Love to Believe: Fireflies ~ Book 2 (24 page)

Sean yawned and scrubbed his hand through his hair. “God willing.”

“You need some coffee?”

“Oh, my god, you’re a doll. That’d be fantastic, thanks.”

“Well, you know where it is.” She threw him a smile and sauntered to the door. “I’m taking an early lunch. I have to run over to Marcie’s to pick up a couple of things. I’ll be back in an hour. Try to stay awake while Wernecki rants at you about his wife’s divorce attorney. I won’t be here to wake you up if his nonsense puts you back to sleep.” She paused in the doorway and turned back to face him. “What’s got you dragging, anyway?”

“Emma’s got a burst pipe at her house and her landlord, who is also her father, isn’t getting in until tomorrow. He retired to Florida and he’s driving up to handle it. In the meantime, her water is shut off. She asked if she could crash in my guestroom till she’s got water again.” Sean yawned and pushed his chair away from the desk, stood up and stretched. “You know she’s prelaw. She’s on the debate team, asked if I’d help her prepare last night. Like an idiot I said yes.”

Mrs. M crossed her arms over her chest and gave him an arch look. “Prepping for a debate? Really? That’s your story?”

“God as my witness.” He yawned again. “Till almost four in the fucking morning.”

She raised her brows and held out her hand. Sean looked at her askance and then scowled when the dawning came. He dug in his pocket for a dollar bill. Damned swear jar.

“So why were you here so early?”

He winced. “She wanders the house half naked in the mornings. Makes me uncomfortable as hell.”

“She’s intelligent, lovely, and you’re both consenting adults, so what’s the problem?”

“Last thing I need is to get tangled up with the twenty-something co-ed on my payroll. No thanks.”

“Your reluctance wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain long-legged redhead, would it?”

Sean pinched the bridge of his nose.
How the hell does this woman know every fucking thing?
“The reasons don’t matter.” He stood up and met Mrs. M in the doorway. “Tell your daughter I said hi. She needs to come by sometime, and I’ll take the two of you to lunch.”

“Changing the subject doesn’t change the facts, Mr. Kinkaid.”

Sean scowled at her. “Go work your voodoo magic on someone else.”

They walked down the hall in tandem, separating when Sean went into the kitchen for coffee. Mrs. M watched him from the doorway. “It doesn’t take voodoo to see what’s right in front of me. You were happy and now you’re miserable. Stop being an idiot man and pick up the phone, for god’s sake. Tell her you’re sorry.”

“You’re overstepping--”

“Sean.”

He sighed, clamped his mouth shut, and steeled himself for the unrequested advice he knew was coming. He sniffed the coffee and wrinkled his nose at the bitterness but poured the hours-old brew into a mug anyway, sipped the black sludge for fortification, and directed his full attention to Mrs. M. She’d be relentless if he didn’t.

“Lightning doesn’t often strike twice, so when it hits the first time you’d be wise to heed it.” Her mien softened. “You may not get a second chance.”

Sean’s unwavering gaze held hers. “I don’t deserve a second chance, Myra, and she deserves better.”

“Sean, there is no better. You’re the finest man I know.”

“You’re just prejudiced because you love me,” he said.

Her expression slid into one of amusement. “Don’t go losing your head, now.”

Sean surrendered to quiet laughter and squeezed her shoulder. “Give my best to Marcie.”

The conference call with his least favorite client, Ferris Wernecki, sounded like blah-blah-blah to Sean. He yawned and doodled on a notepad while the other man’s rant became a fine crescendo. Sean held his temper in check, reminded himself every twenty seconds or so that Wernecki was one of the few clients he actually billed, until the man hollered, “What the hell am I paying you for if she can still clean me out with alimony and child support?”

Sean’s words held steel. “Feel free to find alternate counsel.”
Please
.

“Find a different lawyer? That’s your advice? What the hell, Sean.”

“Ferris, you’re lucky I’m not opposing counsel.”
Asshole.
“You think you’re financially bloody now? If your wife had hired me, you’d be bleeding green from every orifice and there’d be a new hole where your balls used to be. Against my better judgment I said I’d represent you, and I’ve done a damn fine job of saving your ass from total financial ruin, but that doesn’t mean I can prevent the inevitable. Sign the goddamned papers, Ferris, before your wife’s attorney realizes how badly he fucked up. And be grateful she couldn’t afford better counsel. And if you don’t want to follow my legal advice, then find another goddamned attorney.” Heavy silence ensued. Sean laid his head back against the chair wishing he hadn’t agreed to take on Wernecki as a client.

The asshole was a serial cheater who got caught one time too many and deserved his fate. Sean had taken him on as a favor to an old Yale buddy who, now that he thought about it, had never been that great of a friend, anyway. So here he sat, representing the law on the wrong side of the battle. Again.

He scowled. Some things never changed.

“So...what? You’re firing me as a client?” Wernecki’s question drew cold silence from Sean. When the man spoke again he’d tempered his attitude. “So, uh, you think he coulda got more outta me?”

“I would have.”

“Well, hell. Fine. I’ll sign the goddamned papers.” Wernecki clicked off the call.

Praise God and all that’s holy
. Sean switched off the speakerphone and glanced up when Mrs. M appeared in the doorway holding a box in her arms.

“That dressing down was so lovely to hear, Mr. Kinkaid, that I’ll give you a pass on the swear jar. The man is an ass.”

“He’s a paying client.”

“You’d have more time for those if you quit doing so much pro bono work.”

“Not everyone can afford good counsel.” Sean dismissed the subject by nodding to the box in her arms. “I hope that’s my lunch, preferably a huge Italian sub from Caravicci’s, because I’m starving.”

“Not exactly.” Mrs. M smiled and glanced behind her. A moment later a dog appeared in the doorway, its tail wagging, doggy lips pulled back in an open-mouthed, tongue-lolling smile.

Sean sat up and stared. “What the hell--”

“This is Belle.”

The dog pricked her ears and sniffed. Her black nose quivered and her gaze zeroed in on Sean with the precision of a nuclear missile. She took a leap and bounded to him as if to say, “There you are! I’ve been looking for you!” She slammed on her brakes, but not soon enough, and rammed against his legs with all of her ninety pounds, set her big head on his thigh, and stared up at him through soulful eyes of golden brown, as if she hadn’t just slammed into him with the force of a tank. Her sweeping tail swung her backend to and fro like a metronome.

Sean’s attention remained riveted on the dog until a “meow” sounded from across the room. His head swiveled and his jaw dropped when he comprehended what the box contained, and it sure as hell wasn’t lunch. Sasha, who spent the afternoon curled into a gray ball on the leather sofa, lifted her dainty head and blinked her eyes, performed a languid stretch and jumped to the floor. She sauntered with indignant grace from the room, her glorious tail twitching in full disdain.

“I can explain.” Mrs. M clutched the box to her chest. “Marcie’s neighbors moved. You know, the weird ones next door. I told you about them. Can you believe they left that sweet dog in the backyard and never came back for her? Just abandoned her. Left her back there to starve, no food, no water. And this little one--” She indicated the box with her chin. “--why, she was wandering their front yard all alone. What was Marcie supposed to do?”

“Calling animal control comes to mind.”

Mrs. M hit him with a laser glare. “These are sweet animals. They need someone to show them a little kindness.”

“This is a law office. A place of business.” The dog whined, her big head still resting on Sean’s leg. Another meow sounded from the box. “Mrs. M, we can’t have a zoo in here. These animals have to--” The dog nudged his arm with her wet nose. Sean placed a reluctant hand on her head and her tail wagged faster. He sighed the sigh of the damned. “Okay, look. They can stay this afternoon, but that’s it.”

“I thought maybe the kitten could keep Sasha company.”

“Sasha already voted paws down on that,” Sean pointed out. “One office cat is already one too many.” He looked at the dog and stroked his hand over her silky head and down her neck, pausing when his fingers encountered bumps beneath the fur. He scratched behind the animal’s ears with both hands and gentled his touch to palpate the rough scabs. His jaw tensed. “She was abused.”

“Yes.”

“Well, hell.” The dog dropped her muzzle back down on his thigh, her adoring gaze still fixed on his face, ass end swaying nonstop. “I take it Marcie can’t keep her.”

Mrs. M shook her head. “She’s already fostering six dogs, plus her own. And my apartment won’t allow me to have any. I thought--I hoped--that you would let the kitten stay here until we find a home for it, and that you might consider fostering Belle. It won’t be forever, you know,” she said in a rush. “Just until we find her a home. Marcie took care of her shots and everything, so you don’t have to worry about that. And you have plenty of room, a fenced yard. Just look at her, Mr. Kinkaid. She’s a wonderful, sweet dog! Part Lab and Golden Retriever, the vet told Marcie. Her previous owners--” She wrinkled her nose and spat the word
owners
from her mouth with distaste. “--kept her chained up outside in a leaky doghouse and, when they moved, they just left her.”

“I don’t want a dog.”

Said dog licked his hand and gazed at him as if he was her one and only. Her tail continued its rhythmic waving.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Shit.
Shit!
He didn’t want a dog. Especially not an oversized canine version of some doe-eyed Disney princess. Why couldn’t she have been a Pit? Or a German Shepherd, for Christ’s sake?

The box meowed again. Sean nudged Belle out of the way so he could stand and look at the kitten. He peered into the box at the tiny calico. About six or eight weeks old he’d guess by the size of her, or lack thereof, but what the hell did he know? Either way, she was a cute little thing, with black slashes of fur over her as-yet-unchanged eyes of newborn blue. Her face showed a look of constant surprise, a quality that only added to her charm.

Belle, not as graceful as her name implied, lumbered across the office and dropped down next to Sean. Sitting, her head reached his waist, and she leaned her heavy body against his leg with such gusto that a smaller statured man might have lost his balance. It wasn’t lost on Sean that he would have dog hair, and plenty of it, all over his dark suit. He wasn’t sure what to do about that yet, nor how to handle the source of that particular problem. But the kitten in the box...well, that problem he knew exactly how to resolve.

***

“Have you decided who you want to interview?” Rebecca planted herself in the chair opposite her father’s desk. “I need to know today, Dad, or I’ll decide for you.”

“When did you get to be so damned bossy?” Big Will’s face crunched into grouchy lines. He leaned back in his creaky chair and tossed his pen on the desk blotter. “I’m going through the damned résumés again, just like you told me. What if I don’t want any of ’em?”

“Then you’re destined for a surprise when I make the decision for you, because one of them is taking over for me at the end of the month.” The bell dinged from the outer office indicating someone had opened the door and come in. Rebecca pushed herself from the chair and tapped her finger on the folder of résumés. “Pick one, Mr. Sunshine.”

“You expecting a delivery?”

“No, it’s probably Nate. He’s picking me up for lunch. See you soon, you old raccoon.”

“Afternoon, you young baboon.”

Big Will waved in a half-hearted gesture, and she blew him a kiss on her way out the door. Since she’d made up her mind to leave Walker & Son, she felt as if the weight of the world had come off her shoulders

God knew starting her own business was a scary proposition, but getting out from under the stress she had imposed on herself trying to please her father had gone a long way toward improving her peace of mind.

“I’m ready,” she said, power-walking to her desk. “Just let me grab my--”

Sean.

Shock stabbed into her chest and her breath caught in her throat. She clutched her purse in a white-knuckled grip and stared at him, speechless.

“Hi. Sorry to show up unannounced.”

At the sound of his voice Rebecca’s mouth went dry and her knees wobbled. God bless America, but the man was a sight. Would she ever look at him without having her bones melt? It wasn’t fair that he could do this to her without even trying, especially since she still reeled from her morning chat with the Nordic goddess. Rebecca’s brain flashed a visual of Emma standing in Sean’s kitchen wearing next to nothing and a smile, and her ardor cooled like she’d been dusted with an Arctic breeze. She tossed her purse into her chair and leaned against the edge of the desk to keep her shaking legs from betraying her. “What do you want, Sean?”

Ice dripped from every word and she knew he felt the chill. He held her gaze, his smile disappearing as her tone registered.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your day. Mrs. M showed up at the office with something I thought you might like to see.” He carried the box to Rebecca’s desk and set it down before burying his hands in his pockets and stepping back. “If you’re not interested, just say so. I’ll find another taker.”

Rebecca drew an unsteady breath and peeked into the box. As if on cue, the kitten bellowed its loudest meow yet. Rebecca gasped and stared at the fur-baby.

“
Mew, mew
!” The kitten stood on her hind legs and poked her head from the box.

“Omigod, Sean.” Her eyes turned to him with surprised delight, ice melting in a flash. Giddy, she reached into the box and lifted the kitten, rubbing her nose over the little one’s fluffy head. “Hello, baby. Hello.” The calico fit in the palm of her hand, but she held it against her chest and stroked its tiny chin with her thumb. Vibrant purrs vibrated the kitten’s body.