The Bad Judgment Series: The Complete Series (9 page)

“
B
oy
, did I get a lecture,” Walker said, by way of greeting. He was wearing a beat up tee-shirt and some cargo shorts, and he was positively glistening with muscles, tendons, and possibility. I thought I might have a hot flash right then and there. He grabbed my work bag from me and put it on the counter. “Wait till you see how many boxes they already delivered,” he said. I nodded at him, mutely, nervous to hear about what David had to say and nervous and excited to be back in Walker's kitchen.

“So we’ll be plenty busy, which is good,” he continued, “because you’re staying assigned to me until the trial. I pulled rank on David. I made him promise.” He smiled at me and I couldn’t help it, I smiled back.
Walker all to myself
for
the
summer
. My stomach plummeted in a good way, my heart fluttered and I tried not to squint to check if maybe I could see the outline of his abs through his tee-shirt.

“How’d he take it? The rank-pulling?” I asked, hopping up on a barstool.

“About how you’d expect. He sputtered and ranted and threw his weight around. I ignored him,” he said blithely, and I laughed. “And then I threatened to fire him.” I stopped laughing. Walker looked at me and smiled. “No worries, Nicole. Even if I fired him, I’d still keep you on.”

“Not if I didn’t have a job, you wouldn’t,” I said.

“You’d still be a lawyer.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “If you fire my firm from your case, I might not be a lawyer for long,” I said

“Don’t worry. I’d give you a job. You could be my wine wench,” he said, and wagged his eyebrows at me.

“I don’t know what that is, but I think it’s below my pay grade,” I sniffed.

“I’d make it worth your while,” he said, and leaned across me to rest his hand on the island. His massive bicep bulged right in front of my eyes.

I jumped up and went over to my bag, putting some distance between me and that bicep. “Where should I put this?” I asked, nervous and trying desperately not to be nervous.

“Living room. We’re going to be surrounded by boxes.”

“Is Adrian here?” I asked. I was curious to meet her.

“She should be home later. Come on, I promised David we’d get through a couple of boxes tonight.” He grabbed my laptop with one hand and I watched his muscles bulge with a mixture of fascination, fear and desire.

“I also promised him you’d text him regularly,” he said. “So he knows you’re working, and not just having fun.”

I gaped at the rows of boxes stacked neatly throughout the living room. “I don’t think he needs to worry about me having too much fun. I don’t think I’ll ever have time for fun again. Who dropped these off, anyway?” I asked. I figured it was probably poor Andrew, sent to do menial labor, while suffering the double-blow of seeing Walker’s gorgeous house that he almost got assigned to.

“Some big security dude that David sent over. It took him a while.”

“I can’t imagine why,” I said, looking out at the sea of boxes. “You ready to get to work?"

“As long as we can have takeout. You up for Indian?”

“Always,” I said, and he smiled at me.

“Me, too, Nic. Me too. We’re practically an old married couple.”

“Ha-ha,” I said, although I was secretly thrilled by what he said. I grabbed a heavy box and set it on the table while he went into the kitchen to call. “Extra samosas and extra naan, please,” I called, whining. We were going to need them.

“
W
e have
to have a cohesive narrative,” I said, rifling through the box of Blue Securities’ tax returns. I’d read the tax summaries, but now I was looking at the actual filings, checking for anything that looked out of order.

“I’m going to show a concrete trail from the profit shown for each of the past three years, to what’s been invested back into the company. I’m also going to need to meet with your Board of Directors, to review meeting minutes, anything about shareholder votes. Anything that the Board voted on that might be a contributing factor in the case. I’m going to need to meet with your Chief Financial Officer,” I said. “What’s his name again?”

“Lester Max,” Walker said, and went back to staring out the window at the darkness. It was almost ten, and he’d seemed to lose interest in the files he was reviewing about an hour ago.

“Do you trust him?”

Walker turned to me. “I don’t trust anybody. But Lester likes money more than most people. He’s obsessed with it, and I pay him lots of it. So if my company has to be in someone else’s hands, his greedy ones are probably the best choice. He wants the company to be successful. Blue is how he happens to own a lovely condominium in the Leather District, a house on Nantucket, and can afford child support to five kids from three wives."

“He sounds charming. Can’t wait to meet him.”

“He’s probably going to try to get you to sleep with him,” he said.

“Walker, not everybody finds me attractive.”

“That, Counselor, is where you’re wrong. You’re twenty-five — which is hot in and of itself. You have long, thick brown hair, breasts that I can’t get a close enough look at, but that I suspect are fantastic, perfect skin and beautiful brown eyes. And great legs, I might add.”

“You're incorrigible,” I said.
Don’t ever stop talking to me like that, not ever,
I thought. “I’ll meet Lester Max for a safe lunch. No Leather District, ‘cause that just sounds naughty. I don’t want him getting any ideas. Now, can we get back to work?”

“Say ‘naughty’ again. I’m begging you,” he said, looking at me playfully.

I handed him a stack of tax returns: the opposite of naughty.

“You drive a hard bargain, Nic.” He paused for a bit, scowling at the documents. “Aren’t you going to beg me to say ‘hard,’ again?” He sounded wounded.

“No, Walker, I’m not. Stop being lewd and get back to work.” I looked up at him and saw him sulking. “Because it’s going to be really
hard
to keep your
naughty
ass out of jail. Bahahaha,” I said. He cracked up and I let him laugh for a minute.

Then I gave him a look that shut him up immediately. “Seriously, Walker. Do I have to crack the whip? Bahahaha!” We laughed until our sides hurt, even though it wasn’t that funny. It was overtired, giddy laughter. Too many tax documents make everything else funny.

Once we stopped, I sat up straight and handed him another file. “We have to get through at least half of this set tonight. You can stop if you want to, because I’m going to review everything, anyway. The government is going to do a massive amount of discovery, and they’re going to go through all of these with a fine-toothed comb. If there’s some sort of irregularity, we need to know as soon as possible, so we can prepare.” I looked up to find him staring at me. “Walker, if you’re trying to find some sexual innuendo in something I just said, move on. The words ‘comb’ and ‘irregular’ are hardly sexy.”

He immediately smiled, victorious. “I was thinking more along the lines of the word
massive
.”

For the hundredth time in a matter of a few short days, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So I just let myself blush and hid behind my tax returns. For the next three hours.

“
N
ic
?” he said to me, later. “Don’t you want to take a break? I’m starving. Don’t you ever have to pee, or anything?”

I looked over at him, dazed. “Huh?” I said, distractedly. I’d forgotten all about him, which I hadn’t thought possible. One of my special talents was getting completely engrossed in documents that put other people to sleep. That, and not getting up to pee for a very long time. Both were contributing factors in my success at law school. I planned to use them to my utmost advantage in my practice, too.

“Snacks,” he said. “Let’s eat, and then let’s finish these in the morning. This is ridiculous.”

I didn’t really want to stop. I’d found a pattern of company payments to a sub-corporation in Miami that was bothering me. I wanted to follow it through.

I looked at my watch. It was one a.m. “This is pretty normal for me.”

He looked at me with tired eyes, exasperated. I was glad he was tired: hopefully he was too exhausted to keep making sexual references. It had been funny at the time, but I knew it was completely inappropriate. And dangerous. I couldn't let myself keep thinking about him like that.

I stood up. “Snacks are always good,” I said, trying to be compromising. “Do you have any diet soda?”

“Follow me,” he said. “Let me introduce you to the awesomeness of my fully-stocked refrigerator.”

“Do
you
stock it?” I asked, peering past him at the rows of soda, organic juices, and foreign-looking snacks. “Seaweed chews?” I asked, examining the green pouch. “Really?”

“Adrian stocks the fridge. She gets me what I ask for, but she buys all sorts of other weird shit.” He grabbed the bag of seaweed chews and ate one. “These are actually good, though.” He handed me an organic non-diet soda and shrugged. “Adrian doesn’t do artificial sweeteners, and neither should you.”

I looked past him into the enormous refrigerator. “Adrian doesn’t seem to have a problem with beer. Or wine.”

“No. No she does not.” He opened a beer while I drank my delicious organic whatever it was.

“Can we get back to the files?” I asked. I unbuttoned my jacket. “I’d like to get home before four.”

“If you insist,” he said, “but you really do have a strong tolerance for this stuff. It’s making me want to do a face plant.”

“It’s your company,” I said, shrugging.

“So I already know all of it.”

“Do you?” I asked. I was serious now, genuinely curious at his level of involvement.

“Of course I do, Nicole,” he said, a bit formally.
Uh-oh. No more ‘Nic’ — I was back to lowly old Nicole.
“I oversee every single portion of my company. There isn’t a distribution or a payment that I’m not aware of. These four days off are the longest amount of time I've been away from my office in three years. I’ve been being playful with you,” he said, giving me a long look, “because it makes this whole process more bearable, but I’m seriously stressed out about being away. I feel like I’m hemorrhaging money.

“Are you doubting my commitment to my company?” he asked. He seemed angry suddenly, all traces of flirting and playfulness gone from his tone.

“No,” I said, “not exactly.” We looked at each other for a beat.

“So…do you know why your company has set up automatic payments to a subsidiary in Miami?” I asked, all traces of flirting and playfulness gone from my tone. From what I’d read tonight, it looked like Blue was funneling money into one of its Miami sub-corporation. But I couldn’t find the money coming back out, and I couldn’t figure out what the sub-corp did. It seemed to do nothing, except accrue money under a different name in sunny Miami.

“Do I detect some doubt, Counselor?” Walker asked.

I searched his face. “Should I doubt you, Walker?”

“No. No you should not,” he said. “The Miami sub-corp is Lester Max’s creation. It’s set up as a tax-shelter. We have several similar subsidiaries. He’s assured me that it’s all perfectly legal. We do an independent audit every year, using a different company. Every year the auditor assures me that the way we’ve set up the company is not only optimal, for tax purposes, but perfectly legal.”

We just looked at each other for a beat.

“Okay,” I said, as much as to myself as to him.

“Okay,” he said.

I grabbed the file I’d been working on and desperately wished that I was drinking a beer, too. “Let’s get back to work,” I said, taking the bag of seaweed chips with me. Walker stood in the kitchen for a minute, watching me, a frown on his face.

I exhaled and walked nervously back towards him. I didn’t like the look on his face; he looked pained. It had been ballsy of me to ask him about Miami the way that I had…I’d wanted to know the truth. Maybe I’d been too painfully direct.

“Walker?” I asked, tentatively.

“I haven’t done anything wrong, Nicole,” he said.

“I believe you,” I said.

“I don’t want you to doubt me,” he said, his eyes piercing mine. “You are my team right now. If I don’t have your trust…” He shook his head and I saw despair on his face.

I walked up to him and touched his arm. “You have it. And I can get you out of your mess.”

“I believe you,” he said. “It should help that I didn’t do it. Any of it.”

“I know,” I said, and it was all at once that I was sure that I believed him, from the bottom of my heart, and I didn’t know why any of this was happening to him. “I need you to use your considerable brain power to help me figure out where they’re going to try to screw you. And afterwards, when it doesn’t matter anymore and you’re free, we’re going to figure out why they’ve done this to you.”

“And then I’m going to go after them,” Walker said, the muscles in his jaw clenching.

“I believe you,” I said. “I’ll help you if I can.

“
N
ic
,” Walker said. I looked up from my file. I was lying on the couch by now, completely unself-conscious, almost done with the box I’d started. “It’s three-thirty in the morning. I am going to bed. Please stay here. I have five extra bedrooms. Toiletries. Pajamas. Coffee for tomorrow.”

I sat up and rubbed my eyes; I still had my damned contacts in, a product of my vanity, and they hurt. “I’m fine. I’ll just call a cab and go home.” I sat up and started packing my bag. Suddenly, Walker was next to me on the couch, his gorgeous face above me. His chin was covered with black stubble and dark circles had formed below his eyes. Unfortunately, his humanity just made him sexier.

“Just stay,” he said. “Don’t rush out of here in the middle of the night, please. Stay here and be safe. We have to start doing this first thing in the morning, anyway. I swear I have clothes you can wear.”

“I don't want to wear Minky Lucca’s clothes,” I sniffed. “Even if I wanted to, they wouldn’t fit.”

He smiled down at me indulgently and my heart seized. “Adrian’s just about your size. I bought her some pajamas for Christmas that I know, for a fact, she’s never worn. Wear them, sleep in one of the guest rooms, and we’ll get up in a few hours and keep going.”