Body of Law (Body of Law #1) (3 page)

BOOK: Body of Law (Body of Law #1)
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The doorman handed me my copy of
The Tribune,
his blustering face red and excited to see me. “Good morning, Mr. Scott. Lovely weather we’re having!” It was another mediocre transaction I had to endure on a regular basis. Regardless, I smiled and began the search for a cab. Adventurous as I considered myself, driving through the city on a Monday morning was something I wasn’t willing to undertake. 

***

Roger was already waiting for me in the lobby when I arrived. Wearing another one of those god-awful suits of his, he often reminded me of a clown…a clown my childhood never afforded me. I was even ready to make such a comment when it occurred to me he was on the phone. I should have known. If anyone put the wind in windy city, it was Roger.

“So I should have called if it lasted four or more hours—?”

I rolled my eyes. Roger’s voice echoed in the massive lobby, no doubt another check mark for anyone building a sexual harassment lawsuit. Yet this, too, was such a regular habit most mornings that I doubted Roger even noticed it anymore. 

“Emergency room?” he yelled. “That all depends on what the nurses look like.”

“Roger…” I pointed at my watch and gestured upstairs. Even my body language had become habitual.

“Okay, okay.” Whether he was talking to me or his prick of a doctor, Roger promptly hung up. He looked in my direction.

“Rough night?”

“You could say that.” He wiggled each of his eyebrows accordingly and led the way to an empty elevator. “What about you, my boy. Have any fun with ah, what’s her name again?”

“The hell if I know.” I sighed. “I lost it somewhere between the time I picked her up and the appetizer.”

Roger smiled approvingly. “That’s good. Save your memory for when it counts. You know this one time I had a redhead in Portugal whose name I kept forgetting—”

I cut him off just as the elevator opened. “Nicky, is it just me or do you get just a little bit lovelier every week?”

“It’s not just you.” She grinned and batted her eyelashes. “I’m that fabulous.”

Roger leaned over the reception desk, instantly spellbound. Ironically, once again Nicky’s oversized rack had saved me from hearing the details of Roger’s sex life. “Of course you are…”

I waved my hand in front of his face, not surprised that he didn’t even blink. Admittedly, if I was as into redheads as Roger was, I might have been just as hypnotized. After the last set of problems screwing a colleague had brought on me, though, I had developed a strict “no-shitting-where-I-eat” rule. Maybe missing out on the occasional screw in the research library was what had brought on my current state of boredom. Then again, maybe it was just the lack of exciting cases lately. Where was a serial killer when you needed one? A mafia kingpin? A domestic terrorist?

“Is there anything at least a little bit interesting going on today, Nicky?” I asked.

“The Lawrence case starts today. What else? Oh, a few people in accounting are on vacation this week so try to avoid sending anything there if you can help it—”

I nodded and made mental notes. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

“And the summer associates start today. I just sent the last one up.”

Finally, something was interesting enough to startle Roger from his stupor. “Hot damn, I forgot all about that!”

Was my boredom starting to make my mind slip? This type of forgetfulness was a classic move I’d expect from Roger, but I sure as hell knew better. I don’t know what bothered me more: the fact that I’d forgotten about getting sentenced to the mentoring of an intern or the fact that said intern was my old mentor’s daughter.

I had always been one of the greatest, the best really. After getting the highest LSAT scores and winning every mock trial I ever participated in, it wasn’t hard to find work after passing the bar. And, unlike every other first year associate, I didn’t kiss Roger’s ass. I knew when to participate in the harassment of receptionists and how to play nice with the clerks in the mail room—naturally it helped that I had a not-guilty rate of 97%—but that was neither here nor there. My clients liked me. And, for the right price, I’d work for senators or drug dealers, English professors or pornographers.

Some people might call me an amoral son of a bitch, and maybe that was true. But, at one time, I had considered an alternative profession. I knew the law was always for me. But once-upon-a-time when I was just a student, I actually had a professor who gave a damn about me—who tried to save me from doing exactly what I was doing now.

***

“Mr. Scott!”

It was the fourth time Professor Donovan had called me to his desk—well, not so much called as yelled. Class had only been over for five minutes, but the classroom was almost cleared out. So, with the exception of a few other students and the tasty co-ed I was chatting up, there was no question who he was yelling at. Still, I pretended like I didn’t hear him. It was bad enough I had to listen to his righteous lectures during class hours. It was another thing entirely for him to give me shit after class.

The co-ed looked over her shoulder. No doubt Professor Donovan was giving the back of my head the evil eye. “Um, you better, like, go?”

I shrugged. “No, it’s cool. So, about tomorrow night—”

“Today, Mr. Scott.”

She giggled and bit her bottom lip. “Later.”

I watched her bottom wiggle as she trotted out the door. It was a bittersweet thing to watch her go, but I knew it would be easy to charm my way into her skirt. It was a natural talent of all good lawyers to know what people wanted to hear, and when it came to women, I was getting better and better at knowing the lies they wanted.

“Professor Donovan, you are messing up my goals. Isn’t that the opposite of your job description?”

One of his massive gray eyebrows went straight up in the air. No doubt he wouldn’t have been the first professor to hear I had actual plans for my life. “Your goals, Mr. Scott?”

“Yeah.” I smirked and plopped my stack of books on his desk. “I plan on banging at least half the girls in this class before the end of the term and I’m ridiculously close. Are you trying to mess that up for me?”

Not missing a beat, Professor Donovan began going through a stack of papers, picking up one from the bottom and sliding it in my direction. “I wanted to talk to you about this paper, Sebastian.”

“What?” I shrugged. “You gave me a B.”

He shook his head, disappointed. The expression by itself made me jittery. I didn’t know how to deal with disappointment—at least when I was the one doing the disappointing.

“It’s phoned in, Sebastian. I know you’re capable of better work. I’ve spoken with your other teachers and I’ve heard you speak in class. You’re better than this.”

“This is only law ethics.” I scoffed. “I wouldn’t take this class if it wasn’t a requirement.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t, huh? So you don’t care about the moral codes that built this country in the first place? Solid legal ethics are the foundation for every good attorney.”

“People don’t become attorneys because they care about ethics; they become attorneys to make money.”

“Is that why you think I went from criminal law to teaching, Sebastian? To make money?”

I shrugged. Admittedly, at the time I hadn’t thought about it at all.

“Do you eat, Sebastian?”

“Huh?”

“Come over to my house tonight around seven. You’ll meet why I teach. The world is a screwed up place. We all have a responsibility to make it better, not worse.”

***

I thought about them the entire ride up to the 52
nd
floor, Roger talking my ear off the whole time. If I was capable of feeling any shame, I might have felt some over the fact that I hadn’t thought about Professor Donovan or his awkward little daughter in years. Though, maybe to my credit, I had tried to block him out—both of them—because they had tried to help me, the only people who had ever done so without asking for anything in return. And there were flecks of moments where it seemed like Donovan’s influence was going to rub off on me. Maybe he had gotten to me too late? Who knew? Certainly, it would have helped if the cancer hadn’t gotten him, but that was one of many things I didn’t like to think about…

I cringed at the memory of his gawky little daughter crying at his funeral. And even now, she was the only real thing I remembered about that day—courtesy of inexpensive whiskey and even cheaper company. At the time, had wanted to make Violet smile, tease her about her braces or crooked glasses. But my own anger was more important, and I ended up doing nothing.

I wondered if it was misplaced obligation that had made me choose her. I had made the partners so much money, they’d automatically skipped my name during the mentoring season. But when Roger sentenced me to the summer associates program and I saw the name Donovan on the list of applicants, I almost…felt something. Maybe it was because I associated her with the remainder of my youth. I couldn’t be sure.

Now that the time was actually here to deal with her, however, I instantly regretted thinking of her at all. I didn’t want to see that awkward little girl again, and the odds were that I never really did. What had I been thinking? I should have picked the intern who couldn’t speak English, the one who was autistic, or even the “please-and-thank-you” freak from Canada. Jesus, anyone but her.

I knew Roger had to make some show of a punishment for the incident in court last month to appease Burke, but this was just ridiculous. I cursed myself for not taking care of this situation earlier. If I had just sent Woods a nice pair of golf clubs, this entire situation might have been remedied. I shook my head; was it too late? I turned to ask Roger but he was staring at something beyond my shoulder. For a second, I wondered if Nicky and her chest had followed us up here. But as I turned I could see for myself what had him so enthralled.

Violet Donovan was not an awkward little girl anymore.

I made a concerted effort to keep my expression neutral—a technique I had learned long ago in law school. Still, I was beyond amazed by how she had transformed from my memory of her into the young woman who stood before me. The gangly teen I’d remembered was now a voluptuous, straight-teethed woman with curves in all the right places. And though her body had clearly gone through some changes, the smattering of freckles on the edge of her nose remained, and her eyes were just as wide as I’d remembered—though maybe not as hopeful.

The child in her was gone, and in her place was the same spark of beauty her father had been afraid of. “Ah, Sebastian, I think this one is yours. Sebastian, meet Violet Donovan, top of her class at Illinois State University, and highly recommended by the staff at UCL.”

I rolled my eyes and switched my briefcase from hand to hand. When had Roger started talking? Had I missed essential parts of the conversation? Had I blanked out? Her eye caught mine and I cursed myself for not reading her file. If anyone asked, I’d tell them I’d chosen her because she went to my alma mater, emphasize that her father was an old mentor of mine, and do anything but stare at that sinfully short skirt of hers.

“Mr. Gardner, sir, always a pleasure to see you, sir.” I never thought I’d be so grateful for Morgan’s ramblings. I would have kissed him if I hadn’t already gone through that phase. Rolling my eyes at him was the perfect excuse to break eye contact with her.

“Go away, Morgan.”  

“Sir, yes, sir.”

I waved to him flamboyantly. I loved when the partners kicked him like a mutt who had just pissed on the floor. Stupid kiss-ass. It was lawyers like him who gave the rest of us a bad name.

Morgan flipped me the bird, but it was only a minor distraction because? before Violet came over and extended her hand. Recoiling on the inside, I watched Roger take her hand and kiss her knuckle. Roger’s mediocre attempts at seduction were getting worse by the year. In fact, if it weren’t for his house in the Hamptons, I was sure he’d never get laid at all.

“Mr. Gardner, it’s such a pleasure to meet you in person. I’ve read so many things about you, I almost feel like I know you.”

“The feeling is mutual, Ms. Donovan. I’m sure you’ll learn a lot from Sebastian here.”

The firm pat on my shoulder was either intended to be condescending or comforting. My bet was a combination of both.

“I thought Mr. Morgan—” I watched her perfect mouth move with each word. Had her lips always been so plump or had I just been oblivious in my twenties? Instantly, I scolded myself. There was an eight year age difference between us. Not a significant difference now, but when I had been in my twenties, it had been more than scandalous—even by my standards.

“Morgan has enough on his plate. Besides, Sebastian here got to skip his year as the mentor for the summer associates team, so he needs to make up for it now.”

Gardner was already walking away when it occurred to me I couldn’t do this. Between the Moore case and the Davis settlement, I had enough on my plate to deal with. Old memories and pretty girls following me around—inside the office anyway—were not welcome.

“Roger? Roger? Is this really necessary?” I looked back at her and sighed. She was an eager-looking little bee, nervous and excited like one would expect, but threatening to boil over with something else. I looked her up and down one more time. Jesus, had she make that outfit herself?

“I understand I may have been a bit out of line in court the other day, but this? You’re sticking me with this infant of a girl who can’t even dress herself? If I wasn’t so tired I’d be downright pleased with my ability to piss you off.”

“You shouldn’t have called Judge Wood
soft
on crime.” he mumbled. “Burke went to school with the man, for god’s sake.”

“What?” I whispered back, but my attempt at innocence was wanting. “I was thanking him for making my job easier.”

BOOK: Body of Law (Body of Law #1)
5.4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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