For years, the Kovels enjoyed a steady double-digit return, regardless of the market’s inevitable dips. It was almost too good to be true. The investment was guaranteed to be practically risk-free and would ensure the Kovels a very comfortable living for the rest of their lives. And it did, for over ten years. Then the market took a nosedive. At the same time, the Kovels tried to liquidate a half-million dollars of their savings to pay for experimental medical treatments for their son, who was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma.
The fund was suddenly bankrupt, and the Kovels’ entire lifesavings disappeared overnight. They’d turned to Jackie, the good girl from the neighborhood who’d made a better life by going to law school. For the last year, Jackie had devoted her life and every cent of her savings to Leo and Bernice and the handful of other seniors who’d lost every penny to Ashe Financial Services.
She turned to face Brandon and looked deep into his soft amber eyes. They’d read each other minds last week, it seemed. She willed him to read hers now.
I’m sorry, Brandon. I don’t want to hurt you, but why are you helping Ashe? Don’t you know he’s a rotten crook? Please understand. Please.
He wrinkled his brow at her and tilted his head.
Had he heard?
She willed herself to move forward and attacked the heart of the case relating to the unrealistic returns Ashe Financial showed on its records. She remained dispassionate and professional as she drilled Brandon for the next hour.
Numb from the exchange, Jackie reached into her box of exhibits and pulled another out. She slid the exhibit across the table to Brandon. “This is the plaintiffs’ expert’s report. Mr. Marshfield, are you familiar with the report?”
“Yes,” he replied without looking at the papers in front of him.
“Well, then you know that as the plaintiff’s expert, Professor Boggs has documented in this report that the rate of return obtained by Ashe Financial Services is statistically impossible.” Jackie leaned toward Brandon.
Brandon leaned back. He brought his fingertips together in a pyramid shape in front of him and raised his eyebrows at her.
Jackie shifted in her chair. “Well?”
“Well, what, Ms. North?” Brandon smiled charmingly.
“Well, what do you have to say about that?”
Brandon leaned forward. “Your expert is a mathematician, not a stockbroker. He may understand statistics, but the market doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Emotions are involved. The market, Ms. North, is like a person. Or, rather, like
most
people.” He offered a tight smile. “It reacts, sometimes rationally, sometimes not, but it reacts. And some people who invest in the market are better than others at reading those reactions. The fund managers at Ashe Financial Services just happen to be better than most at anticipating those reactions. That’s why they have been so successful.”
“More successful than you, Mr. Marshfield? How does the average return you secure for your clients compare to Ashe’s?” Jackie sat back slightly in her chair and looked Brandon directly in the eyes.
“Objection,” Stone said, breaking his long silence. “Mr. Marshfield’s clients’ statistics are not in the record, and any response by him would be mere speculation.”
“Withdrawn,” Jackie said with a wave of her hand toward the court reporter. “So, are you saying, Mr. Marshfield, that it is not impossible to generate a twelve percent return when every other index in the country is showing a loss?”
Brandon gave her another smile and leaned over the table in her direction. “Ms. North, is anything
really
impossible? For example, what is the chance of meeting a total stranger, then finding out only a week later that your lives are intricately connected? Improbable? Yes. But impossible? You tell me.”
Jackie snapped back, “I’m the one asking the questions here.”
Brandon stretched back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Indeed you are.”
Silence fell over the room. Jackie returned Brandon’s glare.
“Excuse me.” The court reporter cleared his throat and waved his hands in front of his face. “I need to change my tape. Would this be a good time to break for lunch too?”
Jackie glanced at her pink plastic digital watch, which blinked 12:47 p.m. Where had the time gone? She’d covered three quarters of the questions she had in her file from the previous expert already. Brandon had obviously studied the previous expert’s deposition. His responses came fast, carefully phrased not to contradict the previous expert’s answers.
After dog-earing her place, Jackie flipped the pages of her legal pad back to the beginning. “Yes, this is a good time to break. Shall we reconvene at two?”
The shuffling of papers around the table indicated approval. Jackie pushed back her chair, stood up, and stole a glance at Brandon and Stone, whose heads were bent together as they conferred in hushed tones.
“Gary, do you mind if I use your conference room during our break?” No point in wasting time walking back to her office. She could grab a quick sandwich from the deli downstairs and study Marilyn’s notes on Brandon for a good hour before the deposition started again.
Stone was uncharacteristically quiet but not in a relaxed way. For most of the deposition, his hand had kept a death grip on his pen. His knuckles were still white from the constant pressure. Had he sensed there was something between her and Brandon? Impossible. She’s gone out of her way to be professional. Too professional?
Stone’s piercing look into her eyes made her heart skip an uncertain beat. He knew something. “Be my guest,” he finally said, much too cordially.
Determined not to be intimidated, Jackie held his stare and her breath. From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Brandon’s gaze flitting back and forth between her and Stone.
Brandon’s movement toward the door broke the link between her and Stone. Brandon paused at the door and looked back over his shoulder at Jackie. He shook his head and left, Stone on his heels. The court reported scurried out right after them.
Jackie slumped, cradling her face in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees. “Breathe. Breathe,” she commanded herself. “Get a grip, North. You can do this. You have to do this.”
Her stomach ached with emptiness, but it wasn’t from hunger. She was thirteen again. Her new pink watch was proudly strapped on her wrist as she came down from her room to go to school. Her mom sat in a powder-blue bathrobe at the kitchen table. Her mother’s hands shielded her face but didn’t muffle the sounds of her cries. Jackie’s daddy was gone. Again. They would be bankrupt. Again.
Jackie vowed that day to do anything, to make herself into something, so she’d never go through that humiliation again. Now she stood at the precipice of financial ruin unless she won this case. She prayed that once it was over, and she’d won, she’d finally be happy with herself because for almost twenty years, she lived by the story that being a “success” was all that mattered. Until that night with Brandon, not even a flicker of doubt penetrated her wall.
Jackie squared her shoulders, palms flat on the conference room table, and sucked in a lungful of air, then set her mind to work. At this point, she had no choice. Getting through today was all she could handle. She called Marilyn to have lunch delivered and then opened the green file folder. “Brandon Marshfield, who are you, and what the hell are you doing in bed with Ashe Investments?”
The information in the folder was dated within the last few years. Nothing indicated a link between Marshfield and the Ashe empire. Robert Ashe, the reigning patriarch of the company, was in his seventies. A blue-blooded Baltimorean, the elder Ashe had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Except for a stint in New York with Merrill Lynch early in his career, the patriarch had lived his entire life at his family’s palatial horse farm in Baltimore County.
The elder Ashe’s son, Robert Ashe, Jr., ostensibly worked at the company. He lived a lavish lifestyle commensurate with the paycheck he drew. He had been charming, egotistical, spoiled, and very clever in his deposition. Unlike his father and most of the other men in the family, he had not attended the Wharton School. Instead, he’d matriculated from Towson University, near the family’s estate.
Matriculated—that was Ashe’s word. When she had asked him where he attended college, he had said he matriculated from Towson. Could he have “attended” college someplace else? Was that his link to Marshfield?
Jackie squeezed her eyes tight, thinking back to Ashe’s deposition. Although she didn’t have a photographic memory, Jackie often could “see” words where they appeared on a page. Like a computer scanning through documents, her mind flipped pages as she searched for the place where they had discussed education. She was almost certain he had said nothing about another college. She hadn’t asked either.
Jackie opened her eyes to jot down a note to follow up on Ashe’s education. Brandon stood across the table from her. She hadn’t heard him come in. To avoid looking, or worse, staring at him, she focused on the vase on the credenza behind him.
“What is going on, Jackie? Or should I call you Ms. North? Or would Mata Hari suffice?” He leaned over the table toward her with his hands flattened against the table’s mirrored surface.
Jackie stood up and pushed back her chair to put some distance between them. “We shouldn’t be talking.”
Brandon pounded his fist on the table. “That’s where you’re wrong. We should be talking. But not like this. I thought we actually enjoyed each other’s company.”
Jackie looked down at the table, silent.
Brandon pushed off from the table and turned to look away from her and out the window. He ran his fingers through his hair and laced them together behind his head.
He turned to face her again. “I wasn’t exactly surprised when you didn’t call right away. I got it that you were busy with your life. Or, I don’t know, maybe you had another guy. Then you show up here, claws sharpened and fangs bared. I saw that folder you have. My photo’s in it. How long have you known? Didn’t that night mean anything to you? Because it did for me, in case you were wondering.”
“Brandon, I—” Jackie didn’t know where to begin. She reached out instinctively toward him at the exact moment Gary Stone walked into the room.
Stone cocked his head and sneered. “Am I interrupting something?”
Chapter Six
Brandon stiffened. The hair on the back of his neck prickled, but he gave Stone an easy smile. “Nothing at all. Just telling Ms. North that I was looking forward to this afternoon’s line of questioning.”
The scene in front of him had not settled as he’d hoped. Energy flowed between the two attorneys like a glacier running into a lava flow. Both emanated a steady, controlled rage. Stone’s was cold and biting. Jackie’s sizzling heat threatened to engulf the room and set its occupants aflame. Where the two met, a thick haze of emotion clouded the space.
A week ago, that passionate heat had been directed toward him. His cock stirred. After her heat touched him that night, he’d become like one of those wretched creatures he’d seen at Pompeii. His life, as he knew it, stopped suddenly and unexpectedly.
She lacked an ulterior motive, unlike most of the women he knew who seemed to always want something from him. Her inconsistent mix of intensity and silliness refreshed him. Her aggressiveness challenged him. Yet underneath that tough exterior, a naive tenderness and frank honesty peeked out.
He hadn’t looked at a single woman since then. His fantasies always returned to Jackie when he was alone in bed at night. No one had ever affected him this way.
And now she was out to discredit him.
He appreciated the fact that her job obliged her to cross-examine him. Her professional competency was alluring. But his debt to Ashe forced him to make her look unconvincing. Jackie wouldn’t yield easily. Even if his ego survived her attack, losing jeopardized his reputation in the financial community and threatened the onslaught of Ashe’s wrath.
Unconvincing wouldn’t be enough. Neither would relent until the other was proven utterly untrustworthy. How could he do that to the one person he thought he might be able to trust?
Brandon looked at Stone and narrowed his eyes. Why did Stone warrant her passion? Brandon coughed to startle them out of their psychic grappling. “I’m ready when you are.”
“Yes, we’re all anxious to be finished here. Shall we begin?” Jackie raised her eyebrows at Stone, who lowered his eyes with a slight nod of his head.
The court reporter switched on the video recorder. Its blinking red light was the only eye focused on Brandon. Stone’s and Jackie’s gazes remained fixed on the papers in front of them.
The questions resumed in a mechanical way. Stone had provided him with a copy of the previous expert’s deposition, so he was familiar with the line of inquiry. Textbook stuff, her questions addressed standards for investment practices and financial advisors’ fiduciary duties.
Victory or defeat wouldn’t be achieved through the raw data. Smart but not creative, the previous expert lacked persuasion. Brandon survived on his persuasive skills. Charm a client. Charm a woman. Charm a jury. A wave of confidence swept through him.
Even though Jackie had been thorough and aggressive, he’d held his own. He smiled. He could hold his own against Jackie North on the witness stand and in bed. God, was she incredible in bed. The thought of how she wrapped her long legs around his waist to pull him into her harder caused his cock to swell.
“Mr. Marshfield?” Jackie’s voice sliced through the silence.
“Yes?” He set his gaze upon her face, daring her to look at him.
“Would you like me to repeat the question?” Her continued avoidance of his gaze gave him hope. Maybe she did care.
“If you would, please,” he warmly requested.
“How long have you known Robert Ashe, Jr.?” For the first time since he’d confronted her after lunch, she met his gaze.
Brandon did the quick math in his head. “Eleven years.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“In college, at UVA. We were fraternity brothers until he transferred to Towson in his junior year.” Brandon’s stomach churned. He’d spent the last nine years trying to forget that he’d once called Ashe his “brother.”