpopular move.
She shook her head. “No, but he is coming in as a senior partner, which wasn’t exactly a well-received decision with the juniors.”
I could see that. I didn’t particularly care for it either since I’d been busting my ass for the last five years. Still, the firm took damn good care of its junior partners and I knew it wouldn’t be much longer until I worked my way up. Another year, maybe two, and I’d have a senior partnership.
Cynthia glanced at the clock on the wall. “You’d better get going or you’ll be late,” she commented.
I drank down nearly half of the coffee she brought me and used a tissue to dab my mouth. “Yes, boss,” I replied.
She smirked at me. “I think that’s my line.”
I rose from my chair and gathered the things I would need for the meeting. “We both know you’re the reason everyone in this office thinks I’m efficient and ultra organized.”
“That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”
“Big bucks? When did you get a raise?”
She chuckled. “You should know since you’re the one who gave it to me.”
“Well, I can’t lose you or everyone will know that I don’t really have my shit together. It’s an illusion you created.”
Laughing, Cynthia and I walked out of my office and toward the largest conference room where the monthly staff meetings were held. Chairs were already filling up, so I snagged the end seat, facing the head of the table. Four seats sat empty there, presumably for the founding partners and the new senior partner.
The low buzz of conversation in the room faded away and, though my back was to the door, I knew that the partners had entered. I turned my head and watched as Milton Buck, Gerard Platt, and Marie Cairns walked around the table.
A tall, lean man followed them. I couldn’t see his face clearly but the arrogant tilt of his dark head set off an unsettling tremor in my fingers. His head turned and my breath caught when our eyes met.
It was him. Jordan Hawke.
I hadn’t seen him in two years. In fact, I was positive that I’d never see him again.
Now, he stood less than ten feet from me and there was every indication that he was the new senior partner in the firm.
My chest ached and I realized that it was because I was still holding my breath. With deliberate slowness, I inhaled deeply and slowly released it. I was intensely aware of my facial expression and did my best to hide the horrible, soul-shattering
shock that filled me. On more than one occasion, my sister, Tessa, told me that I had the best damn poker face she’d ever seen.
I called upon every ounce of self-control I had to make it so this morning.
I realized that I was still staring at Jordan, and he at me, as Milton Buck spoke to the room. Dragging my eyes away from the icy blue of Jordan’s, I looked toward Milton, tuning into his words as I did so.
“…have a new senior partner. I’m sure many of you knew Jordan Hawke when he worked at Stern and Holtzman a few years ago before he moved to New York. Now, he’s back.”
I lost track of Milton’s speech as I felt the warm touch of Jordan’s eyes on me again. I knew without looking that he was still staring at me and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to fidget in my seat.
Somehow, I managed to sit through Milton’s announcement of his imminent retirement. His words barely processed in my whirling mind. I didn’t allow my gaze to wander back to Jordan as the meeting ended and we all left the conference room.
On shaky legs, I quickly made my way toward my office. Then I realized that the glass wall facing the hall would offer no privacy and veered toward the ladies’ room. Locking myself inside, I collapsed on the small bench next to the door and wrapped my arms around my waist.
The shock of seeing Jordan again, so unexpectedly, knocked me off balance. Brutally and completely. I had no idea how I would be able to get through the rest of the day, much less working with him indefinitely.
Rolling my head back, I rested my skull against the wall and stared at the ceiling while I concentrated on regulating my breathing. As my pounding heart began to slow, I decided to focus on getting through today. It was my only choice. I had work to do, clients depending on me. There wasn’t time to fall apart.
Once my work day was over, I would go home, dull my anxiety with a well-deserved bottle of wine, and figure out what my next move would be.
Somehow I made it through the day. I stayed until nearly six, which was typical for me. It was doubtful anyone would notice if I changed my routine but pride wouldn’t allow me to vary.
I drove home on autopilot, stopping to grab a bottle of wine and dinner at the local supermarket. Sticking to habit, I changed into yoga pants and a t-shirt as soon as I got to my townhouse, then I gathered my dinner and carried it into the living room and turned on the television.
An hour later, most of the food sat untouched on my coffee table, but the wine bottle was nearly empty. I leaned back into the couch cushions, resting my bare feet on the edge of the coffee table, and stared at the wall above the TV. As I sipped the chilled white wine in my glass, I thought about Jordan Hawke.
Immediately I was thrown back in time, reliving the six months we were together as though they’d happened yesterday instead of two and a half years ago.
I’d taken on a client and set up a meeting with her husband’s attorney. Both parties seemed angry and bitter, but neither wanted the time and expense required to duke it out in court.
Jordan Hawke had represented my client’s soon-to-be-ex-husband. From the moment we met, the sexual tension between us had been off the charts. So strong in fact that I’d been determined to keep my distance from him. I didn’t need a man messing up my plans for the future or distracting me from my goals. Even if it meant giving up what promised to be insanely great sex.
After our first date and an explosive first kiss, I’d decided that a fling wasn’t such a horrible thing after all. I’d honestly thought that the intense passion between us would inevitably fizzle out within a month, maybe two. How wrong I’d been.
For six months, I spent nearly every night with Jordan Hawke. The sex was incredible. The best I’d ever had. Which was why I didn’t put up a fight when he insisted on taking me to dinner or out to the movies, despite our original agreement to keep our entanglement purely physical. Blinded by hormones and mind-scrambling orgasms, I hadn’t noticed when my defenses shifted on their foundation, leaving my heart unprotected.
I’d fallen in love with him and hadn’t realized it until he told me that he was leaving for New York and the offer of a dream job. Still, I never mentioned it. Never told him how I felt.
Jordan crushed my heart to dust when he left.
He never knew.
If I had my way, he never would.
Chapter Two
The Meeting
Two Years Ago
I glanced at the clock on the wall and bit back a sigh. Shit, I was going to be late. I held my cell phone against my ear and listened to my sister sob.
Fuck it. I would be late. My sister was more important, even if the lying, cheating sack of shit she was crying over wasn’t worth the effort. This wasn’t about him. It was about the fact that her heart was broken—a heart she’d shared in good faith.
“I’m so sorry, Tessa,” I murmured, hoping that the low, soothing tone of my voice would calm her.
Sure enough, her huge sobs weakened gradually to small hiccups. “He’s been s-s-s-seeing her for almost a year. That’s only three months less than we’ve been together!” she cried. “We’d bah-bah-barely started dating before he met her.”
“That’s horrible,” I replied. There was nothing else to say. It was horrible. Well, there was plenty to say, but I didn’t think that my sister would appreciate the rant that was working its way up from my gut to my mouth. While I might have attended law school, most of the words I wanted to use would have made my former professors’ and colleagues’ ears bleed. I could spit it all out later while I practiced yoga at home. It might not be what most yoga instructors would prefer, but I found the process extremely satisfying. I would breathe deeply as I moved through the poses and cuss out all the people who’d pissed me off during the day. I got some exercise and it allowed me to rid myself of any nasty thoughts that had accumulated in my brain.
“I d-d-don’t know what I’m going to do,” she stuttered.
“Are you going to forgive him?” I asked blandly. God, I hoped not because I knew I wouldn’t be able to maintain a facade of civility if she brought him home for Christmas this year.
“Maybe someday,” she muttered and my heart sank.
Goddammit, I didn’t want to have to stare at his smirking face across my father’s dinner table and hold my tongue.
“But it’s over anyway,” she continued, banishing the painful images from my mind before they could fully form.
“Thank God,” I breathed.
“What was that?” Tessa sniffed.
“Nothing. I’m just glad you’ve already made the hardest decision,” I evaded.
She laughed harshly. “More like he made it for me. He broke up with m-m-me!”
“Fucker,” I mumbled.
This time she heard me but when she laughed again, there was underlying humor in it. “Oh, I love you, Tanya,” she said breathlessly. “Thank you for listening to me cry over him even though I know you want to call him every nasty name you can think of.”
What could I say? Tessa might be five years younger than me, but she knew me well. Those extra five years of experience were also the reason I didn’t share my philosophy about love with her. She wouldn’t listen anyway.
“I love you too, Tess. I hate that someone hurt you and I can’t make them pay.”
She laughed again, the last of the uncontrollable quiver leaving her voice. “You’d be disbarred,” she teased.
“It would be worth it,” I replied quickly.
I could practically hear her shaking her head over my words, but what she didn’t understand was that she was one of the only people in this world I loved openly and unconditionally. Whenever someone hurt her, I had to rein in the urge to burn their house down with them inside it. Figuratively speaking, of course. A competent attorney would never make threats like that verbally.
“Oh, God. I just realized it’s only three in the afternoon. You’re at work, aren’t you?” Tessa asked.
“Yes, but…”
“I know you p
robably have back-to-back appointments. I’ll let you go.”
“It’s okay, Tessa, I—”
“I’ll talk to you later, okay?” Before I could reply, she continued, “Love you, Tata. Bye.” Then she hung up.
I laid my phone on the desk and stared at my computer monitor for a moment, collecting my thoughts. Listening to Tessa cry over some jerk who slept around on her made me glad I didn’t believe in love.
Just like my sister, I’d searched for the one throughout my early twenties. I’d connected with a man, someone I could love and eventually did love, and inevitably he broke my heart. It happened twice during law school.
Then, when I started working as a divorce attorney, I realized it was ridiculous to believe in the notion of happily ever after. At least for me. I represented men and women that had been blindsided by the fact that their spouses who vowed to love them until death do them part now found them repugnant. Every day I witnessed what happened when love faded. Or worse, the fall-out when it morphed into hatred.
It wouldn’t happen to me.
My desk phone buzzed and my assistant, Cynthia, said, “Tanya, you’re going to be late for your three-thirty.”
I rose to my feet. “Will you call them and tell them I’ve been detained? I’m leaving now, so I should be there by quarter to four.”
“Sure thing,” Cynthia replied.
I gathered my things and slipped on my light coat. It was fall in Texas, which meant it was only slightly cooler than the pits of Hell, but today it was rainy and windy and I didn’t want my dress to get soaked.
This meeting was my last of the day and I lamented the fact that Tessa had taken that job in Oregon right after college. It meant I couldn’t swing by her house with a pizza and chocolate when I was done. I knew she would need it. I decided to send her a chocolate bouquet the next day. If I couldn’t be there physically, I could at least offer some comfort.
The drive to the law offices of Stern and Holtzman took longer than usual because of the rain, making me even later. I hustled inside, wincing when I realized the clock was rapidly closing in on four and I should have been there well over thirty minutes before. It was the first settlement meeting between my client and her husband and I wasn’t making the best impression.
