Work for Hire (24 page)

But at least the delay was worth it, because Julian had kissed me.

Julian.

I savored the memory of the kiss, rubbing my lips together to remember his taste. He’d tasted of Espresso and mint, and kissed me for like five minutes: it was a real kiss, in the park, on the great lawn, just as the sun descended.

We had sat to watch the sunset when
it
happened. He had leaned over, and brushed his lips against mine—a gentle caress, then another. He’d run his tongue along my upper lip before he nibbled on the lower one, then dipped for more exploration.

No groping or tongue shoving for Julian, no siree.
The man had technique, finesse. I didn’t even have a chance to get nervous.

When the kiss was over, he took my hand into his, touched the knuckles with his lips, and insisted on chocolate to mark the occasion.

The chocolate mousse cake tasted almost as good as the kiss.
Almost.

Too bad the pleasant part of the evening was over.

I looked around the dorm suite. All was quiet, all lights off. Lauren had to be asleep. I tiptoed to my bedroom. My own bed looked inviting.

But no, I
had
to work on the brief. So I changed into a sweatshirt and jeans, took my laptop off my desk and tiptoed back out of the room, out of the suite and the dorm. I would put in at least two hours of research, but not here, so as not to be lulled by those who were sound asleep. I needed the artificial light, the lack of time reference, of the library.

I set up shop in its basement. A scatter of hardcore students occupied a few of the study desks. But mostly, even the library was empty. Late Saturday nights, with the promise of a full working Sunday, were usually quiet, even in law school.

I hooked my laptop to an Internet portal and logged into the library’s electronic database. I typed, “Work for Hire,” into the search bar. The search wrote back, “236 results.”

I groaned—this would be a long night—and clicked into the first case:
Community for Creative Non-Violence versus Reid
. It read, in part: “ … In determining whether a hired party is an employee … consider the hiring party’s right to control the manner and means by which the product is accomplished.” I yawned, and clicked out of case one.

Surely case two had to be more interesting, more understandable. I skimmed the text: “ … No one factor is dispositive … ”

Nope. Just as bad. What the hell were these judges writing about?

My vision blurred. I closed case two and scrolled down the remaining headings:
Aymes v. Bonelli
,
Carter v. Helmsley-Spear, Inc.
,
Avtec Sys., Inc. v. Peiffer.
The cases, their names, blended, morphed into indecipherable gibberish. I also found I could barely keep my eyes open.

This was not working.

I got up from the desk, moved away from the computer and stretched, thinking. I could read all night but process nothing, or I could go back to the dorm, get a good night’s rest, and start fresh tomorrow with no distractions. Sure, I’d lose a few hours, but how productive would those hours be in the first place?

So I collected my things and almost flew back to the dorm, past the empty street that separated the library from the student housing, the sleeping doorman at the front desk and the mailroom.

I stopped.

The mailroom. I hadn’t picked up my mail in days, not that I was expecting any. The tuition bill was paid and my housing costs were up to date, thanks to the Lamonts. God bless them. The school had no reason to send its friendly reminders. Still, in my preoccupation with Gemma, Xander and Julian, checking the mail was another chore I had let fall by the wayside—but fortunately was one that I could easily remedy.

And I did.

Except for one folded sheet of paper, my box was empty. I unfolded the sheet and eyed the official
Law Review
letterhead; it contained two terse sentences:
Your appearance is requested at a meeting with the Editor-in-Chief on Monday, 11 a.m. Thank you.

I read the lines again.

Such unadorned language did not bode good tidings.

CHAPTER 18

“
H
EY,
T
EKLA
, how’s it going?”

The phone woke me up at seven the next morning. I wouldn’t have answered, except it was from Xander.
It’s about the party
, was all I could think.

“It’s going fine, Xander.” I clutched the receiver in my hand. “And how about with you?”

“Oh,” Xander drawled as if he had just called to shoot the breeze. Somehow I doubted it. He liked me, but not that much, and not that early on a Sunday morning. “Things are just dandy here.”

“Then why,” I said as I rolled out of bed and squinted at the alarm clock on my nightstand, “are you calling me at 7:03 a.m., on a Sunday?”

“To say hi?” Xander’s voice squeaked.

Yeah, right.
The words hovered on the tip of my tongue.
Be nice
, I reminded myself.

“Xander!” I scowled at the telephone. “Are you okay?”

“Sure,” Xander chirped. “Never better.”

He didn’t elaborate.

“Is Gemma okay?” I persisted.

“Uh-huh.”

I shut my eyes. Talking to the boy was like pulling teeth.

“Is the house still standing?” Obviously, he had called to tell me
something
. And if he was dillydallying, that something couldn’t be good.

“Sure,” Xander said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I snapped, my patience quickly waning. “Maybe because you had a party last night and now you’re calling me at, like, the break of dawn. Come on, Xander, out with it. What happened?”

“Oh, all right,” Xander snapped back. “I’m not sure it’s anything. Hey, like, it’s probably nothing, and Gemma’s just flipping out but, like, during the party we accidentally opened the door to
Maman’s
office—you know, ‘cause, like, there were a lot of people here and we wanted more room, you know—and now some of
Maman’s
equipment looks kinda messed up.”

I said nothing and wondered whether, if I remained silent, the conversation, and all its potential ramifications—
read: me being involved
—would just go away.

“Tekla?” Xander’s voice wavered on the other end of the line.

Nope. No such luck. Xander was still there, and no amount of pretending could make him or his problems disappear.

“How messed up?” I murmured.

“Tekla,” Xander wailed, all teen bravado abandoned, “I think you better come over, ‘cause I think we
really
messed up.”

Words failed me again. I glanced at my laptop. It was on my desk in the very same spot I had dropped it last night after the trip to the library, when I had left with 236 cases yet to be read.
Cases
, I reminded myself,
I could read because of the Lamonts and their money.

“Tekla,” Xander pleaded. “Are you there?”

“Yeah,” I replied sourly.

I
HAD NEVER STEPPED
foot in Monique’s office before. It was the rabbit hole on the ground floor where Julian disappeared every time he was in New York. It was also undoubtedly the place Monique met with all the beautiful and glamorous people she shot for her covers. I imagined Giselle Bündchen, Jessica Simpson and maybe even Madonna—or, at the very least, Anna Wintour—gracing the assuredly posh space with their presence.

I had been dying to know what Monique’s office looked like—but it looked nothing like I envisioned. No celebrities lounged in smoky corners, sipping fat-free smoothies and discussing the latest trends in fashion. Okay, I hadn’t
really
expected Carmen Diaz to just hang around, not when Monique wasn’t there. But, still, I thought the room would be decked out in photo-shoot-ready splendor, with makeup stations, stacks of couture dresses, oversized set lights and, oh yeah, shoes. Lots of them. Manolo Blahniks. Jimmy Choos. Zanottis. Shoes not yet available to the public. Shoes only accessible to the upper echelons of the fashion elite. Shoes I could maybe try on when no one was looking.

But there were no lights, shoes or dresses. Instead, the office was just as stark and white as the rest of the townhouse, with white marble floors, white walls and two rows of white desks, complemented by white chairs. An occasional black and white print—probably Monique’s—adorned the walls. Oversized computer screens occupied most of the desk space, and two enormous printers took over the rest. These had to be expensive, professional grade, as were the cameras and lenses haphazardly scattered throughout the space. But otherwise, the room looked like any other vanilla office anywhere in New York: neat and organized.

I frowned.
Too
neat and organized. Aside from an occasional scuffmark on the floor and an empty water bottle here and there, there was no indication that anyone, let alone a horde of partygoers, had been in the space after it closed for business on Friday. I turned to look at Xander and Gemma sitting in two of the chairs. They were still in their party clothes: Xander in white Polo shirt and jeans, his hair actually combed, Gemma in a yellow jersey mini-dress, in full makeup.

“I don’t get it.” I waved a hand around the room, encompassing the obviously undamaged computers, telephones and cameras. “Everything looks fine.”

“Not these,” Xander said as he shook his head and pointed to a shelf in a half-open closet. “
Those
.”

I walked over to the closet, pulled its door open all the way and stared down at ten compact black boxes. Numerous buttons and display screens clued me in that they probably had something to do with taking pictures, but otherwise the boxes looked like no cameras I had ever seen.

“What are they?” I turned back to Xander.

“Digital backs,” he said as if the name alone should suffice in explanation.

“What?” I glanced at Gemma for help. She shrugged, her eyelids barely open.

“Don’t ask me,” she mumbled. “All I know is that, like, they snap onto the cameras and
Maman
has to have them to take pictures.” She twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “Oh, yeah, and that they’re, like, really expensive. That’s why Julian stores them in the closet there.”

I nodded, turned back to the closet again and stared at the—what was it, backs?—some more, pretending Gemma’s explanation made any more sense than Xander’s had. “So what’s wrong with them?”

From where I stood, they looked perfectly okay, all black with touches of white, nothing dented, and therefore nothing broken.

Xander got up from his chair and walked over to join me.

“I think,” he said, picking up a back and flipping it over, “someone spray-painted their sensors.”

“Oh,” I said, and looked more closely at the box in Xander’s hand, at its small rectangular mirror with obvious splotches of black. I didn’t know what he meant, but any sentence that included the words “spray” and “paint,” together, couldn’t portend good things. “And how did that happen?”

“Don’t know.”

Xander returned the back to its place next to the others. They appeared so orderly I had trouble believing anyone had touched them, let alone a vandal. Surely, no one bent on destruction would be so organized. “Gemma came down here this morning, after the party, to, you know, clean up, and found the closet open. She freaked. We opened the office but this closet always stays closed.
Maman’s
rule.”

I pulled the closet door towards me. It had three locks, none of which appeared jimmied.

“Then give me your theories on how the door opened itself, because it doesn’t look broken into,” I demanded.

Xander looked away from me. Gemma, too, averted her gaze.

I crossed my arms over my chest, like a sergeant about to drill her cadets. “Out with it, both of you,” I ordered crisply.

“Well,” Xander responded, refusing to face me. Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets and moseyed back to his chair. “I might have left the keys here on the desk, accidentally, after I opened the office. They’re, like, all on the same chain.”

“
Might
have?”

He shrugged. This gesture really irritated me.
Hey
, I wanted to snap,
you dragged me out here—on a Sunday—not the other way around. Who was doing whom the favor?

Xander pouted as he verbalized, “I don’t really remember. I was … sort of out of it.”

“Clarify ‘out of it.’” I wasn’t about to let up now.

“Okay, okay.” Xander slumped in the chair. “I had a few drinks.”

“What drinks?” I demanded.

“Don’t look at me like that!” Xander’s hands flew up in the air. “
Maman
and Dad know. They’re the ones who got us wine and beer for the party.”

My brows must have shot up to my forehead at this. They wouldn’t—
couldn’t
—have, not after the mess with Gemma. But as soon as that thought crystallized, I knew they would, and they could.

“
Maman
says social drinking is perfectly normal, and only puritanical Americans place age restrictions on responsibility,” Xander elaborated.

I tried to get my eyes to roll back to the front of my head.

“And then everyone else brought some liquor with them,” he added.

“How,” I scowled, “do a bunch of teenagers show up with liquor bottles under their arms, and no one outside noticed?”

“Not liquor bottles,” Xander clarified, indicating a half-filled Poland Spring near me. “Water bottles.”

Curious, I walked over to the bottle, picked it up and sniffed. The stench of vodka had me stepping right back.

Water bottles. How ingenious. They gave new meaning to the old paper bag trick.

“So you had a few drinks, and you decided to open the office because what, the four floors above were not enough? Just how many people
were
here?”

“Lots,” Xander grinned. “I lost count. The party was, like, awesome. Every private school kid must have come, and then some.”