A Case for Love (15 page)

He stepped out of the garage and met Shon at the bottom of his neighbor’s front steps.

“’Sup, man? We running in the morning?” Shon returned Forbes’s handshake.

“Yes. Definitely.”

“Good. I’ve got a couple of prospects for you.”

“Prospects?”

“For dates. Remember? Your ninety-day membership.”

“Right. I’ll make you a deal.”

“Huh-uh.” Shon shook his head. “You already made me one deal on this.”

“But I really need this favor.”

Shon crossed his arms and leaned against the banister. “Let’s have it.”

“I’ll go out with anyone you want to set me up with, sight unseen, if you’ll let me use you as a sounding board for some stuff I have going on in my life right now.”

“Dude, you know you can tell me anything.” His grin flashed in the gathering twilight.

“This is big stuff, Shon. Stuff I can’t talk to anyone else about because if it ever went public, it could create a lot of chaos for people I care a lot about.”

Shon sobered. “You’re serious. Whatever you need, man, I’m here for you. And you know me: Everything you tell me will be held in strictest confidence, no matter what. You know, that whole lawyer-client confidentiality thing.”

Forbes laughed for the first time all day. “That only applies to me as your lawyer.”

“Whatever. I promise to listen to what you have to say and not repeat it to anyone.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“No problem.” Shon’s grin reappeared.

“What?”

“I’m just thinking about all those ladies I’d like to introduce you to.”

Forbes groaned.

Alaine refilled the two glasses of iced tea and handed the second glass to her co-worker. “I’m really glad you could come over for dinner tonight.”

Bekka Blakeley accepted the glass and followed Alaine from the dining table into the living room. “I’m glad you asked. One of my grandfather’s horses is foaling tonight, so Andrew’s probably going to be out there all night.”

“After working all day?”

“He loves it. He worked full-time for my grandfather for a few years—started just before we got married. But then when Grandpa decided to go into semiretirement, stop breeding, and sell off most of the stock, Andrew went back to the animal hospital. I don’t know if he misses working with Grandpa every day or being a full-time equine vet more.”

“Is that how you met? Because he worked for your grandfather?” Alaine curled up in the opposite corner of the sofa from the newscaster.

“No. He was still at the hospital when we met. I had an emergency with my horse, and he came out to take care of it for me.”

“And it was love at first sight, I’ll bet.” Alaine teased.

A wry smile spread over Bekka’s face. “No. Actually, we didn’t start off well. He asked to speak to one of my parents.”

Considering it had been more than ten years ago and Bekka could still pass for a teenager when she had on no makeup and was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt—like now—Alaine could understand Andrew’s mistake.

“I was dating someone else at the time. You’re a bit younger than me, so you may not remember when I was in the news instead of just reporting it. Tim, the man I’d been seeing, had been arrested, and some accusations were made regarding me and whether or not I’d bribed someone to get him out of jail. It was right after I’d gotten the weekend sports anchor position.”

“Oh, yeah—he went on Channel Three, on Teri Jones’s show, and tried to discredit you, and then she brought out a surprise guest who ended up discrediting him. We watched all of that as it happened in one of my J-school classes. I’d forgotten it was you.”

“I haven’t.”

“So it was after all that when you and Andrew started dating?” Alaine swirled her glass to mix the melting ice into the tea.

“We never really dated. We were always just together. I went to Iowa with him at New Year’s to see his parents, whom he hadn’t spoken to in years. We were really close after that, but it wasn’t until he proposed to me Memorial Day weekend that I knew exactly how he felt about me.” Bekka sipped her tea. “Why the questions about how I met my husband?”

Alaine shrugged.

“Have you met someone?”

She shrugged again. “I thought so. Then I found out who he is, and it’ll never work.”

“I can see this is eating you up. Spill it, girl.”

Alaine didn’t need a second invitation. It took nearly an hour for her to explain everything; and several times, she questioned the wisdom of telling another reporter all of the details of what could become a huge story, if not one of the biggest scandals in Bonneterre’s history. But she trusted Bekka implicitly, especially after having just been reminded of the integrity with which Bekka’d handled her own public scandal years ago.

When Alaine finished speaking, Bekka just stared at her for a moment.

“Do you realize if Rodney knew you were involved in this, he’d flip his toupee?”

“He’s already tried to pump me for information because he knows I have family connections in the Mills. Which is why you can’t say anything to anyone about it. I promised my parents I’d keep quiet about it—that I wouldn’t make a stink about it on my show, as I’d really like to.” Though it felt good to have spoken everything aloud, anxiety started chewing at Alaine’s insides over bringing an outsider into the situation.

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep it to myself. But what are you going to do if this does become a lawsuit? Once that happens, it’s public knowledge, and Rodney is bound to find out you knew about it.” Bekka slipped off her sneakers and tucked her feet up under herself.

“I’ll just have to deal with that if and when it happens.” Alaine couldn’t meet her friend’s eye. If Bekka didn’t know Alaine was planning to film her own story and turn it in just before anything went public, Bekka wouldn’t have to lie to protect her.

“What about this Forbes Guidry? Didn’t he ask you out a couple of weeks ago?”

Heat flooded Alaine’s cheeks. “He did. But that was right about the time I learned what was going on. Of course I said no. At that time, it was a major conflict of interest.”

“At that time? But not now?”

“It doesn’t matter. It would be a conflict of interest.”

“But you like him?”

Alaine sighed and put her dripping glass of now watered-down tea on the table. “I do. But—”

“I know. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ What are you going to do?”

“About?”

“About trying to make the fact you’re attracted to him not matter?”

“I signed up for a membership to Let’s Do Coffee. Shon Murphy is even now supposed to be finding matches to set me up on dates with.”

“You know, I have a cousin your age who isn’t married.” Bekka’s brown eyes twinkled.

Alaine made a cross with her forefingers as if warding off a vampire. “If I had a dollar for every time someone told me they have an unmarried relative.” She giggled. “Is he cute?”

“I think so. I’m sure you’ve heard of him: Clark d’Arcement.”

Alaine sat up straighter. “Clark ... one of the twins who made a couple million dollars when they were in college because of that Web site they started and then sold?”

Bekka nodded. “Yep. They’re partners in a Web site designing company now. I could give him your number. I know he knows who you are.”

Alaine chewed the inside of her bottom lip. Was cuteness and wealth a good enough reason to go out with someone? Oh, heck yeah. “Okay. But you can’t tell him it’s my idea.”

“Of course not. Because no man’s ego needs the boost it gets from knowing a beautiful woman is interested in him.”

Very true. Alaine led the conversation into more casual, less personal topics, but Bekka’s statement kept whirring in her mind, bringing the vision of Forbes at the bachelors’ banquet to mind. No, his ego hadn’t needed the boost it had gotten from the interest she’d unwillingly shown. And no matter how much she protested that her attraction to him didn’t matter, she couldn’t help but tingle with the anticipation of dancing with him again Monday night.

“Um, boss?”

Forbes looked up from the paperwork in front of him. “Yes, Samantha?”

“That e-mail you sent with the list of files you want copied ... you know those are in the partners-only file room?” His secretary twisted her long necklace around her fingers.

“Oh, right.” He opened his top drawer and pulled out a key, which he held toward her. “Here. That should get you in.”

She crossed the office but hesitated before taking the key. “If someone else asks me why I’m pulling the files, what case should I tell them it’s for?”

Forbes’s insides squirmed. “It’s background research for a real-estate development case I’m looking at taking. I need to see if there’s any precedent in any of those files that can help me decide if the case if viable or not.”

Samantha’s anxious posture eased. “Oh. Okay. I just wasn’t sure what to say if Mary—I mean, if someone decides I’m not supposed to be up there.”

He tried to give her a reassuring smile. “If she—someone happens to ask you what you’re doing in the partners-only file room, you can simply remind her that I’m a partner and tell her I asked you to copy some files for me. She doesn’t need to know anything beyond that.”

His voice oozed confidence but guilt burned through his stomach. While he had every right to access the room containing files of clients handled by the partners—because he
was
a partner, as he’d just reminded his secretary—pulling B-G’s files to see what kind of information he could find about their legal dealings with acquiring the property in the Warehouse District and Moreaux Mills wasn’t necessarily on the up-and-up. He could go through proper channels and request them through the court system, but that could take weeks, if not months.

He had to know now. And he couldn’t tell much from the briefs he found in the electronic files on the server. He needed to read the transcripts, to see the paperwork, to find out exactly what kinds of legal action they’d been pursuing to gain those properties.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose and tried to concentrate on the Pichon file ... but it was no use. He reached for the large ceramic mug with the Delta Chi fraternity logo on it. Empty.

He moaned and made his way down the hall to the break room. The extra-large coffee carafe was more than half-f, meaning it had only been made a few minutes ago, as it never lasted very long. He poured the mug three-quarters full, topped it off with skim milk, and sweetened it with two packs of artificial sweetener.

“Oh, good morning, Mr. Guidry.” One of the paralegals came in bearing a pink mug with Princess in purple scripty letters across the front.

“Good morning, Geoff. Nice cup.”

“Thanks. My daughter’s. Only clean one in the house this morning. And if I forget to take it home by tomorrow, I’ll never hear the end of it—this is my weekend to have the kids.”

Forbes clamped his teeth together to keep from asking when Geoff had gotten a divorce. He needed to get out of his office more often and mingle with his co-workers. He didn’t want to be one of those kinds of partners who knew nothing about the people in the ranks who worked longer and harder hours trying to gain what Forbes had already accomplished.

“How old are they now?” He leaned against the counter and unbuttoned his coat.

“Twelve, nine, and five. What about you? You got kids?” Geoff poured his coffee to the rim of his mug and took a slurp before turning to the granite-topped cabinet to doctor it with powdered creamer.

“No. I’m not married.”

Geoff chuckled. “Yeah, knew that from the whole Bachelor of the Year thing. But marriage isn’t required for someone to have kids.”

“For me, it is.”

“Nice to hear someone still has some old-fashioned values these days. I mean, my wife comes to me a year ago and tells me she wants us to have an ‘open’ marriage—because she’s met someone else but doesn’t want to go through the trouble of a divorce. And she gets majority custody of the kids because I was the one who asked for the divorce, so it looks like I’m in the wrong. Does that seem right to you?”

Okay. Maybe he really didn’t need to spend more time with the staff.

“Just because I’d mentioned wanting to go back to school to work on my law degree and asked if she’d be able to make sure she had the kids the nights I had class. And when I had to work late...”

Forbes edged toward the door, trying to figure out a tactful way to extricate himself from the conversation.

The administrative coordinator’s appearance gave him just the out he needed. “Good morning, Mr. Guidry. Geoff.”

“Good morning, Cheryl. Well, I’ve got to get back to it.” Forbes raised his hand in a farewell wave and made a hasty exit. Geoff resumed complaining about his ex-wife before Cheryl got two words out.

Forbes sank into his chair, grateful to have escaped without having to pass judgment on the outcome of the paralegal’s divorce and custody. The guy was a few years younger than Forbes, and his life was already a mess.

He turned and stared out the window, across the parking lot to the slice of river he could see through the trees lining it. He’d abandoned the idea of dating years ago because no woman he’d dated had ever been satisfied with him. Had he chosen the wrong ones, or was he really not marriage material? While he’d never been as attracted to anyone he’d dated as he was to Alaine Delacroix, would it turn out the same way with her? Would she end up walking away from him either because she felt like he was too controlling or that he didn’t take enough of an interest in her, as he’d been accused in the past?

He’d rather never marry than to go through the pain of a divorce, especially if there were children involved.

Is that what You’re trying to teach me, Lord? That I’m not cut out to be married? That if I did, I’d end up like Geoff with my wife wanting out to be with someone else?

Shaking his head, he turned back to his desk and ran the dictating machine back to listen to where he’d left off. This motion had to be filed today, which meant he needed to be finished dictating it so Samantha could type it before he went down to the courthouse after lunch.

He was almost finished when the phone rang. With Samantha still upstairs making the copies for him, he couldn’t let it go unanswered.

“Forbes Guidry.”

“Hey, it’s Anne.”

“Why are you calling me on my office phone?”

“Wasn’t sure if you’d be in court or a meeting or something—you usually are. I figured I’d just leave you a message to call me when you had a minute.”

“What’s up?” He marked his place in his notes and leaned back, propping his right foot on the corner of his partially open bottom desk drawer.

“I just wanted to know if you’re going to make it for supper tonight.”

The knot started forming at the base of his skull again. “I hadn’t gotten that far yet.” Really, what he wanted to do was to take the copies of the files home and start reading through them. And maybe order a pizza or something. Or maybe even see if Shon wanted to grab dinner so they could talk—since their run had been rained out this morning. “Why? Is there something going on tonight I’m unaware of?”

“Well, I couldn’t say anything in front of them last night, but George and I got to talking and figured that since Meredith and Major are going to put off having any kind of formal reception indefinitely—as in, Meredith has decided she doesn’t want one but doesn’t know how to break it to the family—we thought it would be fun to have a little informal reception for them tonight. Jenn is decorating the Shack’s back room in a wedding theme, Aunt Maggie made a little wedding cake, and George and I are handling everything else.”

Why hadn’t he thought of that? Oh, yeah. Because he wasn’t the professional wedding planner. “Who all’s going to be there?”