Confessions of a Litigation God: A Legal Affairs Full Length Erotic Novel (15 page)

Yes, broken degrees…
as in plural. Apparently, her other degree had been already knocked
to the floor and lay amid a pile of crushed glass.

“That’s
just great,” Mac says forlornly, looking down at the damaged
proof of her graduations.

Even though I want
to grab Lorraine by the neck and wring the meanness out of her, I
look to Mac and say calmly, “What the hell is going on here?”

Her eyes rise to
mine and she says quietly, “You broke my frame.”

Maybe once I wring
Lorraine’s neck, I’ll wring Mac’s too. She’s
purposely being evasive.

Turning from Mac, I
look to Lorraine. My tone is still calm, but there is a bit more
anger laced in my words. “I repeat… what is going on
here? I heard yelling clear down in my office.”

Lorraine looks like
she’s about ready to puke. Her face is green, and she stands
there twisting her hands around one another in a sign of nervous
guilt. Mac quietly starts gathering all the scattered papers on her
desk, straightening them into a single pile. When she grabs one
document off the floor, she looks at it and the corners of her mouth
tilt upward slightly.

She hands the paper
to Lorraine and says quietly, “Here’s your Order.”

Lorraine doesn’t
take the paper from Mac but rather stares at it in horror with her
face blanched pale. Then I watch an interesting byplay between Mac
and Lorraine.

Mac keeps her eyes
steady on Lorraine, holding the Order out to her. Lorraine slowly
drags her gaze from the offensive document and looks at Mac
beseechingly. Mac looks at Lorraine with a hard glint for just a
moment, and then she opens her mouth like she’s going to say
something. Lorraine’s face goes green again.

Then Mac turns to me
with a sparkling smile and a sweet voice. “Nothing’s
wrong. Just a little disagreement, but we cleared it up. Right,
Lorraine?”

Lorraine’s
breath comes out in a massive, relieved rush, and she regains some of
her color. Giving Mac a grateful look, she turns to me and says,
“Right. No problems here.”

Nice try, Mac.
You little liar.

I look back and
forth between the two of them, trying to figure out if it’s
worth my while to figure out what’s really going on here. But
then I decide against it. Mac told me before she doesn’t want
my help with any beefs she may have with Lorraine and, in just a few
weeks, Lorraine will be gone.

I decide to let it
go. “McKayla… let’s meet on the
Jackson
case so I can get out of here. I’ve got plans tonight.”

Mac follows docilely
behind me to my office, although she doesn’t have a docile bone
in her body. I wait for her to choose which chair she wants to sit
in, and then I choose to sit in the chair next to her rather than
behind my desk, causing her eyebrows to raise.

It’s the
closest we’ve been to each other since Monday, and it’s
disconcerting. Although I’ve been coming to a slow acceptance
that our time together is done, I still have an aching urge to grab
her and kiss her.

Looking down at my
watch, I say, “I’ve got twenty minutes before I have to
leave for dinner. Bill and I are meeting our accountant tonight.”

I told her that part
about Bill and me going out to dinner tonight in an effort to give
her full disclosure, since I know I fucked up earlier in the week by
refusing to tell her where I was going. Why I conceded to do that is
beyond me. I don’t owe her that courtesy, yet I just gave it to
her.

She responds by
shrugging her shoulders, as if she could give a damn. “Not any
of my business.”

I just stare at her,
pissed she doesn’t appreciate my effort.

Then she really
sticks the knife in by adding on, “Sir.”

My blood boils with
anger over the fact she’s deliberately trying to get under my
skin with the “sir” routine. She’s been doing it
all week in the few interactions we’ve had, even once calling
me “Mr. Connover”. None of the attorneys here call me Mr.
Connover.

I grit my teeth and
narrow my eyes at her, rising to the challenge. To hell with saying I
was going to stay out of it. “I want to know what was going on
between you and Lorraine.”

She shrugs her
shoulders nonchalantly again. “Nothing. Just a little
misunderstanding, but it’s solved now.”

“Misunderstanding?”

“Misunderstanding,”
she agrees with a nod of her head.

“Lorraine was
screaming at you. Just before I walked in, she called you a fucking
screw up. I don’t care what the reason was, but we don’t
talk to each other like that at this firm.”

“I’m
sorry. It won’t happen again,” she says apologetically,
and I feel like my head is going to explode.

“Fuck,
McKayla. Why are you apologizing? She was the one screaming at you.”

“And like I
said… it was just a misunderstanding. No harm, no foul.”

I grit my teeth even
further, feeling my blood pressure rise. Why can’t she just
admit that Lorraine was on her case unfairly? Why can’t she let
me help her fix it?

And even as I ask
those questions, I know the answers. Because she doesn’t need
me for anything. She doesn’t want to give me the satisfaction
of possibly trying to make things up to her.

That just pisses me
off even more, but now is not the time to battle with Mac. So I pick
a piece of imaginary lint off my slacks as if I’m completely
nonplused and say, “I’ll just have to talk to Lorraine
myself, I guess. Give your degrees to Miss Anders, and she’ll
get them fixed for you, at my expense.”

“No, thanks,”
she says primly. “I can handle it.”

Okay, now she’s
just being devious, and I glare at her. She looks back at me with a
bland expression, but I see it… deep down in her eyes…
way down deep… she’s enjoying bucking against me. She’s
enjoying the little power trip she has right now by refusing to give
me what I want.

And that just won’t
do.

No, that won’t
do at all.

Mac needs to learn
that while I will give her some latitude, she’ll never win the
ultimate battle against me. She needs to learn that when I set out to
do something, I don’t give up until I get what I want.

It’s time to
show her that.

For the past week,
Mac has been tormenting me. Long before this little act of defiance
by refusing to tell me what just happened with Lorraine. And she’s
doing it on purpose… a little female evil I suppose, to get
back at me for refusing to cancel dinner with Lorraine.

To get back at me
for demanding something from her, but refusing to reciprocate in
kind.

It’s bad
enough that she’d been dropping the “Yes, sir” and
“No, sir” routine all week, making clear to me that
she’ll be the dutiful little employee now, but she continued to
torment me in other ways.

This past Thursday,
I about flipped my shit. I was sitting in the break room, minding my
own business and able to actually get my mind off Mac for a few
minutes while I read the paper and had a cup of coffee before I
started my workday.

Mac walked in,
looking stunning with her hair all loose and curled so it bounced
when she walked, and her makeup a little more pronounced. Whatever
she had done to her fucking eyes had made them pop like a star
bursting.

And her dress?

That fucking dress
hugged her breasts like a second skin, cutting down fairly low. It
smoothed over her flat stomach and her hips, and then flared out
around her knees. She was wearing another pair of sexy-as-fuck heels,
and for a moment… I forgot we weren’t together. Our eyes
met, and I started to give her one of those smiles… sexually
hot… to show my appreciation.

Then another staff
person walked in, and I hastily averted my gaze. Mac turned away to
talk to her, and I had my ear only half on the conversation. But it
was open enough that I heard her say she had a “lunch date,”
which was why she had dressed up.

My blood pressure
skyrocketed because I knew she was talking about having lunch with
Cal. I know she said that out loud, purposely to shove my nose in it.
She knew it would get to me.

She just had no idea
how much.

I had to stand up
and walk out of the break room, before I grabbed her and threw her
over my shoulder in a testosterone-driven display of ownership. It
took me almost an hour to calm down and remind myself that I had no
hold over her whatsoever. I certainly had no right to her.

So, she’s been
purposely driving me nuts all week, and even now, this little act of
defiance is earning a point in her column. But I’m tired of
playing her game, and it’s time to take back control. If she
won’t tell me what’s going on with Lorraine, I will find
out for myself and I’ll make Mac watch how easy it is to get
said information.

Curling my lips
upward, I give Mac a knowing look and turn my smile into an evil
grin. She blinks hard and tries to maintain eye contact, but I see
the way she nibbles on her lip nervously.

Standing up, I lean
over my desk and press a button on my phone. It chimes once, and then
Lorraine’s voice comes through. “Yes, Matt?”

“Lorraine…
can you come into my office for a minute?”

She pauses just a
moment, but I can hear the fear in her voice. “Sure. Be right
down.”

I disconnect the
call and turn back around toward Mac. Leaning my butt back against my
desk, I cross my arms over my chest and give her my most conquering
look. Because I read body language, I catch the almost imperceptible
way Mac sucks in her breath and stiffens her shoulders.

She’s bracing
herself against the unknown and I’m not going to lie, the
little bit of unease in her eyes is turning me on.

My office door opens
and Lorraine steps in, but I don’t look at her. I keep my gaze
on Mac, waiting to see if she’ll confess what happened with
Lorraine but even though I know I’m making her nervous, she
lifts her chin up at me in defiance.

So be it.

I motion for
Lorraine to take the seat I had vacated and push off from my desk,
walking around to my big, leather chair on wheels. Taking my seat, I
lean back in the chair casually and look over at Lorraine. She’s
sitting straight, as if a steel pole was fused to her spine, with her
hands tightly clasped on her thighs. I move my gaze over to Mac, and
I give her that knowing smile again. I want to laugh when she raises
her chin just a bit more, and I hate myself that I find her so
adorable and charming.

But now it’s
time to find out what the fuck is going on. Looking back at Lorraine,
I lean forward. “Lorraine… I’d like to know
exactly what just happened in McKayla’s office.”

“It was just a
disagreement. No biggie,” she says in an attempt to sound
confident, even as the shaking of her hands in her lap give her away.

“So I’ve
heard. But any time you scream at someone and call them… what
were the words you used? ‘A fucking screw up’…
well, I need to delve a little deeper, you see?”

Lorraine just nods
her head at me and clasps her hands tighter in an attempt to stop the
shaking.

Putting my elbows on
my desk, I steeple my fingers in front of me and look at her
thoughtfully. I don’t dare look at Mac and take my attention
off Lorraine. This has now become a battle between us. “Let me
see if I can put this together… you had a hearing this
morning?”

“Yes,”
she says hesitantly.

“And you
couldn’t find the Order the judge was supposed to sign?”

“Yes.”
This time softer.

“And you
assumed that McKayla had failed to draft the Order and put it in the
file?”

“I couldn’t
find it while I was in court—”

I hold my hand up
and she’s responsive, snapping her mouth shut.

“Yet the Order
was, in fact, in there?”

“It appears
so,” Lorraine grits out.

None of this was
hard to figure out. I put together Lorraine yelling, papers all over
the office, Mac handing an Order to Lorraine, and then Lorraine
looking like she was going to puke. This was all a no-brainer but I
continue, wanting Mac to understand I will always get someone to
spill the beans.

“So, you went
into McKayla’s office and slammed the door shut, causing one of
her degrees to fall and break?”

“Yes.”

“And then you
screamed at her for failing to draft the Order?”

“Yes,”
she says, her voice now a whisper.

“And then
yelled that she was a ‘fucking screw up’?”

“Perhaps I was
a bit hasty—”

I hold my hand up
again and on command, she shuts up, which is perfect because I’ve
heard enough. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out
what was going on when I walked into Mac’s office. I had hoped
Mac would trust me with the full truth but, in fairness, I’ve
given her no reason to, so I’m going to let that slide.

Standing from my
chair, I walk up to Lorraine and look down at her. “I’m
going to honor the deal we made with each other Monday night, but I’d
like you to go ahead and pack up your stuff and leave now. I don’t
condone that type of behavior in my business.”

Half expecting
Lorraine to blow up, I’m surprised when Mac exclaims, “What?
You’re firing her?”

Turning my back on
them, I walk to my office door and open it. Sweeping a hand forward
while looking at Lorraine, I say, “That’s right.
Effective immediately.”

I keep my gaze
pinned on Lorraine, because I know this woman operates on a short
fuse. I expect her to try to give me a tongue-lashing.

Instead, she stands
from her chair and rather than walk toward the open door and me, she
turns on Mac. “You fucking bitch, you just had to rat me out.”

Mac rears backward,
her eyes confused. “Lorraine… I never said a word.”

“Save it,”
she hisses at Mac, and then leans in just a little closer to her.
“You’re fucking him, and you have him wrapped around your
finger. All he talked about Monday night was ‘McKayla this and
McKayla that’. And now you have him doing your dirty work for
you.”