14
Lia turned off the light in the family room as a light knock sounded on the front door just after 11:00 p.m. the following Thursday. “What are you doing here?” she asked moments later as Joseph stepped into the foyer.
“I was in the neighborhood.”
“You were in the neighborhood?” She laid her hands on his chest as he pushed her back against the wall.
“I had dinner with a client.” He slipped his hand under her nightshirt and cupped her breast as his mouth dropped to her neck. “I’ve missed the hell out of you this week.”
“I’m coming out tomorrow.” It was Ned’s weekend with Taylor, and Lia was in the habit of spending those weekends at Joseph’s condo.
“I know, but I wanted to see you tonight.” His mouth moved over her neck, his body pressing hers back against the wall. “You’re not going to send me away, are you?”
“What about Taylor? She could wake up and come in.”
“We’ll lock the door. And I’ll leave before she has to get up for school.”
“Are you sure?” Her voice was breathless. She couldn’t think clearly while he rolled her nipple between his thumb and index finger.
“Yes.” And then he surprised her by lifting her effortlessly into his arms.
“You’re crazy.” She laughed as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“For you.” He covered her mouth with his as he walked back towards her bedroom.
“Mommy…Mommy?” Taylor whispered, tugging on Lia’s arm the next morning.
“Hmm? Yes? What time is it?” She opened her eyes, squinting at her bedside alarm clock. “Taylor, it’s not even five. Go back to bed.”
“You’re naked. How come you’re naked?”
Lia pulled the sheet up to her neck as her gaze swung to Joseph’s sleeping body. “Taylor, go turn on the television. I’ll be out in a minute.”
“But—.”
“Taylor, Arthur’s on,” she lied, knowing the mention of her daughter’s favorite television show would get her out of the room. “And close the door behind you.”
As soon as the door was closed, she reached over and pushed Joseph’s bare shoulder. “Wake up. You overslept,” she whispered. “Joseph, wake up.”
“What?” He sat up and glanced around, the blanket falling down around his waist.
“You overslept, and you forgot to lock the door last night.” She slipped out of bed and locked the bedroom door. “Taylor was in here.”
“Did she see me?” He fell back against the pillows.
“I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure.” She lifted her nightshirt from the floor and slipped it over her head. “You’ve got to get out of here.”
“Hey.” He reached for her hand. “Come here for a second.”
“Joseph, there’s no time. You’ve got to get dressed and out of here.”
“Come on, just say good morning to me.”
“Lower you voice,” Lia whispered, her eyes moving to the door. “She’ll hear you.”
“She knows I’m your boyfriend.”
“Mommy?” Taylor banged on the door. “Mommy, why is the door locked? Arthur isn’t on.”
Lia glared at Joseph and motioned with her hand for him to lie down before opening the door and going out into the hall. “Taylor, it’s still early. I’m going to take you back to bed.”
“What are you doing?” Lia sputtered a few minutes later after pulling back the shower curtain.
“I think it’s called showering.” Joseph raised his eyebrows.
“But you’re supposed to be gone.”
“You need to relax.” He put his hand up in the stream of the water, causing it to spray out and get her wet.
“Joseph!” She jumped back.
“Lia!” He mimicked the sound of her voice. “You’re acting like you’re married and your husband’s in the next room.”
“Have you forgotten I’m in the middle of a custody suit?” She moved her hands to her hips. “If Ned knew you spent the night, he could—”
“Did you lock the bedroom door?”
“Yes. Why?” Lia’s eyes swung towards the bedroom.
“Because you need me to make love to you again.” He reached out of the shower and clasped her hand.
“Joseph, don’t you dare pull me in there.” She was under the spray of the shower before she completed the sentence. “Have you completely lost your mind?”
“Yes.” He began to remove her wet T-shirt while she attempted unsuccessfully to flee. “I’ve completely lost my mind over you.” He tossed the wet T-shirt in the back of the stall.
“This isn’t funny.” She pushed against his wet chest. “I don’t want to lose her.”
“You’re not going to lose her.” He moved his hands to the sides of her face. “I would never do something to jeopardize your case.”
“But it’s not setting a good example for her. I don’t want her to think it’s okay for men I’m not married to, to spend the night.”
“Is that a proposal?”
“What?” She blinked her eyes as the water splashed against her face.
“Are you asking me to marry you?” He moved his hands to her hips.
“No.” She shook her head, her heart suddenly pounding.
“Because I think I’d say yes.” He covered her mouth with his and kissed her until she was clinging to his shoulders. And then he was pushing her back into the tiled wall, and moving his hand to the juncture between her legs. “Your body wants me to stay.”
Lia was lost, unable to think past the “because I think I’d say yes” comment, as her body responded to his.
Thirty minutes later, she was still reeling from his words as she lay curled against him in her bed. “So, were you asking me to marry you?” Joseph asked, as if hearing her thoughts.
“You know I wasn’t.” She kissed him lightly on his chest.
“Because my answer is yes.”
She closed her eyes, her heart rate again accelerating. “Don’t tease me.”
“Lia?”
“Yes?”
“Look at me. Look at me,” he repeated, when she didn’t respond.
She pushed herself up so she could see his face. “Joseph—”
“Do you really think I would tease you about something so serious?” He covered her lips with his fingers before she could say anything. “I’ll be right back.” He was off the bed and crossing to his suit jacket.
Moments later, he was on one knee beside the bed. “Give me your hand.”
“Joseph?” She let him take her hand.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
“Are you being serious?”
“I’ve never been more serious. Lia, will you do me the great honor of being my wife? Will you marry me?”
Lia stared into his eyes. He was serious. And then she felt the ring. “Oh my God.” She looked down at her hand. There on her finger was the most beautiful diamond she had ever seen. It was spectacular—a cushioned cut diamond of at least five carats set in a platinum setting, and it was on her finger. “Joseph?” she raised her eyes to his.
“You haven’t answered me, Lia.”
“Of course I’ll marry you.” She came off the bed and launched herself into his arms, raining kisses over his face as he fell back onto the carpet. “There is no one on this earth more perfect than you,” she said, framing his face between her hands as she met his eyes. “I’m the luckiest woman alive.” She lowered her mouth onto his, trying to show him with one kiss how much he meant to her.
“Mommy?” There was a click of the knob, followed by a knock on the door. “Mommy, why’s the door locked?”
“I’ll be right out, sweetie.” Lia didn’t take her eyes from Joseph’s. “I love you,” she whispered. “And now you really do have to leave.”
“Is Joseph awake yet?” Taylor’s voice came through the door. “Cause I poured him a bowl of cereal.”
Lia dropped her forehead onto his chest. “Yes, he’s awake.” She lifted her eyes to Joseph’s, attempting to frown at him, but she couldn’t. Instead she was smiling. She and Joseph were getting married. She was going to be his wife.
“We’ll be some role models when we tell our grandchildren you proposed to me while we were both naked,” she finally whispered, happy tears in her eyes.
“I think you were right about her ex-husband,” John Bianchi told Joseph several hours later as they shared lunch at Kinkead’s Restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue.
“The pay stubs were bogus, weren’t they?” Joseph sat up straighter in his chair.
“No. He’s actually a clever guy. In fact, if the accountants hadn’t screwed up what they sent us, I don’t think we could have figured it out.”
“Figured what out? What did you figure out?” Joseph leaned back in his chair as the waiter delivered his scotch.
“Are you ready to order?”
“Fish. Broiled. Whatever looks good.” Joseph didn’t take his eyes from John as he ordered.
“You get a salad and two sides with—”
“Any vinaigrette on the side, and two vegetables.”
He tapped his hand impatiently on the table as he waited for John, who took considerably more time, to place his order. “What? What did you figure out?” he asked as soon as the waiter was gone.
“Up until the time he left his ex-wife, he was billing approximately sixty-five hours a week. Once he’s out of the house, his billable hours go down to twenty and this continues until a month before the divorce is final, at which time it goes back to sixty-five.”
Joseph frowned. “Then the time records are bogus, because there’s no way—”
“Let me finish.”
“Sorry.” He reached for his drink.
“Like I was saying, for a sixteen-month period, he bills approximately eighty hours a month. Except”—he paused as he picked up the top sheet from the documents set out in front of him—“in June of last year, his monthly total is five hundred and twenty-five hours.” He held out the sheet to Joseph.
“Five hundred and twenty-five?” Joseph frowned as his eyes scanned the sheet, which listed consolidated totals for each month. “Is this what they sent you?”
“No. One of my associates put that together. What they sent me was daily breakdowns of his time.”
“So what is this? He actually billed out five hundred twenty-five hours?” Joseph shook his head. “It’s impossible to log so many hours. What did he do, double bill to make up for previous months?” He brought his hand up to cover his mouth as he stared at the total for June. “But that wouldn’t make sense. The divorce wasn’t final. She could have gotten ahold of this.”
“It didn’t make any sense to me either, until I noticed the initial in front of ‘Merrick.’” He waited until Joseph looked up from the paper to continue. “The time sheets in June were for C. Merrick. All the other months were for N. Merrick.”
“I’m not following.”
“Look at these.” John handed him two more sheets. “See the employee name at the top?”
Joseph glanced at the sheets, noticing one was for the first of June with the employee name listed as “C. Merrick,” and the other was the first of May with the employee name listed as “N. Merrick.” “So he divided his time between two different names?”
“That’s my guess. But something went wrong that month, and all the hours were charged to C. Merrick.”
“But it doesn’t make sense.” Joseph looked from one sheet to the other. “How did he keep the C. Merrick charges from his pay statement? If he were receiving the money, it would be appearing on his biweekly statements, unless they were treated like separate employees.” Joseph’s eyes met John Bianchi’s. “He receives two pay statements, and two W-2s, and Lia only knew about the one.”
“That’s my theory.”
“And when his clients receive the bills, they don’t notice which initial is before the ‘Merrick,’” Joseph said absently.
“Correct.” John paused to take a swallow from his glass. “They’re paying for the services of Ned Merrick, and they receive an invoice with ‘Merrick’ at the top. They aren’t going to care what initial precedes the name. All they care about is that they’re paying for services they actually receive.”
“So you think he has two social security numbers?”
“He must. Which means his law firm knows what he’s doing. Which is a bit surprising, but considering his wife’s father is the founding partner...” He trailed off. “Maybe one of her relatives works in their Accounting Department. It’s an awful lot to risk to save what? Ten, twenty thousand? It’s probably more about sticking it to his ex-wife than saving money.”
“There aren’t any social security numbers on the time sheets?”
“No. I’ve already checked. They’re blacked out.”
“So what do we do now?”
“That depends on what Lia Merrick wants. Unless there’s a C. Merrick at Blackman and Associates, this guy is in some serious trouble.”
“Wait a second.” Joseph looked down at the June first time sheet. “Candice Merrick. This is his wife’s time sheet.”
“Then he’s a bigamist, because the date of that time sheet is over three months before the divorce is final.”
“Oh, right.” Joseph covered his mouth with his hand as he stared at the name. “Just to be safe, I guess we should make sure there are no other Merricks at the firm.”
“We already checked.” John closed his briefcase and deposited it on the floor beside his chair. “He and his new wife are the only Merricks.” He paused as the waiter delivered their salads. “We’ve got him by the balls.” John picked up his salad fork. “What? What are you looking at?”
“I still don’t understand why there were so many billable hours in June.”
“He’s probably double billing. He screws his ex-wife. He screws his clients. He certainly wouldn’t be the first.”
Joseph was freshly showered and dressed casually when Lia arrived at his apartment later that evening. “Are you hungry?” He took her overnight bag from her shoulder and set it by the stairs before following her to the kitchen.
“Kind of.” She actually wasn’t, but she hadn’t eaten all day and figured she needed food.
“I picked up some orange roughy on my way home. I’ve got it seasoned. I have to put it under the broiler, and I’ve got rice and asparagus cooking on the stove.” He took his cell phone off the counter and looked over the note he’d jotted down after his meeting with John Bianchi.
Doesn’t add up:
- Two names
- Two social security numbers
- 525 billable hours in June? Did he bill that many each month?
- What am I missing?????????
“Can I do anything?” Lia was at the stove, lifting the lid off the asparagus.
“Hmm?” Joseph looked up from his phone.
“I asked if I could help.”
“Yes, in a second.” He crossed to the oven and placed the fish beneath the broiler. “You can set the table. There’s a salad in the refrigerator, and you can grab a bottle of Montrachet White Burgundy from the wine pantry…1986.” He frowned as he looked down at his phone. “Would you watch the fish?” He left the kitchen before she responded.
“Five weeks,” he said aloud moments later as he stared at the calendar on his computer. He picked up his phone and continued the note:
- 5 weeks in June so feasible that he was billing 100 hours per week
- Why the jump from 60? It’s not Merrick’s MO
He leaned back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. “What am I missing?”
He sat forward and again began to type:
- Why C. Merrick when his wife would be C. Merrick? Why not something random M. Merrick or O. Merrick? Why C.??????
“Dinner’s ready.” Lia leaned against the doorsill of his study.
Joseph lifted his gaze to hers. “Candice did take Ned’s name, right?”
“What?” She frowned.
“Did Candice take Ned’s name?”
“I heard you the first time. I can’t understand why that’s important to you.”
“I met with John Bianchi this afternoon, and there’re some discrepancies in Ned’s time records. I’m trying to figure something out.” He came to his feet. “I need to know if she took his name.”
“We have barely been engaged twelve hours.”
“And?”
“And you’ve been distant since I arrived—I was actually starting to wonder if you changed your mind about getting married.”
Joseph tilted his head to the side as he met her eyes. “You’re serious. I wasn’t paying enough attention to you, so you decided I didn’t want to marry you? That’s how much depth you think I have?”
“No, of course not. It’s my past—every now and then it creeps in and makes me have irrational thoughts.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders and slowly propelled her backwards until she was pressed against the wall. “What can I do,” he asked deeply, his eyes looking into hers, “to make those feelings disappear forever?” He kissed her hard on the mouth as he pressed his body into hers. “I’m thirty-four years old. I’ve dated a lot of women—I’ve known a lot of women, and until you walked into that lobby and my life, I had no clue what it meant to love another person.”
“Joseph.”
“Lia, I’m serious. Tell me what I’m doing wrong. Tell me and I’ll fix it.”
“You’re not doing anything wrong.” She kissed him. “You’re perfect.”
“I’m far from perfect, but my love for you is perfect and it’s permanent.” He kissed her nose. “Okay?”
“I’m sorry. I was so excited, and then I get here and you’re completely distracted.”
“I’m a man. I can compartmentalize.” He kissed her again. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “You make me so happy.”
“Joseph…Joseph, are you awake?” It was past 1:00 a.m., and they’d been in bed over an hour.
“No,” his sleep-filled voice responded as his hold on her tightened.
“Remember what you asked me earlier about Candice changing her name to Merrick?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“She did. In fact, she did it months before they were even married.”
She could feel his entire body stiffen, and then he was sitting up and turning on the light, flooding the room with brightness. He was awake.
When Ned stepped into Lia’s foyer Sunday evening, she made a conscious effort not to blurt out that she knew what a snake he was. He’d cheated her out of thousands of dollars, according to Joseph, but she wasn’t able to let on that she knew because Joseph was still in the process of gathering the proof.
“Where’s Joseph?” Taylor asked after hugging Lia.
“He’s at home. You’ll see him next week.”
“But you’re married,” Taylor said, frowning. “I thought married people lived together. I thought he was going to live with us.” She placed her hands on her hips as she looked up at Lia.
“Married?” Lia repeated, completely baffled. She couldn’t believe Taylor had been listening through the door when he proposed, but why else—
“That’s right,” Ned said. “Apparently he was in your bed the other morning, and our daughter thinks when two adults sleep in the same bed, they’re married.”
“Oh.” Her eyes moved from Ned to Taylor. “We’re not married, Taylor.”
Taylor brought her eyebrows together. “But he slept in your bed.”
“I know.” She rubbed Taylor’s back. “He was tired.”
“You’re a great role model, Mom.” Ned leaned back against the door and crossed his arms over his chest. “Just the type of mother judges look highly upon.”
“You’re one to talk,” Lia bit back and then forced herself to calm down, remembering Taylor. “Say goodbye to your daddy.”
“Bye, Daddy,” Taylor said softly.
“Bye, baby.” He bent down and gave her a hug and kiss. “I’ll see you Thursday.” He stood and his eyes found Lia’s. “You’re making this easy for me.”
Lia smirked, no longer fearing he would get Taylor. “I guess we’ll see.”