Chapter 20
BEN
“Can I grab a ride back with you?” Dan asks the officers as they turn to leave. One of them offers me a lazy salute and a smirk as he passes by. I recognize him as a customer from Penny’s. Not that that connection was enough to keep us from getting into trouble tonight.
I called Dan and asked him to intercept the cops in case Reese was wrong and they could find a reason to haul our asses down to the station. I’m pretty sure Reese is right and they can’t charge us with trespassing. I’m not 100 percent sure about the indecency charges and I’d rather not have to figure that out while in handcuffs.
I think I know how Reese has avoided a criminal record up until this point: she’s a compelling liar. When Granny announced that the cops were coming and Reese saw the look on my face, she immediately turned the tear tap on, swearing that Sara—how Reese remembered the woman’s name is beyond me, unless this entire stunt was premeditated, which, given Reese’s reputation, could very well be—told us we could come over for a late-night swim. The old woman was sceptical, but she at least allowed me to dig my phone out of my pants pocket to call Dan.
All of this while still in the pool because she wouldn’t let us get out. She said she didn’t trust us not to run. I’m sure that’s mostly true, but I damn well know that with the light shining down on us the way it was, glasses or not, the old coot was getting a good eyeful.
If I had known she was pointing an eleven-year-old’s BB gun at us, I would have pulled Reese out and run.
Dan arrived just minutes after the cops, driving the blitzed homeowners and their kids home. Apparently Sara bowled out of the car and stumbled inside to pass out on the couch, so she couldn’t corroborate Reese’s story. Jim, the husband, was thankfully a little more lucid. He quickly brought towels out for us and sent his mother inside with the boys, swearing up and down that his wife did in fact invite us to use their pool. I think everyone standing around that backyard knew that was a fat lie, but no one, including the cops, wanted to deal with this tonight. Seeing as we hadn’t hurt anyone, and our “public nudity” was on private property at night and hadn’t offended anyone besides Granny, the cops were happy to leave with a warning.
All because I can’t think with the right head when there’s a naked girl around.
“Can I please go back to my bride now?” Dan asks me, his tone full of irritation.
“I’m sorry, man,” I mutter, buttoning up my shirt. Fuck, am I going to get the gears about this one later!
“Thank you, Dan,” says an already dressed and very sheepish-sounding Reese.
Dan exhales and then softens. “Don’t worry about it.” Running a hand through his blond brush cut, he adds in a very cop-like tone, “But let this be a lesson to you, young lady. This is the kind of stuff that happens when you hang around with a guy like Ben.”
Stealing a glance Reese’s way, I see her lips pressed together tightly, like she’s fighting the urge to laugh. She merely nods in silent agreement.
And all I can do is shake my head at her.
Jack saw you drop me off this morning.
Reese’s text couldn’t have come at a better time. Or worse.
“Ben! A moment?” Jack calls out as I speed past the open door, hoping to go unnoticed.
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath. With a low exhale, I slide my phone into my pocket and turn around to make my way into Jack’s spacious office. I hoped it would be empty in here, on a Sunday afternoon. I should have known better.
Jack gestures to the chair across from him. “Take a seat, please.” He looks as rough as I feel, the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced than usual. The guy’s in his mid-fifties and he works longer hours than anyone else here. Not what I want to be known for when I hit that decade of my life. Very casually, he asks, “How was your night?”
I sigh before I can stop myself, as the tightness of regret sets into my chest. Reese could have shared a little more on what exactly she told Jack. Now I’m bound to get caught in a lie. I mean, other than almost nailing his stepdaughter in the pool and almost getting into trouble with the police, nothing happened. When we got back to the reception, Dan had already highlighted “another night of Ben’s idiocy” to everyone. They wasted no time laying into me. The only plus to that was that Mercy heard about it and I guess figured that if I was giving it to anyone, Reese would be the lucky receiver.
We hung out in the den with the usual gang for a while after the crowd died down, intent on heading home once the few beers I drank worked their way out of my system. We would have left had we both not passed out for a few hours on the couch, Reese curled up against my side, her cheek on my chest. It was sweet. If Nate and Ginger weren’t asleep on the other side of the sectional, I might have awakened Reese to pick up where Granny had interrupted.
So, all in all, it was a relatively innocent night for me. I feel like no matter what I say now, though, I’m still gonna look like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. So I settle on, “Good.”
Jack’s chair bops back and forth as he shifts his body. And then he starts to chuckle. “Sometimes I forget what it was like to be your age.”
I choose to keep my mouth shut and see where this conversation takes us. Hopefully it’s not to a pink slip.
“I remember the day Reese’s mother, Annabelle, strolled into my office, looking for a divorce from her first husband. I was taken by her right away. A mesmerizingly beautiful woman. When she started flirting with me, I was dumbstruck. A woman who look like that, interested in this?” He gestures at himself. “But she seemed to be and we married a year later.” A derisive snort escapes Jack as he stands and starts pacing, absently spinning a globe as he passes. “Obviously things didn’t work out for us. I came back from a business trip early and swung by here to collect some paperwork, only to find my partner with her.” He nods toward the impressive desk in front of me. “On there.”
Sitting up straighter, I find myself looking at the desk under a whole new light. “And you still use it?”
“Five generations of Warners have sat at this desk,” he mutters, walking over to rap his knuckles against the smooth, polished mahogany wood as if to make a point. “I wasn’t going to let that she-devil ruin that. She ruined almost everything else.” He exhales heavily, as if just talking about it tires him out. “We divorced immediately after that. Barry had helped me double the size of the Warner clientele list since joining, and I had to put everything up as collateral to buy out his share.” He shakes his head. “My father warned me not to take on an equity partner, even if Barry and I had been best friends since we were two. I should have listened.”
Sitting back down, he continues. “As painful as that whole experience was, the only thing I regret was letting Annabelle cut Reese out of my life when the girl was twelve. My first wife and I always wanted a daughter but after Mason, she kept miscarrying. Then she died. I had all but given up until Reese came along. I’ve known that girl since she was six years old. I thought of her often, but . . .” He shakes his head. “I lost a lot in the divorce, but the biggest thing by far was losing touch with that girl.”
This is the kind of shit I don’t ever want to deal with. When you avoid making commitments involving signatures and precious metal and mixed DNA, there’s no collateral damage.
But why is Jack telling me all of this? Is this is the part where he tells me that I’m getting canned for trying to defile the stepdaughter he finally reconnected with and loves so much; where three years of law school goes down the toilet because I let my dick do all my thinking for me?
“You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all of this.”
I answer with a shrug that says “kind of,” and a simultaneous stomach clench.
He starts chuckling lightly. “I’m not going to pretend that Reese is a sweet little girl. She was a holy terror when she was six and she’s still wild, though she seems to have settled down quite a bit since I brought her down from Jacksonville.”
Not that much, based on last night’s pool incident. “She does love red paint,” I dare to bring up.
His chuckle deepens. “You should have seen her, splattered head to toe like some scene out of Dexter, sitting in the police station interrogation room. I’m glad she called me when she did, even if it was to bail her out. Surprised, actually. I called Barry on the way up to Jacksonville because I couldn’t believe Annabelle hadn’t forced him to help keep her reputation from getting smeared by a daughter with a criminal record. That’s when I found out that they divorced two years ago. We had a good talk.” Jack’s eyes drift off out the window, as if catching up with the past. “Anyway, I saw my trip to Jacksonville as my chance to make amends.” A frown zigzags across his forehead. “Reese is shrewd. So is her mother. She can also be quite selfish and spiteful. Again, like Annabelle. She’s passionate, and that gets her into trouble more often than not. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to her about accountability and control and consequences, while trying to treat her like a responsible adult. Hence the Harley.” There’s a pause. “Her dad rode a bike; did she tell you that?”
I shake my head.
“She always talked about getting one, just like him. Even as young as six.”
Huh . . . The mystery that is Reese is starting to unfold. “Daddy’s little girl?”
Jack snorts. “Through and through. It sounds like she spent a lot of time with him before he left her. Broke that little girl’s heart when he did.” He heaves a sigh. “She was still asking where Daddy was every night a year later, when they moved in with me. When he’d come back. Why he didn’t come back for her. That broke my heart.”
“Yeah, she mentioned something about him the other day.”
Jack turns to regard me with an arched brow for a long moment. “Really? She doesn’t normally.”
“What ever happened to him?”
Jack shrugs. “He dumped her in a diner and took off. He had a record. I guess he didn’t want to go to jail for kidnapping. As far as I know, he never tried to get in contact with Annabelle again, but she was pretty tight-lipped about anything to do with her first marriage.” He pauses for a moment. “Whatever happened, I don’t think Annabelle ever recovered from it, and it has made her a bitter woman. When I heard what happened to Reese, warning bells went off inside my head. I don’t want her to end up like her mother, breaking some poor shmuck’s heart because some idiot first broke hers. That’s how people get into trouble.”
“She sure does like trouble,” I agree softly.
Twisting his mouth, he adds, “And I don’t doubt that you were no match for whatever she was up to last night that made you dare drop her off on my doorstep at six in the morning.”
The sudden change in topic startles me. It brings with it the memory of Reese’s svelte, naked silhouette and I have to duck my head, for fear of Jack reading the vulgar thoughts coursing through my mind.
“Look. You know my policy here on interoffice relationships. I have them in place for a good reason. I’ve lost more than one good employee due to emotional messes. I told you all of this to help you understand that Reese is a passionate, emotional young woman who’s finally on the right track. I won’t let her fall apart because of a soured romance with one of my lawyers.”
“I’m not looking for a relationship,” I promise him, hands held up in surrender.
That earns me a stern glare. “Well, I can guarantee you that I don’t approve of what else you may be looking for, Ben. I can only imagine the kind of workplace experiences you’ve become accustomed to, given your previous employment.”
I open my mouth to deny his assumptions, to explain that Cain would have fired my ass and crippled me had he heard I screwed around with his dancers while working there, but Jack puts his hand up to silence me. “Your position at Warner is safe. For now. Reese says you two are just friends and I have no reason to believe otherwise. Yet.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Mason has even corroborated it. We both know how much of a stickler he is on following the rules.”
“Yup. He sure is.” The guy’s like a programmed robot. He gets all flustered when he has to function outside of them.
Giving the stubble on his cheek a rub, Jack muses, “I liken Reese to a wild horse that’s become accustomed to humans. She’ll tolerate you, she may even come close to you, she’ll certainly bewitch you, but you never know exactly what she’s going to do next. She has trust issues that run deep.”
“She trusted a guy enough to marry him,” I remind him.
“After six weeks . . . and look where that got the crazy girl,” he mutters. “That wasn’t about trust. That was about needing to feel loved. About someone choosing her, making her come first. Everyone who was supposed to make her the priority had failed, leaving her lying on the ground to figure out how to pick herself back up. Her father, Annabelle, me . . . and then that joker she married.”
I wonder if Jack knows that said joker is now living in Miami and Reese is on a mission for revenge. Based on the fake boyfriend deal she cornered me into, I don’t think she’s gotten enough payback. Whatever else she has planned, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.
“The poor girl has felt rejection over and over again.” Taking a seat once again, Jack steeples his fingers in front of his face and says in a calm, cautionary tone, “If anything were to happen between the two of you and then fall apart, I will choose her. I don’t care how good of a lawyer or friend to Mason you are. She will be my priority. Am I clear?”
“Got it.” He’ll fire my ass if I hurt her in any way, shape, or form. Luckily, she seems to be interested in me for only one thing and it’s the kind of thing I can readily give her.
With a slight nod, he leans back in his chair. “I’d like this little conversation to stay between the two of us, if you don’t mind. Reese doesn’t take well to being told she can’t do something and I don’t want to give her a reason to feel she needs to start rebelling against me.”
“It won’t ever come up.”
“Good. Now get out of here.”
With a quick salute, I jump up, gladly accepting my get-out-of-jail-free card.