by Mary Brady
Hunter told Mr. O’Brien goodbye and dropped the handset into the cradle.
“He’d feel much better if you called him. Was there any of that you didn’t understand?”
“No. I’m sorry. He’s been waffling about this for about six months now.” She tried to see if he was hiding frustration or indignation, but she could see none. “He’s been doing business as a sole proprietor for seventeen years. His father did business that way. I’ll call him. He probably just wants to know if you’re one of the good guys.”
He turned away and then turned back. “Am I?”
His face held a clear and honest expression, and she wanted so badly for him to still be one of the guys in the white hats. “I’ll let you know when the jury’s back in on that.”
“Fair enough.”
“I came to speak with you about the rebellion going on downstairs.” She outlined what she had told the staff and what she had asked of them.
“There won’t be much in the way of wiggle room, because I was as lenient as I could possibly be with them. I’m not an office manager, but that’s what this place needs.”
She dipped her chin instead of speaking.
“Hey.” He flourished a hand. “If you want to discuss whether or not banks engaged in international commerce will become third-party garnishees in event of a dispute across international borders, the likelihood is yes. Will a financial and economic crisis in the eurozone represent a threat, most likely a serious threat, to global stability? Without a doubt.”
It was her turn to gesture and she held up both hands. “I get it. We don’t practice your kind of law.”
“You should have been entrusted with the full role of office manager, since in everything except the monetary aspect you have been the de facto manager, as far as I can tell, since about two minutes after you started here.”
It was a compliment, she thought. “I won’t ask you to consult me in management matters, because that has always been the purview of the partners. I am, however, always available for consultations on how to approach or work with the employees.”
“Like I said, there is little leeway built into the changes I have mandated,” he said, looking slightly concerned.
She shook her head. “Thank you for your honesty.”
Perhaps some of the enigma surrounding Hunter Morrison was beginning to unravel.
She crossed the hall to her office and left her door open, as did Hunter. Obviously, he had nothing to hide and she found that reassuring. She left hers open in the event one or more of the disgruntled wandered up to see her.
Delainey called Mr. O’Brien, who asked her to let Shamus know he needed to talk to him. She assured him Mr. Morrison was like having another Shamus, only younger. As she said the words, she entertained the idea that she might believe them.
The pile of case files on her desk was not very impressive today, but the first day of the business week had a tendency to be the slowest or the fastest. She began processing cases, seeing that the necessary information was located and the follow-up phone calls were documented. After about an hour it occurred to her that she should probably check the inbox on the filing cabinet across the room. Maybe Hunter had left something for her.
Sure enough, copies of his mandates for the employees were there. She went through the pile again. There was nothing specifically addressed to her.
She spent the rest of the morning prepping cases, assigning points of research to Carol and Shirley, and helping Matt and Eddie figure out what forms Mr. O’Brien was going to need to fill out for setting his business up as an LLC and the justification for why he should do so.
“It’s like having to show your work in math,” Matt grumbled.
Delainey couldn’t do anything but chuckle and counter with “Or throwing a thousand passes to make sure you can get the exact outcome you want during a game.”
“Yeah, right, Ms. Talbot.”
She wished Matt would lighten up. His father had entrusted her to help his son learn to grow up a little and so far she hadn’t been able to reach him.
After lunch she went back to her office, glad Hunter wasn’t at his desk.
She left her door open, so when his phone rang half an hour later and he answered it, she was surprised. Knowing he was close by made excitement flash through her.
CHAPTER NINE
DELAINEY KNEW SHE should get up and close the door of her office, but when Hunter began speaking, she found herself listening even though it was eavesdropping. She figured the clients of Morrison and Morrison deserved a gatekeeper who could offer some protection against cold big-city ways.
“The prenup isn’t ironclad, and all he has to do is mention the kids and she’ll fold anyway,” Hunter said, his tone firm, almost demanding.
Kids as leverage? Delainey felt an instant flush of anger.
“No, ask her for twice that much and we won’t be having this conversation in another month.”
He listened again.
“You know her. She only does that because somebody didn’t bend to her beck and call.”
And then, “If you let her get away with it, she’ll escalate things and then she’ll be a real bi—” He paused. “She’ll be even more difficult to deal with. You treat her too nicely sometimes.”
By the time he hung up, the thought had hit Delainey that she did not know Hunter Morrison at all anymore. How cruel to suggest children be used in a divorce battle.
A minute later he appeared in her doorway. “I assume you heard that.” It wasn’t an accusation.
She nodded.
He stared at her as if trying to decide whether or not to justify himself. No way was she letting him off the hook.
“That was harsh. Using children like that. Is that the type of law you learned in Chicago?”
“The type of law I learned in Chicago is international monetary law. That was my father. His sister has been threatening to divorce her husband for three decades.”
“Then that means the children...”
“Are thirty-eight and forty years old.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “What is the threat about?”
“Telling them their mother is, let me put this delicately, being a sort of donkey again. When she does that, they take her to task and don’t let her see the grandchildren.” He held a hand up to stop her protests about grandchildren deprivation. “Because she does not treat them well when she is in this state. She bad-mouths their grandfather as well as their parents.”
Now she grinned. Fair. Protector of the young. This would be her Hunter.
No.
She blinked long. Not her Hunter, just the Hunter she once knew.
After Hunter left, she got up and closed her door. Hunter Morrison the attorney was compassionate and knowledgeable, and he seemed competent on things outside international monetary law.
She tried to ignore the knot of loneliness that rose suddenly inside her. Pushing herself up in her chair, she opened Stevie Anning’s file. There was the issue of nonpaying clients. Carol had already put in several hours trying to find out what, if anything, could be done to help the boy.
A child-protection assessment had been completed twice by a social worker. The boy’s uncle had readily agreed to being interviewed. The child had been questioned both times, and both times the report of abuse was considered “unsubstantiated.”
Delainey had seen the system work over and over again in the past. She trusted the judgment of the people of the DHHS, the Department of Health and Human Services. A lot of good people worked the hard job of seeing to the safety of children when the adults around them had failed.
If this man had fooled them, he was good at seeming to be what he was not, most likely good to the point of mental illness or even more than that. More than that made
her shudder with fear for the child.
She wondered if Hunter would put the stamp of approval on this one. It could not wait until Harriet got back and Delainey couldn’t take the risk of failing the boy.
* * *
TWENTY MINUTES LATER Delainey parked her car across the street from where Stevie Anning and his uncle lived in an old two-story house covered with dingy white vinyl siding. Snow was still piled in mounds along the driveway and sidewalk. That it had been shoveled seemed normal. Did an adult who abused a child bother with sidewalks and such?
She supposed they did. Keep things looking normal and maybe people would believe it to be so.
Delainey watched the house, trying to see in the windows, but it was too light to get a look at anything except the reflection of the branches of the pine trees blowing in the stiff wind.
Mr. Anning was unemployed, so there was no reason he and the boy couldn’t be at home. He could be playing games with Stevie, as Brianna was probably doing with her grandmother.
After she had sat there for about thirty minutes, her fingers got cold and the rest of her was following suit. What was she doing here? Trained social workers had declared the home to be safe.
There were a couple laws she was breaking just by being here. If she interfered with Mr. Anning’s lawful custody of his nephew, she could be guilty of harassment, trespassing if she stepped foot onto his land. She could not even touch the child without the permission of the uncle and even then she could end up on thin ice.
She checked the time. She could sit for a couple more hours before she had to go pick Brianna up. The blankets were still in her backseat. She pulled one onto her lap.
Just then the side door to the house opened. Mr. Anning looked around and went back inside. He might have seen her. He might not have.
She could leave now and leave Stevie to whatever his uncle had to hand out, whether it be games of Candy Land or—she dropped her chin to her chest—a beating or some other abuse. Oh, please, be safe, Stevie.
She fetched the other blanket from the backseat and hunkered down to try to make it seem as if the car were empty, as if the car’s owner might be in the house across the street visiting.
This time when Mr. Anning came out of the house, he started down the driveway toward where she sat parked in the car. He held some sort of stick in one hand. She sat up and fumbled with getting the blankets out of the way.
They seemed endless and when she looked up again Anning was almost to the street.
Suddenly, the door beside her jerked open and she was being dragged from her car.
But then she was in Hunter’s arms and he was kissing her as if she were the love of his life. His mouth possessed her. His strong arms pressed her to him.
Joy and heat filled her at the same time. His late-afternoon whiskers scraped her lips and he smelled of aftershave and pine. She wanted the world to stop. She wanted Hunter to want her forever.
When he’d broken the kiss, he pulled away the blankets and tossed them into her car and pushed her gently back inside. The shock of the sudden change left her speechless.
He bent down and looked in at her. “You do not want to be here.”
“What are you talking about?” She found her voice and there was anger in it. How could he use her so?
“He’s gone back into the house.”
“You mean you kissed me to save me?”
“It works in the movies.” There was not a hint of humor in his tone, but he wasn’t scolding her, either.
“No. You can’t possibly be here. How did you know where I was?”
“Went in to say goodbye to you. You were gone but the Anning boy’s file was open on your desk.”
“But why did you think I’d come here?”
“The Deelee I knew would try to save the boy. It would not matter that she might put herself in danger, ruin her chances of ever becoming an attorney.”
With that he closed her car door and strode back to Shamus’s black Ford and got in. He sat until she pulled away from the curb. When they reached Church Street, she turned left and he turned right.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. He couldn’t stick around Bailey’s Cove, but he could be her friend while he was here. “Thank you.”
She put her fingers to her lips, which still stung with the pleasure of his kisses. He had been right. Mr. Anning had not caught her. If she was lucky, he hadn’t thought to try to get her license plate number.
How many ways did she plan to be reckless?
* * *
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING Hunter sat in the car he had purchased right before he canceled the rental car, which still hadn’t arrived. He’d been invited to attend the weekly staff meeting to discuss the “terms” the employees had come up with to counter his demands. As soon as he had put the employees’ notices in their respective mailboxes, he’d known the law office was going to be a pool of discontent.
They hadn’t proved him wrong and would be out to inflict their own pain today. He had been an attorney long enough to know what it felt like to run the gauntlet. Attorneys ran them every time they entered a courtroom or stepped into a conference room populated by a hostile opposing team. When South Harbor, the first name of the town of Bailey’s Cove, was settled, running the gauntlet had meant passing between two lines of people determined to inflict pain on you with sticks, fists, feet, swords—whatever weapon was acceptable for the offense committed.
He doubted Delainey would use a stick to whack him, and her restraint would likely be the closest thing he’d have to an ally. When he thought of Deelee, his mind returned to yesterday.
When he saw Anning heading directly toward her, he’d done the first stupid thing that had come to his mind. Kissing her was as amazing as it had always been. She’d trembled in his arms from the cold, but her lips had been warm and soft and responsive. If he kissed her like that when they were alone, he feared there would be no stopping them and it would only lead to heartbreak.
He hurried inside and headed for the conference room. He had business to deal with and thinking about kissing Delainey wasn’t helping to keep him focused.
After she had spoken with him yesterday about the employees, he had thought about what she’d said. He did not discard her pleas as unwarranted, but he also knew to survive, even by Bailey’s Cove standards, this office had to have some tough love.
Shamus had hinted, but Hunter hadn’t understood until he sat down with the books how close Morrison and Morrison was to closing its doors. There would plainly be room for Delainey to open a practice in the town if that happened, but she would not want her livelihood to come about under such circumstances. Oddly enough, had they put her in charge of finances and not case management, he had no doubt she would have insisted on changes years ago and this would not have been happening so traumatically, coming fast and furious from an outsider.
He adjusted his tie and stepped into the conference room, where he looked into the unwelcoming faces. Maybe they’d just flay him and be done with it.
“Good morning, everyone.”
Of the twelve people sitting at the table, a few, including Delainey, gave him a return greeting. Carol had on her power outfit—red glasses and matching jacket. Patty had on a skirt and blouse. She looked neat and he suspected had more respect for herself when she looked in the mirror today. Shirley had on a dress that made her look about twelve and that might have been the plan. Who could pick on a twelve-year-old, after all?
Delainey wore a sleek dark suit and her hair was tucked up in a tidy roll at the back of her head. If she were sitting at the conference table in the Chicago office, no one would think she didn’t belong there. And she was trying her best not to look at him. He wondered if she hated him yet.
The room itself would be the envy of many a corporate office in Chicago. The walls he
re were dark, rich cherry. The table, which would accommodate twenty, looked as if it outweighed the Mayflower, but though old, it would not be that old. It did have over a century of wear and tear and love. The top was currently polished to a high shine. The chairs matched the table, a tribute to the care and craftsmanship that had gone into making them. On the wall at the head of the table behind where Carol sat were portraits of his great-great-grandfather and his great-great-uncle. Stout men who barely looked like brothers. His grandfather flat faced and blond. His uncle darker with intense eyes.
Delainey leaned forward. “Welcome, Mr. Morrison.”
“Thank you for inviting me.” He was a guest and he’d decided to behave as such.
“Almost everyone has read their letter from you and Shamus,” Delainey continued.
Shamus had helped him know who needed to do what and the things he had been remiss in demanding of the staff over the years. Hunter had added a few things, like Patty’s dress habits. They had written a paragraph to each employee personally and the letter also included general office regulations that would go into effect immediately after the meeting. Hunter and Shamus had then signed every letter personally.
“Some of us,” Delainey said, “have some suggestions.” He took her words to mean she wanted to be inclusive and supportive but that she might agree, at least in principle, with what had been said to each of them.
“Complaints,” the high school student, Matthew, said in a low tone, and got a visual reprimand from Delainey.
“Who wants to go first?” she asked.
They all looked uneasy and Hunter had to hold in a smile. She wasn’t letting them off the hook by making their complaints seem anonymous at best or from her at worst.
“Matthew, you seem to have some definite ideas about what you didn’t like or perhaps did like,” she prompted.
