Nameless

This book is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Claire Kent.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit
in any form or by any means.

The author acknowledges the
trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks referenced
in this work of fiction: Duke University and Cheerios.

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Epilogue

Before the afternoon of Mac’s
funeral, Erin’s longest interaction with Seth Thomas was over a volume of
Byron’s poetry.

Erin Marshall had
been in middle school when sixteen-year-old Seth showed up in town to live with
Mac, who was some sort of distant cousin and the closest surviving relative he
had.

According to
Mac, Seth was orphaned early and raised by his grandfather, who’d owned a car
dealership a few counties away and had left him to the care of a nanny. The
small town was predisposed to welcome the boy after his grandfather died, but his
sullen, hostile attitude hadn’t won him any friends.

She’d been a
hopeless bookworm and spent hours in the library after school. Often she’d look
up from where she read in her favorite chair to see Seth scouring the stacks.

He’d always
worn the same beat-up Army jacket, and he would read everything from Roman
military history to biographies of business tycoons. He never spoke—not to her
or anyone else.

That month,
she’d been trying to be artsy and poetic, one of her many flights of fancy as a
kid, so she decided to read and sigh over Lord Byron, although she didn’t
understand much of the poetry.

Seth already
had the book off the shelf when she approached with the call numbers written
down on a slip of paper.

She’d been
painfully shy back then, so when she realized this good-looking teenage boy was
holding the book she needed, she’d dropped her eyes and prepared to slink away.

Seth didn’t say
a word, but he reached out and put the book in her hands. When she raised her gaze
to meet his, he gave her a little half-smile.

It was an unexpected
moment of kinship over a book no one had checked out for over thirty years.

Erin might have
had a little crush on him after that.

Irrationally,
she’d felt betrayed when he stopped coming to the library later that year and then
started getting in trouble for reckless driving, drugs, and underage drinking.

Mac did the
best he could, but he was a life-long bachelor and was very far out of his
depth. Everyone in town was relieved when Seth graduated from high school early
and went off to college.

Despite his rocky
start, Seth made a success of himself in the fifteen years since—college, law
school, associate at a prestigious law firm. He’d made partner a few months ago,
after earning a lot of attention from the press when he helped successfully
defend a pro basketball player in a trial that made national headlines.

When he came to
Mac’s funeral that Saturday afternoon, he wasn’t the same solitary boy who’d
haunted the library so long ago.

And that was
just fine with Erin.

At twelve, she
had been bashful, fed on romantic fantasies, convinced her dreams might one day
come true.

She wasn’t anymore.

***

“I thought it was a really nice
service,” Erin said, leaning forward from the backseat of the car.

Her father was driving
in the long line of vehicles headed from the Methodist church to the cemetery,
but he glanced back at her in the rearview mirror. “Yeah. Mac would have liked
it.”

“It was packed.
I can’t believe how many people showed up to pay their respects.” Erin’s older
sister, Liz, had always been the outgoing and popular one. Like Erin, she lived
in Atlanta now, but they’d both come out to support their widowed father, who’d
been friends with the man who died for fifty years.

“Everyone in
town loved him,” Erin added, trying to hide how exhausted she was, so her
father wouldn’t worry.

 She’d been on
vacation in the Caribbean with friends and had just flown back to Atlanta the
day before. She’d planned to use the weekend to recover before going back to
work as a judicial assistant for a superior court judge, but instead she’d
driven an hour outside of the city to the small town she’d grown up in to
attend the funeral.

She’d known Mac
all her life, and she’d loved him too.

“I can’t
believe Seth Thomas had the gall to show up,” Liz muttered. “He did nothing but
make Mac miserable, and he obviously didn’t want to be family.”

“It would have
been pretty rude for Seth not to come, since Mac left him everything.” Erin
thought about the handsome, stoic man who’d attended the funeral—a far cry from
the boy she remembered and just as far from the charismatic defense attorney
she saw around the courthouse on a semi-regular basis. “Maybe he cared about
Mac more than it seemed.”

“Mac was really
proud of him,” her father said, turning into the cemetery drive in the line of
cars. “He blamed himself for not getting through to Seth, and he never stopped
talking about how he got that scholarship to college and then got into a
top-rated law school and was hired by that fancy law firm.”

“It is pretty
impressive, I guess,” Liz admitted.

Erin made a
face. “Maybe he wears power suits now, but he’s not really that different than
he used to be. He’s just as selfish as he was back then, doing whatever he
wants, taking whatever he wants, walking over anyone who gets in his way.”

They parked
halfway on the drive and halfway on the grass, like everyone else, and the
conversation lagged as they climbed out of the car and headed for the tent set
up at the grave.

“You mean with
women?” Liz asked, falling in step beside Erin. “If Mary Carlyle’s blog is to
be believed, he dates a different gorgeous woman every few weeks.”

When the
basketball player’s trial had made the national news, there was a lot of media
attention surrounding the sexy, young attorney who’d begun as second chair on
the defense team but had taken the lead halfway through and won a brilliant
victory in what should have been a losing case. Even now, cable news shows
regularly brought Seth on to comment on legal issues.

Liz’s college
nemesis, a woman named Mary Carlyle, ran a tabloid-style blog. At Seth’s
temporary notoriety, she had leveraged her location in Atlanta to uncover more
gossip on him than anyone else. Evidently, the blog’s readership had
skyrocketed in the weeks surrounding the trial, and it was still more popular
than it had ever been before.

“I don’t care
who he dates,” Erin said, answering her sister’s question. “I just mean with
his general attitude. They’ve called him the Bulldozer at the courthouse for
years because he just plows through people to get what he wants. Even before he
became a hotshot, he was like that.”

Erin’s job as
judicial assistant was part secretaru, part paralegal, and part law clerk. It
wasn’t anywhere close to the career she’d dreamed of in high school and
college, but it was sure as hell better than being married to Marcus, her controlling
ass of an ex-husband.

“You should see
him break down a witness on the stand,” Erin added. “It’s brutal.
He’s
brutal. It’s like he doesn’t have normal human feelings.”

“It doesn’t
seem to be a turn-off to women. Of course, some women like the alpha-male
type.”

“Some women
haven’t been married to one.”

Liz snorted in
amusement. “I wonder what he’s like in bed.”

“Girls, please.
I’m right behind you.”

Erin and Liz
smiled at their father’s aggrieved voice, but they would have stopped talking
anyway since they were approaching the graveside.

The service was
brief and traditional, and Erin and Liz lingered afterwards, since their father
wanted to speak to some people before he left.

As they waited,
Erin’s eyes landed on an isolated figure, wearing an expensive black suit,
standing slightly away from everyone else.

Seth Thomas was
definitely hot. He had a tall, lean body and medium brown hair that sometimes
looked almost auburn. His features were well-chiseled and, on the rare occasions
he smiled, it transformed his face in a breathtaking way.

He could
control a room merely by the force of his personality. She’d seen him in court,
where his charisma was astonishing. Even when he was just walking down the
hall, though, he commanded attention. People turned, moved out the way, yielded
to his presence.

She wasn’t sure
how the boy she remembered from the library had turned into this man.

At the moment,
however, he looked different. Quiet. Withdrawn.

No one but her
father and the pastor had spoken to him today.

“How often do
you see him around?” Liz asked, obviously noticing where Erin’s attention had
drifted.

“Now and then.”

“Does he
recognize you?”

“He knows I’m
Judge Hargrove’s assistant. I don’t think he remembers me from way back when. There’s
no reason for him to. I was twelve. He barely knew I existed.”

She still remembered
their shared look over Byron—the half-smile he’d given her, the way he’d really
seemed to
see
her—but she was quite sure Seth had no memory of that
moment.

Someone should
go talk to him. No matter how much folks resented him for the way he’d behaved
toward Mac, it didn’t speak well of the town to shun him this way at a funeral.

As if he’d read
her mind, her father stepped over just then. “Someone besides me and Pastor
Jack needs to talk to him.”

“He’s obviously
not looking for company,” Liz said.

“Still. Mac
wouldn’t want this. Someone needs to talk to him.” He met Erin’s eyes with an
obvious plea.

She felt a
reluctant twist in her stomach. She and Seth would nod at each other if their
paths happened to cross at work, but she’d never in her life had a real
conversation with him.

She still
wasn’t comfortable initiating conversations with strangers, and she didn’t even
like Seth Thomas.

Her father rarely
asked her for anything, though, and Mac had evidently been attached to him.

With a sigh,
she said, “Fine. I’ll be the martyr.”

“Just don’t let
him make a move on you,” Liz teased. “You always did have a soft spot for the
wounded types. It’s the romantic in you.”

“I’m not a
romantic.” Erin stiffened, feeling insulted. “Plus, I’m not gorgeous enough for
him to be interested in anyway.”

“Don’t talk
like that. You’re beautiful,” her father objected automatically.

Erin had an
average build with very blonde hair and very pale skin, thanks to her mother’s
Scandinavian heritage. Even her hazel eyes were lighter than they should be. Liz—who’d
been blessed with the ability to get a suntan—used to call her an albino.