chapter 4
SAMANTHA OWENS REGRETTED signing a one-year lease on the small office in downtown Columbus. Apparently the previous tenant, a new-age marriage counselor of some sort, had offered more services to her male clientele than just marital advice. Since Sam had moved into the office two months earlier, hardly a day had passed without some guy walking in to request an appointment…for counseling. Their enthusiasm and desire for “counseling” peaked when they saw Sam.
She was a thirty-five-year-old recent divorcée who was trying to put her life back together, and thanks to her mama’s genes, she didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Sam had moved to Columbus, Mississippi, from Tupelo in hopes of a clean start. Her ex-husband had made the last eight years of her life miserable. She had been a victim of abuse from a scheming, well-connected, old-moneyed bastard who had orchestrated every advantage available to hide assets and influence the judge so that, after ten years of marriage, she was left with little more than her car. Sam was glad simply to get out, but she was upset that her husband had walked away financially unscathed due to questionable legal maneuvers and quite possibly judicial manipulation. All she had wanted was an equitable settlement. What she got was shafted.
With her law degree from the University of Mississippi and recent admittance to the bar, she was anxious to get to work. As one of the oldest in her class, she considered her age an advantage—more life experience and such. After the bad marriage, her success in law school had helped her regain most of her self-esteem and self-reliance. Sam was now hell-bent on helping others, and although she might not admit it, she wanted a little payback on her ex-husband.
Taking the vacated office space of a high-dollar call girl posing as a marriage counselor wasn’t in her plan, but she didn’t have the cash to break the lease and move. Apparently the local married-male population really appreciated marriage counseling, and word had not spread successfully that their favorite counselor had been run out of town by a pack of angry wives. Sam and the secretary, whom she could barely afford, finally found the humor in the situation and began handing out business cards to the men with instructions to give the cards to their spouses. Confused looks followed.
Sam needed clients, and each time the door opened, her hopes rose. More often than not, she was disappointed. She joined the local Rotary Club to network, but they met only once a month. Yesterday she’d had one appointment, and although she was giving this one client world-class treatment, the project wasn’t going to generate many billable hours. Ole Miss Law had taught her to understand and apply the law but not how to generate clients. Last month she had scraped together enough cash to buy commercials on a local cable-television channel. Freshly filmed and quickly edited, the commercials had been running for almost three weeks, with very limited trackable results. She could afford one more week.
Samantha Owens said a silent prayer that her efforts would translate into business.