The elevator doors slide silently open, and I step into the marbled foyer of Knight & Payne. The front-desk receptionist, Amanda, looks up at me with surprise.
“Welcome back, Emma,” she says sweetly.
“Thanks,” I say flatly. I don’t want to be here, but I figured if my dad’s back at work, and he had a broken heart so to speak, then I could do the same.
Amanda sniffs at my rebuff and turns her attention back to her computer screen.
I, on the other hand, hitch my shoulders back and head into The Pit.
Rather than turning left to wind my way through the desks to get to my own, I spare a brief glance to see my dad sitting behind his desk, and then turn right. I follow the perimeter of the room, not looking anywhere but the direction I’m walking. When I reach the adjacent wall, I turn left and walk straight toward Midge’s office.
Her secretary looks up from her desk as I approach, a cool smile on her face.
“Can I help you?” she asks pleasantly.
“Nope,” I say and glide right past her. Taking the doorknob to Midge’s office firmly in hand, I turn it and push the door open while her secretary scrambles up from her desk, saying in a frantic voice, “You can’t go in there without an invite.”
Midge is at her desk and her head slowly rises to look at who would dare intrude into her personal space. Her secretary comes in right behind me and says, “I’m so sorry. She just barged right in. Shall I call security?”
I roll my eyes, but I don’t spare her a glance. Instead, I walk right up to one of Midge’s guest chairs and plop down in one. I set my briefcase on the floor and look at Midge expectantly.
Midge stares back at me for a thoughtful moment, her face exquisitely blank. I brace for her to throw me out, but her gaze slides past me and over my shoulder where she says to her secretary, “It’s fine. You can leave us.”
When I hear the door close behind me, Midge finally looks back to me and says, “Welcome back, Emma. It’s about time.”
“I’m not here to stay,” I say curtly and bend to the side to reach into the side pocket of my briefcase. I pull a piece of paper out and hand it across the desk to her. “This is where I want a job. I want you to handle it for me as soon as possible.”
Midge cocks an eyebrow at me but takes the paper. She unfolds it, and her eyes do a quick scan of the printout. I’d been doing some in-depth searching and knew the exact place I wanted to go.
“Crowley and Padrick,” she muses as she looks back up at me. “You’ve done your homework.”
“You were classmates with Quentin Padrick,” I recite like a robot. “You did moot court together, served on law review, and graduated numbers one and two respectively from your law school class. You’ve worked on several cases together over the years, and I remember seeing him at the Christmas party.”
“Well done,” she praises me, but it doesn’t ring genuine. “So you think I have enough influence with him to land you a job there?”
“I think you have enough influence to do anything you set your mind to,” I offer praise back to her.
She gives a tinkling laugh of appreciation, but then her demeanor turns shrewd. She leans forward, puts her elbows on the desk, and steeples her fingers in front of her face as she looks at me. “That law firm is about as far from Raleigh as you can get without crossing over into Tennessee.”
“It is,” I agree.
“You’re running far, far away, aren’t you?” she taunts me.
“I consider it a necessary career change, and one that was promised to me if I helped Evan out,” I offer back.
“I get it,” she says smoothly. “You know Evan will come back here after the tour, and you’re conceited enough to think he might come looking for you.”
My jaw drops as anger courses through me. “I have no such thoughts—”
“Then why are you leaving?”
I’m prepared for this, because I knew she and my dad would think I was running away from Evan. “As it turns out, your nephew did have one positive impact on me. He taught me that I could do so much more as an attorney than I thought. So I chose Crowley and Padrick because they have a heavy mergers and acquisitions practice. That’s contract heavy, but there is also a good deal of negotiations that occur. I consider it an upward move for my career, and it lets me expand upon my newfound confidence and skills.”
Midge sits up straight as she gives an amused chuckle. She claps her hands repeatedly and says, “Oh, very well done, Emma. I’d say Evan did quite a bit for you.”
I don’t respond because I’ve already given him all the credit he’s due.