Landon
I stretch early Tuesday morning. Lazily: I stretch lazily. I’m not exactly a morning person. Not at all. Not by any stretch of the imagination. This is why Joyce schedules as many of my clients in the afternoon as she possibly can. Usually, I can sleep in until eight or nine before I even have to think about getting up, showering, and eating.
Today is a rather unusual day, however.
Last night, Joyce called me late at night and asked if I would do her a favor. Well, she actually demanded that I do her a favor. She claims that I owe her and that I just absolutely, positively, essentially have to meet her friend at eight.
It’s a life-or-death situation, she says.
It might just be my opinion, but I think Joyce has a flair for the dramatic.
There’s nothing over-the-top about a custody case. They happen. People get divorced all the time. The situation is rough all around. People get hurt and damaged and broken and cry, but that’s where I come in.
I’m not a counselor.
I can’t fix a marriage or make it work.
I can’t talk someone out of a divorce.
I can, however, make the entire situation go a little more smoothly. I can help things to go a little easier. I can help everything work out just a little bit better.
In general, I practice family law. This includes divorces, but I’m not exclusively a divorce attorney. A lot of what I do is handle adoptions, which I love. My job can be incredibly fun, interesting, and rewarding. My clients can be incredible. They can be wonderful.
Or they can be awful.
Luckily for me, those cases are few and far between.
Still, whether or not Joyce’s friend actually needs my help, I’m not happy to be getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to offer my assistance. It’s not that I don’t want to help Joyce. I’d do anything for her: obviously. It’s just that waking up early is hard for a bear, and I really don’t want to.
My alarm beeps again and I growl. Shutting it off, I stretch once more, enjoying the way the sheets feel against my bare skin, and then I climb out of bed. I shower on autopilot and manage to make myself a cup of coffee. My studio apartment takes up the third floor of the Victorian mansion we call our office. Casa shares the second floor with his wife and Lyon has the fourth. Somehow, we make the weird living situation work for us.
Somehow, it seems easy when it’s with friends.
I didn’t mean to fall into this little family. I met Casa and Lyon when we were all law students. Not too many shifters were around at our school, so we sort of connected and became friends. Law school is hard enough when you’re human. Being a freak of nature makes it even harder. Casa and Lyon were incredibly supportive throughout the entire journey. After graduation, it only made sense that we would live and work together.
I glance at my watch. It’s nearly eight and if Joyce’s friend is as punctual as she says she is, I need to get moving. I might be doing this as a favor to my favorite secretary in the world, but I don’t want to make a bad impression.
The thing about lawyers is that they often feel like they’re better than other people. It’s an easy mindset to slip into. In fact, it’s practically drilled into us at law school. We’re the lawyers and they’re the clients. Lawyers know best and clients know nothing. Lawyers are smart and clients are the ones who got themselves tangled up in legal trouble.
Although I find this attitude wrong and demeaning, it’s still easy to act that way when I’m not paying attention. It’s easy to think that since I didn’t want to get up at eight, I shouldn’t worry about being on time. I’m doing this woman a favor, after all. She should be waiting on me: not the other way around.
I don’t want to be a bad person, though, and that attitude? It’s garbage. So I take a deep breath, paste on a smile, and head down the two flights of stairs to the first floor.
Before I even reach the bottom of the stairs, I can smell her: vanilla and citrus. She smells fantastic, incredible. She smells human. She smells like desire.
I pause halfway down the stairs. She doesn’t notice me because the stairs curve around, but I peek through the banister and can see her talking to Joyce. She’s lovely: fair-skinned, long hair, beautiful curves. She’s wearing a flowered dress that comes just to her knees and a pair of dark brown sandals. It’s simple, but pretty, and it seems to match her disposition.
“He’ll be down shortly,” Joyce is saying. “Why don’t I show you to his office?”
“Oh, I’m all right,” the woman says. “I’m okay to wait out here in the open. I wouldn’t be comfortable, you know, just sitting in his private room.”
Joyce laughs. “His private room? Girl, please. That man wouldn’t know the word ‘private’ if it bit him on the ass.”
Really?
This is what Joyce thinks of me?
That I have no sense of personal privacy?
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Landon Fee is an open book. If you want to ask him something about himself, you can. He’s not quiet and secretive like some people are, if you get my drift.” Joyce jerks her head toward one of my colleague’s offices, and I know what she’s saying. Oliver Lyon is one private motherfucker. It’s not his fault, being a damn tiger. Cats are notorious for being sneaky loners. Still, I hate knowing that his need for privacy has kept him from pursuing women on more than one occasion.
When he finds the right girl, she’s going to need to have more patience than a damn saint. That’s all I’m saying.
“Oh, I don’t need to know anything personal about him,” the woman says to Joyce. “It’s just…you know…as long as he can help me with my, um, problem. That’s all I need.”
“Speak of the devil,” Joyce says, finally calling me out for eavesdropping. “Here he comes now.”
I bite back a growl. I was having fun listening. Why does Joyce always have to ruin all of my fun? I straighten my tie, and then I make my way down the rest of the stairs.
“Good morning, ladies,” I say to the women. I turn to Joyce’s friend and hold out my hand politely. “I’m Landon Fee.”
The woman blushes, but shakes my hand.
“Tina Miller,” she says, and she smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Interesting. Joyce didn’t fill me in on the details, but I know it has something to do with custody of the woman’s child. These sorts of cases are always painful to deal with for everyone involved.
Maybe the woman believes the man is an unfit father or perhaps he just wants a chance. Maybe one party was abusive and the other wants the children to be safe and isolated from that. Perhaps the divorce was just difficult and now that it’s settled and everyone has healed a bit, they want to contest custody.
It’s always different, but it’s always the same, and unfortunately, someone always loses.
The thing about the law is that there aren’t always winners. Even if you win a case, it comes at a cost. Sometimes that cost is financial, but more often than not, it’s also emotional. It’s physical. It’s spiritual. By the time a court case is finished, by the time a divorce case is closed, someone has lost something.
And as I look at the beautiful woman in front of me, I hate knowing that she’s going to lose something during this case. I’m filled with the desire to protect her, to shield her from any pain or heartache that might come her way. I don’t want her to suffer. I don’t want her to hurt.
I don’t want her to be scared.
“Please,” I motion to my office. “Come with me. I think we’ll both be more comfortable in my office.”
“Of course,” she says, and squeezes Joyce’s hand before walking ahead of me to the door.
“Hey,” Joyce grabs my arm as I walk by her. She lowers her voice. “Take care of her, okay?”
“Of course.”
“No,” Joyce looks at me seriously. “I mean it. Take care of her. She’s important to me, and if money becomes an issue, you bill me instead of her. Got it?”
I look at Joyce curiously. I’ve never seen her this protective of a human before. Joyce is an incredible woman: strong, determined, brave. She’s fierce and she’s fucking loyal as hell. Still, her reaction is unlike anything I’ve seen from her before, and I nod.
“I will take care of her, Joyce.”
Joyce breathes a sigh of relief.
“Good,” she says. “Because Landon? She’s been through hell. She’ll tell you all about it, but it’s ten times worse than what she’s going to tell you. She’ll brush it off and say she’s fine, but she’s not fine. She’s alone in the world, and she needs us. We have to help her.”
Before I can say anything else, Joyce turns and walks away. Her stilettos make click-clack sounds on the floor as she walks to her own office. I’m no fool. I know that as soon as the door closes, she’s going to have her shoes off and her feet up on the desk, but right now, I don’t care about that. I’m too busy digesting Joyce’s words.
Tina has been through hell?
How could this be possible?
I’ll admit that as a lawyer, I’ve seen the best and the worst of humanity. While I practice family law, the truth is that families can be nasty to each other, especially when money or power is involved. When someone dies, it’s not uncommon for the family to completely fall apart as the remaining relatives fight over the inheritance. When a child has a trust fund from a rich relative, it’s not unusual for the parents to want instant access to that money.
Still, the idea that anyone would hurt Tina, would be mean to her, rankles me. I don’t like knowing that someone has hurt this woman. I don’t like knowing she’s been dealing with something alone. Being an adult is hard enough. Having to face the world alone is something no one should have to do.
No one.
Tina is already sitting in my office when I finally walk in. She’s got her ankles crossed and her hands in her lap. She’s beautiful, but terrified, and I can smell her fear and anxiety when I walk into the room. I need to calm her down. I need to ease her pain. I need to make everything better.
Because she’s so scared, I leave my office door halfway open. This way, she won’t feel boxed in or isolated with a strange man. Sure, it will slightly cut down on privacy, but I think she’ll be more happy knowing she can make a quick escape if she needs to. I have no interest in scaring this woman or causing her more anxiety.
I take a seat at my desk and give her what I hope is a warm smile.
“Well, Tina, what is it I can do for you today?”
She takes a deep breath, and then she starts talking.