Cheri drew the blinds, trying to shut out the cruel world. She had zero appetite and couldn’t possibly settle her mind enough to sleep, so she just sat in her living room binging on TV series and movies, ignoring the constant ringing of her phone.

After countless calls went to voicemail, the text notification noises started assaulting her ears. She reached over to silence the annoying device but glanced at it before she did, as the thought occurred to her that maybe it was her lawyer, with possible good news.

“What the…?” she said aloud when she realized it was Thomas Graham himself. Furious, she cleared all the messages without even reading them, then stared at the TV again. Screw you! she screamed silently. You were supposed to be my knight in shining armor, wearing stupid cowboy boots!

Somewhere between the next shows, she dozed off.

She awoke early the next morning, to what seemed like a million new texts from Thomas. She had no idea what he wanted, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of reading one of them. She cleared her phone once again, tempted to block him, but she didn’t have the nerve to do that just yet, not quite ready to cut him out of her life completely. She had no idea what was going on. The only thing she knew for certain was that she was heading to work in the foulest of moods.

The day seemed to draw out forever, every minute stretching into a torturous hour all its own. By the end of the day, she was plain whipped, and she wanted nothing more than to go to back to her couch and dive back into her movies and shows, even reruns she’d seen fifty times. Her emotions were taking their toll, and she was not in the mood to talk to anyone.

She was enjoying a quiet moment at her desk when the receptionist buzzed her. “Yes?” Cheri said into the phone receiver.

“There’s a gentleman here to see you,” said the receptionist.

“Why? Who is he?” Cheri asked bluntly.

“He wouldn’t give me his name,” snapped the receptionist, clearly frustrated. “Come see for yourself.”

Cheri didn’t particularly want to get up from her desk, but there was a lull in her work, and she had no excuse to ignore office visitors. As she marched up to the lobby to address whoever it was, her mind worked involuntarily, trying to guess what the unscheduled visit might be about. She was sure it had something to do with the firm, and there was only a short list of possibilities. For whatever reason, she felt very uneasy about it. All that came to mind was that she was about to meet another process server. When she finally reached the hallway that gave her a clear view of the lobby window, she was stunned to find that it was someone else entirely, someone she’d never expected to see at work.

At once her anger swelled. As mad as she was at Thomas, though, she was also glad to see him, a secret she planned to keep all to herself. He was so incredibly handsome, so tall and out of place in his casual attire, those well-fitting jeans and that t-shirt, his cowboy boots on that marble floor as he stood among the bleached birch of the fancy law firm. She couldn’t help but notice that there was a manila envelope in his hand, and she instantly thought the worst.

“You’ve been blowing up my phone,” she barked. “What do you want?”

“I just wanted to bring this to you,” he said in his delicious baritone.

His voice melted her heart a little, and it certainly had an effect on the young, blonde receptionist, but he didn’t seem to pay her any mind.

Cheri put her hands up and refused to accept the envelope he was holding out to her. “Are you serving me with something now?” she demanded roughly.

“Easy,” he said softly. “Just open it.”

She pushed it back toward him. “No,” she said, “and please don’t come to my office again.” She then turned on her heel to head back to her office.

“Cheri!” He called her name with such command that it stopped her in her tracks. “It’s a witness statement,” he said when she turned and looked at him with a rude scowl on her face. “I tried to call you about it. I already delivered the original to your attorney, but I figured you would want a copy. I asked him not to tell you so I could tell you myself.”

Cheri felt her face soften, all the tension of her anger draining away. Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to throw herself at him; she’d done that before, and it hadn’t gotten her anything but a sore body and a broken heart. “Okay,” she said, trying her best to hide her emotions. “Just leave it with the receptionist. She’ll make sure it comes to me through office mail.”

“If you like,” he replied somberly, looking at her expectantly, as if he wanted a thank-you, an invitation to dinner, or something else from her.

Somewhere under the turmoil of feelings he disturbed in her, there was a wish that she could just grab her purse and take off with him, but that desire wasn’t strong enough for her to act on it, so she simply nodded and walked away.

By the time she was back at her desk, Cheri had received an email from her attorney stating that he had forwarded Thomas’s statement to the other side. That was all well and good, and by the time she checked her messages before bed that night, she had received word that the other side had dropped the charges. All it took was Thomas stepping up to the plate, and as much as she was irked by some of his behavior, that ballsy move had worked wonders. Once again, like so many times before, the sinner-turned-saint had come to her rescue.

It had been a very long twenty-four hours, so she pressed her eyes closed and took a moment to relish the fact that the entire ordeal might be all behind her. She wanted to text Thomas to let him know his statement killed the lawsuit, but she decided not to. With no need for streaming distractions, she lay back in bed and sank into a deep, much-needed sleep that wasn’t infiltrated with dreams of bankruptcy and prison cells, and that was a sweet relief.