“Vanessa Daisy Worthington, you will get me the Howard addendum and briefs by noon today. It’s not a request.”

Oh no, she didn’t.

My mother did not just call me by my full name with my office door open. It’s bad enough that I’m slaving away as a junior associate at Wilkes Macmillan in the tiniest office on the floor, probably the smallest office known to man. I’m almost sure this was a broom closet before they set it up for me. There’s barely enough room in here for my desk, a swivel chair, the two bookcases in the corner, and two guest chairs for when colleagues stop by to talk about cases. But she has to top it off by humiliating me in front of my coworkers every chance she gets?

Suddenly that job offer from Rigsby, Klein, and Associates is starting to look pretty attractive. Too bad I turned it down. Wilkes Macmillan is the law practice that my maternal great great grandfather founded almost eighty-five years ago. It’s supposed to be my birthright, my legacy if I play my cards right. But butting heads with my mother on an almost daily basis is getting to the point where heading up this firm one day in the very distant future just isn’t worth it.

And I’ve only been working here for five months.

Pushing off the armrests of my leather swivel chair, I hurry around my desk and brush past my mother to close my office door. Yes, I have to get that close to her because the room is fucking small.

“Can you say it any louder, Diane?” I ask, calling her by her first name as I fold my arms and give her the stink eye from head to toe. Calling her Diane was actually her request. She thinks being called ‘Mom’ in the office undermines her authority, detracts from her credibility, and takes away from her corporate image. “I don’t think they heard you on the forty-seventh floor.”

I don’t want to lose my focus, but as always, she’s perfectly put together. The right amount of style. Short blonde hair, styled and slicked back with a part on one side. Light blue eyes are glaring at me behind thick black lashes. Her oval shaped face and stoic high cheekbones have just the right amount of matte foundation and blush. Cupid bow lips under dark red lipstick applied with scientific precision. Her slender frame is neatly packaged in a navy blue power suit with a white blouse, the knee-length pencil skirt showing evidence of long, athletic legs sculpted through her life-long daily running habit. And the nude colored four-inch pumps. It’s definitely Jimmy Choo, and if I weren’t so irritated by her right now, I’d ask her where she got them.

“I told you to have the Howard Manufacturing addendum and briefs ready first thing this morning,” she repeats as I return to my chair. “You had enough time to prepare them.”

All I can do is shake my head. “I was here for almost the entire weekend, working on due diligence for Poppy.”

“Her pro bono case?” she asks rhetorically, or it must be rhetorical, because it’s the only type of case that longstanding senior partner, Poppy Lovell, has been assigned since I started working here. According to office rumor among the junior staff, that’s what happens around here when you hit eighty-two and won’t retire. “You should know better than to put that work ahead of something I assign. Or do we have to go over prioritization again?”

I don’t dignify her question with an answer. She won’t like my reply, so I continue to type out the report I was working on before she barged into my broom closet and messed with my chi.

“Check your email,” she huffs. “I want you to attend a meeting with me this afternoon. It’s a new client. Assume you’re running this one end-to-end. I believe you can handle what’s needed.”

“You want me to take a case?” I ask, allowing only my eyes to trail up from the screen to meet her glare.

It’s a first. Junior associates are rarely offered to take the lead on cases in this firm. Corporate law is riddled with nuances and vague precedence, and the high net worth clients and companies we handle demand excellence. Newbies like me perform the behind-the-scenes grunt work that our paralegals can’t handle.

She gives me a cold, annoyed nod. “Do your best to prepare the assessment of all entertainment facility assets of both hotel chains outlined in the documents. Net annual earnings, valuations, itemized asset inventories, everything you can dig up.” As she turns to leave, she adds, “This is one of those make or break opportunities, Vanessa. I hope you make it count.”

I scramble to switch screens from the report I’m working on to open her email. Halfway through reading her message, the clicking of my mother’s Jimmy Choo’s subsides as she returns to her large, bright corner office down the hall.

Wow.

She wasn’t kidding.

The email lays out instructions to help a client I’ve never heard of, O’Sullivan Entertainment LLC. The sole owner is Craig O’Sullivan, and his company founded Wild Irish Rose, a successful chain of bars and pubs across New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC. Mr. O’Sullivan’s about to do a deal with two large hotel chains to take over all bar operations, and hired our law firm to manage the transaction.

I scratch my head in confusion for two reasons. The client’s company is worth under half a billion dollars, which is strange because Wilkes Macmillan has a habit of only taking on clients worth a few billion or more. Mind you, the deal we’re about to manage between them and the hotel chain is a two-billion-dollar transaction. Still, even that’s unusual. There’s no high net worth co-buyer and no mortgagee noted in the initial paperwork. It suggests that whoever owns O’Sullivan Entertainment must have a ton of liquid capital somewhere.

I’m intrigued. The prospect of taking the lead on my first case is exciting too. While letting it all sink in, I close out the email and do a quick third reading of the addendum and briefs for Mom. The truth is, they’re finished. I do have my priorities straight. I finished them before I started the work for Poppy. But I know from experience that my mother will give me hell if I send her anything that isn’t completed to her standard. After the read-through, I email the files to Sharon, Mom’s executive assistant, and move on to the O’Sullivan Entertainment file.

After poring over the documents of my first client ever for close to four hours, the thirty-minute meeting alert pings and pops up on the calendar item I added to my desktop. Lunch can wait. This looming agenda item makes the moment too nerve-wracking to eat anyway. I’m ready for this O’Sullivan meeting, but decide to pop by my mother’s office to get some questions answered before the client arrive. Grabbing my planner and paper copies, I stride down the hall to her office. Her door is open, which is a good sign.

“Do you have a few minutes?” I ask, giving a brief knock on Mom’s open door.

“I know what you’re going to ask, but sure. Come in,” she answers without looking up from whatever’s on her screen.

She knows what I’m going to ask? Is she a mind-reader now? This woman knows how to push my buttons. Still, I don’t want to fuck up this new case by looking stupid in front of the client. I don’t need to contradict my mother, to make incorrect assumptions, or to ask questions that have already been answered by the senior partner who brought in Mr. O’Sullivan.

“Thanks,” I say instead of the smartass response I was itching to deliver, and force myself not to roll my eyes. I take a seat facing her in the guest chair on the other side of her desk, and I wait.

Since she knows everything, including what I’m about to ask.

“The O’Sullivan purchase is a fully funded transaction,” she starts off. “No mortgages or other encumbrances. No partnerships, either. And they have no plans to go public. Does that help?”

It does, but hell, I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of confirming that she can anticipate my thoughts. I ask her a few less critical probing questions, including the item of which senior partner brought in the client, as the intake document doesn’t identify a name. Her composure changes for a split second, and I know something’s up.

“Consider it an external referral,” she says stiffly. “Happens all the time.”

The way she tries to explain it away so dismissively tells me I’m barking up the right tree. She’s hiding something. I want to press her further, but we’re minutes from the scheduled start of the meeting. Making a mental note to confront her later this evening, I smile and drop the topic. If she’s hiding anything at all, I’ll find it.

“Ready to go in?” I get to my feet without waiting for an answer.

Her executive assistant calls her on the phone intercom before Mom can answer, letting us know the client is here and waiting in boardroom three.

Mom confirms that we’ll be there in a minute and flips through a folder on one side of her well-organized, clutter-free, mahogany desk. A desk that’s about the size of my entire office, I might add. “Yes. I’ll take the lead for the first few minutes,” she finally answers. “You can handle the rest.”

“Excellent.”

I wait for her to leave the office first, and follow her down the hall and around the corner to the row of private boardrooms we use for client meetings. Walking into the room, I catch my first glimpse of the two men waiting for us inside.

Then I almost freeze.

The large lump in my throat is near impossible to swallow. I’m more confused than ever, and thankful that my mother plans to lead the meeting for the first little while. I’ll need that time to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth. Because I’m acquainted with one of the two men standing before me, but never put two and two together. He’s not just an acquaintance, I know him intimately. In the biblical sense. Because we’ve had our on-again, off-again, very casual, late-night hookup thing going on for over four years.

What the hell is Liam O’Sullivan doing here?