Courting Trouble (2 page)

Sonia clutched Sprinkles, the couple’s pampered pup, closer to her cleavage, soothing the pooch with the stroke of her hand and the bounty of her breast.

Opposing counsel, David Strotmeyer, placed his elbow onto the slick mahogany conference-room table and settled his chin into his palm. “We’ve come to terms on everything: the home in Aspen, the pied-à-terre in Paris—”

“—the original Picasso,” Tulsa broke in.

“But there is one final matter.”

Everyone’s gaze landed on Sonia. The lynchpin to the success of this multi-million-dollar divorce settlement quivered on her lap.

Sprinkles.

“Can we
please
reach some sort of agreement with regards to Sprinkles?”

“We must come to terms over Sprinkles,” Tulsa said. “If you
truly
want this marriage to be finished.”

The jaw muscle in Albie’s cheek flinched. He crossed his arms and turned his chair ever so slightly away from the table.

“You do want this marriage to be over, don’t you?” Tulsa’s gaze bounced from a closed-off Albie—arms crossed, gaze averted, to Sonia, who leaned forward while Sprinkles’s tongue lapped at her lips.

Tulsa sucked in her cheeks and stifled a gag reflex deep in her throat.

“He does not love Sprinkles!” Sonia shot out, her voice filled with thick-sounding consonants. She flipped her luxurious black hair over her shoulder. “He only wants to have her! To control her! Albie has no love for any woman!” Sonia’s hand sliced through the air as if chopping a carrot top. Sprinkles jumped in response, the tiniest whimper escaping from her throat. “We are merely trophies for him to put on a shelf.”

David started, “This case is—”

“Is that what you think?” The force of Albie’s words propelled his arms—his torso—across the table toward Sonia. “That I wanted to control you? That you were only a trophy?”

Like a magnet to metal, Sonia leaned toward Albie, her voluptuous lips pursed not in disdain, but in near arousal. Her eyes begged for more from her mate—more words—more emotion—more time.

A breath heavy with frustration escaped Tulsa. She’d often witnessed the look now on Sonia’s face—on innumerable soon-to-be ex-wives. Sonia still wanted Albie.

Tulsa clasped her hands together. Her gaze landed first on Albie, with his eyes wide and hopeful he searched Sonia’s face for the tiniest hint of a rekindled romance. Tulsa next turned to her opposing counsel, his eyes heavy-lidded and weary from eight months of never-ending settlement negotiations. Finally Tulsa looked up at the ceiling—smooth and flat—just like she willed her face to remain.

“All I ever wanted was to give you everything,” Albie continued, his voice a hopeful plea emphatic with the emotion contained in the death of a marriage. “Why do you think I did all those crappy films? Action movies? When have I ever done an action movie? I’m a character actor. I went to Yale, for God’s sake. I did them for the payday.” Albie’s voice softened, his shoulders dropped, his palms faced up on the table as if he were begging to be understood. “I did it for you.”

Sonia’s bottom lip quivered and Sprinkles shivered in her arms. “For me?”

“Yeah, baby, all of it for you.” Albie rushed around the conference table. In less than a second he and Sonia were lip-locked.

David scooped up Sonia’s file from the table and tucked it into his briefcase. “So much for the visitation schedule,” he mumbled toward Tulsa.

“I wouldn’t bet the farm,” Tulsa said.

Marital mini-reconciliations usually lasted just long enough for the couple’s raging pheromones to release. Once Albie and Sonia realized that regardless of the hot sex, the same problems existed in their relationship, Tulsa and David would again haggle over where Sprinkles spent Christmas.

“I’ll see you in about two weeks,” Tulsa said.

Albie and Sonia pressed their foreheads together while Sprinkles licked both their chins. She’d give the lovebirds a couple of minutes before Tulsa had her paralegal, Sylvia, give them a swift kick out the door.

Tulsa escorted David into reception, shook his hand, and did a quick U-turn back toward her office. Her quick strides caused her long, barely tamed sable curls to bounce about her shoulders. She’d given up on trying to tame the mass of McGrath hair and accepted her long dark locks as another part of the unruly McGrath legacy.

Jo, Tulsa’s law partner, stood just outside the conference room and watched Sonia, Albie, and Sprinkles canoodle on the other side of the glass. Her black hair was pulled into an all-business bun and her face was uncreased by lines left from emotion. “Guess you can withdraw the petition.” Her voice contained the tiniest bit of judgment. Jo maintained an extreme dislike of the gray area that accompanied indecision.

“Give it a couple of days,” Tulsa said, continuing down the hall toward her office. She was unconvinced this marital reunion would stick. In Los Angeles, love and marriage were as ephemeral as a dewdrop in a desert.

Once inside her office, Tulsa sifted through the magazines, letters, and bills that Sylvia had placed on the corner of her desk. On the bottom of the pile was the California Bar Association’s monthly magazine. Tulsa’s own big blue eyes stared back at her from the cover. Arms crossed, with a smile that could only be described as cocky yet knowing, she’d been named California Divorce Attorney of the year.

She turned the magazine facedown—she didn’t need to have her own eyes staring up at her all day—she saw enough of her face when she looked in the mirror. Tulsa pushed the magazine to the far side of her desk and pulled a depo transcript from a file. Of course she was good at her job—she’d grown up surrounded by emotionally overwrought people and now, for giant sums of money, she represented them.

“I think we have a problem.”

Tulsa closed her eyes. A chill chased down her spine and balled in her belly. She looked at Sylvia, her paralegal, who stood in the doorway of Tulsa’s office. A hard-core veteran of the divorce wars, Sylvia was calm in the face of screaming spouses, blubbering ex-wives, and phone-hurtling opposing counsels. If Sylvia said there was a problem then there was definitely a near-cataclysmic storm on the horizon.

“Sonia and Albie are still in the conference room?” Tulsa asked, a hopeful lilt in her voice.

“If only,” Sylvia said, her words accompanied by a slow and nearly imperceptible head shake. She took a deep breath and tilted her head to the side. “You’re going to wish that was the problem.”

*

Life didn’t go as planned.

Cade sipped coffee from his travel mug and steadied the pickup’s steering wheel with his knee. Once upon a time, Cade had escaped Powder Springs for a world-class legal career, a beautiful woman, and the biggest city in America, but now the career, the city, and the woman were gone.

He slowly drove through downtown Powder Springs. Pine trees jutted toward the bright blue Colorado sky in the tiny park that surrounded the Powder Springs Courthouse. He tapped his brakes at the stop sign at the corner of Main and First and turned right. Red and blue flashers lit up his rearview mirror and a siren wailed. Cade pulled to the right to allow the cop to pull past, but instead the SUV remained glued to Cade’s tail.

“Are you kidding?” Cade mumbled. He pulled to a stop in front of the courthouse and across from his office. He rolled down his window. This had to be a joke.

Already scribbling on his ticket pad, Wayne approached. “Morning, Cade,” Wayne said. “License and registration.”

“What exactly did I do?” Cade bit out. “And second, you know exactly who I am.”

“First, you ran that stop sign at Second and Main—”

“Ran the stop sign! Are you blind? I stopped. Not only did I stop, I came to a
complete
stop. What’s the problem, Wayne—”

“—and second,” Wayne continued, undeterred, “I need your license and registration.” He set his lips in a grim line to emphasize his command, yet his eyes twinkled with a mischief that indicated this traffic stop might be the high point of his day. “Please.”

Locked in a stare-down with Wayne, Cade finally broke his gaze and leaned across the seat. There was no way of talking Wayne out of this ticket. He opened the truck dash and dug through unused fast-food napkins, sugar packets, and receipts. Beneath a plastic fork his hand finally landed on the truck’s registration. He handed the paper to Wayne without a glance. Cade slid his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out his license.

Wayne’s eyes drifted from the registration to Cade’s license, now clipped to the top of his ticket pad. “This is from New York.”

“That’s where I live.”

Wayne’s eyes traveled upward and met Cade’s squinted eyes, hot with irritation, “Live? Or lived? You’ve been in Powder Springs for nearly a year.”

“Against my better judgment, yes. Yes, I have.” Cade drew a deep breath and willed the tension that gripped his shoulder blades to release. “And your point?”

“You have six months once you move to change your license. That’s another ticket.”

The muscle tightness gripped harder and sent a hot jet of pain from Cade’s shoulders down his spine.

“If you bring in your Colorado license to your court date, the judge will dismiss the ticket.”

Cade held his breath, his eyes settled on Wayne as he continued to write out tickets. Cade fought back his desire to reach out the truck window and strangle Wayne. He’d forgotten to change his license, or perhaps he’d hoped there would be no need—that he would in fact return to New York.

“Looks like your New York license is expired.”

“Three’s the charm.” Cade held out his hand for his paper bouquet. Not only did he have a mountain of legal work on his desk at the law firm but he’d also acquired his own legal mess. Cade started to stuff the tickets into the truck dash on top of the plastic fork.

“You’ll need to get your things and step out of the truck.”

A jolt of surprise barreled through Cade’s chest. He whipped his head around to face Wayne. “You want to frisk me?”

“You can’t drive.” Wayne pulled open Cade’s door. “Give me your keys.”

“Who says I can’t drive? These,” Cade said, shaking the tickets still clamped in his fist, “are the first tickets I’ve gotten in fifteen years.”

“Your license isn’t valid.”

The temporary gratification Cade might feel at slugging Wayne was outweighed by the inconvenience of spending an entire day in jail. He grabbed his briefcase and stepped out of his truck before handing Wayne his keys.

“Go get your license, then come by the jail and I’ll give you your keys.” A hint of remorse reverberated in Wayne’s thick voice, although the corners of his mouth turned up with a barely contained smile that seemed to say ‘gotcha.’

“I’m supposed to meet with a client in forty-five minutes.”

“Then you might want to hustle up.” Wayne lumbered toward his SUV. “DMV opens in ten minutes.”

Cade’s entire morning had just become one big hassle.

“This is how you treat your brother?” Cade yelled.

“Half brother,” Wayne called. “Just think what I’d do to you if we had the same dad.”

*

“I leave in an hour.” Tulsa’s tone was staccato and bore little emotion—no judgment, no remorse—only the conveyance of her intent to her two partners.

“This is a horrible time for you to leave.” Jo leaned against the credenza in Tulsa’s office. Her face was placid and her voice calm, but a tension underscored Jo’s words. A tension akin to a lioness ready to spring for her prey.

“This is family.” Emma settled onto Tulsa’s office couch and slipped off her periwinkle-blue kitten heels. She tucked her bare feet beneath her and brushed back a tendril of blond hair from her cheek. “She doesn’t have a choice.”

Jo searched the room with her eyes as if trying to find reason within the room. “We’ve got five new cases coming our way and two of them are heaters, not to mention our regular case load—”

“It’s Tulsa’s
family
,” Emma interrupted and this time she emphasized the F word. “Jo, you have three sisters and two brothers; you
know
about family.”

Jo tilted her head to the side and let her gaze glance across the ceiling, her irritation palpable. The shrug of her shoulder indicated that she finally acknowledged Tulsa leaving for Powder Springs wasn’t by choice, but an obligation.

This was a tough one for Jo. After a decade as an assistant district attorney, she was all business, all the time—well, nearly all the time—she had a definite soft spot where Emma and Tulsa and her own family were concerned.

“Sylvia sent both of you memos about my court appearances for the next couple of—”

“Emma’s right.” Jo’s eyes were softer, friendlier. “We can handle it. We
will
handle it. What do you think? A couple of days?”

Tulsa caught Jo’s hopeful gaze. She wasn’t sure how long Savannah and Ash needed her in Powder Springs, but it was definitely more than a couple days.

“Weeks,” Tulsa said, “maybe even a month.”

A grimace breached the stone wall of Jo’s face. “A month?”

“We’ll handle it,” Emma said.

Although they were all around the same age and friends since law school, Tulsa had started the firm and then came Emma and finally Jo. Less prickly than Jo and more savvy than Emma, Tulsa always handled the high-profile cases and the media.

Full of purpose, Sylvia rushed into Tulsa’s office. A red leather laptop bag bounced against her hip and in her hand she carried a file.

Tulsa’s stomach collapsed with the block of dread now wedged in the pit of her belly. How could she maintain her practice and save her family? She wanted to help Savannah, she wanted to save Ash, she wanted to be a good sister and devoted aunt, but she didn’t want to go to Powder Springs, Colorado, to accomplish these goals.

“I loaded your laptop with everything you need.” Sylvia reached out and hitched the laptop-case strap over Tulsa’s shoulder. “Basically, your entire office is on this computer.”

“Well not everything,” Tulsa said.

“What do you mean? I put—”

“—I mean
you
, Sylvia.” Tulsa gathered her friends into her gaze, “You, and Emma, and Jo.”