The Deposit Slip

17





Jessie drove the dark road in silence. She usually listened to the radio when she drove. Here, outside of Ashley, fifteen minutes of searching hadn’t yielded a single station that suited her. She finally gave up and focused on watching for the next turn on her drive to the Larson farm. Besides, it gave her time to think things over.

This whole thing was moving quickly out of control. When Jared had told her his plans for her to stay with Erin, her first silent reaction was anger—serious anger. But she held her peace and said she understood. It was Jared she didn’t understand.

Jessie had spent most of her twenties working with lawyers. Most attorneys ranged a narrow spectrum from the banal to the boring—usually predictable, seldom interesting. At Paisley, they all thought themselves interesting because they were driven and ambitious. But ambition wasn’t interesting. Ambition just had its own standards of conformity and conventionality.

Jared was that rarity for Jessie—an unpredictable attorney. Jessie didn’t really know many unpredictable men. She’d always been good at forecasting how they would react to things. Jared was less easy to calculate. And in the years she had worked with him, Jared had never yet seriously disappointed her in how he treated a client—another rarity at Paisley. But she’d never figured out its source.

Still, integrity, unpredictability: neither of these attributes were what really attracted Jessie to Jared. Jared was attractive because he was unfinished.

She’d had her share of suitors in the halls of Paisley. She was young and she knew she was pretty enough. They were drawn to her energy, as well as her utter lack of awe around the power brokers.

But Jared was different. He’d worked the long hours, serving his mentor, Clay. But his ambition was more raw, less self-conscious. In their quest for partnership, the others contorted themselves into icons of success to impress the partners. Jared withheld more of himself in the process, as though the money and status were a means, not an end. He was . . . unfinished.

The hand-lettered sign came into view in the headlights, and Jessie turned onto the gravel driveway. As the bright lights spotlighted the farmhouse amidst the glimpse of gray and brown fields, Jessie felt as though she were seeing a castle surrounded by a moat. Jared mentioned that Erin was lonely at this place growing up with her father. The isolation was palpable in that brief image.

Erin greeted Jessie at the door and welcomed her in. The client was courteous, slim—and very pretty, of course. She showed Jessie to the office that doubled as a guest room on the second floor, next to her own bedroom. Jessie stowed her bag before coming down to the kitchen, where Erin was making some decaf coffee.

Jessie apologized again for intruding, and Erin brushed it aside. After all, it saved costs, didn’t it? Jessie wondered for a moment whether she had any idea how rapidly Jared’s resources would disappear once the depositions began.

As she chatted with Erin over coffee at the kitchen table, Jessie searched for clues to Jared’s attraction to this client and her case. True, there was a hint of vulnerability—and a sincerity he would find appealing. It couldn’t be as simple as appearances, could it?

They chatted for nearly an hour. At last, when Erin offered Jessie more coffee, she declined, saying she needed to get to bed. Jessie excused herself and headed to the guest room.

All that—vulnerability, sincerity, beauty—was all too easy, she thought as she closed the bedroom door behind her. Jared wasn’t just attracted to this woman. He was putting everything on the line for her and in the process ignoring danger signs about the case. He may want to make some money on this, but he’d passed up rich cases before based on risk.

No, there was something special about this woman—or this case—to Jared. Sitting on the bed, the door closed, Jessie felt near to tears. She shook it off. Even alone, she seldom gave in to that reaction.

Maybe staying here was for the best. Maybe it would give Jessie the clue to understand what was really driving Jared. Before things were irretrievable. If they weren’t already so.