A Verdict for Love (3 page)

Mrs. Butrell was all astir about it,
and she was about to begin planning what Grace might wear and where
they might go shopping for her necessary accessories.

Grace flatly refused to go to her
‘coming out’ ball. She had no intention of being some pretty little
magnolia bloom to be fawned over and pushed into one of life’s
corners.

Grace’s refusal to attend this grand
affair left her mother completely upset. Grace didn’t care. She was
not interested in being a debutante, though her beauty qualified
her to be one.

Earlier on, Grace had been too
sensible to offend anyone with such an open show of scorn. But
after she had escaped to university she wanted nothing to do with
LaGrange or its trappings of bourgeois mediocrity. The old town was
too restrictive for her. She felt choked to death by their dead
ideas about love and about the way women were supposed to live. She
was ashamed of where she’d come from and she wanted to break free
of the chains of backwater Georgia.

Grace was a student of history as well
as the law. She was aware that during the Victorian period women
had been told they only had two choices: to be domesticated angels
of the household or fallen deviants without a future. To a large
degree, she felt this still defined a woman’s role in many areas of
the old south. And she was right. This was something Grace was not
about to accept for herself. She had told her Momma so during one
of their many heated discussions about the subject of her
future,

“I did not attend Ole Miss as a
finishing school. I plan to do something with my degree and my life
besides becoming a breeder!”

Her Momma was more than a little angry
about this, as was her father.

Of course, there were other more
practical reasons to leave her hometown behind. Not a soul there
would be likely to take her seriously as a lawyer and there simply
was no other meaningful employment to be had. LaGrange had not been
immune to the downward spiral that had started when the bottom fell
out of Wall Street.

Grace had worked summers as a
receptionist for Marvin Handy, an attorney in town, but he was the
kind of man who really only wanted an assistant to provide him with
coffee throughout the day and make a nice impression when clients
arrived. She was underutilized in terms of her skills and had
fended off more than a few unwelcome pats and touches. Lawyer Handy
had been literally way too handy in his attempts to feel her up
when she came in to deliver his messages in the late afternoons
after he’d hit the scotch bottle. No way was she going back to
that.

At twenty-six with her education
finally behind her Grace was anxious to launch her career. No
sooner had she passed the bar exam than Grace made the move to
Atlanta that she had been planning. She hadn’t needed to pack much
into her old car. Her clothes and the laptop were about all she had
that was worth moving.

Grace had been saving for her new life
but had found the rents in metropolitan Atlanta rather daunting.
Finally she luckily discovered a cozy little apartment in the
Decatur area that she could afford. With that solved she set about
the task of finding a position that offered a future. Grace had
naively assumed that such a bustling city would be full of
opportunity. She quickly discovered that Atlanta was also suffering
from the downturn in the economy.

There were very few legal firms hiring
and when Grace went to interview with those that were, she found
herself in waiting rooms crowded with other applicants. Most were
as well or more qualified than she was. Back in LaGrange she might
have shone like silver but in Atlanta she was just another new
penny. After a fruitless month of searching for work, her slender
savings had almost evaporated.

As she did every morning over coffee
Grace was grimly searching through the classifieds. There were
plenty of ads for lesser jobs but she was not that desperate. She
hadn’t worked her butt off for a law degree to wait tables or
peddle jeans at a mall. Her pretty brow furrowed in frustration as
she neared the bottom of the professional section but then a smile
smoothed her features.

Legal Assistant

Compensation commensurate
with ability. Apply in person.

Law firm of Smith,
Weinstein, Brooks & Bianchi

111 West Peachtree
Avenue

This was going to be the one. It
simply had to be the one. She was almost broke.

“I don’t care how many others want
this damn job.” She said aloud, “One way or another I am going to
be the one they choose!”

Grace left her coffee unfinished and
rushed to get dressed.

F
rom the day of Chiara’s ascendance to full partner she had
rated the personal assistance of another attorney. She had
considered some within the firm first but couldn’t settle on one
that she’d be comfortable with. She had too much history with all
of them. She wanted a fresh talent that she could train to her
methods.

Next she had browsed discreetly among
the competition for someone promising that she might steal away but
none had stood out. Placing an ad in the Journal was a long shot.
Chiara had not expected it to produce much.

But the firm’s prestige had attracted
a flood of applicants. There was no way Chiara had time to deal
with each of them. Instead she’d outlined the qualities she wanted
and told Sheila, her longtime secretary, to pre-interview them. She
would only meet personally with the select few. So far she had met
with three of the brightest newcomers in the area. None of them had
really excited her but a month had passed and her case load was
growing. The three résumés were in front of her and she supposed
she’d best choose among them. It was past time to lighten her load.
The intercom buzzed.

“What is it, Sheila?”

“There’s an applicant in the outer
room you might want to check out.”

“Harvard or Yale?”

“Neither. Her name is Grace Butrell.
Old Miss Law School. Just passed the bar.”

This sounded very thin to Chiara and
she said as much.

“That was my first thought too…but she
was top of her class and she has…” Sheila hesitated.

“Has what?”

“A sort of presence. Don’t laugh…but
she reminds me a little bit of you when you first joined the
firm.”

Chiara was intrigued.

“Send her in…No, wait…I’ll come out
and have a look first. If she won’t do, I don’t want to be trapped
for thirty minutes while I pretend to consider her.”

A
s
Grace sat in the reception area, she was impressed by the firm’s
large suite of offices. Her settee faced a stunning view of the
city skyline. Even though she had arrived with high expectations,
this was an atmosphere way more posh than she had ever pictured
herself in. None of the other firms she’d applied to had been so
intimidating. She had come dressed in her best but had begun to
feel somewhat uncomfortable and plain. Grace was sure the woman who
had asked her to wait after interviewing her was only a secretary
yet she had been wearing Prada shoes and smelt of designer
perfume.

She had psyched herself up to come in
full of confidence and had apparently cleared the first hurdle. Her
interviewer had reappeared saying that one of the partners would
see her shortly. Grace knew that the next few minutes would be a
gamble but if her education and experience weren’t enough to win
her this coveted position, her looks and attitude might be. The
wait was working on her nerves. She calmed herself with an inner
mantra ‘I am not a nervous country girl only recently relocated to
Atlanta …I am a beautiful and intelligent young woman full of
bravura.”

C
hiara entered the reception room and found an extremely
beautiful young woman sitting composedly in the chair. The young
woman was wearing her long blonde hair down. It fell in waves
around her face and framed deep azure eyes that were almost
confrontational. There was a hint of bravado in their
intensity.

Chiara approached with an extended
hand and a smile.

“I’m Chiara Bianchi. My secretary was
impressed with you, Ms. Butrell.”

“Yes…I mean I’m glad you’re willing to
consider me further.”

Grace hoped she sounded confident but
felt her cheeks growing hot at the compliment. Or perhaps it was
the open manner in which this stunning beauty of a woman was
appraising her. She felt a magnetic pull from the dark brown eyes
and suddenly realized that she had been holding the warm, slender
hand longer than necessary.

“Well then, shall we go sit down and
talk?”

“Of course.” Grace responded
eagerly.

She followed Chiara down a long
hallway accented by beautiful glass lamps fashioned after the
old-style ones often seen on the streets of Savannah back in the
day. Chiara had decided to take her to the huge conference room. It
was more intimidating and she wanted to see how the girl reacted to
it. Chiara pointed Grace to a chair while she merely rested a
shapely haunch on the edge of the massive table. It would make
Grace have to look up as they talked. Chiara made the girl endure
some silence as she browsed down the resume Sheila had handed her.
Finally she spoke.

“Grace, the position would be as my
personal assistant and at times you might even be asked to act as
co-counsel.”

“That sounds exciting. More than I’d
hoped for really.”

“To be fair, I must tell you there are
others already under consideration. Others with degrees from
Harvard and Yale. Now, Grace, tell me why I should choose you over
them?”

The imposing room and her beautiful
inquisitor’s manner might have given pause to anyone but to Grace’s
credit she didn’t falter.

“I think you should choose me because
I’ll give you more.”

“More?” Chiara asked with a lifted
eyebrow.

“More of anything required. A
dedicated attitude will be more valuable to the position you are
offering than a prestigious degree. And at the risk of sounding
brash I personally don’t think those Ivy League schools have much
on Ole Miss.”

The answer impressed Chiara enough to
pull a smile from her.

“Fair enough. Fill me in on your
background.”

Chiara was able to surmise in a short
space of time that Grace was no Atlanta sophisticate. She was a
country girl who had worked hard for a chance at something none of
her family had managed to achieve. It sounded like the bright
lights of the big city had been calling to her since she was a
little girl.

As Grace went on, Chiara tried to
listen intently but she was distracted by Grace’s good looks. Even
though she tried to appear totally focused on the interview, her
eyes kept going to the girl’s breasts and lingering there. She
shifted her gaze to Grace’s face and tried to keep it
there.

An hour flew by before she was certain
she’d gotten a sense of the young woman’s potential ability.
Whether it was an unconscious habit or deliberately provocative,
Grace kept licking her full pinkish lips as she paused over each of
Chiara’s questions. It was seductively distracting. In fact so far
the only thing that bothered Chiara about this girl was the fact
that she was too damned attractive.

She asked Grace a final question. One
that would be the deciding factor for hiring her.

“What,” she asked, “would you do if
you had a client who came to you and admitted his guilt? Would you
accept the case and try to win…or would your scruples
interfere?”

Chiara was thinking of her part in the
Shay affair as she asked it.

Grace smiled slowly and answered in a
measured southern drawl, “Well, I suppose it would help me decide
if there were contributing factors. But the truth is…I would
probably take it regardless of the offense and see it as a
challenge…I would want to see if I could win the case despite any
qualms I might have.”

Chiara looked Grace over at length,
noticing her well cared for pearl-like fingernails and her glowing
cheeks.

She smiled and said, “I think I have
enough information now. Thank you so much for coming in, Miss
Butrell. You’ll hear from me.”

With that she personally ushered Grace
to the elevator with a slight handshake and a non-committal
smile.

Chiara liked Grace’s answers during
the interview. Because she was young and naïve in many ways, Chiara
felt she would be able to shape and school her. She’d sensed that
Grace would accept offered advice. And, though she rationalized her
way around the fact, Chiara had found Grace deeply attractive on a
personal level. Perhaps because of all this, or in spite of it,
Chiara had already decided to hire her before the elevator doors
had closed.

G
race found herself on the street still wondering if she had
succeeded. She had the feeling that it had gone well but all she
had really gotten was “You’ll hear from me.”

Grace had grown accustomed to having
her way. Most people gave in to her because they were impressed by
her physical beauty and charm…and smarts. But Chiara Bianchi was in
a brand new league. The woman had everything Grace had and then
some.