Chapter Five
“Ugh, Mondays, amirite?”
Becky looked up from her computer to see one of the mail guys, Will, leaning against the doorframe of her sad, windowless office.
“Good morning, Will.” It was eleven, so, technically it was still morning. And for Will, eleven was early. He was usually stumbling into work around this time, and they’d be lucky to get their mail by the time he rolled out at five. But Will was Mr. Glassmeyer’s grandson, and nepotism was alive and well in the field of corporate law, which meant Will could come in whenever he wanted. In most places, this would make Will the most hated man in the office, or at least in the mailroom. But Becky had learned through the office grapevine that Mr. Glassmeyer made sure his coworkers’ paychecks were inversely proportionate to the amount of work Will did.
This also made her feel a lot less guilty for liking the guy, pain in the ass that he was.
“Don’t remind me.” Will put a stack of interoffice envelopes on her desk. She moved them to her inbox. The inbox that was clearly marked on the corner of her desk. But, well. He was Will. What could she do?
It was like clockwork, in the sense that a broken clock is still right twice a day. And twice a day, when she was eyeballs deep in Westlaw, Will would come in and deliver the mail. He’d put it all on her desk, she’d throw him a don’t-interrupt-me look, he’d come in and sit down to ramble and gossip, then he’d go away and she’d distribute the mail to the other librarians. She realized this part was Will’s job, but she’d quickly learned it was easier to just do it herself. Besides, Will had good gossip.
Today, Becky couldn’t afford the distraction. She had a partner breathing down her neck for precedents involving the National Register of Historic Places, which was just the kind of research she didn’t like to ask too many questions about—besides, even if she did ask, they never told her—but the fact that it was urgent made Becky a little uneasy.
On second thought, maybe a gossip break would help ease the headache that was building behind her right eye.
Anyway, Becky had learned that Will didn’t require much interaction. If she just gave an occasional noncommittal grunt, he would entertain himself and she could keep working.
“New guy starts today,” Will said. He’d plucked the pen with the big pink pom-pom from the cup on her desk and was rubbing it slowly across his forehead. That was a distraction too far.
She reached over to grab the pen from him.
“Hey! I was using that!”
“Will, how many times do I have to tell you not to come in here and molest my office supplies?”
“That’s the magic pom-pom pen. It cures my hangovers.”
She rolled her eyes at him. Suggesting that he not drink so much on a work night was nothing but a waste of breath. She knew that from experience. “Get your own pom-pom pen.”
“You’re just mad because you forgot the new guy started today.”
“Why would I be mad about that? And how do you know the new guy is a guy?”
Will raised an eyebrow. “Um, because his picture came with the press release.”
Oh, right. She remembered now. She hadn’t paid much attention because she was still living under the happy delusion that Paul was the love of her life.
Huh. The little pang of sadness she usually felt when she thought about Paul was gone. In fact, this was the first time she’d thought about Paul since Saturday. Which meant her magical lumberjack sexual reset had totally worked.
“Besides, if you had remembered he was coming, you would have worn a cuter outfit.”
“What’s wrong with my outfit?”
“Nothing, but whenever there’s a new guy, you get all dolled up.”
“Will, you’re being disgusting.” She pretended the heat suffusing her face was all righteous indignation and not embarrassment that Will had figured out her stupid attempts to impress new guys at work. They all did it, all the women who worked in the library. Even the married ones. It was the patriarchy, she decided. It was the patriarchy that made them get dolled up because it had been instilled in them that it was their biological duty to seek the approval of men.
That was it. The patriarchy.
Not that it matters now, she thought. She’d sworn off boring lawyers, and no amount of patriarchy could talk her out of that, so it didn’t matter that she was wearing the slacks that were maybe a little snugger in the waist than she preferred and a blouse that didn’t quite hide the fact that her slacks were too snug in the waist. And that she’d had a wash-and-go morning with her hair instead of taking the time to blow it dry and relatively flat. And that she hadn’t bothered with makeup beyond a swipe of mascara.
Nope. Didn’t matter one bit. When she met this new guy, whoever he was, she would present the image that she was a professional colleague without the potential for anything more, because that was what she was. A colleague. She didn’t sleep with lawyers anymore.
No, now her fantasies were reserved for lumberjacks. Not for Deke the Lumberjack specifically, because that ship had sailed. She was a one-trip-ona-ship gal now. Oh, maybe pirates were a thing she could get into. Lumberjacks, pirates . . . the world was her sexual oyster. As long as he didn’t wear a boring suit, and definitely not if he was a lawyer.
“You’re literally the only woman in the office not totally dazzled by the great Foster Deacon.”
Foster Deacon? A little bell went off in the back of her head, like she’d heard that name before. And she had: His name was always listed on those Thirty-Under-30 things that talked about what a genius he was, and it was pretty much all Mr. Polak could talk about since the guy had signed a contract with P&G. But that wasn’t it. It was something else.
Maybe it was because the name Deacon made her think of Deke, but that was some next-level wishful thinking there. There was no way a legal whiz would have a beard like that. Besides, there were lots of Deacons in the world. Probably.
“You OK, Beck? You look like you’re in pain.”
“Ha! What? No! I’m just . . . I’m very busy.”
She pulled up the P&G web site and searched through the press releases—just in case—for the one announcing the arrival of Foster Deacon, legal whiz. She’d just clicked on it when she heard voices come into the library. She recognized Mr. Polak, the senior partner who would be seriously unimpressed with Will’s chill work ethic. Why was her stupid internet so slow? Anne never should have gotten into that political argument with the guy from IT. The text loaded, but she kind of knew that part. She knew this guy was some hotshot intellectual property guy, hired away from a big New York firm to build up their IP division. His hiring directly coincided with a whole mess of new research they’d barely scratched the surface of. She knew his arrival had something to do with the megacompany Goliath, but obviously the press release didn’t go into that. If they weren’t going to tell the press, they weren’t going to tell the librarians. Wait, that wasn’t necessarily true; it just felt that way a lot of the time. Holy crap, why was her internet so slow!
She’d gotten just enough of a glance at his picture to notice that Foster Deacon was a vaguely familiar white guy—so, basically, any lawyer in the state of Colorado—when Mr. Polak was at the door with the white guy himself.
Her first thought was that this guy must be big news if Mr. Polak was showing him around. Usually, if new hires were shown around at all, Linda from HR did it. And Linda didn’t take the person to everyone’s office; she’d just stick her head in the library and say, “Here it is,” and it would take weeks for the new associates to learn her name, or even to learn that she was not, in fact, just a really old intern.
“Hiya, Mr. P.” Will had somehow regained possession of her pom-pom pen and was now tilting the chair back on two legs, out of her reach. She should just give him the damn pen. She didn’t have to look at Mr. Polak to know he was fuming with annoyance. It was how Mr. Polak always looked at Will.
Not a great first impression that Will was goofing off in her office with her goofy pen, making her look like a goof by association.
But there was no time to think about her reputation. Because she was looking at the real-life Foster Deacon and he was making her wish she hadn’t just put a firm ban on ever dating a lawyer again. Foster Deacon was, in a word, delicious. And . . . he did look vaguely familiar. But how could he? She just had Deke on the brain, that was all. Foster Deacon didn’t have a beard; Deke did. Deke also had piercing eyes that bored right into her soul as he hovered over her; Foster Deacon’s eyes were just . . . piercing. Oh God.
No. It couldn’t be. Just because Foster Deacon and Deke both had high cheekbones and dark eyebrows and sexy ears. Lots of people had sexy ears.
“And here is one of the librarians you’ll be working with.” Foster Deacon’s gaze shifted to her just as Will’s chair came crashing down, nearly dumping him at Mr. Polak’s feet. So it took her a second to realize he was holding his hand out for her to shake, and then it took her another second to realize she definitely recognized that hand. That hand had done amazing things to her. She couldn’t touch that hand; not here, not in front of everybody.
She saw the second he recognized her, which really was just half a second after his hand—and his eyes and his cheekbones and his ears—forced her to admit the truth. She watched it cross his face: surprise, warmth, heat—definitely heat—before he cleared his throat and looked nothing but professional. Becky felt the blush all the way down to her toes, and if Will hadn’t tossed the pom-pom pen on her desk, she would still be standing there, gawping like a guppy, while the new associate waited for her to return his handshake.
The new associate.
Oh God.
The new associate was a lawyer and a genius and had had a beard on Saturday night when he’d rocked her world several times over, and the look on his face told her that he remembered.
Becky wanted to crawl under her desk and die.
But she couldn’t, not with a partner standing there.
She’d wait until the partner left. And he took his new legal genius with him. Then Becky could die.
Dammit, why had she sworn off lawyers?
* * *
Of all the libraries in all the world, Becky had walked into this one. Well, he’d walked into it. Becky was sitting behind a desk next to a floppy-haired hipster who was seriously pushing the firm’s dress code.
That didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he’d found her. He wouldn’t have to search every crappy sports bar in Denver looking for her. Even better, he hadn’t imagined her. That was the worst part, waking up in the morning, alone, thinking he’d made up the best sex of his life. But there was no way he could have conjured up Becky. She was too . . . he’d just never dreamed someone who looked like her would be as aggressive as she was. And he wasn’t into, like, Fifty Shades stuff, but when she’d climbed on top of him and trapped his wrists above his head . . .
“And that’s how you check your voice mail.” Kevin, the secretary for his division, looked at Foster expectantly. Foster wasn’t sure what he expected. Acknowledgment that he’d understood the incredibly detailed instructions on an incredibly simple phone system? Well, he hadn’t really been listening. But how hard could voice mail be?
“Thanks, that’s great,” he said, giving Kevin an acknowledging nod.
“Anything else you need, supplies, whatever, just let me know. I can get into the supply closet.”
Kevin jangled the keys hanging from around his neck. “I’m the only one with a key to the supply closet.”
“Oh.”
“Not even the senior partners have one,” Kevin said, with what could only be described as glee.
“You’re the man for office supplies, got it.”
“Some of the other admins have a key, but I’m responsible for the supplies for this division. You want pens, you ask me.”
“OK.”
“Legal pads, ask me.”
“Stapler?”
“You’ve already got one. I planned ahead.” Kevin pointed at the top drawer of his desk, which Foster had been too busy to open. He did so now, and what do you know, a shiny new stapler. And scissors. And a letter opener.
“Wow, looks like you thought of everything.”
“If I didn’t think of it, you probably don’t need it. But if you do . . .” He jangled his keys again.
Foster took small comfort in the fact that, even outside of the prestigious-beyond-all-reason law firms in New York he was familiar with, there were little eccentricities in every law firm. In every office, probably. In fact, he was sure this wasn’t unique to law firms, but there was something particular about the tension between lawyers and nonlawyers, everyone on their own little power trips between divisions and coworkers. That particular thing was animosity. Foster hated political crap. He just wanted to figure stuff out and write briefs about it.
That was probably oversimplifying it.
But really, he could simplify it even more.
He just wanted to win.
And maybe sleep with Becky again.
He knew she had recognized him. Women didn’t turn red and stammery like that just over his good looks, no matter how much he liked to pretend they did.
He’d have to figure out a way to talk to her again. He’d probably need a lot of research help on this case. Usually, he sent one of the junior associates down to work with the librarian, but maybe that wasn’t how things worked at P&G. Or, if it was, there was no reason he had to work like that. There was no reason he couldn’t take a hands-on approach to the research.
Which was exactly what he didn’t need to do. Not only because, hello, unprofessional to bill a client because you wanted to flirt with a librarian. It wouldn’t be the shadiest thing a law firm had ever done, but he had ethics. For the moment. As long as he didn’t think about the way her hair had cascaded around their faces, then brushed down his chest and his abdomen . . .
No. Definitely not.
Besides which, he had enough work of his own on this case without also doing the work he could delegate. P&G had hired him to win this business with Goliath, and now that he was here, he really needed to prove himself. Not that he couldn’t win the case—he’d won stickier intellectual property cases before—but if he was going to leverage this victory for whatever his next move was going to be, he needed this to go perfectly. That meant junior associates who were as hungry as he was, and definitely no distractions from the hot librarian.
At least no distractions when he could be working. During off-hours . . .
And hadn’t Madison accused him of turning into their workaholic father? So maybe Becky wouldn’t be a distraction. Maybe she’d be the key to his finally learning what all this work-life balance nonsense was all about.
As if summoned by the inner gods of delegation, a clerk—Claire, maybe? He really had to learn people’s names—wheeled a dolly full of Bankers Boxes past his office.
Ah, the Goliath case. The case that would move his reputation from up-and-coming intellectual property whiz kid to an IP expert who could write his own ticket anywhere. All his colleagues in New York had said he was crazy to move to a smaller market. Even if he made partner in Denver, it was nowhere near as prestigious as making partner in New York. But P&G had a relationship with Goliath, and Goliath had the IP case of the century. Throw in one New York IP expert and there was no way P&G couldn’t win the business, no way Goliath could lose.
Foster had done his due diligence. He’d cut his teeth working on a big case for Monsanto, and he knew what it took to win a case that crossed patent law with intellectual property law and the business of corporate secrets and scientific inquiry. And this case had it all.
Goliath had developed an herbicide that killed invasive species and was making them a ton of money in the home gardening market. But it turned out that while killing invasive species, the herbicide was also poisoning native pollinators, which meant native species didn’t stand a chance. So they’d pulled the product.
Now CoLabs, also based outside of Denver, was bringing to market an herbicide that would attack invasive species but leave the bees alone. Bees were all over the news right now—or at least bees’ place in the ecosystem and the importance of not just letting them die off was. This product was going to mean a ton of business.
Except the origin of their herbicide was Goliath’s. So Goliath was suing. Without their bee-killing herbicide, CoLabs wouldn’t have their bee saver. So Goliath was going to win.
Just thinking about it made his fingers twitch. In a good way. The case was complicated, relying on layers and layers of balancing previous case law in both the medical and business fields. Hence the boxes and boxes of files. And they weren’t even done with the discovery phase. Bees were hot right now, too, and it seemed like every day there were more news stories, more peer-reviewed studies, more more to go through to get to the heart of the case. If only he knew of a librarian who could help him keep track . . .
No time to think about Becky. He had a conference room full of boxes to go through, interns to do the grunt work, and, most importantly, he had a case to win.