Want It, page 3
MacNiven raised his brow. “The baddest enforcer in football can’t move some guys out of his house? Have you called the police?”
“I can’t.” If he called the cops, the media would get ahold of the story. His dad would lose face in front of his family and the rest of the village, and he’d lose face with his dad. He didn’t want to mess up his relationship with his dad over this—not after all the time he’d taken to build it. Worse, he wasn’t entirely certain they wouldn’t implicate him with the drugs—it was his word against theirs and his reputation wasn’t exactly pristine in the media.
Plus, there was Kofi. If his dad left, he’d take Kofi. Danny couldn’t do that to his brother, not when he had the means to help him have a better life.
But would MacNiven understand any of that? He wasn’t sure, so he just said, “It’s complicated.”
Pascal made a dismissive sound. “Ben, la vie est compliquée. Quand même.”
He ignored Pascal and focused on MacNiven. He was the linchpin here.
MacNiven stared back at him. Danny recognized the analyzing look on the man’s face—he used to get the same look when he was plotting a path to the goal. “You know, you’ll have to be upfront with us for us to help you. Trust goes both ways.”
“And when you agree to take me as a client, I’ll be completely upfront,” he replied, holding MacNiven’s stare.
“Hmm.”
Another noncommittal sound. That didn’t bode well. Danny studied the man, trying to determine what he could say in his defense.
Before he could figure that out, MacNiven stood up. “I’ll discuss this with the team.”
Danny followed suit slowly. He tried to figure out which way MacNiven was leaning based on his tone, but the guy was a sphinx. “What does that mean?”
“We decide which clients we take as a team. I’ll give you a call once we decide either way.”
“Lottie said that you decide which clients you take.”
MacNiven nodded, hands in his pockets, all relaxed. “True, but that doesn’t mean that someone else on the team might not take someone I don’t feel I can help.”
“How often has that happened?”
“It hasn’t yet.” The man shrugged. “There’s always a first time.”
Danny frowned, jerking his thumb at Pascal. “Does he get a say?”
“Yes, he does.”
He glanced at Pascal, who was smiling like a cat with cream.
Well, shit. He was screwed.
Two
Julianne Emory looked at the plaque next to the closed doors. She could barely see a thing—the lenses on her sunglasses were so tinted that she’d basically found the office by braille. But the bold, embossed gold of the plaque seemed to shine brighter even with her dark glasses.
Winners Inc.
She couldn’t believe she was here. Jules looked both ways down the hall, relieved at the discreet feel of the floor. There was absolutely no way she was chancing taking the sunglasses off. The last thing she needed was for someone to find out that she—Chicago’s hottest up-and-coming attorney—was seeking a coaching service dedicated to winning. It’d put her next case in jeopardy and open her up to scrutiny she didn’t want.
She’d had trepidations about coming here. 110 N. Wacker was one of Chicago’s most exclusive office buildings. Half the businesses in this building were clients of Benington Mayer, her law firm, including the one she was representing in court in three weeks.
It was the most important case of her life, one she was determined to win.
It wasn’t that the case was ground-shaking or socially important—it was a simple matter of a breach of contract. Everyone assumed that she was determined to win because she’d never lost a case and wanted to preserve her record. Or that this was her ticket to becoming a partner.
Becoming a partner was a given—it was just a matter of time and putting in her dues.
No, this case was important because of the opposing counsel.
To most people he was Julian Holland, senior partner at one of Chicago’s most influential firms and her firm’s biggest competitor, a deciding factor in her taking the job.
To her, he was the father who’d never acknowledged her existence.
Except for one moment—in her first year of law school, when he’d been a guest speaker at her civil procedures class and he’d singled her out not as his illegitimate child, but to tell her she’d never cut it as a lawyer.
She gritted her teeth, remembering that morning. She’d been hungry because she’d used all her money on textbooks, and on the way to class, the plastic bag she’d used for her stuff had ripped, which meant she’d arrived in a flurry of disarray. To make matters worse, she’d walked right into him and dropped her things again. She’d stood there staring at him mutely, caught by his pale-blue eyes—the same strange color as hers.
He'd known who she was too—she could see it in his expression. But he’d asked her name, as if to make sure. She swore his nose turned up when she’d muttered Emory, her mother’s last name.
As if the look he’d given her as she slunk to her seat wasn’t bad enough, ten minutes later he thoroughly bashed her in front of all the other students.
The next day she’d bought brown-colored contact lenses.
The humiliation from that first time still burned.
Yes—the first time, because there’d been other times over the years. She was an attorney in the same city—they were inevitably going to appear at the same functions. And each time, to her utter shame, she ducked her head and pretended that she didn’t know that he existed, even though she was aware of him with every fiber of her being.
She felt acid in her stomach just thinking about it. She opened her purse and fished out an antacid, popping it in her mouth, hoping it’d work today. Lately, they didn’t do their job anymore, as if her stomach was building up a resistance to them.
She took a deep breath, trying to call on the breathing exercises Louisa had given her to control her anger when she’d been sixteen. Those exercises had been a lifesaver.
Louisa had been a lifesaver.
Louisa Merriam ran Sunflower Alley, the homeless shelter on the South Side that Jules had tried to check herself into, and Connor was Louisa’s billionaire husband. She’d met Louisa when she was sixteen, when she decided to leave her mother. She knew if she stayed on the streets, she’d go down the same path her mother had been on—drugs and prostitution.
She didn’t want that.
She’d heard some people talk about Louisa and Sunflower Alley, about how the formerly homeless woman was tough but fair. Tough but fair had sounded good to Jules, so she’d gone to find her.
Sunflower Alley had been full that night. She’d had no idea that a homeless shelter could turn people away. She’d had a moment of panic until Louisa had suddenly offered to take her to stay in her own house. She’d been suspicious for a moment, but she’d always been good at reading people, and Louisa had been all candid kindness. She’d been wary when she met Connor, but he put her at ease right away.
Their house hadn’t been a house—it’d been a home.
She’d never been in that sort of house before. She and her mother had moved around a lot—her mother used their rent money for drugs a lot of times and they’d been evicted more times than she liked to think about. If there’d been a magazine called Slums and Cesspools, any of those apartments could have featured in it.
When she’d walked into Louisa and Connor’s home, she’d had one thought: it was so clean. There weren’t beer cans lying around; there were no needles lining the walkway; the couches weren’t ripped open and spilling out stuffing. The rooms were bright and lit, with throw pillows and real art on the walls.
What struck her most were all the photos, in color as well as black and white, of happy, smiling people. Family, based on some of the resemblances, but not like any family she’d ever seen. The only base for reference she’d had was the people in her tenements, and happy wasn’t a word she’d ascribe to any of them.
She’d decided right then and there that she wanted a house like that.
In the morning when she’d woken up, there was a note in feminine handwriting propped against the sink in the bathroom she’d been told was hers:
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Louisa had been right.
In the twenty years that she’d known Louisa, they’d become more than friends. Louisa had gone from being a mentor to being family.
Louisa and Connor were the only other living people who knew the identity of her father. Her mother had overdosed almost seventeen years before, right as Jules had started college.
Of course he knew too, but he’d never acknowledged her, despite the fact that she’d been named after him. His name wasn’t even on her birth certificate. Her mother had protected him, despite him abandoning them.
All the old feelings of anger and bitterness welled at the base of her throat, choking her. She cleared them ruthlessly, adjusted the sunglasses on her face, and reached for the door handle.
The door flung toward her harder than she expected given how heavy it looked. With a gasp, she jumped out of the way before it hit her.
“Hell, are you okay?” a deep masculine voice asked. “I didn’t expect anyone to be out here.”
Hand on her sunglasses, she looked up. Standing on the other side of the threshold was the most attractive man she’d ever seen.
Her heart began to beat so hard it was the only thing she could hear. She lowered her glasses just enough to really look at him. He had the sort of milk chocolaty skin you wanted to lap at, with a sharp chiseled face and lips that looked very talented. His braids were gathered high behind his head, cascading in a spray to his shoulders.
They were very broad shoulders.
He wore only a sweater, despite the weather out, and the kind of designer jeans that she could tell cost a fortune. And if that wasn’t enough, he had on more jewelry than she owned. She could see the dark line of a tattoo snaking out from the collar of his sweater.
This man had bad written all over him.
She swallowed down what tasted dark and forbidden—like lust. She didn’t come across many bad boys—this was Chicago, land of the nice guy.
She didn’t do nice guys. Nice guys wanted to get married and move to the suburbs to a picket-fenced house. Her lifestyle and goals didn’t align with that. What was the point of going out with them? And she definitely wasn’t going to date a lawyer, like her dad.
But this man… He didn’t look like anyone she’d ever met. She had the insane urge to curl her hands into his sweater and pull him to her. She could almost feel the way his skin would feel if she pushed his top and kissed up his chest.
Over the crazy beating of her heart, she heard her mother’s voice telling her the familiar story. From the moment I met Julian, I couldn’t help myself. There was something about him. I couldn’t resist it. I was powerless when he was with me, and when he wasn’t, I couldn’t think of anything other than being with him.
She knew some things were inherited, like bad vision and alcoholism—or bad judgment about men. But she didn’t have any of that—she’d worked hard to exorcise her mother’s diseases from every cell of her being, and she knew she’d never let herself go down that path. She’d decided that the day she’d walked off the street and into Sunflower Alley.
And this bad boy was nothing like Julian Holland, from the top of his braided hair to the tips of his flashy shoes.
She lifted her gaze and looked into his blue-gray eyes, startling against the mocha of his skin. She felt her face flush, with desire and all manner of emotions she wasn’t acquainted with, and she said the one thing that popped into her head. “Oh shit.”
He looked at her warily. But then whatever he saw changed his expression, and he stepped forward, a look of concern tightening his stunning eyes. “Hey, you okay?”
His voice was like smoky whiskey, and it hit her just right, making her feel tipsy. She felt herself list toward him before she could catch herself.
He gently took hold of her arm, steadying her and sending her into flight at the same time. “I’m sorry if I scared you when I burst out like that,” he said gently. “I didn’t expect to run into anyone out here.”
She shook her head, trying to clear it. “It wasn’t that.”
“Then what was it?”
“This,” she said baldly, gesturing between the two of them. “You don’t feel it?”
“Oh, I feel it,” he said in his low, intoxicating voice. “I’m just surprised you called it out there so honestly.”
“We could hardly ignore it.” Reluctantly, she pulled her arm out of his hold. “Our timing is shit though.”
“No one’s ever accused me of poor timing so early in a relationship.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “But you’re right. The timing could be better for me too.”
Made sense. If he was coming out of Winners Inc., he was likely high profile in some way and had something big he was working toward. “I work all the time,” she confessed, knowing on some level that he’d understand her drive.
“Literally all the time?” he asked with a frown.
“Literally all the time.” She had to make sure her upcoming trial went off without a hitch, not to mention that being on the partner track meant she was constantly at the office. Being a woman meant she had to work twice as hard to prove she deserved the promotion.
If only she had time to take on a bad boy. She sighed in regret, taking him in one last time. She gestured to the door. “And now I’m late.”
“You work here?” he asked, looking behind him, his mouth turning down with a slight frown.
She imagined herself as a motivational speaker and her lips quirked with wry amusement. “How did you know? As you’ve noticed, I’m full of kind, encouraging words.”
He grinned suddenly, full and beautiful. “There are other types of motivations. Like whips.”
She arched her brow. “Do I look like a dominatrix?”
“I wouldn’t begin to imagine what you have on under your clothing.” He batted his lovely eyes innocently.
She snorted. “Now that I don’t believe.”
“I don’t daydream.” He leaned closer to her, so close she caught the subtle tease of his expensive cologne. “I’m more of a hands-on, physical kind of guy.”
“I bet you are.” She leaned into him before she could catch herself.
What was she doing? She shook her head to clear the sex fog that had wrapped around her. She put her hand on his chest to keep him where he was. “I really do need to go in. I hate being late.”
He looked down at her hand. Then, to her surprise, he said, “I gotcha,” stepped to the side, and held the door open for her, his body language not encroaching or intimidating the way most men would have been after being dismissed like this.
She hesitated a moment. Usually, she was very good at setting aside feelings that didn’t serve her in the moment, but she was oddly reluctant to leave him.
Remember the trial. Remember your appointment.
“See you around,” he said. It sounded almost like a promise.
She wished, but she knew better. She tipped her head in acknowledgment to him, inhaling one last time as she strode past him into the office. Later, she’d recall his scent and imagine what could have been, when she was alone in her bed.
The door clicked closed softly. She turned to look at it, feeling him still standing on the other side.
“Hello there,” a voice said from behind her.
Blinking away the haze of lust, Jules turned around to find an older woman coming around a counter to greet her. She looked like one of the partners’ secretaries at the firm, only more approachable, in a bright fifties style dress and a warm smile. If her mother had lived longer, Jules wondered if this is what she’d look like.
Why was she thinking about that? She pushed that aside and said, “Hello. I’m here to see Jamie MacNiven.”
“You have sunglasses too?” The woman put hands on her hips as she studied Jules. “What is this? Some sort of new trend on wintery days?”
Deciding not to address the question, she took the glasses off and tucked them into her purse casually. “Jamie MacNiven?”
“He’s waiting for you, if you’re Jules Emory.”
“I am.”
“Jules is short for something?” the woman asked perceptively.
“Julianne,” she replied through a forced smile. She went by Julianne Emory professionally, but she couldn’t think of herself as Julianne. It was too close to Julian for her tastes.
“I’m Lottie Morgan.” The woman held her hand out. “I’m a consultant here with Winners Inc.”
Disguising her surprise, she shook the woman’s hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
The woman’s eyes twinkled with wicked humor. “Bet that caught you off guard. You probably expected me to be a secretary or something.”
“That’d be narrow-minded of me,” she evaded.
“I was a secretary for most of my life, so you wouldn’t have been far off.”
She studied the woman, who was obviously past retirement age. “What made you decide to work with Winners Inc.?”
“Jamie, and the fact that I wasn’t ready to roll over and die. I have a lot yet to give.” She fixed her bright gaze on her. “What made you decide to come see Jamie?”
“The article in the Tribune.” After reading it, she’d spent a week debating coming in. The last thing she needed was for it to leak in the media that she was getting what would be equated to as therapy before a trial. She had no doubt Julian would use it to manipulate a win for himself. But in the end, she’d had to come see Jamie. “He said something that caught my attention.”
Lottie nodded. “It was a good article. My granddaughter, Jamie’s fiancée, wrote it. What was it specifically?”
She didn’t have to think about it. “They asked him if he’d win if he was facing his father, who’s a famous soccer player as you know. And he said absolutely, because on the field they wouldn’t be father and son, they’d be momentary opponents.”
