Love Proof (Laws of Attraction)

Thirty-eight

It was different this time when Joe opened the door to his room. Instead of the two of them rushing into each other’s arms, Sarah moved to the bed alone. She kicked off her shoes, then pulled out the pillows from beneath the bedspread and fluffed them against the headboard. She propped herself up on one of them and waited while Joe removed his own shoes, his coat and tie, then joined her on the bed.

Sarah draped her closest leg over Joe’s. “Okay, go,” she told him. “Don’t leave anything out.”

“I let him gloat for a while,” Joe said. “That seemed important. He wanted to make sure I understood how clever he was.”

“Good,” Sarah said. Letting an opponent bask in some momentary triumph was always a good foundation for then chipping away at his victory.

“He wanted information from me,” Joe continued. “How long it had been going on, whether I thought Chapman suspected, but you know me.”

“You didn’t say a thing.”

“Nope. Then after a while, once he’d talked enough, I finally told him he’d convinced me—I’d have to leave the case.”

Sarah had been expecting that. It made strategic sense.

“I told him it might take me a day or two to find a replacement,” Joe said, “but that I’d be gone sometime this week.”

“So Felix shows up day after tomorrow,” Sarah said, “you’re gone, and Sollers thinks he won.”

“Yep.”

“Then you quit the firm at the same time and hope you’re out of there before the indictments get served.”

“That’s the plan,” Joe said.

Sarah nodded. “Good. I think you handled it right.” And she meant it. He’d done the right thing—for him.

But now came the hard part.

“I quit, too.”

Joe rounded on her. “You what?”

“I sent an e-mail to Calvin. I told him I have to leave the case.”

“Why?” Joe roared. “Sarah, are you crazy? Why would you do that? Why didn’t you at least wait to talk to me?”

“Because I knew you’d try to talk me out of it.”

“Damn right I would have!” Joe ran a hand over his tired face. “Sarah, you didn’t have to do that. All it takes is for one of us to quit—you know that. Sollers got what he wanted. So why would you throw away your job, too?”

“Because it’s already over,” Sarah said. “You understand that guy as well as I do. He’d always keep this hanging over my head—our little secret. Then one day he’d use it against me when he thought he could get some advantage in the case.”

She looked him intensely in the eyes, willing him to understand. “Joe, I actually have a viable defense in this case. Something I came up with that nobody else has. Do you think I’m going to jeopardize that for the client just so I can hide something about my personal life?”

Joe groaned. “There has to be some other solution.”

“There isn’t,” Sarah said. “Believe me, I thought it through for hours and hours this afternoon. But I kept coming back to the same thing: I’m not going to be one of those people who pretends the law doesn’t apply to me. Look what happened to the partners in our firm—is that the kind of lawyers we want to be?”

“This is a hell of a lot different, Sarah, and you know it.”

“You’re right, it is different. But the fact is, Joe, we got caught. We’ve been doing something that is technically, ethically wrong, and now there’s a price to pay for that. And I’m willing to pay it.”

“Tell me how this is different from what I did after my mother died,” Joe said.

“What?” The comparison made no sense.

“Me punishing myself for not being there. And look how I did it—by pushing you away. Do you think that was smart?”

“No,” she said carefully, “I think it was dumbest thing you’ve ever done in your life. But I’m not punishing myself by pushing you away. I want to pull you toward me, Joe. A night like tonight? I want that all the time. No more of this sneaking around, waiting for someone like Ryan Sollers to snap a few pictures of us and hold them over our heads. I want what we had before. I want a redo. I think I’m entitled.”

Joe shook his head, but she could see a light glimmering somewhere in his eyes. She was getting through to him—she knew it.

“Do you remember that Negotiation class I took?”

Now it was Joe’s turn to seem confused. “Yes, but what—”

“It has everything to do with this,” she answered before he could finish. “The professor—that guy Shefter—told us the most important thing in any negotiation is to understand our bottom line. Then to pile on a whole basket of terms we don’t actually care about, so we can start giving them away, one by one.

“So I asked myself that this afternoon,” Sarah continued. “What is my bottom line? What can I absolutely not give away? And I came up with two things.”

She shifted position now, kneeling on either side of his thighs. “One of them is the interests of my client—I’m never going to sacrifice that. And the other one is you, Joe. You have to know that now.”

He shook his head. “Henley . . . ”

“That’s right,” Sarah said. “It is Henley to you. Because right now I’m thinking like your opponent. But in a few minutes, I’m going to start acting like your lover again, so if you have anything else of a lawyer-like nature to say to me, you’d better say it right now.”

“So it’s already done,” Joe said. “You’ve already sent the e-mail, there’s no room for interpretation.”

“No. I think the phrase, ‘have to remove myself from this case due to a personal conflict of interest’ is going to be pretty clear once Calvin discusses it with Mickey.”

“You’re sure about this,” Joe said.

“I’m sure this is how it is,” Sarah answered, “and now we’ll just have to see what happens.”

“I had a plan, you know,” Joe said.

“I’m sure you did.” She shifted one knee, then another, crawling higher up toward his hips. “Anything else, Burke?”

“I think you’re beautiful. And smart. And sexy as hell. And I agree you’re entitled to a redo. But Sarah, if we’re in this together, then we’re in this together. I still wish you’d talked to me about it first.”

“I couldn’t,” Sarah said. “It wasn’t in my client’s interests. And I was still their attorney as of this evening, which meant it wasn’t any of your business what I did. Now that’s all I’m saying about it for the rest of the night. Off-duty. Do you want me or not?”

Joe moved so quickly it shocked the breath from her lungs. He flipped her over onto her back and had her beneath him in a second, his knees pinning her hips instead.

“So I’m part of your bottom line?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“That could be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Then I must be a very cold woman.”

“Far from it,” Joe said, then he set about to prove it.

***

Joe dropped her back at her hotel around five o’clock in the morning. He grumbled about the two of them having to leave his warm bed, but Sarah convinced him fairly quickly that she was already back to business mode and it might be dangerous to stand in her way.

He parked at side of the hotel closest to her room, and left the car idling while he gave her a proper kiss.

“You’ll be all right today?”

Sarah nodded. Already her stomach was twisting at the thought of what messages awaited her. She had deliberately left her phone off the night before. But now it was time to hear everyone’s reactions to the e-mail she’d sent out.

“Are you flying home tonight?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know yet.” She kissed him one more time, then got out and prepared to go to work.

Back in her room, she booted up her laptop and turned on her phone.

Mickey had called her four times.

“You’d better be joking, Sarah.”

“Sarah, call me back right away.”

“Where are you—with him? Call me back, damn it.”

“Do you understand I did you a favor? How do you think this makes me look? You can’t keep your legs together for five min—”

She stopped listening after that.

There was a series of e-mails from the associates on her team. Questions about what was going on, what they were supposed to do now, what the status of the case was, who should take over which of her assignments . . .

A short e-mail from Calvin stating simply, “I’ll expect you to meet with me immediately upon your return. Please notify my secretary of the time.”

Sarah felt tired already. She hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, but she was used to that by now. What she needed, she decided, was coffee—and strong, not just what she could brew up on the hotel coffee maker.

So she donned her warmest layers, including the hat and gloves she bought with Joe what seemed like months ago instead of weeks, and took off in the pre-dawn for the two-block walk to a Starbucks. She wanted to feel the cold air on her face and the long stretch of her limbs on a brisk walk as much as she wanted the caffeine.

The first few sips of the dark roast hit her like a mallet and alerted her mind that it had better shift into a higher gear for what Sarah expected of it that day. She walked back, sipping along the way, warming her hands on the cup, and by the time she returned to her room felt better ready to face the onslaught.

She had learned over the years not to give people options or to ask for permission when she’d already made up her mind. Not to say, “Would it be okay . . . ?” when what she really meant was, “I’m doing X.” Letting people think they still had a chance to change her mind only led to fruitless, frustrating conversations. It was one of the reasons she hadn’t consulted Joe before sending out her e-mail. She had already decided it was the right thing to do.

So instead of writing back to her team, “Would one of you be able to take over for me immediately, and fly to Spokane tonight for tomorrow’s deposition?” she wrote, “One of you needs to fly to Spokane tonight. Please make this arrangement among yourselves and book the plane ticket immediately. I will not be attending Wednesday’s deposition.”

Sarah sat back and looked at the e-mail before sending it off. She knew she had to be very careful with her words from now on. Every one of them would be scrutinized by someone—maybe even by the ethics committee of the Bar at some point. She was willing to face the consequences of her behavior, but she saw no reason to make her situation worse.

With that in mind, she deleted the last line, and changed it to, “Let me know as soon as possible who will be attending Wednesday’s deposition.” Joe had had the right attitude about not leaving the case or his firm until his colleague Felix could take over. Sarah couldn’t abandon the client, no matter what. She would have to wait until she knew for certain some other lawyer had taken her place.

She pressed Send, then checked the clock. The morning was already flying. She still needed to eat, shower, and dress for the morning’s deposition.

A text popped onto her phone.

Are you there?

It looked like Mickey was awake.

Sarah thought about what she might say: Thanks for everything; thanks for getting me that opportunity; I’m sorry it didn’t work out; I’m sorry.

A text wasn’t going to do it. A phone call probably wouldn’t, either.

Sarah left the phone on the desk and went to take a shower.

***

“Good morning.” Ryan Sollers seemed especially cheerful. “So nice to see you today, Sarah.”

“Oh, you, too, Ryan,” Sarah said just as cheerfully. She greeted the court reporter more sincerely, then sat and unpacked her laptop.

“Sleep all right?” Ryan asked.

“It’s so nice of you to be concerned,” Sarah said.

Ryan grinned. He seemed to think there was no reason to hide how much he was enjoying himself.

Joe entered a few minutes later with a woman around Sarah’s mother’s age. She had short wiry hair that looked like it had never met a brush.

While Ryan began his seduction—“Can I get you anything, Ms. O’Connor? Coffee? Water? Are you comfortable? How’s the temperature in here?”—Sarah refreshed her e-mail. There were already several from the associates.

The one named Bingham—the one Calvin had already mentioned would take over for Sarah if and when there were more depositions in the new year—had arranged a flight to Spokane that would arrive that night.

So Sarah was off the hook.

Or, put another way, she thought, she was now officially out of work.

She only half-listened while Sollers quizzed Joe’s client about every aspect of her hair routine. About every single flammable item near where she set her hair iron down. One by one, methodically going through the instruction manual, all while pretending to have a pleasant conversation.

Sarah had harder things to think about. She had been putting it off until just this moment, when the final piece was in place, but now she knew she had face the next step:

She was about to be poor again.

She had negotiated a good salary with Calvin. And had been frugal with it, not spending wildly just because she had money again, but instead dutifully paying down her debts.

But now she would be back to the bare bones again. Trying to budget for her rent, car expenses, groceries, utilities. Forget any of the Flourish like workouts with Angie or sending money to her parents. Sarah would have to draw in tightly now, defend her borders, and not let a single cent out of her fortress unless it was absolutely necessary and she could justify it.

She mentally reviewed her bank accounts. How much did she still have in savings? She had depleted the fund substantially over the six months she was out of work, and had only put back a little in these past two months. How much longer would it last? And if the money ran out before she found another job—then what?

If she could find another job. What were the chances now? It wasn’t as if Calvin would send her off with a glowing letter of recommendation . . .

“Ms. Henley?”

Sarah didn’t realize how far she’d drifted away until she heard Joe say her name. “Do you have any questions?” he asked.

She startled back into action. Smiled at Joe’s client, went through the motions of asking her a few handfuls of questions.

Once again, they were finished much earlier than if Chapman had been running the deposition. Sarah had at least three hours before she had to return for the one in the afternoon.

She repacked her laptop, then left the room without saying anything to anyone. She needed to make lists. Plan. Think through how she was going to live now, from the moment her plane touched down at LAX tonight.

Change her flight, too—she needed to do that. She wouldn’t be going on to Spokane tonight. A whole list of actions she could tick off one by one.

She unlocked the door to her room and stood just inside for a few moments, wondering which task she should tackle first. But a lethargy had already begun seeping into her bones, and the tiredness overwhelmed her.

Sarah pulled back the covers on the bed, pried off her shoes, then slipped between the sheets still wearing her expensive wool suit. It had been easy to be brave and principled last night when she explained all her motives to Joe. But now that she was alone again, she had to wonder whether she had done the right thing—for her.

“I’m not going to be one of those people who pretends the law doesn’t apply to me,” she’d told Joe. “Look what happened to the partners in our firm—is that the kind of lawyers we want to be?”

She knew what kind of lawyer she wanted to be—what she’d wanted from the moment she ever decided to become a lawyer in the first place. Back then she had an image of her future self wearing fancy clothes just like these, feeling strong and smart and capable, feeling confident and in charge of her life, unafraid and in total control.

And she had experienced moments just like that, Sarah thought—enough that the young dreamer inside her felt proud of all she had been able to accomplish.

But that young woman hadn’t factored in Joe Burke. Hadn’t factored in love. Hadn’t realized that at some point Sarah might have to make a choice between her personal life and her professional one.

Well, now she’d made the choice. And her dream of being a happy, successful lawyer might have disappeared in the bargain.

Sarah indulged in that melodramatic, self-pitying thought for one whole, luxurious minute before groaning and making herself sit up. She got out of the bed and went to her laptop case to retrieve a legal pad from the side. Then she sat back against the pillows, pulled the sheets over her cold legs, and began to make her list.

Change plane reservation.

Schedule meeting with Calvin.

Prepare final report and case analysis.

Sarah heard the dings of two text messages in quick succession.

The first was from Mickey:

I assume you warned him?

The second from Joe:

It’s happened.