Wrangling with the Laywer (3 page)

This curious fascination he was developing for
her was unexpected. He wasn’t often surprised these days. He took a moment to watch her head to the coffee cart, her pert little behind swaying delightfully in a fitted skirt, before he returned to his conversation.

Harper was hungry by the time they were called into the courtroom. Two hours had passed during which she’d spent the majority of the time working on her laptop, and Gabe on his phone. Very little conversation had passed between them. The hallway benches were uncomfortable, and she discovered that the coffee was like dishwater. Finally inside the courtroom half an hour later, her spirits were flagging as they eased into the back pew. They were pressed up against each other just to fit into the confined space. She could feel the hard heat of him through the fabric of his suit.

“I thought they were calling us in?”

Gabe turned to her with what appeared to be patient amusement. “Nemei’s having some fun with us, I think.”

“You call
this fun?” Leaning to one side to let someone pass, she caught a scent of something fresh and light from Gabe’s suit. Whether Gabe chose that moment purposely to lean his face down towards her, she didn’t know, but his breath brushed like a feather against the hair at her temple as he spoke.

“They’ve flooded the judge’s docket.”

She had to grip the pew to absorb the dizzy sensations swirling across her scalp and down the back of her neck. Did he have to speak with such an intense murmur? It was as if he’d touched her.

“As far as I can tell, every homeless person accused of public indecency for the last fifteen years is here today.” He looked amused, and maybe impressed. “We only filed the motion last night. They must have had every associate on their payroll on call all night to organise something like this.”

She recovered enough to look around. It was true that the room was packed with some unfortunate-looking people. She’d volunteered at a homeless shelter near her first apartment in the city years ago, before career and marriage and Finn had swallowed up her time. She knew how tough it was to get a break, and how easily people got lost in the system. It did seem unlikely that in one day so many similar cases had been brought before a single judge, ready for hearing. At least the majority of these people would be getting a bed and a decent meal tonight; she supposed a little discomfort on her part was worth that much.

“So what do we do?” She searched his features. She felt an illicit thrill at the sight of him so close. He really was kind of... she sighed internally. Perfect. His skin was clear and carried his age well. His eyelashes were longer than she’d ever seen on a man; how did he manage to look so manly?

“We wait.”

Gabe’s eyes flicked over her features in return. He found it easy to maintain eye contact, she had noticed; his expression rarely flinched. Her eyes, of course, scurried from his to cover her mutinous train of thought. Clearly his thought-process was less prone to distraction that hers.

“We wait, and do what we need to do. That’s the secret to surviving this type of strategy.” He paused for a second. “Not that I need to tell you this.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “It’s less a strategy and more of a survival technique for me.”

“They make the best strategies. The secret is maintaining them long-term.”  He really was stunning when he smiled, she decided again, bedazzled when he turned to her warmly.

She turned back to centre.
Grabbing her phone, she stood up and the urge to smooth down her skirt. “I think I’ll head outside and make a call. “She needed a break from this constant wonderment. “Can I squeeze past this way?”

His expression was acquiescent. He leaned back, but it was a token effort. The pews were too tightly stacked to allow for modesty. Once she had assimilated this fact, she grasped the rail in front and turned discreetly away from him. As she pressed through, she could feel his eyes making a leisurely tour. She thanked the heavens she’d been sticking to her workout regime in the last few months while simultaneously hoping she didn’t have visible panty line. Underneath this, she hoped he wasn’t one of those men who only dated skinny model types; if that was the case, he would be pretty damned uncomfortable right now with her curvaceous ass passing by.

Gabe tried for about three seconds not to stare at her ass but the longer it took for her to move through, the more his willpower waned. Finally he turned, taking a long, leisurely glance at what he had seen from a distance to be a pretty well-toned derriere. He hadn’t been wrong; he had to bite his lip to stop himself from smiling. She was inching through, and each movement just rocked her invitingly in front of him. He could sense she was uncomfortable, and this pleased him. He was feeling inappropriately turned on; it seemed only fair she should at least be aware of it on some level.

Finally the two men to his right stood up and exited into the aisle to let her past. She eased herself through and out of his reach. Lucky for her, he thought, watching her almost bolt from the courtroom. Had she spent much longer there hovering in front of his face he might have been tempted to run a hand up the length of one of those long, stocking-clad legs, just to find out if she was as soft and firm as she looked.

It was a quarter to three by the time the judge heard their motion to dismiss. It was ten to three when she rejected the motion. Gabe didn’t even bother to sit in front of the bench; he presented his entire argument standing. As soon as they were dismissed, he thanked the judge for her time, switched his phone back on to check his inbox, and made his way back up the aisle to the exit. He was vaguely aware of
Harper gathering her laptop and papers hurriedly in his wake. She was, he realised, clumsy. His brow creased as he watched her almost drop what looked like a page of programming code. She recovered in time, her pale cheeks flushing a little under his observation. She might be a bit of a nerd, he decided. The notion amused him.

“What?” Her tone was a little defensive. “Was that it? Five hours and we get a two minute hearing?”

He held the door open for her, waiting patiently as she bumped past, juggling her load. He ignored her question. “What did you major in at school?”

“Applied mathematics.”

“How did you get into software development?”

She adopted an expression he could only describe as discreet incredulity. “Programming is mostly math.”

He nodded. “Is it really?”

“I did a post-grad in electronic engineering, but just about everything circles back to basic math principles.” She kept juggling her bag, trying unsuccessfully to insert her papers into the pocket as they walked along side by side. Something about her height next to him pleased him on a level he couldn’t quite define; he felt contented walking along and listening to her. “Advanced algorithms; physics engines; applied economics...”

He nodded again; it was like listening to someone speaking a familiar but foreign language. “I hear you have an IQ somewhere in the clouds.”

She darted a
suspicious glance at him. Her tone was certainly suspicious. “It depends on the criteria used, but yes... it’s pretty high.”

“I’d be advertising that in the New York Times if it were me.”

She laughed, but there was little humour in it. “I’ve discovered that if you want to get by in the world, being obviously threatening isn’t a great ploy on a consistent basis.” She brushed her hair behind her ears distractedly, holding on to the rail on the stairs as they descended, her papers now shoved gracelessly in her bag. “People are uncomfortable with certain things.”

“And an intelligent woman is one of those things?”

This time her glance was overtly suspicious. “You really think Nemei Corp’s going after me because I’m jeopardising their business?” Her smile reappeared. “Has anything you’ve seen and heard about my company or its products convinced you that we’re challenging their foothold in the market?”

Gabe felt a stab of something between irritation and excitement in his gut. It was strong enough to stop him in his tracks.

What had he missed?

She paused long enough to look at him. Before she could take the remaining steps, he clasped her by the wrist. “What does that mean? Are you saying all of this is
personal?”

Her brows lifted. She glanced up behind him in agitation, as if checking who was there.

“Does this have something to do with you and Joe Davidson?” The CEO of Nemei Corp was one of the world’s most powerful men; he was also another one of Gabe’s old college acquaintances. He experienced a savage rush of disillusionment before he was able to clamp down on it. “You had a relationship-?”

“No!”

“An affair?”

“No!” She snatched her hand back, covering the extremity of the movement with a humourless laugh. “I’m not talking about that. I shouldn’t have said anything.” She paced down the remaining stairs. “I have to fetch my son from school. I’m already late.”

He watched her leave, the disillusionment bubbling into inexplicable anger.

Across town later that afternoon, Gabe finally tracked Don down to the study in the exclusive law review club they both belonged to. The men shook hands, but Gabe didn’t waste time with pleasantries, perching himself on the side of the desk where his friend was working.

“Did
Harper have a relationship with Davidson?”

Don blanched. “No.” He studied Gabe’s unflinching expression. “Not that I know of. Why?”

“She made a comment this morning.”

Don’s mind was clearly whirring like a mechanical clock. His eyes flickered, but he had the professionalism to control his reaction. “What kind of comment?”

Gabe shifted his weight as he recalled her evasive exit. “Something about the scale of the case being disproportionate to the threat she actually poses to Nemei.”

“I think
Harper believes she’s less of a threat than she actually is,” Don conceded, but there was reluctance in his tone. “Her studio has the potential to revolutionise the market; you’ve seen the latest software. It isn’t the size of the threat in actual terms; it’s the potential threat if she were to reach the kind of success they think she’s capable of-”

“I get that.” Gabe marshalled his thoughts. He kept seeing
Harper’s troubled expression in his mind. “I just have... a gut feeling.” He squared his eyes on his friend. “Any normal legal team within a corporation like Nemei would weigh up and the pros and cons of this whole mess, and decide to settle. We both know this. They’d make an additional gesture of goodwill to gain back her trust. It’s business. It happens all the time. She’s a business person; there’s no reason with a new set of parameters in place that they couldn’t work together in future. Right?”

By Don’s expression it was clear he wasn’t convinced, but he was going along with the story.

“Instead, five years on, they’re now facing a civil suit. In the midst of this escalating madness, they start turning their resources to block any new intellectual property coming out of her studio.” He gave Don a second to assimilate. “Heavy-handed, right? Strategically, they’re pretty much bringing everything they have to the table up front. It’s kind of like using shotgun to kill a fly.” He lifted his hands in defence when Don went to object. “I know you think her studio has the potential to grow into a fearsome beast that warrants the use of a shotgun... but it’s not there yet.”

Don shifted in his seat, a reluctant smile forming as he sighed. “Okay. What’s your point? You think this is some kind of billion dollar lovers’ quarrel?”

“You remember Davidson at school.”

“He was an idiot.”

“He also ran the law review three years in a row and dated Natalie Van der Sar, even though he was an idiot. I’ve never someone more determined to succeed that this guy. Failure is not an option in his world.”

Don’s expression creased into something approaching disgust. “Jesus, Gabe... there’s no way a woman like
Harper would even look at this guy.”

“Natalie did. You’ve had a crush on her since time began-”

“He’s an idiot,” Don reiterated with emphasis. “Natalie was blinded by his family connections. Harper’s not interested in that kind of crap. She could run circles around him intellectually; I can see her tolerating him to secure the best publishing deal for her studio, but I can’t see her jumping into bed with him.”

“Maybe she fell in love.” Gabe shrugged. “People do stupid things.”

“Harper doesn’t do stupid things.”

Sighing, Gabe came to his feet. “I just thought I should throw it in there. It wasn’t so much what she said... I just wasn’t comfortable with her reaction when I asked her about it. She was evasive-”

“You asked her about it?” Don spoke loudly, causing the other members of the club working around them to look up. He lowered his voice. “What did she say?”

“She denied it. But she was embarrassed. Annoyed, I think. It wasn’t the reaction of someone with nothing to hide.”

“Damn it, Gabe.”

Buttoning his jacket, Gabe nodded towards an old adversary entering the room, his mouth curving in a smile that didn’t reach his consciousness. He was annoyed by this latest development – this complication, in Don’s case. If what he suspected was true, and
Harper and Davidson had had a relationship, it made the patent case a lot less interesting. He wasn’t wasting his time working through a dispute catalysed by hurt feelings, however high the stakes.