Outside The Lines:: Third Person Narration (6 page)

“That’s a joke, right?” she said into the phone, trying to sound sure.

He glanced over his shoulder.

“I didn’t know you had it in you,” she explained weakly.
 

His eyes held hers as he spoke into his phone. “’Course not, Jauntie. Because you don’t know anything about me. One hour,” he said, and clicked off.
 

It sounded like a threat.

Chapter Four

SHE SAT in the empty bar-slash-banquet hall forty-three minutes later, a good, reproving seventeen minutes early.
 
Time enough to select a table and put her back to the wall before Johnny arrived.
 

She took a table by the windows, set her huge, shapeless bag with the plethora of accoutrements she took most everywhere—pencils, pads of paper, calculator, vodka, lipstick, sugar packets—on the floor beside her chair, then plunked down the two grandé coffees she’d purchased in the overpriced café downstairs.
 

Then, hurriedly, she did all the things she hadn’t planned on needing to do until she got home again: brush her hair; took off her long johns; pulled on jeans; swiped liner across her lips and eyes.

Damn that Danger.

The room was large and felt unheated, which kept the temperature low for when it filled up with hot bodies at night. It had a dance floor and two bars, and must host some big events. But at twilight tonight, it was dim and deserted.

Winter light poured through huge windows that ran the length of the west and north walls. Outside, sunset faded away in a red slash, burning against the mountain peaks. The valley below was already plunged into darkness, twinkling with lights, but on the slopes, the ski runs were as bright as day, lit up for night skiing. Overhead was a black winter sky, poked through with stars.
 
In the distance, snagged momentarily on the mountain peaks, lurked more storm clouds.

Inside, the lights of the slopes cast a white glow, but otherwise, the only illumination came from low lights that lit the walkways and the underside of a row of plush booths sitting on risers at the back of the room.
 

The sound of footfalls drew her attention to the far end of the room.
 
Johnny pushed open one of the doors, spotted Juliette, and started over.
 

“I found it,” she said. Her voice echoed a little in the huge, empty space.

“You’re amazing.”

“How’d you even know this place was here?”

“How’d you not?”
 

“Oddly, I haven’t needed a banquet hall this entire trip until now,” she said.
 

He prowled through the dimly lit room, circling tables.
 
The empty bar’s low lights were reflected back in the smoky mirror on the wall behind it, and showed Johnny striding past in a dark green wool pea coat and faded jeans, bulky messenger bag slung over one shoulder.
   

His dark hair was fashionably tousled, his jaw and cheeks roughened by a day’s growth of beard. It toned down his usual more polished, put-together elegance. It made him more human, more handsome. More dangerous.
 

“Are we allowed to be here?” she asked as he arrived at the table.

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

That didn’t sound like someone who’d inquired about permission. “Are we?” she persisted.

He yanked out a chair. “Was it locked when you got here?”
 

She hesitated. “No.”

He set his bag on the table with a thud. “Permission granted.”

Right, then.
 

“The heat’s not working,” he explained shortly. “The room’s off limits.”

“And so that’s why we’re here.
 
Because it’s off-limits.”

“Exactly.” He glanced around. “All the conference rooms were taken, and all the rooms are booked.
 
This will work.” He looked down at her. “Right?”

“Right. Make yourself at home,” she mumbled, waving her hand at the vast, empty hall as she reached for one of the steaming coffee cups.
 

“Coffee?” she asked, looking up, cup in hand, then froze.
 

Johnny’s back was to her as he shrugged off his coat.
 
He was wearing faded jeans and a loose, soft cotton dark grey shirt.
 
It had got tugged up when he pulled off his coat, giving her a fleeting, spectacular view of his naked lower back.
 

Silky smooth skin slid overtop hard muscle that dipped into the valley of his spine, then disappeared below the waistband of his jeans. It was an entire topography of masculinity.
 
She couldn’t tear her eyes away.
 

He flung the jacket onto the table. The shirt fell back down, covering the map of Johnny and her sudden, shocking desire.

“Sure,” he said, turning to her.

She dragged her gaze up blankly. “Sure?”
 

He nodded toward the coffee she was still holding aloft. “Sure. As in yes, coffee.”
 
When she didn’t move, he added slowly, “Please.”

She jerked. “Right. Sure. Coffee.”
 

Idiot.
 

“Cream?” she said, setting down his cup with more force than was necessary. A little liquid splashed out the tiny sip hole.

“No, I’m good.”

Good, because she hadn’t brought any.
 

He pulled out a chair and leaned forward slightly to sit. She thrust a handful of sugar packets under his nose. “Sugar?”
 

He paused, mid-sit, and tilted his head up. “No, thanks.”
 

“If you’re sure,” she said grimly and started dumping sugar into her coffee. Johnny began extracting things from his bag. When she got to five packets, he paused in lifting a laptop out of his bag. She added a sixth. He slid his gaze up to hers.

“You like sugar.”
 

“I’m trying to quit.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

“Not too good.”
 

He sat back, considering her. She felt the urge to yank down on her sweater.
 
“You need a drink,” he announced.

She stared, sugar packet suspended in the air. “A drink? Of alcohol?”

He looked at her, his eyes as remote as ever. He said nothing.

She cleared her throat. “That would be stupid.” More nothing.
 
She waved her hand at the bar. “Anyhow, there’s no bartender, so….”

“I don’t rely on bartenders.”

She laughed a little. “Not even in a bar, huh?”

He smiled faintly. “Not even then.”
 
He reached down into his bag and extracted a heavy glass bottle.
 
It was filled with golden-amber liquid.
 
Whisky.

She watched glumly as he went behind the bar and grabbed two low, beveled glasses.
 
He came back and set everything on the table, then poured whisky into one of the glasses. The other sat there, empty, like a challenge. Neither of
 
referred to it.
   

 
“You carry whisky around with you,” she observed flatly.

“Doesn’t everyone?”
 

She couldn’t help it; she laughed.
 
“Controlling.”

He shook his head. “Self-reliant.
 
Heading into a snowstorm.” He looked at her. “Unwilling to settle.”
 

Something hot shivered in the center of her.
 
That’s when she had the first inkling, deep down, that she was doomed.

“Want some?” he asked.

 
She stared at the golden drink.
 
Alcohol was the last thing she needed, and it had nothing to do with the fact that they were going to be working.
 
It was that all the rules were bending, with Johnny and her alone together.
 
Things could get confused.
 
She didn’t like confusion.
 
It confused her.
 

“No, I’d better…not.”

He didn’t seem to care. He gave a clipped nod and finished pulling things out of his bag. It was like a clown car of electronic devices: out came an iPad, another laptop, three cell phones and a portable printer. In his ear was a clip for Bluetooth. He was like a NASA engineer.
 

She glanced down at her old, non-camera phone.
 

He took his watch off and laid it flat on the table, then pressed a button on its side.

She watched nervously.
 
“Are you recording us?”
 

He shook his head and pointed. An image was now projected onto the wall a few feet behind me. Crisp and clear, it was the first page of her valuation.
 

“You have my valuation in your
watch
?” she said incredulously.

“It’s not a watch, Jauntie. Just like that’s not a phone.” He gestured to the cracked plastic cover of her phone.
 
“They’re computers.”

She clamped her hand down over her phone that was barely a phone, let alone a computer.
 
“Are we ready?” she asked shortly.

He pressed a last button.
 
“I’m always ready.”
 

“Till there’s a power outage,” she muttered darkly.
 

He tipped his head up and their eyes met.
 
“What makes you think I turn off then, Jauntie?”

Uh-oh.

He pushed his chair away from the table and sprawled back in it.
 
“Okay, talk to me about your valuation. Why’s it so off?”

Ah. Into her element. Enough of hard muscles and pea coats and tousled dark hair. More numbers appearing in neat, orderly lines.
 

“It’s not off,” she retorted.
 
“Your partner Dan used direct capitalization for Mrs. B’s LLC.
 
I used discounted cash flow, and attributed goodwill to her husband.”

He nodded as if this was perfectly reasonable, then said, “Why the hell did you do that?”

“Because I can’t assume the same cash flow will continue once the judge’s name is removed.”

“The properties aren’t Judge Billings, so his name can’t be ‘removed.’”
 

“It can be removed in truth, if not on paper, since the divorce is public knowledge. Very public. Unlike his mistress,” she added.

He ignored that.
 
“It’s academic. They already agreed to the value of the LLC. ”

“No, you
want
it to be academic. Nothing’s signed yet.”

“That would be because of you.”
 

She set down her pencil with a sharp click. “No, that would be because the LLC’s rental properties have brought in almost three million dollars in three-plus years, which is an extremely high sum. Atypical, one might say. That being so, we can’t know how much of that comes as a result of the goodwill that attaches to the judge, for no other reason than that he’s a judge, and that can’t be divided in a divorce. It’s all his.”

They sat back and considered each other, two fighters going to their respective corners.
 

“Are you implying,” Johnny said slowly, “that Judge Billings used his position as a judge to obtain tenants for his wife’s rental properties?”

She shrugged. “I’m not implying anything. My client says the whole rental thing was his baby, that he took care of everything.”

“So you
are
saying he used his profession to bring in renters.”

She set her elbow on the table and leaned forward again. It was becoming a habit with her and Johnny, this leaning in.
 

“What I’m saying is this: he’s a president judge of the district juvenile court and is involved in various—
appropriate
I’m sure—community events. He’s been on TV
,
for goodness sake, doing interviews. People know his name. They know his face. They know
him
. They trust him. People do business with someone they can trust. So he gets that in the valuation.”