A Good Kind of Trouble (A Trouble in Twin Rivers Novel Book 1) (5 page)

“I’ll walk. It’s not that far.”

Ben stood and shook his head. “No, I’ll drive you to Dave and Kathleen’s.”

He worked with Kathleen’s husband Dave and the two were friends, so he knew the address. And he didn’t look like he would take no for an answer. “I have to go home and get Steve.”

“That’s fine,” Ben said. “I’d feel better if you weren’t out walking around alone.”

Lindsey was grateful for the sentiment. “Thank you, that would be nice.”
 

The short drive to Lindsey’s house, and then to the Hogans’, was quiet. The only sound was the jingling of Steve McQueen’s tags as he enjoyed the air rushing in the open window. Lindsey reached for the door handle as the car rolled to a stop in the driveway, but paused when she felt Ben’s hand on her arm.
 

“Has it occurred to you that you have a stalker?” he asked.

“I’m not an idiot. Yes, I think someone is doing all these things to me. But no one else thinks that. I’ll report this to the police and they’ll tell me that the newspaper office is in a bad part of town and these things happen.”

She shrugged and immediately regretted the motion, the pain in her shoulder reminding her of the earlier incident.
 

“They won’t take the report?”

“They take the report and nothing happens. They think I’m paranoid or making things up.”
 

She let herself and Steve out of the car and turned to thank Ben for the ride, only to find him getting out of the car, too. He grabbed her satchel and her hastily packed gym bag from the backseat and then walked up the front steps to the door. Lindsey followed, fishing her keys out of her purse, then unlocking the door.
 

“You stay here often?” Ben asked, as she entered the alarm code.
 

“Sometimes.” She didn’t want to admit how many times in the past few months she had found an excuse to stay over with her friends rather than go home.
 

“Where should I put your bags?”

She motioned down the hallway and Ben walked in the direction of the spare room, his tall frame filling the narrow hall. In the laundry room, Lindsey took Steve’s dog dish from a shelf and filled it with kibble. Maybe she was staying here too often. But what was the alternative? Staying at her house and waiting for her stalker to show up? Move—again?
 

She put the water and food outside the back door and let Steve into the yard. The dog lapped up some water, then jumped up onto the patio furniture and lay across the cushions, his tongue lolling and his tail wagging slowly. She sat next to him and scratched his head in the spot that made him smile and close his eyes.
 

She watched Ben open the sliding door from the living room and step out into the courtyard. This was where they had met the first time, at a party Dave and Kathleen had thrown. The yard had been crowded and lit with tiki torches and strings of festive lights that reflected off the pool. Kathleen had dragged her toward the fountain in the corner to introduce her to Dave’s colleague. He was tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, and when he shook her hand, the touch had taken her breath away.
 

That was before the disaster. Before everything went to hell. As usual.

Ben sat on an ottoman and faced Lindsey. His scrutiny made her shift uncomfortably.
 

“I’m okay now,” she said. “Don’t you have to go back to work?”
 

“Yes, I probably should get back to the office.” He didn’t look happy about that.
 

He leaned forward and took her hand in his, the touch sending a surge of energy through her.
 

“Look. I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you need to talk to the police about this.”
 

“I have talked to the police,” she said, frustration welling up inside her chest. “I have moved. I have changed my phone number—twice. I got a dog. I installed an alarm system. I report this stuff—and nothing changes.”
 

“Would it help if I went with you to report the mugging?”
 

She shook her head and pulled her hand from his. “I’m not reporting it. I’m not getting laughed at again.”
 

“But I was there. I was chased, too.”
 

“Then you report it,” she said, standing. That would be even worse, dragging him along to the police station so he could see the condescending looks and hear the doubt-filled questions. Her shoulder and neck muscles tensed even more at the thought. Ben had witnessed enough of her humiliation for one day.
 

Ben shook his head and stood. Steve jumped down from the settee, alert now.

“Set the alarm when I leave,” Ben said, walking back to the house. He paused at the door and gave her a long look. “Be careful.”
 

“Ben, wait,” Lindsey said. He stopped. “Thanks for the ride. And for getting me out of jail.”
 

He nodded. And then he left.

“Mr. Stanton was looking for you.”

Sharon’s voice had the sing-song cadence of a seasoned tattle-tale. Ben nodded toward his secretary but kept walking into his office. “New client,” he said. “Got tied up in court.”

“Well, which is it? You have a new client? Or you got tied up in court?” Sharon asked, her tone as pinched as her expression.
 

“Yes,” Ben said, closing the door to his office and ignoring the indignant huff from his secretary. He was pretty sure other lawyers liked their assistants. That wasn’t the case with him and Sharon. Their relationship could best be described as mutually suspicious. She was certain he was screwing off and costing the firm money. He was certain that she was a mole planted by the senior partners to make sure every employee spent every minute at work being utterly miserable.

There was a stack of four boxes next to his desk. “That’s new,” he murmured. He read the note taped to the top.

Please read and summarize—Stanton

There must be six thousand pages in the boxes. He crumpled up the note and tossed it at the wastepaper basket by the door. As the wad of paper arced toward the can, the door flew open, knocking the paper onto the floor. Gordon Marshall bounded in like an enthusiastic Labrador, his dress shirt wrinkled and his tie askew.

“Hey, where have you been?” he asked, taking a seat not in the chairs in front of Ben’s desk, but on the low oak bookcase against the wall. “I heard you got summoned to talk to Judge Kinsey. What the hell did you do?”
 

Ben dropped his briefcase on the desk. “She asked me to represent someone on a last-minute appearance. It wasn’t a big deal.”
 

“That’s not what I heard,” said Dave Hogan, entering the office behind Gordo and closing the door behind him. “I heard you represented Lindsey Fox on a contempt charge.”
 

“That’s right,” Ben said, giving Dave a small shake of his head.
Not in front of Gordo
, he tried to telegraph to his friend.
 

To his relief, Dave gave Ben a small knowing nod and smiled. “How did that go?”
 

The two men who had barged into his office were both lawyers at Stanton & Lowe, but they couldn’t have been more different—Gordo, stocky and bordering on rotund, with floppy hair that fell in his eyes no matter when his last haircut was, and Dave, trim, tall, and perpetually well-groomed thanks to his fashion-plate wife, Kathleen. Gordo joined the firm just out of law school and was now a third-year associate. Dave was a partner with fifteen years at Stanton & Lowe. They were the only two people in this building he liked, but Ben really didn’t want to talk about Lindsey’s legal problems with them. He was still trying to figure out exactly what her legal troubles were.
 

“It went fine,” Ben said, kicking a chair toward Gordo, who took the hint and removed his butt from the bookcase.
 

“Who’s Lindsey Fox?” Gordo asked, brushing his thick, brown hair from his eyes.
 

“Gordo, get a damn haircut,” Dave said. “Lindsey Fox is a newspaper reporter. And my wife’s best friend. Ben used to date her.”
 

“I just got a haircut,” Gordo complained, then turned to Ben. “You had a date? When? You’re always here.”

Ben frowned at his friends, but especially at Dave. “We had one date. Six months ago. Not a big deal.”

Dave laughed loudly. “Really? Not a big deal?”

Gordo looked at both men expectantly. “What happened?”

“It didn’t work out,” Ben said, then attempted a diversion. “Did you see this pile of bullshit Stanton dropped on me while I was out? How the hell does he expect me to get the last document review finished when he’s dumping this on me?”

Dave wasn’t about to be deterred. “Kathleen set them up,” he said, looking at Gordo. “She thought they’d hit it off.”
 

“So, what happened?” Gordo asked.
 

“My car got towed,” Ben said.
 

“That sucks,” Gordo said with a sympathetic nod.
 

“And…” Dave prompted.
 

“And when I went back up to her apartment to use the phone, she pepper-sprayed me,” Ben said, resigned to the humiliation he knew was coming.
 

Gordo didn’t disappoint. His mouth dropped open. He glanced at Dave, a smile hovering on his lips, then back to Ben, then back to Dave.
 

“No,” he said. “Really?”

Dave nodded. “It’s true.”
 

Gordo started to laugh—great peals of laughter that started deep in his belly and erupted into an expression of absolute joy. He leaned forward, gasping and trying to catch his breath, then fell out of the chair and onto the floor, a fresh convulsion of laugher causing him to roll about on the carpet.
 

“Really? You really needed to share this with Gordo?” Ben asked Dave.

Dave grinned. “Yes, I really did. The boy has such little joy in his life. He works here, you know.”
 

“Dude,” Gordon gasped. “You got pepper-sprayed on the first date?”

“What, your dates don’t usually pepper-spray you until the second or third date?” Ben said. “She thought her apartment got broken into and that I was the burglar. I startled her.”

This set off another round of howling laughter.
 

“You have to admit,” Dave said. “It’s pretty funny.”

“Yeah, now that my eyes are no longer swollen shut and I got my car out of the impound yard,” Ben said.
 

Gordo pulled himself together and sat in the chair opposite Ben. He wiped the tears from his eyes.
 

“So, someone broke into her apartment?”
 

“The police said no,” Ben said.

Dave tilted his head. “I kind of believe her.”
 

Until the events of the past few hours, Ben had trusted the police on the matter. But now? “She told the police there was nothing missing.”

The door flew open again and Ben let out an exasperated breath at the intrusion. What would happen if he started locking his office to avoid intrusions? Wasn’t Sharon supposed to be a gatekeeper for him?
 

Gregory Stanton walked in and Gordo straightened in the chair, all traces of good humor gone. A founding partner of Stanton & Lowe, Stanton had that effect on a room. Like a dark cloud blotting out all hope for humanity.

“Where the hell have you been? I got back from court hours ago,” Stanton said. His close-set eyes narrowed as he glared at all three men in turn. Ben shifted uncomfortably, as he did whenever the malevolent force that was Gregory Stanton was near. Gordo avoided eye contact and eyed the door as if he were plotting to bolt from the room. Only Dave’s demeanor was unchanged. He still had the same relaxed stance and unperturbed expression.
 

“He was recruiting a new client—the in-house counsel for the newspaper asked him to do some litigation work,” Dave said. It was a stretch, but it had the intended result. Stanton looked at Dave, then at Ben, his pissy expression slowly changing as his greedy reptilian brain did the math. A corporate client? Who wanted litigation counsel? That meant big bucks. Stanton’s lips drew back into an expression he probably thought was a smile.
 

“Good work,” he said. “Did you get my note about the document review?”

“Yeah, I did,” Ben said.
 

Dave interrupted. “With him courting this new client, Ben doesn’t have time to waste on your medical malpractice case. Get one of the interns to do it.”

Stanton glared at Dave. After a minute, he nodded. “The client wants a lawyer to do the doc review. But I suppose we could get an associate to do it. Jordan—” He nodded at Gordo. “You have time.”

It wasn’t a question. Nor was it true. Gordo worked sixty-plus hours a week on tedious projects that more senior lawyers wanted to avoid. Stanton wanted a lawyer to do the review because the firm could charge an astronomical hourly rate for an attorney. The client didn’t care who reviewed the documents. The client probably had no clue what document review was.

“Keep me in the loop on the new client,” Stanton said, then stalked out of the office. Dave closed the door as Stanton left.
 

“That man scares the shit out of me,” Gordo said, his voice hushed.
 

“Don’t worry,” Dave said. “He can’t even remember your name. And he really only hates one person and that’s me.”
 

“Why does he hate you?” Ben asked. The animosity was well established and neither man made any attempt to hide their disdain for the other. But Dave had never told him the origin of the feud.
 

Dave gave the men a smile. “It’s a story best told over a couple of drinks. Some other time.”
 

He strolled out into the hallway, followed by Gordo who lugged out two boxes of documents with him. Ben was left alone in his office. He retrieved some folders from his briefcase for Sharon to file.
 

He stacked the papers on his desk, looking for the documents from his morning court appearance. He sorted through the stack, realizing that some were not related to his case. He’d ended up with some of Lindsey’s files from the newspaper.