When Lightning Strikes Twice (3 page)

“Sure. They’re practically best friends.” Sarah grinned. “What a waste, huh? Wade’s so cool. And smart and rich, not to mention a definite hunk. But Dana’s dating some nerdy actuary and Wade is—well, I don’t know who his girlfriend is this month, but he’s sure to be dating somebody. He always is.”

“Did Wade ever say anything to Dana about the Pedersen Car Shoppe case?” Quint cut in, not at all interested in either Wade or Dana’s personal lives. But the idea of having access to the inner workings of Saxon Associates made him feel like a bloodhound must when getting that first whiff of a scent on the trail.

“Oh man, did he ever!” exclaimed Sarah. “Dana said the Saxons were obsessed with that case! They couldn’t believe they’d lost. And to
you!”

“Ouch, I think.”

“I mean, the Saxons always win. Or they always used to. Your dad wasn’t exactly much competition,” Sarah said frankly. “Then you came and things changed. We’re sure the only reason they hired Katie to work at their snobby firm is because Dana works for you.”

“They’re hoping some of the magic will rub off, huh?” Quint drawled. “Does Dana ever mention Rachel Saxon?”

He sounded casually offhand. Well, why shouldn’t he?
He was merely on a fishing expedition here, looking for some extraneous facts that might prove useful in future litigation. Because if the Tildens reacted as expected, it wouldn’t be long before he was again sparring with Saxon Associates. With Rachel Saxon. A distinctly pleasurable tingle of heat radiated through him.

“Rachel is Wade’s cousin,” said Sarah. “She kinda drives him nuts.”

“Ah.”

“Wade is calm and laid-back and Rachel is—how does Dana put it?—wound really tight. Really,
really
tight. She, like, lives for her work—probably because there isn’t anything else in her life.”

“Nothing else? She’s a very attractive woman, surely there is a man who—”

“A man for the Freezer Queen?” Sarah giggled. “Wade told Dana that Rachel could end global warming all by herself, just send her out on a few dates.”

“She’s cold, huh?”

“The word is Lady Antarctica never melts.”

“Though many have tried to defrost her?” Quint no longer sounded casual. He waited for more details with an eagerness he rarely felt for anything anymore. Not even Misty Tilden’s multimillion-dollar inheritance had fired his enthusiasm like imagining …

What exactly was he imagining?

Another one of those images of Rachel that he’d unwittingly stored in his mind played before him. Rachel standing rigidly in court wearing a custom-tailored, impeccably neat pale gray suit, her hair as dark, thick and rich as sable, cut in a precisely perfect bob that swung just below her chin without a strand ever out of order. He’d watched her, fascinated, during the entire Pedersen trial, waiting for her clothing to show a single wrinkle, or maybe for her hair to be rustled, even slightly, by the annoying air vents in the ceiling that blew everybody else’s hair, including his own.

But it had never happened. Her clothing stayed impeccable, and her beautiful hair was impervious to the air
vents. She remained as pristine and perfect as a porcelain doll secured behind a glass dome. Clearly, being wrinkled and mussed was not a condition achievable to Rachel Saxon.

Intimidating fastidiousness. Iciness beyond the essence of the human condition. Sarah had called her Lady Antarctica. It was obvious, Rachel was a textbook case of untouchable frigidity. From the looks and the sounds of it, she could qualify as the poster girl for the Sexual Repression Foundation, should one exist.

Quint felt his breathing quicken and his loins begin to grow heavy. He had no difficulty identifying his symptoms of sexual arousal, but the cause floored him.
The idea of sexual repression was turning him on?

He hadn’t expected it to come to this, but maybe he shouldn’t be surprised. The last time he’d had sex had been during his short miserable marriage to Sharolyn and it had been duty sex, lousy for both Sharolyn and himself. Perhaps to punish himself—getting Sharolyn pregnant on their third date had been an epic blunder—he’d cut himself off. No sex, not even a single meaningless one-night stand.

Maybe his body was now experiencing the consequences of acting against nature. Simply discussing a sexually repressed woman who hated his guts was arousing him. He was becoming unhinged, a victim of self-induced celibate lunacy.

“Wade says no sane man is brave enough to take on Rachel, let alone get lucky with her,” Sarah prattled on cheerfully.

Quint felt as if he were strangling. He cleared his throat. “Is—Is that so?”

“You have a really weird look on your face, Quint.” Sarah was staring at him. Her eyes widened. “Omigod, you’re not thinking of trying to nail Rachel Saxon, are you?”

He quickly attempted to rearrange his features into an impassive mask. “Of course not. I’m—uh—merely trying to plot strategy in the Tilden case.”

“Cause Rachel is really pretty.” Sarah continued to study him curiously. “But you won’t get anywhere with her, Quint. Wade told Dana that more guys have struck out with Rachel than have been up to bat in the history of baseball.”

“Definitely some hyperbole there, but I get the point. Thanks for your advice, Sarah,” Quint gritted through his teeth.

Lectured by a twenty-one-year-old nanny. He was truly humbled.

R
achel’s hands trembled. Her insides felt as if they’d been twisted into knots. Her face was flushed, her breathing rapid and shallow.

“Hey, cuz, are my eyes deceiving me?” Wade Saxon appeared in the doorway of her office and leaned against the frame. “You actually look ready to blow your cool. Seems we’re on the verge of an historic occasion here.”

“Have you seen what arrived via messenger this morning?” Rachel asked tightly, ignoring his cousinly humor. Wade took nothing seriously. Unlike her.

“Okay, I’ll bite. What arrived via messenger this morning?” Wade ambled into her office.

“This!” Rachel shoved a manila envelope into his hands.

“And I was hoping for a candy gram.” Wade feigned disappointment. “Or maybe a bundt cake.”

Rachel resisted the urge to start throwing things. It wasn’t Wade she was angry with, though his diffident air and lack of competitive zeal tended to irritate her even at the best of times. Which this morning definitely wasn’t.

“I suggest you read it.” Her suggestion sounded more like a command, but Rachel didn’t care. She wanted Saxon support, Saxon unity—Saxon outrage! And since Aunt Eve was out of the office this morning, the support, unity, and outrage would have to be supplied by Wade.

Surely not even he could remain immune to this deliberate
insult from that unmitigated master of legal gall, Quinton Cormack.

Wade removed a document from the envelope. “The Last Will and Testament of Townsend Tilden Senior. It’s dated four months ago.” He glanced at the neon green Post-it note stuck to the top page.
For your reading enjoyment
was handwritten in broad bold strokes and signed,
Q. Cormack
.

“Uh-oh!” Wade grimaced wryly. “We’ve been Cormacked.”

Since the Pedersen defeat, Wade had developed the annoying habit of using Cormack’s name as a verb. Loosely translated, to be Cormacked meant to be unsuspectingly kicked in the head and left reeling. A rather effective description of the way she was feeling at this moment.

“For your reading enjoyment!” Rachel fumed. “Cormack is mocking us, Wade. He—He’s laughing in our faces!”

“Wonder why he sent the will to you instead of Aunt Eve?” Wade studied the envelope, which was addressed to Rachel Saxon and marked personal. “An egalitarian touch, maybe? Q. Cormack is letting us know that unlike the Tildens he doesn’t mind dealing with lowly junior partners?”

“He sent it to me to remind me of the Pedersen case—and how I lost it to him. He is implying that the same thing is going to happen with this phony new will scheme he’s conjured up with that—that tramp!”

Wade’s lips quirked. “May I assume that tramp you’re referring to would be the young Widow Tilden?”

“Don’t you dare try and make a joke of this, Wade! It isn’t funny. Take a look at the signature page. Look who he has down as witnesses!”

Wade flipped to the final page containing the signatures of those persons who had officially witnessed the signing of the will. The witnesses who would testify under oath in court, when asked, as to the mental state of Town Senior at the time of the signing.

His eyes widened. “Reverend Andrews of the Lakeview
Presbyterian Church, Rabbi Newman of Temple Sinai, Cherry Hill, and Father Cleary of St. Philomena’s, Lakeview. Hmm, pretty impeccable list, Rachel. Imagine this crew taking the stand in court. Who would want to try and impeach any one of them? Ingenious.”

“Ingenious? Ha! Don’t you see, Wade? It’s all a scam. The entire thing is just a Quinton Cormack con job. Those three witnesses—”

“Do you think Cormack was going for some sort of Three Wise Men symbolism, or is this trio a nod to political correctness?”

“Wade, stop kidding around! Those so-called witnesses didn’t witness a thing, none of them signed that will! But Quinton Cormack is hoping we’ll believe they did.”

“Uh, I’m not exactly following you here, Rachel.”

“Quinton Cormack thinks I’m stupid and naive.” Rachel seethed. “Oh, I know exactly what he’s doing, Wade. This faux list of witnesses is a despicable ploy by that snake. It’s his less-than-subtle way of telling me that he thinks I’m an incompetent idiot!”

“Cormack is really psyching you out,” Wade said thoughtfully.

“No, he isn’t! He might try, but he’ll never succeed!”

“I’d say he’s already halfway there if he has you believing that Town Tilden’s will is a little memento betweeen you two. And if you really believe he forged the signatures of a minister, a rabbi, and a priest, Cormack has you right where he wants you, Rach.”

“I shouldn’t have expected you to understand!”

“Rachel, Cormack realizes how much you personalized the Pedersen case and he’s working that. Meanwhile, you’re not only leaping at the bait, you’ve already gulped it whole.”

“Stop using overextended fishing metaphors! They’re clichéd and irrelevant.”

“I should stick to those really original reptile metaphors, like snake?” Wade grinned. “Or is that a phallic one? Because from where I stand, Q.C.’s effect on you has nothing
to do with either fishing or reptiles and everything to do with—”

“Can’t you ever be serious?” To her consternation Rachel felt a hot flush sweep through her. Which stoked her anger even higher. She was
not
in the mood for Wade’s jokey innuendos. “And—And I did not personalize the Pedersen Case! True, I wasn’t happy about the outcome …”

Rachel felt a peculiar stabbing sensation rip through her as she remembered the expression on Quinton Cormack’s face when the Pedersen verdict had been rendered. His victory, her loss. She could remember every detail of the little encounter that had followed.

Quinton Cormack had turned to look at her, his smile cocky, his brown eyes shining with triumph. He’d arched his brows in that maddeningly mocking way of his when she had glared back at him. And then he’d approached her to stand right in front of her, so close …
too close!

He’d laughed when she had refused to shake his hand, which he had proffered as the others in the courtroom began to file out. “Give it up, Counselor,” he’d leaned down to murmur against her ear.

Even now, she could conjure up the sensory images of that moment. His warm breath rustling her hair, the scent of his aftershave, a tangy masculine aroma she couldn’t identify but couldn’t forget, his solid muscular frame that made her feel—small and helpless.

Just thinking the words made her blush. Never had she expected to experience such a disconcerting sensation. She’d reached her five-foot-eight at the age of thirteen and learned to use her imposing height to intimidate her adolescent male peers, most of whom took years longer to achieve their full adult stature. By then, Rachel’s daunting body language skills were formidable enough to unnerve even gigantic athlete types because she had also developed verbal skills that could annihilate any male ego with just a few well-chosen words.

The pattern seemed to be set in cement—men were attracted
to her beauty but couldn’t cope with her outspoken, edgy personality. The men she dated seemed to expect what she considered an alarming degree of simpering and pandering from a woman and when she refused to accommodate, potential partners fled.

At the age of twenty-eight, she’d had but one significant relationship, and disappointingly, it wasn’t all that significant. On her twenty-fifth birthday, she had decided she’d better experience sex at least once; after all, her younger sister Laurel—who was
five years younger!
—had recently given birth to a baby girl.

Rachel had allowed Donald Allard, whom she’d been dating for months, to take her to bed—where she had experienced sex once and decided she hadn’t been missing a thing. Just as she’d always suspected, the whole thing was highly overrated. She’d stopped seeing Don and resumed dating others, who stopped seeing her when she didn’t simper or pander or sleep with them.

Rachel told herself she didn’t care, she wouldn’t sacrifice who she was for any male. She dedicated herself to her career, patterning herself after her aunt Eve. After all, it was Eve Saxon who’d joined the family firm in Lakeview and continued its success while brothers Hobart—Wade’s father—and Whitman—Rachel’s dad—chose other careers in nearby Philadelphia.

But somehow Quinton Cormack was oblivious to Rachel’s forbidding demeanor, or worse, he was fully aware of it and found it funny. Because the smile on his face had been devilish that day in the courtroom when he’d
taken
her hand—after she’d refused his taunting handshake!—into his.

“Not going to offer me congratulations on a well-fought victory?” His voice echoed in her head.

Rachel felt the warmth of his big hand engulf hers, felt his thumb glide lightly over her palm. Her heart slammed against her ribs and she stood stock still, her gaze compulsively drawn to his. She had to tilt her neck to look into his eyes because at six-foot-four, he towered over her despite
her courtroom pumps with their chunky two-and-a-half-inch heels.

Rachel gulped, then and now. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked up to any man, but there she was, looking up into Quinton Cormack’s intense brown eyes while he held her hand.

He was so tall, so strong and he exuded a masculine virility that had a potent and totally uncharacteristic effect on her. She still squirmed when she remembered how completely immobilized she’d been as she’d gazed into his dark eyes. Like a mouse under a cobra’s stare.

She’d also remained mute. A first for her. She’d never been unable to come up with just that right phrase necessary to level her opponent.

“You won’t say it? You’re not going to say anything at all, are you? Well, then I won’t offer you better luck next time, Rachel,” Quint had said softly, releasing her hand.

Hearing him say her name left her as breathless as a sucker punch. It wasn’t until later, when she’d replayed the scene in her mind for the fiftieth time that the note of mockery in his voice finally registered with her. “
Then I won’t offer you better luck next time, Rachel
.” He’d been needling her. Ridiculing her! And she had stood there passively and taken it!

Rachel burned. No wonder he thought she was an insipid twit, she’d certainly acted like one that day in the courtroom. And she had given him no further opportunities to change his mind about her. Since the disastrous Pedersen verdict, she had taken great care to keep her distance from Quinton Cormack.

If she saw him walking her way on the street, she assiduously turned in the other direction. If they accidentally turned up in the same place, like the courthouse or supermarket or a shop in town, she avoided eye contact and made a quick getaway. Her natural vigilance kept her safely away from the man she’d come to regard as her nemesis.

He seemed bent on proving it, too. Quint Cormack hadn’t messengered this ridiculous faux will to Aunt Eve or Wade,
he had marked it personal and sent it to her. Obviously, he saw her as the weak link in Saxon Associates. The acknowledgment stung, but Rachel forced herself to face it.

“I didn’t personalize the Pedersen case,” Rachel insisted once more, but her words rang hollow, even to herself.

“Okay, if you say so. But Cormack’s decided to personalize this case, Rach.” Wade pointed to the word
personal
on the manila envelope, his expression wry. “He’s just made his first move.”

“Yes.” Was it possible to implode from pent-up anger? If so, Rachel feared she was dangerously near that point. She had to do something, to take action, to get out of here!

“I’ll be back.” She stalked from her office, nearly knocking over Katie Sheely, who was entering it.

“Kind of reminds you of Schwarzenegger in that
Terminator
flick.” Wade smiled at the younger girl. “Or maybe a disgruntled postal worker looking for revenge is even closer to the mark, huh?”

“What’s up with her, anyway?” Katie asked, peering into the narrow carpeted corridor. Rachel had already disappeared from view.

“I’m going to take a wild guess that she’s on her way over to the offices of Cormack and Son to lodge a protest—or maybe even wreak some havoc. A very unRachel-like action, but her response to Quinton Cormack is also very unRachel-like.”

“She looked awful mad.” Katie nervously sucked in her cheeks. “What you said about postal workers…. Maybe I should call Dana over there and warn her?”

Wade chuckled. “Maybe you should. Advise the staff to take cover. After all, Rachel’s broomstick makes great time. She ought to be arriving there real soon.”

Despite her anxiety, Katie giggled.

Dana Sheely met Rachel at the door of the Cormack and Son law office and ushered her into the dingy reception room, which was about the size of the utility closet at the Saxon Associates suite of offices. There was barely enough
space for the receptionist’s desk tucked into the corner and the four uninviting folding chairs that lined the walls. The receptionist, a plump, grandmotherly-looking woman, glanced up from the magazine she was reading.

It was as though Dana and the receptionist both had been expecting her, Rachel decided, glancing from one woman to the other. But how was that possible?

“I want to see Quinton Cormack immediately,” she decreed, fully expecting to be refused entry. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, of course, she would burst into that manipulative, insulting weasel’s office and then—

“Come right this way, please,” Dana said agreeably, smiling at her.

Rachel stared at her. Had Quinton Cormack guessed that bogus will would send her runing over here? Her cheeks pinked. How humiliating to be that predictable!

“Your cousin said you were on your way over,” Dana told her.

“Wade called you?” Rachel frowned. He’d guessed where she was going and called his pal Dana to alert her? His actions struck Rachel as treasonous. She’d been counting on the element of surprise.

As for the rest of her strategy … Rachel swallowed. It suddenly occurred to her that she had no strategy whatsoever. She had acted impulsively, which was most unlike her. Yet clearly, she had been embarrassingly obvious because Wade had known exactly where she was going.