The Cost of Happiness: A Contemporary Romance (18 page)

“Please. Disco was king when I was in the womb. I’m not that much older than you.”

“Sure, anything you say, Gramps.”

“Brat.”

They both laughed.

On their way to the taxi rank alongside Philly’s Terminal C, Dan tried to convince Meghan to go straight home from the airport. No luck. He wasn’t surprised. He’d figured he’d have a tough time getting her to quit the office this evening.

“I have work on my desk. It’s only—” She checked her watch. “Three-fifteen. Let me clear out any emails and requests from other lawyers, then we can leave for dinner.”

He shook his head, a gesture of regret and resignation rather than refusal. “You’re too dedicated to your job, you know that?”

“I thought that was what you liked about me.”

“I do. It’s just that now I like even more things about you.” He grinned as he opened a cab door for her.

“Flatterer.” Her eyes flashed a wicked glance up at him as she folded herself into the backseat.

“It’s not flattery,” Dan muttered to himself as he watched the cabby stow their carry-ons into the trunk.

They held hands on the drive north to Center City. When the cab left the Schuylkill Expressway, their hands separated. It was like they had the same thought.
Someone could see us
. Dan compressed his lips. He didn’t want to be sneaking around, pretending there was nothing going on. That’s what sleazy guys do, cheat on their wives while out of town on business.

It was like he had Wally Leith’s voice in his head.
Jumbotron.

Crap.

The cab stopped on Arch Street alongside their building. Meghan got out and waited while Dan paid the cabby and collected a receipt. When they had their luggage, they walked together into the lobby and stood side by side waiting for an elevator.

Vicky Womack came out of the coffee shop, a paper to-go cup in one hand and her cell phone in the other. As soon as she saw Dan, she said something short and terse into the phone, then slipped it into a pocket. “Welcome back, stranger.” She ignored Meghan completely.

“Vicky.” Dan kept his voice level.

She hooked her free hand around his elbow. He thought she meant to pull him aside, perhaps to tell him something confidential about a case. Instead, she just pulled herself closer.

“Where have you been? Tessa makes it sound like a top secret mission or something.”

Dan caught Vicky’s sidelong glance at Meghan, who stared straight ahead, waiting for the elevator. The two carry-ons at their feet made it clear that they’d been traveling. Together.

He shrugged. “Off to see a client. Meghan needed to review documents. I needed to see in-house counsel.” Horrible how he had to make it seem like they weren’t doing both tasks together, but he didn’t trust Vicky at all.

“Oh. Which client?” Vicky let go of his arm when the elevator beeped.

The doors opened and a wave of people streamed out, heading for home at the end of a hot summer’s day. Meghan got on first, tucking her suitcase into the back corner before turning to face front.

Dan ignored Vicky’s question and countered with one of his own. “How’s your week going?” He hoped she’d announce that she had assignments with other partners.

Vicky took advantage of the elevator—which wasn’t very full—to stand too close to Dan. He could smell her coffee and the sickly-sweet perfume she favored. He thought about holding Meghan in his arms. She smelled nice—warm, with just a hint of a flowery scent. He wished he’d countermanded her instinct to come back to the office. They could have snuck away to his place and skipped the headache of Vicky’s perfume.

“Oh, you know how it is. I’ve been cranking out the work. I’d love to talk to you about those trial memos I prepared. Shall I come to your office now?” Vicky turned sideways just enough to make her bust brush against his arm.

He didn’t look at her, just stared at the door. He could imagine how all this looked to Meghan. Damn Vicky.

“No. We’re just getting in. I’d better check in with Tessa and see what she’s got for me. Besides, I approved those trial memos last week.” He’d done so with little commentary, even though they hadn’t been very good.

He heard Vicky’s indrawn breath, as though she was about to say something, but then the elevator stopped at her floor, and she had to get off. His blood pressure had to have dropped twenty points just seeing her disappear from view. Then the doors closed and they continued up to thirty-nine together.

The doors opened on their floor. Just his luck, Darlene McAndrews was standing there, her arms folded around some files. She looked at Dan, who looked back impassively, then her gaze shifted to Meghan, who said, “Excuse me,” as she pulled her carry-on bag off the elevator car and past Darlene.

He swore he could hear Darlene sniff. What was this? A soap opera? Dan said hi with a pleasant smile, then moved past her, turning the corner a couple of seconds after Meghan, who was dashing down the corridor that led to their offices.

Dan knew better than to say anything. He’d bet a dollar that Meghan was convinced both Vicky and Darlene had mentally slapped scarlet letters to their foreheads. Hell, for all he knew, they had. Good lord, he and Meghan were both—he hesitated over the word “single” although it really wasn’t wrong—allowed to get involved.

He knew Meghan wouldn’t see it that way. He let her head toward her office while he went off to find Tessa and see how many messages he needed to answer. He’d deal with Meghan at the end of the day when trolls like Vicky and Darlene weren’t around.

Meghan told herself she wasn’t sorry that Dan had to act like they barely knew each other. It would have been hard for her to behave any other way. As she made her way to her office, a thought tickled the back of her brain. Something about how she was going to handle an office fling with a partner. She ignored it. She was more interested in getting onto the names that Vince Johnson had given them.

While Meghan was on hold, waiting for a former Jenner executive, the scene with Vicky replayed in her mind. Meghan wasn’t stupid—she knew Dan wasn’t interested in Vicky Womack. If he had been, she’d undoubtedly given him lots of opportunities to pursue that interest.

No, Meghan’s anxiety came from the office nonsense. She meets a great guy, and he’s her boss. He’s new at the firm, he’s a partner, and people are watching both of them.

That reminded her of Darlene’s basilisk stare when they’d gotten off the elevator. If Darlene wanted Meghan fired, she’d make it easy enough to happen. Sure, someone at the law school had put in a good word, but Meghan would be kidding herself if that somehow inoculated her from Darlene’s venom.

The “please hold” music switched to a different bad instrumental cover of an oldie Meghan couldn’t name.

Maybe it would be good if Darlene got her fired? She’d get another job. That way, Dan and she could date without all this scrutiny.

“Ms. Mattson? This is Tom Stevens.”

That call was followed by another, and a third. Meghan forgot about office politics in her quest to find people who remembered Jenner phone technology.

Friday afternoon turned out to be a great time to find people in their offices, and in some cases even willing to talk to her. What was that old joke about how all real work ended by two on a Friday afternoon, and by three even the pretense of work stopped? It wasn’t like that at Fergusson, of course. The companies she was calling, she suspected, were the kinds of places where all pretense of work had stopped. Certainly, people sounded happy to be distracted by a paralegal calling about the now-defunct Jenner Corporation.

She was following up on a lead Tom Stevens had given her when Dan strolled in, shutting the door behind him.

“I’m on hold,” she explained, keeping the phone to her ear. “What’s up?”

He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Just here to get my fix. I missed you.”

She looked at the clock. “It hasn’t even been two hours,” she hissed. “What’s there to miss?”

“This.” He nuzzled her neck on the other side from the phone.

Meghan knew better than to admonish him. With her luck, she’d be telling him, “Stop that!” just as someone came back to the call.

“Ms. Mattson?”

Right on cue, the perky voice of an assistant chimed in Meghan’s other ear.

“Yes, I’m here.” Meghan’s voice squeaked when Dan nibbled on her earlobe.

Dan continued to plant feathery kisses on the skin below her left ear while she tried to have a sensible conversation with Alanna, or Alicia, or whatever she said her name was.

Thankfully the guy Meghan was calling wasn’t available and she was able to stammer out something about trying again on Monday and hang up.

“Are you crazy?” Meghan couldn’t keep the smile out of her voice. “And if you say you’re crazy for me, you’ll be violating any number of state and federal statutes prohibiting bad clichés.”

He pulled back and settled into the side chair. “Oh, all right. What have you learned?” At her frantic gesture, he rolled his eyes. She scowled at him. He sighed and reached back and opened her door a bit, so it wouldn’t look so obvious that they were doing what in fact they had been doing.

She pulled her notes over and started to explain who she’d called, what she’d learned, and where her efforts had gotten her. They slipped back into the now-familiar routine of working their brains around the known, the suspected, and the legal ramifications of it all. Talking about the case was almost as exhilarating as his kisses.

Almost.

When Dan’s phone rang, Meghan zoned out his call, which sounded like something to do with his apartment. She realized what that little thought tickling the back of her head had been. If they got caught, if Darlene decided to make an example of them, Meghan would lose this—not just the job, but the fun. No one would hire her as a paralegal and then let her work on cases the way Dan did. Of course it looked like favoritism, but the alternative of doing nothing but data entry was unbearable.

“Sorry about that,” he said as he put his phone away. “Where were we?”

“Well, I’ve reached about half the people on Vince Johnson’s list. Most don’t know anything, but the first guy I reached, Tom Stevens, thinks he remembers the name of the guy who headed up Jenner’s research and development department.”

“Okay. And here’s what I was thinking.” Dan proceeded to rattle off some ideas.

They hadn’t been at it for very long when Dan’s phone buzzed. He read the text, frowned, then got up to leave. “Sorry. It’s something I really need to follow up on.”

She waved him off. “Go. It’s okay, I’ve got stuff to do.” Namely, all the work she hadn’t been doing while they’d been in Massachusetts.

When he didn’t return right away, Meghan half-expected him to cancel their evening. Instead, he called her a couple of hours later to say he’d needed to leave the office, but he was coming back to collect her, if she was still up for pizza and—?

“And another sleepover?” She chuckled. “Do I get the s’mores I requested?”

“I’m still trying to figure out the double entendre there,” he mused. “If you really want them, we’d have to stop at Whole Foods and get the components. Can you melt marshmallows on an electric stove?”

“I’m trying to imagine Whole Foods having marshmallows.”

Dan laughed. “Oh, God, you’re right. They probably don’t. Or if they do, the marshmallows are made of free-range egg whites and fair-traded raw sugar.”

“And the chocolate will be seventy percent cacao something or other and have subtle hints of blackberry.”

“And the graham crackers are artisanal, and deliberately left in non-uniform shapes.”

“Okay, no s’mores,” Meghan conceded. “I’ll get over the crushing disappointment, eventually.”

“There’s a decent Thai place I can order from. Would that help to cushion the blow?”

“Mmm. How spicy do you like it?”

He laughed. “Okay, that time I definitely got the double entendre!”

She shook her head, but she could feel herself grinning. “You’re impossible. Look, does it even make sense for you to come back here? Give me the address and I’ll meet you at your place.”

“No need. I have to get my overnight bag. I should be back in half an hour or so. Hold on—”

Meghan could hear a woman’s voice in the background. All Dan said was, “No, that looks good. Can you make sure he files it correctly this time?” He didn’t sound annoyed, precisely, just a bit exasperated. Then he came back on the line.

“Okay, I should be ready to leave here. See you in a few minutes, okay?”

“Sure thing.”

Meghan was checking a database when she noticed she had a new email.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

On my way back now. Am mildly embarrassed to admit how excited I am. You?

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

Now that you mention it I am. Literally. Before this, I was putting it firmly out my mind, the better to appear like the dedicated paralegal I strive to be. (Drooling on files not entirely appropriate here, you know.)