Love Proof (Laws of Attraction)

Thirty-two

She couldn’t keep away from him for long, she realized. She needed physical contact with him, needed whatever reassurance she could gain from tucking her feet under his thighs, from having him reach out and hold her hand.

“Tell me what you know,” Joe said, and she did.

When she finished, he said, “That’s only part of it.”

“Then tell me the whole thing,” Sarah said. “Don’t make me guess.” She understood how Angie felt earlier in the day, trying to drag the information out of Sarah one question at a time.

Joe pulled Sarah’s legs over his lap and wrapped his arms around them. Apparently he needed more physical contact for the conversation, too, Sarah thought. It reminded her of how they used to be when they studied together. They sometimes sat just like this, like puppies in a pile, each reading their own books and notes until it was time to take a break and engage in something far less intellectual and much more fun. Then back to the books.

“It started this summer,” Joe said. “One of the lawyers in our office quit, and someone needed to take over his cases. I’d just settled a big class action suit, so I had the time.

“I knew Milton,” he said, referring to Al Milton, one of the two head partners in the firm, “but I’d never worked with him before. He always worked with a particular set of associates who were more senior than I was. But there was a lot going on in the case at the time—motions, depositions, huge discovery output—and he must have figured he could use someone like me on the periphery without really involving me in the case as a whole. It was a big risk. And now it’s about to blow up in his face.”

“Too much background,” Sarah said impatiently. “Tell me what happened.”

“What happened was I had to cover the deposition of one of our plaintiffs,” Joe said. “He was this optometrist from San Diego, very aggressive, pugnacious guy, and as soon as the deposition was over he took me aside and asked me where his money was.”

“What money?”

“He said he was late on his car payment. I told him that was unfortunate, but what did he want me to do about it? He said I’d better pull out my phone and call Milton and tell him to send the goddamn money today. It was the third month in a row he was late.”

“Wait a minute,” Sarah said. “So your firm was making this guy’s car payment? You can’t do that, can you?”

“No. We’re not supposed to have any financial dealings with a client, other than giving him the recovery from a case,” Joe said. “But it wasn’t just the car. The firm was also covering a lot of his other expenses, and the guy was tired of waiting for his money.”

“So what did you tell him?”

“I pretended I knew all about it,” Joe said. “I asked him for a list of everything he was owed, I wrote it down, and said I’d call Milton that night. Then I told him how sorry I was for any inconvenience, especially since Milton said this guy was our top client and I was supposed to treat him like a king and give him whatever he wanted.”

“Did the guy buy it?”

“You bet,” Joe said. “Probably because it was exactly what he wanted to hear. So then I took him out for a very expensive meal and lots of liquor, and I was the best listener you’ve ever seen. The guy never stopped talking.

“Speaking of food,” Joe said, patting her leg, “I need some. I worked through lunch. Can we take a five-minute break here?”

“Sure.” Sarah swung her legs off his lap and moved toward the kitchen to reheat their dinner.

She felt easier now—so much easier she realized she was actually hungry herself. Even though Joe’s story made her feel anxious, she could tell from the way he was telling it that she didn’t need to worry about him—not the way she had. He was clean, she felt sure of it. And that mattered more to her than anything.

Joe joined her in the kitchen and wrapped his arms around her from behind while she transferred food into microwavable dishes.

“This seems familiar,” he said, kissing the back of her neck.

Sarah had had the same thought. She started the microwave, then twisted around to face him. They were both expert at making the most of a five-minute break. It was something they practiced often as they studied for finals.

Joe untied her sweater and immediately slipped a hand underneath her cami.

“No bra,” he murmured. “Thank you.” He teased his thumb over her already erect nipple and let his other hand drift down her back and inside the waistband of her pants. “Nothing here, either,” he observed. “Very thoughtful.” Then he pushed her pants past her hips.

Sarah had dressed for her own comfort, not his—especially since the last thing on her mind when she dressed for her confrontation with him was that they might end up in her kitchen just like this—but now she was happy for the convenience. She had just widened her legs so he could explore further, when the microwave dinged.

“Hold,” she said breathily as she dragged her mouth away from his, hating that she had to trade out the dishes and hit start again before she could let Joe resume, too. But the pause only lasted seconds.

She undid his belt and pulled open the buttons on his jeans. Then she glanced at the timer on the microwave. “Two more minutes.”

“Go for it,” Joe growled, and Sarah reached in to stroke him at the same time his fingers worked their charms on her. When the microwave dinged again, Sarah pulled away from him, feeling completely disheveled and keyed up, and smiled as she tugged her shirt down and her pants back up.

Joe groaned, but he knew the rules. He left his jeans unbuttoned and pulled his T-shirt over the top. Sarah assumed it was the best he could do at the moment.

She made him sit at the table rather than risk lasagna sauce on her white couch. They were both still breathing hard, but that was part of the game. She pulled her chair up close to Joe’s so she could still drape one leg over his. He rested his hand on her shin, and the two of them ate while he continued his story.

“Turns out we employed his whole family,” Joe said.

“What do you mean?”

“His mother, brother, sister-in-law, a few cousins—all of them on the firm payroll, all of them repeat plaintiffs in a whole variety of class action suits. He told me Milton would call them up, tell them which stocks to buy in which tech companies, then the firm would send them out the money to cover the cost of the investment.”

“Totally illegal,” Sarah said.

“Completely,” Joe confirmed. “Then once the stock went down, the firm would file a lawsuit immediately, and start paying for these people’s monthly expenses to keep them happy while they went through the whole process of litigation.”

“Why?” Sarah asked. “Your firm seems like it has plenty of work. Why would Milton gamble like that?”

“Because there’s huge money in it,” Joe said. “With these class action suits, if you’re the first to file, you usually end up as the lead attorney, which means you get the bulk of the fees. So Milton created a stable of plaintiffs, always ready to go. It brought him in millions every year.”

Sarah shook her head. “It still doesn’t seem worth it.”

“To you,” Joe pointed out. “But some of these guys . . . they just don’t know when to stop. They need five beach houses, not just four, they need two yachts, two private jets—it gets crazy.”

Sarah thought of her own bank account at one time, with its balance of $4.32. All she had ever wanted was security—to have enough. Even her Flourish list was laughably modest, compared to the kinds of things Joe was talking about. She just didn’t understand the mentality of someone like Milton, who would risk prison and the loss of his law license just to buy himself another jet.

“So now you had all that information,” Sarah said. “Now what?”

Joe took his time scraping up the last of his lasagna before leaning back and looking at her.

“Well, that’s where you come in.”

“Me?”

“You have to know I followed everything that happened to you last April.”

Sarah set down her fork. “Oh.” She’d suddenly lost her appetite. She had the feeling she wasn’t going to like what she was about to hear next.

She slid her leg off Joe’s lap and then took him by the hand, leading him back into the living room. She pulled the faux-fur blanket off the back of the couch and laid it over both of them as she curled up next to him again.

“Okay,” she said, “go.”

“I know it was a nightmare for you,” Joe said. “You don’t know how many times I thought about contacting you, saying something . . . ”

“I wouldn’t have wanted you to,” Sarah said, knowing it was true. She would have felt even more humiliated—and more of a failure—than she already did if Joe had suddenly reappeared. It would have compounded her misery a hundredfold.

“I figured,” Joe said. “That’s why I didn’t. But Sarah, I thought about you all the time. Not just then, but in all the years since law school. You know that, don’t you?”

Sarah looked down. She felt a hardness in her throat. But she wrapped her fingers around Joe’s and forced herself to look up again. She kissed him softly on the lips, the same way he’d kissed her that afternoon in the mountain medical clinic. Then she smiled. “Go on. Don’t distract me.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. “I didn’t want to go through that,” he said. “The feds rushing in, the whole firm collapsing around me. So I took steps.”

“Steps,” Sarah said. “Such as?”

“I wrote a memo. A long one. To Milton and the other partners. I laid out in detail everything the optometrist had told me, and everything I found once I started investigating on my own. Now that I knew the names of all his family members, I could find them in the firm’s files. They’d been on the payroll for years. So I put that in the memo, too. Then I sent it.”

“Why did you do it that way?” Sarah asked. “What did you think it would get you?”

“Some protection, for one thing,” Joe said, “in case anyone wanted to accuse me of being involved. But I also had at least a slim hope that none of the other partners knew what Milton was up to, and they’d crack down on him and do something about it.”

“But they didn’t, I assume.”

“No, they cracked down on me instead.”

“What happened?” Sarah asked.

“Purgatory.”

Sarah drew back and looked into his face. “Wait a minute—that’s why you were on the road?”

“Yep.”

“I remember I asked you if they were trying to make you quit.”

“Right,” Joe said. “And they were. They were afraid to fire me, but if they gave me the world’s crappiest assignment—”

“Traveling from city to city with Paul Chapman—”

Joe smiled. “And then you showed up. From then on, it was perfect.”

“Somehow I doubt you felt that way at first,” Sarah said. “Not with the way I was treating you.”

“I didn’t care,” he answered. “You could be as hostile as you wanted. I was just so happy to be with you again.”

Sarah shook her head. And thought of what she’d said to Angie about returning after that first, excruciating workout: What can I say? I obviously love pain.

No, Angie had corrected her, it’s because you commit.

Was that what this was? Sarah wondered, looking at Joe. Had he really been so happy to see her he was willing to put up with two months of her anger before finally breaking through it only the week before? Or was it just the natural outcome of the two of them being thrown together again, day after day, week after week, until finally Sarah’s defenses wore down?

She didn’t like to think of it that way, but she also didn’t want to blindly romanticize the situation. The truth was, if she had never taken that job with Mickey’s firm, she and Joe would have continued along their separate paths and probably never seen each other again.

“Red?”

“What?”

“You have that look. What’s going on in that clever brain of yours?”

“You don’t want to know,” she said.

“I always do.” He loosened his grip on her waist so she could turn to face him. “Tell me. I’m done with all these secrets.”

“Then why did you keep this one?” she asked quietly. “Why didn’t you tell me yourself? You think I liked hearing about it from Mickey today?”

“I couldn’t say anything,” Joe answered. “I’m a witness now—a star witness, they tell me.”

“Who tells you?”

“The U.S. Attorney’s office. One of the paralegals at my firm saw the memo and turned it over to a friend of hers who works there. Next thing I knew, I got a call, then had a meeting, then more phone calls . . . and now I’m at the top of their list to testify. Which should keep me in the news for a little while.”

“Is that what you meant when you said it’s about to get worse?”

“That’s part of it,” Joe said. “It’s also about trying to time everything perfectly so I get out before the indictments, but land a new job before I’m branded a snitch. It’s tricky times, Red.”

“Don’t make a joke out of this.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m just stating the facts.”

“Well explain this fact to me, then,” she said. “Why haven’t you quit yet? What are you doing still hanging around that place? Is the U.S. Attorney making you stay?”

“No, I can leave anytime.”

“Then, why haven’t you? Do you not understand what’s at stake here?”

“No, what’s at stake?” he asked calmly.

“Your career. Your reputation. You can’t go down with that ship, Joe. You saw what happened with me—I didn’t work again for six months.”

“I’m not worried about it,” he said.

“Well, you should be.”

“Something will come along.”

Sarah groaned in frustration. “How can you say that? You don’t know.”

“I’ve already had one offer.”

“Well, then you should take it!”

“I can’t,” Joe said. “The offer expired last month.”

Sarah stared at him, confused. “But why? How could you let it go?”

Joe tilted his head and gave her a look she knew too well. It was a look that said, You know the answer here, Red. Think about it.

“No,” she said. “You didn’t . . . . You didn’t let it go because of me.”

“I told you I have a strategy,” he said. “Why do you think I’ve spent the last two months traveling with you almost every day? Why do you think I stayed behind at Thanksgiving? Why have I been handing over all my cases to other people in the firm, but holding on to this one?”

Her throat felt dry, but she forced herself to answer. “Because you’re crazy.”

“No,” Joe said, “it’s because I’m not stupid. And I know a second chance when I see one. I’m not quitting this case or leaving the firm until I know: are you with me, Sarah? Have I done enough to convince you that I still love you and I wish I’d never let you go?”