The Cost of Happiness: A Contemporary Romance (8 page)

“No prob, Dan. I’ll wait for your email with the list, though, okay?”

“I’ll get that out this afternoon,” Dan promised. “Oh, and Lou?”

“Yeah?” Trioli sighed loudly. He knew what was coming next.

“Do we have the case?”

“Send me the strategy memo so I can show my CEO. But yeah, you’ve definitely impressed me.”

After the call, Dan found it hard to stop grinning at Meghan, whose face registered conflicting emotions. Pleasure in being included in a client visit, sure, Dan could tell. He guessed, though, that she was worried their field trip wouldn’t be allowed. He wanted to assure her that she was going. He’d make sure of it.

Instead, he admired the fancy arch he’d constructed during the call. “I’ll work up some thoughts on who we’ll need to talk to and email that to you, okay? Make all the suggestions you can—we don’t want to make this trip twice. Oh, and get me up to speed on the pacemaker case.”

“Sullivan versus Gerard Technologies.”

“If you say so. I just know it’s about pacemakers.”

She glanced up and then back to her pad. She scribbled things. Unless he missed something, she was already thinking through what she wanted to ask the ProCell team, while another part of her brain was organizing her thoughts on the pacemaker case. Natural-born lawyer. Just like that, he was grinning again.

When she was ready to tell Dan about the pacemaker case, Meghan updated the database, printed out two clean copies of the summary and headed over to his office. He was on the phone but waved her in. She sat in the chair and looked around with some interest. Other than the plethora of toys on his desk, there didn’t seem to be a lot of Dan in the space yet—he could have been a partner from one of the branch offices, squatting here while stuck in Philadelphia. No family photos, for example. You’d have thought he’d have brought pictures in first thing. His lovely wife and wonderful children on the annual vacation back to the family compound in Maine, for example.

He didn’t wear a wedding ring and there was that awkward moment in the cab on Monday night. Still, she figured he had to be married. He just seemed the type to have a house in the suburbs, a wife, two-point-four children and a dog. Then she remembered he lived by the museum. She edited her mental image. Now she saw him in a late-Victorian townhouse, on Spring Garden perhaps. The kind with a traditional façade, while the inside looked like a cross between an art gallery and an elegantly spare furniture display. Mid-century modern, she thought. Chrome and leather bent into architecturally compelling shapes. She smiled at the image of Dan folded like a pretzel in a chair that cost more than her annual salary.

“What’s the joke?” he asked as he hung up the phone.

She ducked her head awkwardly. “Nothing,” she mumbled, embarrassed to realize she was embarrassed. She covered by launching into an explanation of the pacemaker litigation.

Dan played with another of his toys, a funny smile on his lips.

After she covered the status of the case so far, she said, “The good news is that we get to argue the merits of each plaintiff’s case for damages. The devil’s in the details of each claim, as there are a lot of things that patients can do to mess up even a fully-functioning pacemaker. I’ve been keeping a database on each plaintiff as we get the forms in. I’m not concerned with the medical aspects of the case, just the defenses we might have. Did they keep a cell phone in a breast pocket? Did they try to tweak their own pacemaker—you’d be surprised how many people do—and cause the problem themselves? Did they use an arc welder?”

Meghan looked up at his laughter.

He was staring at her with his mouth open. “You’re kidding, right?”

She kept her face impassive. “Oh, no. It seems arc welders and other bits of equipment can produce very powerful magnetic fields that interfere with the functioning of the pacemaker.”

Dan tipped his chair back and put his feet on an open drawer sticking out from his desk. “Now, see? I did not know that. I’m telling you—this is what I love about being a lawyer. Where else can you learn stuff like that?”

“Uh, you could be a cardiologist perhaps?”

His eyes crinkled into that sunny-blue-sky/I’m-amused-with-you look. “Okay, Ms. Smarty-Pants, I’ll concede that. But riddle me this: On what other job can you learn about cell phone technology and the effect of arc welders on pacemakers on the same day? Hmmm?”

Meghan pressed her lips together until the urge to laugh had passed. “I would imagine any number of places, including any of the…” She was about to say something about companies that make both pacemakers and cell phones—surely there was at least one, the technologies seemed like they might be related—when she thought of something. From the look on Dan’s face, it was possible he had thought of it too.

“We need to ask—” she said.

“I’ll add that to—” he began.

They stared at each other. Finally, Dan turned to his computer and typed something in one of the documents he’d been working on.

“I mean, what are the odds, right?” he asked rhetorically. “But it sure can’t hurt to ask the ProCell tech guys about any research they’ve done on the effect of their phones on pacemakers.” He turned back to grin at her. “This is fun, isn’t it?”

Staring at his beaming face, Meghan had to agree. It was fun.

“Hey, neighbor.”

Meghan turned from her mailbox to see Kassie coming up the steps from the courtyard. “Oh, hi.” So much for thinking they’d never see each other again.

Kassie opened her mailbox and pulled out the junk mail folded inside. “Catalogs.” She flipped through them. “And not very interesting ones, at that.”

Meghan chuckled, then headed inside. “Have a great weekend.”

“Hey, where are you going?” Kassie asked. “Okay, I can tell where you’re going. What I wanted to know is why don’t you come out with me? I got stood up.”

“Stood up?” Kassie was precisely the sort of woman Meghan assumed guys went for.

“Yeah. Someone I met last weekend at a Wharton mixer. He was a bit pompous, but seemed harmless enough. We’d agreed to meet at a bar downtown, then he never showed.”

Meghan held the door open for Kassie. “I really should get upstairs and, uh, do some laundry. Or something.”

“Or something?” Kassie plunked her fists on her hips, the catalogs clutched in one hand. “You’re turning me down on the basis of chores you can’t even name? That’s cold.”

They walked up the stairs. “Sorry. I just don’t like to go out. And particularly not if I’m going to meet schmucky MBA students.” Meghan pulled her keys out, ready to get into her apartment and out of her work clothes.

“Yeah, I agree he’s not much of an ad for the bar scene.”

Meghan stopped by her door. “And honestly? I want to make some notes about a case I’m working on. I might even go into work over the weekend.”

Kassie flipped her bangs out of her eyes. “Your boss breathing down your neck?”

Meghan paused, thinking. “No.” She smiled. “He thinks it’s fun too.”

“What’s fun?”

“I don’t know. Thinking about the law, trying to figure out a way to make the facts work in our—well, in our client’s—favor.”

Kassie leaned against her door. “Work is fun?”

Meghan nodded. It was. And with Dan Howard heading up the team, she couldn’t wait to get back to it. “I normally do laundry on Saturdays, so I want to get it done tonight so I can go into the office tomorrow.” She could tell she must sound like a nut job, but she couldn’t wait to get back to the ProCell case.

Kassie rolled her eyes. “Okay. I won’t keep you from your fun work, then. We’ll have to get together when it gets more boring.” She was about to turn away when she caught Meghan’s eye. “Unless it’s your boss who’s so much fun.”

Meghan’s cheeks heated. “Bye.”

For the rest of the evening, she tried to convince herself that Dan had nothing to do with her enjoyment of the case. She wasn’t very successful. Not when she kept remembering his blazing smile and hot summer sky eyes.

The office felt odd after dark on a Sunday. Meghan could tell there were other people in the building—she could hear the elevators’ faint pings when they stopped at various floors. Her floor remained quiet. She walked to Dan’s office with the results of her work on the ProCell defense. She didn’t see any puddles of light from the other offices. Plus, no one had made coffee, normally a reliable indicator someone was in on a weekend.

She was entering her hours into the firm’s billing program when she heard some tapping just outside her office. She turned to see Dan in her doorway.

“You scared me.” She scowled at him. “I’d just decided there was no one else on this floor, and then you materialize.”

He hunched his shoulder in self-defense. “Hey, I tapped on the wall, so you’d know someone was coming. It’s not like I snuck up on you.”

She turned back to her computer. “I’m just putting in my time, and then I’m off. Did you want something?”

“Nope. I came in to get some files and I found this massive slab of paper on my desk,” he said, flopping the memos and documents she’d rubber-banded together. “What is this?” He sat in her other chair and started looking at what was in the stack.

“Okay, the top document’s a memo covering all the relevant facts we have so far. Below that’s another memo on the legal research I found concerning the evidentiary standards for severing cases with multiple defendants. I threw in some research on the antitrust, intellectual property, and class action procedure issues that I could think of. It’s sketchy, though and it most likely misses more than it includes, but it’s a start. Finally, you’ve got a third memo on technological issues, everything I could find on the Internet and from other case law.”

“I’m impressed. This is a lot.” He hesitated. “Um, did I assign this?”

She couldn’t read his expression, which seemed more rueful than critical, but one never knew with partners. “No. I just thought it would be helpful. I mean, helpful for me. And since I was going to be doing it for myself, I thought it would be better to have copies for the file. That’s okay, right?” She heard the anxiety in her voice. When would she get past this fear that they were going to fire her? Add to that her desire to please him professionally and she was a bundle of nerves. Hell, everything about the ProCell case was outside her experience.

Dan studied her for a moment, then pulled out one of the memos to read with more care. A minute later, he appeared to have forgotten she was there.

Meghan considered explaining how scared she was of not doing a good enough job, that he’d quietly request someone else to work on his cases, and how that would feel like she’d been demoted. Maybe she’d done too much work without authorization, but she’d loved doing it.

Then it hit her. “Oh, no—if it’s the time, I don’t have to bill any of it. I mean, I really was trying to get my head around the various aspects of the case, but there’s no reason why the client has to pay for my ignorance, I guess, so if you—”

He didn’t look up. “Don’t be silly. Of course your time should be billed. Hell, it should probably be billed at a second-year associate’s rate, but I can think of a lot of reasons why it can’t be, so the client is getting a massive break on the legal costs. ProCell’s gain, I guess.”

Meghan found she could breathe again.

He leaned forward, still staring at her memos. Finally he lifted his head. “I don’t have a handle yet on the law firm mindset,” he admitted. “All I know is that you’re brilliant and capable and somehow your thinking on this case meshes with mine.”

Meghan’s heart started pounding. She wanted to make that screeching tire noise and get him to repeat that part about her being brilliant, but there was something about his expression that freaked her out. She tried to keep her breathing steady while she waited for what was coming.

“I got a phone call Friday afternoon from Darlene McAndrews. She’s your—supervisor?”

“The paralegal coordinator,” she explained in a dead calm voice. “If you have problems with my work, you call her. If you need a paralegal, you can call her or the litigation administrator, either one.” Meghan wanted to scream at him to spit out what was going on, but she focused on her breathing and waited some more.