Under the Law: A When Opposites Attract Romance (Fanning the Flames Book 3)

by Liz Peters

  It was clear that her friend hadn’t been able to leave the office until late in the night. When the coffee in the stainless steel tumbler on her desk was still warm from the night before and it was half full, it was obvious she’d been here much later than she should have been. The two of them needed help, and she intended to bring it up as soon as possible. They were going to have to hire someone to take on more of the assistant duties around here, while Debbie became Sam’s legal intern. That was the only way they were going to be able to make this work.

  She had no idea what Reid thought of all this. Debbie hadn’t had a chance to see him during the last few weeks, but she didn’t imagine he would be happy about his brand new wife spending every single waking hour at the office.

  When Debbie heard the car pull up out front, she glanced out of the window between the blinds. The look on Sam’s face as she walked up the front steps troubled her. The girl looked like she hadn’t slept at all, and if she had, it hadn’t been in the bed. Debbie could only knit her brows together and make a beeline for the front door to confront her as she came inside.

  “What in the hell happened to you? And don’t you lie to me and go saying that you’re fine. I already know good and damned well that you’re not fine. Something is wrong.” Debbie felt her hands go to her hips without even thinking about it. It was a habit she had when she got worked up, not something she could help.

  It was clear she’d startled her friend, but she hadn’t been ready for the flood of tears that came before Sam even opened her mouth. She immediately pulled Sam into a hug and let the apology that she felt bubbling up pour out of her mouth.

  “I’m sorry, Sam. I don’t know what I said, but I’m sorry. I’ve got you.”

  Sam couldn’t even speak for the sobs that racked her frame when Debbie pulled her in for a hug, and Debbie didn’t know how to reply to her until she knew what was wrong.

  “What’s the matter?” Debbie reached for a box of tissues on the desk behind her and pulled out a few to try to dry the flood of tears that were pouring down her best friend’s face.

  It took some time to get Sam calm enough to talk, but when she did Debbie felt her heart drop into her stomach.

  “Reid… He was gone last night when I got home from work. I missed dinner… again.” The words were broken by Sam’s attempts to pull in deep breaths of air and calm herself. “I just… I don’t know what to do. I have to keep this place running, and I need to keep my marriage going. We’ve never had a fight before, but if I can’t figure something out I know this one isn’t going to be the last.”

  It shook Debbie to see Sam like this. Sam was strong and resilient. She’d quit her job back in the city over a conflict of interests. She’d walked away from it all to an entirely different state to open up a practice all on her own. She’d lived alone and done everything for herself up until now, but here she was falling apart because of a fight she’d had with Reid. She loved the man. That much was obvious. Debbie wanted that in her life. Maybe not the whole snot sobbing mess that was standing in front of her, but someone who mattered that much. It was the major thing she was missing, but she didn’t know if she even had time for a social life right now, never mind a relationship.

  “Sam, just breathe for a minute.” Debbie pulled out the rolling chair from behind her desk and pulled it for Sam to take a seat. She’d been putting herself through the ringer, and something had to give. Debbie didn’t intend for it to be her relationship, though. “I’ve got an answer for your problem, but first, I need you to know that he loves you. If I’ve ever seen a man in love with a woman, he’s it, so whatever happened between the two of you is fixable. You love each other, and you’re going to work it out. Both of you changed so much about your lives for the other, and I know it’s going to be all right, so just breathe in and out and listen to the rest of what I have to say.”

  Samantha just sat there for a moment, trying to focus and catch her breath after her crying jag, and Debbie gave her a minute to just breathe while she grabbed something off the desk she’d printed out a few days ago. It was a resume she’d found on a local job listing site where she’d searched for applicants looking for a job as an office manager. This one had caught her eye — Jamie Halston. Jamie had experience. She’d worked for an attorney before and held the job for more than four years. She could type a hundred and twenty words per minute, and she was familiar with running an office and everything that entailed. It was going to be the one way that Sam could get some of this responsibility off her shoulders. Best of all Jamie was available to start immediately. There was no way she was going to pass up this opportunity.

  She handed the resumé to Samantha who read over the piece of paper with a confused expression before she looked up at her friend.

  “What is this?” She held out the paper and knit her eyebrows.

  “It’s a resumé, Sam.” Sam couldn’t help but roll her eyes and sigh, slightly exasperated.

  “Well, I know that, but why are you showing it to me?”

  “Because I think you need an office manager. We need an office manager. Someone to take care of all the little things around here like making sure that the utilities get paid, checking the mail, taking care of the billing and accounts, and just leave the actual law practice up to you and me. I’ve just been a secretary and paralegal before now, and you’ve only been a lawyer. We’re in over our head with all the rest of the bullshit that running a business entails, and this person,” she gestured at the piece of paper in Samantha’s hand, “specializes in all of that. We hire her, and it takes all the pressure off of us so we can have some of our lives back. You and Reid can be a newlywed couple, and maybe I can find the time to actually go on a date before my ovaries dry up like the Sahara.”

  Sam was still congested and had a case of the sniffles from crying, but now she couldn’t stop herself from laughing with a soft snort at Debbie’s rant. Debbie had grown more animated as the short tirade continued. It was just about that point in time that Debbie’s phone went off with a text notification. She pulled it from the pocket of her jacket and glanced at it before grumbling and dropping it on the desktop.

  “And just who was that from?” Sam raised an eyebrow, stopping her laughing to begin drying the tears off her face.

  Debbie wasn’t going to be able to lie to her friend, even if she hadn’t been exactly up front with the details before now. Three weeks ago, she’d happened to slip her professor her phone number before she’d realized who he was. She had no way of knowing he was actually going to use it once he found out who she was, but the first text had come in that evening. Since then, she’d gotten several a day from him, and the fact that her professor was flirting with her was almost too much for her to handle. On one hand, she knew it was wrong, but there had been a reason she was attracted to him in the first place. He was exactly what she imagined was her type — older, smart, successful, flirty but respectful. The combination of it all was more than she could withstand forever.

  “Someone I met at school… A professor actually.” Debbie took a deep breath and shrugged. “He’s one of my professors.”

  “What the hell, Deb?”

  “I know. I know. I shouldn’t be texting my professor, but to be fair I gave him my number before I knew who he was.”

  “Of course you did.” Samantha shook her head and bit down on her bottom lip. “Tell me about it?”

  The two of them spent the better part of the next hour making a pot of coffee and having a long talk about everything that had happened with the two of them since Debbie had started school. It was the first time the two of them had just taken the time to talk in weeks, and Debbie figured out it was exactly what she needed. She hadn’t had anyone to talk to about the path things had been taking with school, and all the rest of it much less her best friend. That was one huge thing about the move here and how busy things had gotten. She missed just having a chance to talk to her friend.

  Sam was busy and understandably so. D
ebbie had fully understood how torn she was between opening up a new practice, having a fairly new boyfriend, then fiancé, and now husband.

  She hadn’t expected her friend to give up time with any of those things for her, but that hadn’t stopped her from missing the time they used to have together. It wasn't so long ago that they were working for the same law firm and they had so much less on their plate.

  “You know? The two of us have got to make more time to chat. There’s a whole hell of a lot of stuff I could talk to you about if we had the time, and you’ve got to get some more sleep.” Debbie paused for a minute before elbowing her friend. “And not on the couch from now on, but for today, you really need to talk to Reid. That man is perfect for you, and you’re perfect for him. You’re going to cross wires from time to time, the two of you are too different to get along a hundred percent of the time, but if you can’t make it then there’s no hope for me.”

  Debbie laughed, but she was serious. If Sam and Reid couldn’t work things out then she just didn’t even need to try.

  “Yeah, I know you’re saying that, but you didn’t see the way he looked last night. We’ve been married like a month, Deb. I just don’t know if he’s going to forgive me this time. I promised him I’d be home for dinner, and then I missed it for like the umpteenth time this month. He’s pissed. He ought to be pissed. I’d be pissed if the tables were turned.”

  Debbie didn’t know what to tell her friend except for one thing.

  “Just don’t give up, ok? It’s not over yet. It was one bad night, not a bad life.” She’d impressed herself a little with that line, even if Debbie had no idea where that had come from. She was filing that one away for future use.

  Sam leaned into her friend with a sigh.

  “I hope you’re right. I just don’t want to lose him.”

  “You’re not going to lose him. Just don’t forget how you got him, hon.”

  Sam let out a soft sigh.

  “I won’t. Now come on and let’s get to work so I can get home at a decent hour today.” Sam glanced down at the piece of paper she still had in her hand. “And why don’t you contact Jamie Halston and see if she can come in for an interview. I trust you. I’ll leave it up to you to hire someone who can take care of this so the both of us don’t lose our minds.”

  Debbie grinned over at her friend.

  “Alright then, I’ll get on it as soon as possible. Thank you for trusting me with that.”

  Sam just nodded and walked back to her desk leaving Debbie to prepare for the rest of her day. They’d wasted a lot of time this morning just talking, so that didn’t leave much time for the two of them to get everything done. It just meant that they were going to have to buckle down for the rest of the day.

  Debbie settled into work just at the same moment that her phone went off again. Another text message, again from Professor Brennan. She’d realized she hadn’t answered him earlier. It was a little surreal to have the two different versions of the Professor that she’d run across.

  On one hand, he was the dignified man who stood at the front of the room two mornings a week and delivered lectures on Constitutional Law. That Professor Brennan was distant and professional. No one in the class was even brave enough to approach him to ask a question, much less get to know him on a personal level. If she’d waited until after the first class to speak to him, she would have felt exactly the same way.

  Then there was the Joshua she’d asked for directions on her first day of school, the guy who she’d slipped her phone number before she waltzed into class and felt like an absolute fool. Debbie had expected that to be the end of things between the two of them, but when that first text message had come through, she’d been too shocked to even answer for about three hours. That Joshua was funny, flirty, and charismatic. The two of them had set up a solid flirtation that had been going on for a couple of weeks now. She found herself looking forward to the text messages that came every day without fail, but this most recent message was the last thing she’d been expecting. She had no idea how to respond to it.

  Would you like to meet me for lunch sometime?

  Chapter Five

  Reid had gotten to work early for no real damned reason other than to avoid Sam, and he absolutely hated doing that. He didn’t want to avoid her. He wanted to wrap her up in his arms and remind her why in the hell he’d decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her in the first place.

  She’d fallen asleep on the couch, and he was kicking himself for being the reason that she’d done that. He might have had a few drinks, but he hadn’t been so drunk that he’d forgotten what he said to her. Samantha Crawford. That was the name he’d known her as for months before they’d gotten married. It was a bad, old habit to fall into, and it wasn’t what he’d meant to call her. But his pride had been too wounded last night to take it back and apologize for using the wrong name.

  Half of him had expected her to come up and crawl into bed with him anyway, but for the first time since the two of them had gotten married, he woke up alone. It had set him off on a bad mood for the remainder of the day. When he’d gotten to the ranch, he went straight for a mug of coffee before heading out to the fields and putting all of the frustration he’d been building up into doing his work. Reid volunteered to split fence posts for the day. Swinging an axe was the best way he knew to work out what he was going through. He didn’t want to think about the fact that the last thing he’d said to Sam had been angry or that she’d been done enough with him to spend the night on the couch.

  Reid tried to get lost in the motions of doing his job. He had done this enough times that the actions were automatic. He could split wood and put all of the feelings he had into the effort used to swing an axe at the wood in front of him. It might have been fall, but the effort quickly brought him to the point where he needed to strip off his shirt and toss it onto the grass next to the pile of wood he was working on before going back to his work with even more enthusiasm. Reid was so focused on what he was doing and tuning out the rest of the world that he didn’t hear anyone walking up behind him, so when he felt a tap on his shoulder, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

  Reid wheeled around to see Matty standing there with two beers in his hand and a shocked expression on his face.

  “Why the hell are you sneaking up on me like that, man?” Reid rested the axe on the wood and wiped the sweat off his brow before fully turning around to take the beer that Matty held out towards him and bringing it to his lips to take a long swig.

  “Yeah, if you call me strolling across the pasture with two beers in my hand whistling and calling out your name twenty feet away sneaking up then you’ve got bigger issues than I do, Buddy.” Matty raised an eyebrow and brought his own beer to his lips to take a long swig of it. “Mind telling me what the hell is wrong with you? And don’t give me any of that bullshit about everything being fine. There’s trouble in paradise, and you can fuck off with any other damned line of bullshit you’re trying to feed me.”

  Reid groaned. Matty was a cocky and persistent fucker when he got his head stuck on something, and he knew that his friend locked on like a bulldog. He wasn’t going to let go of this until Reid opened up and told him the truth, so he may as well go ahead and get it over with. Reid scraped a hand across his brow, wiping the sweat that he’d finally realized was gathering there and let out a long breath.

  “I had a thing with Sam last night.” Reid shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged towards his best friend.

  “A thing? So that explains why you showed up at my place last night and blasted through an entire case of beer with me before you headed off home. I figured something was up. I just didn’t want to ask, but then you were out here splitting logs like you were in the running to be the next Abraham Lincoln or something. I just thought maybe you needed to talk.”

  Reid put his focus on the beer bottle in his hand, not sure how to answer Matty. Matty was his best friend, but this wasn’t the kind of thing that
he was used to having to talk to his friend about.

  “Yeah, a thing. I just don’t know if you want to hear about it. I had a stupid fight with Sam about how much she’s been working. I was an asshole about it, and she wound up sleeping on the couch.” He shrugged again. He wasn’t sure how to feel about all of it or how much that Matty wanted to hear about his problems. Matty was a longtime bachelor. Sure he’d hook up with the townie girls from time to time or some chick rolling through on a vacation who wanted to have a wild weekend.

  He had the build of a ranch hand, but the red hair and green eyes that you didn’t see on many guys around here. It just meant that he caught a girl’s eye almost immediately and kept it as long as he wanted, but he never had anything that lasted longer than a weekend or so. Relationship problems weren’t exactly his style. If anything looked like it was going to be complicated, then he was out like a light.

  Matty raised an eyebrow and took a swig of his beer before he replied to his friend.

  “So you thought you’d drink it out of your system, and then try to work yourself to death so you didn’t have to deal with it?” He had this deadpan flat look on his face so Reid didn’t know whether he was kidding or serious. Reid narrowed his eyebrows before he rolled his eyes at his friend.

  “Yeah, no. I just figured I’d put my energy into something I could do worth a damn since I seem to suck at being a husband so much she’d rather be at work.” He moved to grab the axe he’d leaned against the pile of wood when his best friend’s voice made him freeze in place.

  “I hope you know you’re absolutely full of shit, man. Like for fucking real.” Matty didn’t change his expression, he just took another long drink off his beer. He was getting to the bottom of the bottle by now, which meant he wasn’t going to be hanging around too much longer if Reid didn’t say something. He just felt a little dumbstruck by what his friend had just said to him.

  “Care to explain?” That was all he could come up with at the moment. He just hoped Matty wouldn’t wave him off and walk away. He was a good guy, but when he was irritated with someone, he could be pretty distant. It was quickly becoming evident that he was irritated with Reid.