The Convenient Wife (A BWWM Steamy Marriage of Convenience Romance) (2 page)

“Thanks,” I said, flashing him a
forced smile before I pushed open the door that led to my bedroom. The door
close with the soft
click
and I let
silence overwhelm me once again.

I’d never thought about how empty my
bedroom felt before. Usually I’d have it filled with women and the music
thumping so loud that the walls would shake—but not today. Today I began to
realize just how empty everything seemed. There was so much room for something
I just couldn’t put my finger on. I’d never felt so alone before.

And for the first time in as long as
I could remember, there wasn’t a woman waiting underneath the sheets for me.

I couldn’t believe I had to spend
all day with such a cranky old coot. I had been sitting at Mr. Lambert’s
bedside for over three hours, and he’d barely been lucid enough to speak to me
concerning his final wishes.

Handling matters of estate had been
my forte since I’d graduated law school. In fact, it was a recommendation from
one of my professors that had landed me a cushy position with one of the
biggest firms in the tristate area. I’d thought that everything would start
going my way once I’d proven myself to the partners.

Until I got saddled with the Lambert
account.

I’d only been with my firm for a few
months when one of the oldest associates had decided that moment was the best
time possible to hang up his lawyering hat and start his retirement. While only
an associate, Scott Hagman had handled some of the firm’s most prestigious
accounts—including the Lamberts, who’d apparently made the bulk of their money
back in the days of John D. Rockefeller.

With Scott gone, the firm had to
scramble to cover his surprisingly large workload, leaving
me
to handle the final preparations for the most senior Mr. Lambert
before his somewhat overdue demise.

“Now, I won’t say
any of this again, Miss…”

“Deveraux, Mr. Lambert. My name is
Georgia Deveraux, your lawyer.” It was the fourth time we’d had this
conversation that morning, it was had gotten no less annoying as the day had
gone on.

“What happened to Hagman? Why’m I
talking to some uppity little—”

“That’s quite enough, Ulysses,” came
the sharp, icy tones of Mr. Lambert’s daughter-in-law, Melissa. “We’ll go over
the terms of the inheritance once again, please, Ms. Deveraux.”

My cheeks enflamed as I realized the
old man had almost spat some awful slur in my direction, and though I
appreciated his daughter’s timely arrival, I got the impression she didn’t
stray too far from her father-in-law’s thoughts on a girl like me “rising above
my station in life.”

Looks
like they’re going to have to get used to respecting a black woman
, I thought, taking a deep, calming
breath before once again reciting the terms.

“I, Ulysses Jeremiah Lambert, IV,” I
read aloud, “being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath a sum totaling
five million dollars to be donated on my behalf following my death to the
American Cancer Institute so that they may—” I stopped, shaking my head to
overcome the sheer ridiculousness of what Mr. Lambert had written. “—so that
they may save whatever poor bastard is in my shoes tomorrow.”

Mr. Lambert smiled a self-satisfied
smile before encouraging me to read on. He was a smug bastard, and even worse,
he honestly thought he was funny.

“In regards to my only living male
heir, Dorian Eugene Lambert, I hereby bequeath my remaining fortune and all my
property to him on the condition that he marry and propagate the Lambert line.
Until such a time, he will have no access to any of his planned inheritance.
Should his betrothal and siring of an heir take such a time longer than a year,
he will forfeit his entire inheritance—all of which will be donated to various
charities and non-profits.”

“And it has to be a
male
heir!” Lambert crowed indignantly.
“I can’t have him leaving the fortune to a daughter! What kind of world would
this be if women ran it?”

I felt the vein in my temple throb. “Mr.
Lambert, with all due respect, I don’t think—”

“No one
asked
you what you thought. You’re a lawyer. You’re here to make
sure that what I want done with my business and my fortune
gets done
. Where the hell is Hagman?” Mr. Lambert craned his neck
to see if my predecessor might be hiding somewhere just beyond the doorway.
“There was a man who knew his place in the world—who knew to respect his
betters!”

It took every drop of self-restraint
I had not to stoop down to that horrible old vulture’s level and sully my
spotless disciplinary record by giving him a piece of my mind.

“You’re absolutely right, Mr.
Lambert. I’ll make sure that everything is done according to your wishes, down
to the letter.”

“Finally!” the old man cried, his
toothless mouth a wobbly snarl. “At least you can understand something as
simple as following someone’s orders, girl. God knows how you’d have survived
back—”

The shrill ringtone of my cellphone
cut off Mr. Lambert before he could make even more of an ass of himself than I
had previously thought possible.

“Just a moment, Mr. Lambert,” I
said, digging my ancient flip-phone out of my bag. Times were tough at the
Deveraux house, and with enormous student loans hanging over my head, a fancy
phone—along with a fancy phone bill—wasn’t something I could readily afford.

“Unbelievable!” the old man growled,
throwing his gnarled, arthritic hands up. “She can’t even show a dying man the
respect of turning her damned cellular phone off! Where in the
hell
is Hagman?!”

I made my exit from the room as
quickly as I possibly could, but not before catching the eye of Mrs. Lambert.
By the way she was looking down her nose at me, I could tell she shared her
father-in-law’s annoyance, but I got the feeling I might have bigger problems.

I looked at the caller ID window
before opening my aged cellphone. It was a number I didn’t recognize, but
before I could think to screen the call, I caught sight of Mrs. Lambert coming
toward me and put the phone to my ear in a panic.

“Georgia Deveraux speaking,” I said,
purposely raising my voice before Mrs. Lambert could interrupt.

“Ms. Deveraux? This is Miles Feldman
with EduLoan Services. I’m calling in regards to the balance on your student
loan account.”

My stomach dropped to the floor like
a bag of bricks.

It was a hard call between suffering
another minute in a room with that racist old bastard or having to listen to
some glorified accountant explain just how fucked-in-half in debt I was. I
decided on the accountant.

“Yes,” I said after a moment of
silence, “I spoke with another representative earlier this month. He said I might
be eligible for a deferment.”

“I’m afraid you’ve exhausted that
option, Ms. Deveraux. I’m afraid that your loans are in collection, and that as
of this moment, we will have to begin garnishing your wages.”

“Please, I’m begging you, Mister…” I
trailed off, attempting to put some distance between myself and Mrs. Lambert.
She just gave me a look of scorn and turned round, returning to Mr. Lambert’s
room.

“Feldman.”

“I’m sorry?” I replied, momentarily
confused, watching the door close behind her.

“It’s Feldman. Mr. Feldman.”

“Mr. Feldman. Please, isn’t there
any way that we could possibly—”

“I’m afraid not, Ms. Deveraux. You
must pay your debts.”

“But I’ve already had my car
repossessed! I can’t have my wages docked on top of everything else! This isn’t
fair!”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing that I
can do, ma’am. You must either pay your debts or face the consequences.”

I could feel tears beginning to well
up at the corners of my eyes, clouding my vision as I sat huddled against the
wall. How could everything be going so wrong in my life? How was this much
misfortune actually possible?

“Your employer will be contacted by
this time tomorrow. I’m sorry that it had to come to this, Ms. Deveraux. I
truly am.”

With the softest click, Mr. Feldman
was gone and I was left alone with my worries, my fears, and my soul-crushing
debt. This was nothing like I imagined. I thought working for a prestigious law
firm would solve everything. My entire life would be like walking on air—I
couldn’t have been any more wrong.

After leaving Harvard Law, I was
practically swimming in unpaid student loans, many of them taken out with the
kinds of companies charging interest rates that would have given a frail human
being a heart attack. I knew that I was in trouble, but being as young as I was,
I thought I had time—time to make enough money to live a life of luxury as a
high-powered attorney.

That was before the trouble with my
father had started.

John Franklin Deveraux was a proud
man who didn’t take shit from anyone—which was code for him being a stubborn
ass. I grew up a military brat, which meant that I ended up traveling more than
I ever wanted to. My father was a strict man, and whenever he was home our
house ran like clockwork. I loved my father more than I could ever express, but
things between us weren’t exactly perfect...

After my mother passed away, my
father went into a destructive downward spiral. I’d always known that my father
hit the bottle a little more than he should, but after her death, his love of
booze turned into a full-blown, alcoholic rampage. I still remembered the first
night he called me from the police station, begging me to bail him out. I could
barely understand him. He was slurring his words.

That scene had played out again and
again over the last few years, waking up at the Godforsaken hours of the
morning with new messages from my father. I learned to tell where my father had
gotten arrested just from what number he’d called from that night. Officers at
a few precincts knew me by name, and not for the reason I wanted them to—it was
embarrassing.

Eventually my father lost his house,
his car, and everything else he owned. It was torture watching the man I had
admired and looked up to all of my life turn from upstanding army man to a barely-functioning
addict. It broke my heart more than anything else ever had, and with every new
incident, the heartache only grew worse.

Last night my father had called me
as he usually did, in the dead of night and without any word for weeks on end.
I was furious—time and time again I was the one he called to bail him out of
jail, using my own money to get him out of the drunk tank. I snapped, screaming
at him over the phone.

“You can sleep there tonight, Dad.
I’ve had
enough
of being the one who
comes to get you out of trouble and clean up your messes!”

Why can’t my life be easy for once?
Just one nice happy uneventful day. No father in jail, no student loans, and
certainly no Mr. Lambert. Is that too much to ask for?

I rubbed the bridge of my nose and
took a deep breath. I steeled myself for at least another hour with an old racist
bastard criticizing my every move before I turned to head once more unto the
breach.

But the moment I turned, I found
myself face to face with someone I’d only caught glimpses of in pictures on Mr.
Lambert’s bedside table.

“Dorian Lambert,” the young man
said, his voice low—presumably so as not to attract attention. He held out his
hand to shake mine.

“Gigi,” I said, forgetting for a
moment I was supposed to be an honest-to-God, professional lawyer. Those
gorgeous blue eyes of his were mesmerizing, and the feel of his palm against
mine made my knees weak. I swallowed thickly. “I mean, Georgia Deveraux.”

“I like Gigi,” he said, flashing me
a grin that must’ve made women’s hearts melt on a routine basis. “You don’t
mind if I call you that, do you?”