The Good Fight (Time Served Book 3) (28 page)

“Yes, Susan.” I groan when my fingertips meet the lacy edge of her panties, when the scent of her arousal reaches my nose. “Tomorrow and all the days after.” I bunch up the fabric at her hip and kiss her pussy through the satin panties. I dig in with my tongue, finding her clit, sucking it against my teeth.

“Oscar,” she gasps. “I don’t—”

“You wanted a strawberry last time,” I point out. “Let me give you one.”

She glances around. There are plenty of buildings looming around us, plenty of people who could be watching, though if they are, they’re hiding. “People might see—”

I shove the crotch of her panties aside and lick straight up her middle. “Might see me eating you out?”

She gasps. “Yes.”

I slide my hands up the inside of her thighs and push her legs wide, pulling apart her slippery folds and opening her up for my mouth. She gives up the fight and lifts one leg to rest on the planter beside me, giving me better access, giving me everything.

And this time I take it.

Epilogue

“...like, I mean, if you don’t even know what an infield fly rule is, why are you coaching softball?”

“It’s a real mystery, Dorrie.” Susan glances back at me and rolls her eyes as we trail Dorrie into the apartment. A year of dating and a summer of softball games later, Susan and I are still going strong. Having had some time to come to terms with her parents’ divorce, Dorrie has settled down a little bit, though she’s every bit the headstrong and vocal woman her mother is.

Dorrie kicks her shoes into the corner and drops her bag on the floor, turning to us, her cheeks pink with indignation. “And did you see when he put Tamra on third in the fourth inning? Uh, Tamra can’t even throw two feet—how is she going to make a play at first? Seriously. He’s such a dipshit.”

Apparently the coach Dorrie had last summer was much better, but he left town to reunite with Susan’s sister, Caitlin, and news of their recent engagement has officially confirmed Dorrie’s fear that he won’t be returning to coach The Closers. Truthfully—they’re dreadful. She makes some good points about the new coach’s ability, but there’s only so much you can do with a bunch of kids whose coordination can best be described as “non-existent.”

“Dorrie, don’t say dipshit.”

“But he—”

“
Stop
.”

Dorrie huffs but drops the argument before it begins, stomping around to the fridge to grab a carton of milk. She’s ready to drink straight from the carton but I snag it before she can, putting a glass in her hand and filling it halfway.

“Use a glass,” I tell her. “You’ve got germs.”

She snorts and tries not to smirk as she drinks.

I lower my voice. “Coach Morgan, however, is a total dipshit. Leaving Lindsay in to pitch after she walked in three runs and calling it a ‘learning opportunity?’”

She swipes the back of her hand across her milk moustache. “I know, right?”

“I can hear you,” Susan says.

“We’re bonding,” Dorrie retorts. “Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?”

“What’s going to happen is you’re going to go take a shower. You smell like bug spray and sunscreen.”

“You made me wear it.”

“And you’ll be grateful when you’re fifty and look forty-five.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Go take a shower.”

Dorrie sighs like the most put-upon teenager on earth, but sticks her empty glass in the dishwasher and trudges down the hall.

I try not to look at Susan, but I can still feel her disapproving stare. “We’re
bonding
,” I insist.

“Don’t encourage her to swear,” she says, with no real vehemence. Then she adds, “She likes you,” and comes to hug me. She lingers, her cheek pressed to my chest, and I rub her back, both because I want to and because I think she needs it. Susan’s been making a huge effort to be more involved in Dorrie’s life, and I think the struggle to find a new balance is exhausting for both of them. It’s exhausting for me, and I’m only here a few nights a week. I still have my place in Camden, but Dorrie’s twelve, so Susan only comes out to spend the night once or twice a month, the rest of the time we’re here.

“I like her,” I reply. “She’s a lot like you.”

“That’s a horrible thing to say.”

“It’s terrifying.”

Susan’s shoulders shake as she laughs. “She was the most docile baby,” she murmurs. “Everyone said we’d taken the wrong one home. Sometimes Stephen and I would stare at her and think, ‘Where’s our kid? Who wound up with that monster?’”

I laugh.

“But now I know,” she continues, nodding sagely. “She’s down the hall, not taking a shower like I told her.”

“No kids like taking showers.”

Susan groans and rubs her forehead against my sternum. “There’s not a lot of time left, Oscar.”

I glance at the clock. It’s five after nine. “She’ll take a shower, Susan. And if she doesn’t, what’s the worst that could happen?”

She laughs tiredly, then keeps laughing until she has to pull away to wipe tears from the corners of her eyes.

“What?”

“Not the shower, you fool.”

“You lost me.”

She takes a deep breath. “Do you remember that first day at my apartment, when I told you about Dorrie?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And how you said you wanted kids?”

I’m pretty sure my heart stops beating. Or just falls out of my chest entirely. Because Susan’s got a knack for knowing everything that’s going on in there—both medically and metaphorically—but still it stuns me that she’s bringing it up. I’d considered broaching the subject a time or two, but I always figured her answer would be no, and I couldn’t really argue with her. She’s already done it once, she has a demanding career...

“What are you saying?”

She scratches the side of her nose. “I’m saying, I only have a couple of good years left. Then I’ll be too old to kidnap anybody.”

“Susan. Fuck. Don’t say stuff like that. You’re not funny.”

“I am too. And I’m serious. About the baby, not the kidnapping.”

“You want to have another one?”

“I want to if you want to.”

“Don’t you want to be married first?”

She shrugs. “I’ve been married, remember? It doesn’t guarantee anything.”

It’s not like I haven’t thought about getting married. I’m crazy in love with Susan, and I love Dorrie, too. I want this whole life with them, and I want it forever, but somehow I’d always envisioned the trial period lasting more than a year.

Then I think of the Green Space 2.0. The garden we’re growing, the baskets of lettuce and carrots and peas we’ve distributed, trees full of apples and cherries and lemons. Our lime tree got some sort of disease and died, and there was a small fire that wiped out our first batch of jalapeno seedlings and set us back a month, but we’ve been overcoming these disasters the way we do everything else, one day at a time. The project may not look exactly like we envisioned, but it feels the same—it feels hopeful. It feels like it’s working. Like everything is possible, if we just keep showing up to fight every day.

“Let me do it right,” I say finally. “Let me ask you the right way.”

“Whatever you want,” Susan says, rising onto her tiptoes to kiss me. “You know I like the way you do things.”

I slide my fingers through her hair, a little longer now, soft and silky where it hangs loose against her shoulders.

“Ew. Please. If I have to see you two geezers kissing, I’m going to vomit. Enough already.” Dorrie flops onto the couch and snags the remote, covering her head with a pillow to block out our horror show.

Susan’s laughing as she pulls back, just an inch. “This is what you’re signing up for,” she tells me. “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

I smile and kiss her again. “Bring it on.”

* * * * *

To find out about other books by Julianna Keyes or to be alerted to new releases, sign up for her monthly newsletter
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And turn the page for an excerpt from
IN HER DEFENSE
, available now at all participating e-retailers.

Now available from Carina Press and Julianna Keyes

Caitlin Dufresne has never loved anyone as much as she loves the law...

Read on for a preview of
IN HER DEFENSE
, the second book in Julianna Keyes’s
TIME SERVED
series

Who Is

Caitlin Dufresne?

By River Smith,
Chicago’s Finest
Lifestyle Editor

If you’ve never heard of Caitlin Dufresne, you are a member of a small minority. Even now, our appointment scheduled weeks ago, she is in demand, desk and cell phone ringing, secretaries, paralegals and fellow lawyers knocking on her door.

We meet in her corner office on the thirty-second floor of the famous King Building in downtown Chicago, a tidy, efficient space done in neutral grays with white accents and limited accessories. Her Yale degrees hang next to a silver plaque etched with the famous
Veni
,
Vidi
,
Vici
phrase. On another wall, a painting whose price tag undoubtedly ran five figures does its best to compete with the stunning city views, but the most eye-catching thing in the room is Dufresne herself.

Our cover photo does her no justice. In fact, it’s entirely possible there’s no justice in the world, because it’s not fair that someone can be this beautiful, this smart and this successful, at just thirty-one. And yet, here she is. In the flesh. Very much real. And very much in demand, I’m reminded when I hesitate before asking a question and a flash of irritation flitters across her face, making her check her watch, her phone, her constantly uploading email.

Dufresne was in demand before settling the famous Fowler case earlier this year, and now it would seem there is no one in the world who doesn’t want a piece of her. (If you’re in the aforementioned minority that is not familiar with her work, the Fowler case is the massive class action suit brought against a manufacturer who used a carcinogenic cleaner that destroyed the lives of thousands of low-income workers.) Class action cases can drag on interminably, but with Dufresne at the helm, it was settled in less than a year for an eight-figure amount that left jaws on the floor.

Because that’s just what Caitlin Dufresne does, folks. She comes, she sees and she conquers.

(Article continued on page 61.)

Chapter One

Whoever said it was lonely at the top was wrong.

My father wore the phrase like a badge of honor, trotting it out on special occasions, reminding everyone that he had started his own law firm at the age of twenty-eight and quickly turned it into one of New York’s top practices. It wasn’t easy, he pointed out frequently, usually when explaining why he couldn’t come to my softball games—tennis matches, swim meets, debates or soccer tournaments—and I’d never doubted him. He and my mother lived together but apart, sharing a home and two daughters, but little more. They’d been happy enough with their arrangement, and I’d considered it a by-product of success.

Sometimes, on the rare night he was home before bed, he’d take me up to the roof and we’d study the blinking city below. I looked up to my father in every way, took his wisdom as gospel and vowed to follow in his footsteps, but I knew then as I know now, that he was wrong. It’s not lonely at the top—
it’s the top
.

He was right about the other part, though: it’s not easy, and he didn’t make it easy on me, either. Everyone assumed I’d work with my father and rise swiftly through the ranks at his firm, Dufresne Proctor, but I’d known since age twelve, when I announced that I’d be attending Yale, then Yale Law, then becoming a lawyer just like him, that I would never work at his side. He told me people would call it nepotism and refuse to take me seriously. I had my father’s drive but my mother’s looks, and people saw three things when they looked at me: blond hair, blue eyes and big breasts.

Despite the fact that I moved to Chicago without knowing a soul, interviewed at a dozen different firms and ultimately accepted an entry-level position with Sterling, Morgan & Haines, people still refuse to believe that I’ve worked for everything I have. Growing up, teachers complained to my parents that I didn’t work well with others. Even now I don’t pawn off less appealing tasks to paralegals or junior associates; I do the work myself. Some people call it vain or selfish, but I call it getting things done, and it’s served me well in my five years at the firm. It’s why I’m the best.

It’s also why I’m at the office at 11:17 p.m. on a Saturday when nearly everyone else has gone home to be with their wives or husbands or cats, or whatever it is people do when they’re not here. The thirty-second floor of the King Building in downtown Chicago isn’t the top of the world, but on clear summer nights like this, it feels pretty damn close.

I worked my ass off to make it this far, and for some people, this is as good as it gets. But not for me. The company plans to launch a new office in Los Angeles this fall, and I’m the one they’ve selected to head it up. A new city, an office on the
forty-fourth
floor and guaranteed fast track to partner. Right on schedule.

I’ve got dozens of active cases, but at the moment my focus is my biggest client, Teller Manufacturing, a home appliance maker being sued by a woman who makes her living fabricating lawsuits. I could win this single-handedly, but the partners have insisted on assigning a second lawyer to the case, even when I could get things done ten times faster on my own. Right now I’m saddled with a fellow fifth-year named Arthur Wong. We started at the firm on the same day, but that’s where the similarities end. I win where Arthur loses; I push where he pulls. I stand out where he shrinks back; I am competent where he is... “Arthur?”

“Yes?” His head pops up from beneath the conference table.

“What are you doing down there?”

“I’m...looking for something.”

A backbone? Legal acumen? Confidence?

“You’re hiding from the picture again, aren’t you?”

“What, um... What?”

Working with Arthur is like toting around one of those fake babies they use to discourage teenage pregnancy: pointless and cumbersome. He’s as helpless and hapless as a newborn, cries at least half as often and I have not learned anything from the experience.

“Do you need a tissue?” I ask when he sniffles.

“No, thanks. I have one.”

“It’s a photo of a finger, Arthur. The woman is still alive.”

“I know.”

“And she’s suing our client.”

“I know.” Shaky breath.

“She’s a manipulative liar who hacked off her pinkie in order to come after Teller for millions of dollars.”

“I know! I just have allergies.” Now he does snatch up a tissue, dabbing at his eyes.

“For Christ’s sake.” I restack the evidence photographs. “Stop looking at the pictures if they aggravate your ‘allergies.’”

He looks relieved but merely says, “We should probably wrap up for the day,” as he randomly tucks papers into his briefcase. “It’s getting late.”

“It’s quarter after eleven.” I take a sip of my energy drink, underscoring the message that we’ve still got lots to do.

“At
night
.”

“We’ll be here until we’re done. You’re deposing Petra Moreno next week, and you’re nowhere close to ready.”

“Yeah, um, about that...” He carefully refastens his briefcase. It’s monogrammed. A.W. As in,
Aw
, as in pity, the sentiment he most inspires in people.

“What about it, Arthur?”

People who want to win work until they succeed, they don’t go home because they’re tired or hungry or their wife recorded
The Amazing Race
. How Arthur managed to get hired is a mystery. He dresses the part, but that’s as close as he comes to belonging here. His short black hair sticks out in every direction, there’s an unidentified stain on his silk tie and one of his shoelaces is perpetually undone. Nothing about him inspires confidence, not even when he manages to stare at me without blinking for twenty full seconds.

I sigh. “Did you forget what you were going to say?”

“Um...”

“It may have been about the Moreno deposition.”

“Yes. Right. I’m not sure we should be doing this.”

I roll my eyes. We’ve had this conversation half a dozen times, and it always ends the same way: We’re definitely doing this. “We’re doing it,” I say.

“It feels wrong, Caitlin. They met in a depression support group. Called the Whispering Angels.”

“I know where they met, Arthur. I’m the one who found Petra. And the only reason Laurel Frances was meeting with the Whispering Angels—” It takes all my willpower not to gag uttering that dreadful name, “—is because she burned through the money she got from her last settlement.”

“And she was depressed.”

“Of course she was. If I spent three hundred grand on lottery tickets and didn’t win, I’d be depressed too.”

“So—”

“But I don’t spend three hundred grand on lottery tickets because I’m not an idiot. And I don’t stick my hand in the PrestoChop and act surprised when it chops off my finger, because
it’s called a PrestoChop
. And I definitely don’t try to sue the company that made it for seven million dollars because I’m an idiot with poor judgment.”

“I’m just not sure...”

“Fine. I’ll do it. You can hold her hand afterward. Don’t worry—she’s got all five fingers.”

Arthur picks at a hangnail and avoids my eyes.

I bail on the pep talk and flip through a stack of less offensive photos until I find the ones I’m looking for. “Here. Remember these?” I slide across photos of Laurel, a career protester, fighting for various causes over the past two years. In five of the photos she’s pictured next to the same young man. In two particularly memorable pictures, they’re protesting a factory that produces stuffed animals. Laurel is dressed as a unicorn, her partner is a flying tiger. Her handmade protest sign reads Stuff This: Animal Gender Diversity Is Not a Myth! Not even I know what that means.

Arthur studies the images and nods. “Should I—”

“Identify Laurel’s friend and bring him in to talk? Yes.”

“Okay, I—”

My phone, set to vibrate, jitters across the table, and I frown when I see the name on the display: William Eldard, son of Julian Eldard, an old man with too much money and too little impulse control who also happens to own one of the largest construction companies in the city. He’s sixty-six, dying of liver cancer and convinced the cure lies with a reclusive shaman in the rain forests of Brazil. William, vice president of Eldard Construction, has been urging his father to sign over power of attorney so he can run the company while his father searches for a cure—or dies trying—and Julian has finally agreed. We’re drafting the paperwork now, and he’s set to sign it on Friday before he hops on his private plane, most likely never to be seen again.

“William,” I say, picking up. “What’s wrong?” A dull roar drowns out his answer. “William? I can’t hear you.”

A faint thud, then silence. “Caitlin? Are you there?”

“Yes. Where are you?”

William exhales shakily. “At the airport.”

“Please tell me your father has not gotten on a plane.”

“He’s about to.”

“He hasn’t signed the papers.”

“I know. Change of plans. He snuck out an hour ago and I just found him. They’re cleared for departure at 11:55. I need the papers now. Are they ready?”

“I—” I abandon Arthur and hurry down the hall to my office to pull up the documents on my computer. “Very nearly. I can email them to you, but you’ll need him to sign a hard copy. Do you have access to a printer?”

“I’ll find one.”

“How’s his mental state?”

“You mean, is he crazy? No worse than usual. But he read that it was important to visit the Brazilian shaman on a full moon, so he has to leave now to get there in time for the next one. He also shaved his head and both his legs.”

“Are you going with him?”

“I offered. He says he has to go alone.” William sounds a tiny bit relieved by this fact, and I don’t blame him. When he first told me of his father’s plans, I pictured future hikers finding Julian’s remains wrapped up in vines, just his teeth and a couple of ribs left behind to identify him.

“Okay, William. I’ll prepare the POA and email it to you in half an hour. It needs notarization and the signature of at least one witness.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m also going to send you a notary public. Don’t sign anything until she gets there. And ask the pilot or a member of the flight staff to sign, too, as your witness.”

“Okay. Okay. Thanks, Caitlin.”

I hang up and curse Julian and his idiocy, then sort through the company contact list until I find the home phone numbers of our three notary publics. The first one doesn’t answer, the second has a sick child and the third, Nancy Patel, extracts a promise for an appointment with my hairdresser, Marcel, the most exclusive stylist in the city, in exchange for racing out to the airport at this hour.

I fire off a text to Marcel before tossing down the phone and finalizing the details for the power of attorney. I type with one hand and reach for the energy drink with the other, finding the can mysteriously empty. I hesitate, but a series of yawns convinces me to down a second one. Despite its promises—or perhaps I’m just becoming immune to the stuff—I don’t feel any more awake, and my hands are twitchy. It takes four tries to type in William’s email address, and the words on the screen are starting to blur. I blame it on skipping dinner again. I’d been in court all day, returned to the office in time for a staff meeting, then snagged Arthur to discuss the Teller case for a few hours. I remind myself a missed meal never hurt anybody, but my rumbling stomach disagrees.

“Um, Caitlin?”

I glance up to find Arthur in the doorway, briefcase in hand. “What is it?”

“It’s 11:35. I’m going to head home. Unless you need something...?” The question trails off, as reluctant to be asked as its asker is to be asking.

“No, Arthur. I’ve got it.”

“Are you sure? I’ve done a lot of power of attorneys. I could—”

“I’m sure.”

He hesitates, then nods once before turning to go. “Good night.”