Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) (19 page)

“What?”

He checked his watch.  “She’s your witness.  I need to go make a phone
call.”

Sarah checked her watch, too.  It was only a little after two.

Chapman must have realized what he said, because he looked guiltily toward
Marcela and said, “Not that last part—take that off.  I meant off the record.”

Marcela looked to both Sarah and Joe.  Sarah waved it off.  “No
objection.  I don’t care.”

Joe nodded without looking up.  “Fine.”

Chapman raced out of the room like he suddenly remembered he had a
flight to catch.

“I just have a few questions,” Sarah told Joe’s client.  She was
surprised Chapman would let the deposition go on in his absence, but that
wasn’t her problem.  She introduced herself, asked her questions, and they were
done twenty minutes later.

Joe escorted his client out of the room, leaving just Marcela and
Sarah.

“That sounded so good!” Marcela said.

“What?”

“A spa.”  She looked toward the door to make sure neither of the men
were coming back in, and whispered conspiratorially, “I’ll bet we can find
one.”

“Here?” Sarah asked.

Marcela sat down and started thumbing a search into her phone.  “Four
of them,” she announced.  “You have a car, don’t you?”

A smile spread over Sarah’s face.  “Do you want to?”

“I will if you will,” the court reporter answered.

Sarah took a deep breath. 
Flourish
.  She had been so careful
with money, even once she started receiving a regular paycheck again, but maybe
it was all right to loosen her hold on it every now and then.  Maybe she was
allowed a few luxuries, especially if a surprise opportunity presented itself.

“Okay,” she said.  “Let’s call and see if we can get in.”  Then she
added, “But you can’t tell the boys.  Ever.  I’m supposed to be as manly as
they are.”

Marcela grinned.  “Our secret.”

***

“You and Joe know each other, don’t you?” Marcela asked on the way to
the massage studio.  “From before, I mean.”

“Why do you say that?” Sarah asked, stalling.  She didn’t really know
Marcela, other than their polite interactions surrounding the depositions the
past several weeks.  Marcela had been the court reporter at more than half of
them so far, and Sarah supposed she felt comfortable enough now to ask such a
personal question.

But it wasn’t something Sarah felt comfortable answering.

“I could tell,” Marcela said.  “By the way he picked you up and carried
you when you were sick.  And the way you put your arms around him and put your
head on his chest.  It looked like you’d done that before.”

Leave it to a woman to notice details like that, Sarah thought.  She
doubted Chapman would have picked up on it.

“We used to date,” Sarah confirmed.  “A long time ago.  But please
don’t tell anyone—especially Paul.”

“What we say in this car stays in this car,” Marcela said.  “Off the
record.  But it’s not illegal, is it?  I mean, you can be an attorney against
someone you went out with, right?”

“No, there’s nothing wrong with it, technically,” Sarah said.  “There’s
an ethical rule about disclosing to your client the fact that you might be
married to someone on the other side, or related to them in some other way.” 
She remembered there being something about that on the California bar exam.  “But
I don’t think there’s any rule about telling people you dated someone once.”

“Then what’s the problem with it getting out?” Marcela asked.  “I won’t
tell anyone,” she hurried to add, “but I’m just curious.”

“I always think it’s best to keep our private lives out of cases,”
Sarah said.  “We’re all just here to do our jobs.  Sometimes if people know too
much about you . . . it complicates things.”

Knowing Joe was certainly complicating things for her.

“I heard he stayed,” Marcela said.  “He didn’t go back until
Thanksgiving.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“From one of the girls at his office.”

“See?” Sarah said.  “That’s what I’m talking about.  I don’t want
people knowing things about me.”

“I’m sorry,” Marcela said.

“No, it’s not you,” Sarah said with a sigh.  She realized she’d sounded
harsher than she meant to.  She also knew she was particularly sensitive to the
topic of gossip, having lived through a scandal earlier that year.  She knew
people had all sorts of opinions about her, including whether she had been more
involved with the senior partners’ crimes than anyone let on.  Maybe she was
paranoid, Sarah thought, but maybe she had a good reason.

She parked the car and turned to Marcela.  “There’s nothing between me
and Joe now.  We’re just friends—actually, not even that.  We knew each other,
then we grew up.  The end.”

Marcela shook her head.  “Didn’t look like ‘the end’ to me.  You should
have seen the way he looked at you.  That’s how I knew.”

Sarah reached out and clasped Marcela’s wrist.  “This has to stay
between us.  Please.  It was a bad moment—I was sick.  But it isn’t how things
really are.  So please just forget you ever saw it, whatever it was.”

Marcela smiled indulgently.  “I won’t ever tell anyone, but just
between you and me?  I wish a man would look at me that way.”

Twenty-one

By the time Sarah returned to the hotel, her muscles felt like mush. 
She forgot how exquisitely painful and wonderful it was to have someone dig
their fingers into her sore back and shoulders.  And the Missoula massage
therapist had fingers like thick wooden dowels, which made her work on the bottoms
of Sarah’s feet particularly cruel and wonderful.

She lay on the bed in her hotel room for a while, still basking in the
aftereffects of the massage, and enjoying the fact that for once she didn’t
need to rush.  Her next flight wasn’t until the morning.  Unlike the previous weeks
of depositions, these next ones were in cities too small to have more than a
few flights a day.  So they would all stay put wherever they happened to be
every night, then catch the first flight out every morning.

Sarah had to marvel again at the insane schedule Paul Chapman devised. 
If it were up to her, they would have taken depositions all over the country,
drawing from a larger sample, instead of deposing only a few people at a time
in these towns all across the west.

But then, she didn’t agree with so much of how Paul Chapman ran his
case, so that was nothing new.

And besides, she reminded herself, the only reason she had this job in
the first place was
because
the schedule was so crazy.  Mickey’s boss didn’t
want to waste one of his own in-house lawyers on traveling hither and yon five
days a week.  So in a way, Sarah had Paul Chapman to thank for her nicely
increasing bank account.

That made it a little easier to stand the man.  Just a little.

But it wasn’t Chapman she was thinking about at the moment, and it
certainly hadn’t been his hands she imagined working out the knots in her tense
shoulders, kneading the muscles up and down her legs—

“Just between you and me?  I wish a man would look at
me that way.”

“Stop it,” Sarah said out loud.  She never should have let the
conversation with Marcela get that far.  And she definitely didn’t need her own
thoughts to spin out the irrational fantasy further.

What she needed to do was work.  Hard.  Now.

She took a moment to order a baked potato and a bowl of vegetable soup from
room service, then she booted up her laptop.   The purchase orders and other internal
documents she started reviewing the week before were beginning to form a
picture.

Every time she found some new piece of the puzzle, no matter how small,
she felt a thrill, a buzzing all along her skin.  Her eyes softened, and a
smile tugged at her lips.  It felt a little like lust, she had to admit, which
maybe no one but another lawyer would understand.  But she couldn’t deny the thrumming
sensation in her nerves whenever she uncovered something she knew no one else
had found—that no one was even looking for yet—and here it was, in her hands, ready
to take advantage of whenever the time was right.

She was sure Joe didn’t know about it—why would he?  And Chapman?  The
man was completely clueless.

But beyond the shear pleasure of discovery, Sarah felt something else: 
hope.  Because if she was right—if she could prove this—then she felt certain
she could save her career.  What had begun as a temporary job—a job in
purgatory, as Joe saw it—could turn into Sarah’s ticket back.

Sarah spent the next hour drafting a lengthy e-mail to one of the other
attorneys in Mickey’s office who was also working on the case.  She provided him
with a list of the kinds of information she needed.  She would have preferred
preparing the interrogatories and requests for documents herself, but she knew
it wasn’t practical during a week with so much travel.  She only hoped that
Mickey’s colleague could follow her detailed instructions, and get her the
final, damaging proof she needed.

Then everything would change.

***

Chapman was in an unusually jolly mood.  Sarah and Joe exchanged bewildered
glances every now and then as the man chuckled and joked and teased his way
through the morning deposition.  At one point it seemed as if he were actually
trying to flirt with Joe’s client, which was made all the worse by the look of
horror on her face.

“What was that?” Sarah muttered to Joe when they finally took a break. 
They weren’t finished with the deposition yet—Chapman still had more questions,
and then it was Sarah’s turn—but their flight from Missoula back to Salt Lake
City had gotten them there mid-morning, and now it was already time for lunch.

Joe’s client stood beside him, so the most he could give Sarah was a
quick, wry smile.  But that was enough.  It was the first time he had shown her
any kind of friendliness at all since their drive back from the ski area the
last time they visited that city.

Sarah felt strange being back at the same hotel.  She was given a
different room than the one where she had been cooped up for so long, but
everything else about it felt like déjà vu.

There were a few restaurants nearby, and Sarah found one that served a
gourmet sandwich of roasted vegetables and pesto.  Now that she had the clothes
for it, she decided to sit outside.  The day was cold, but sunny.  She zipped
up her raincoat to keep out the wind, then pulled on her blue fleece hat.  She
ate by herself, gazing up at the mountains.

What was she doing with her life?

This wasn’t where she expected to be a year ago.

She tried not to think too much about what the day meant, but that was difficult.

Today was her birthday.  She had just turned thirty.  Nothing was the
way she planned.

***

The weeper was back.

Sarah had forgotten her impression of Joe’s client the last time she
saw her:  that the woman would be great in front of a jury.

Once again, as she had that morning before Sarah had to flee the room,
the plaintiff cried as she recounted how long and lux and beautiful her hair once
was, and how devastated she was to see nearly half of it go up in flames.

Sarah cringed at the woman’s detailed description.  The product really
was dangerous.  Now that she had a theory about exactly what happened between
her own client and Chapman’s client, the primary manufacturer, she felt even
more sympathy for the woman than before.

But when it was Sarah’s turn to ask questions, the woman turned on her.

“How would you know what it’s like?” she snapped.  “Pretty little thing
like you?  I’ll bet you just love running your fingers through that thick red
hair of yours.  How do you think you’d look with half of it burned off?  Think
you’d be so pretty then?  Men would still look at you, but only because you’re
a freak—”

“Ms. Tiburon,” Sarah said calmly, “please answer the question.  What
other hair products and equipment were you using during this same period of
time?  That would include blow dryers, curling irons, gels, pomades . . . ”

“Everything,” the woman answered.  “I’ve tried everything, I use
everything, I’m not going to list them out.  Do I have to list them out?” she
asked Joe.

“To the best of your ability,” he said.

The woman sighed dramatically.  And Sarah started thinking she wouldn’t
look so good in front of a jury after all.  Ordinary citizens appreciated real
emotions, but not melodrama.  Maybe if Joe worked with his client, the woman
could learn to keep her performance in line.  But Sarah could already see that
the more she pushed this plaintiff, the uglier the woman’s temper became.

By the time Sarah got through her questions, she felt tired and worn
out.  Some depositions were easier than others, but this one went into the
pain-in-the-ass category.

As she gathered up her notes and packed away her laptop, Sarah couldn’t
help lingering in the room.  Wondering if she’d see some sign of recognition
from Joe that he remembered what day it was.