Law Offices of Spencer White and Associates

Los Angeles, California

 

Stevie followed the woman through a series of cubicles—did every office have cubicles?—trying to keep up so that she could read her lips.

“Things are…around here. As long…done by the end of the day, no one really cares what you do,” the woman said. “We don’t care…lunch.”

Stevie was almost relieved when they reached the empty cubicle she’d be calling her own for the next few days. It had finally been decided that Stevie would be introduced to the staff as a temporary secretary, responsible for busywork the secretaries who worked for the partners didn’t have time to finish.

“They’ll send assignments to your email. All you do is read the brief instructions and do what’s asked.” The woman smiled. “It’s pretty easy stuff. I think you’ll like it here.”

“Thank you.”

“Sure. They gave you your login information downstairs?”

“They did.”

“Good, good.” The woman started to back out of the cubicle, but hesitated. “Some advice?” She looked Stevie over, admiring her long hair and petite build. “Watch out for Senior Hop Along.”

“Senior Hop Along?”

“He’s one of the junior associates. We call him that because he hops from one girl to the next, never sticking in one place for long.”

“I’ve known guys like that.”

“Yeah, well, this one is super charming and hot!” She waved her hand near her face. “He’s hotter than any man should have a right to be.”

Stevie couldn’t have cared less. She wasn’t going to be here long enough to meet a new guy, let alone allow some gigolo to convince her to do anything. It would take more than a few nice words for a guy to drag her off to bed for a one-night stand.

The woman sighed. “Okay. I’ll let you get to work.”

The moment she was alone, Stevie slipped a small kit out of her bag and pressed tiny sensors to the opening of the cubicle. Then she walked down to the water cooler, pretending to fill a bottle full of the spring water, pressing sensors to the wall in strategic places. She didn’t want anyone sneaking up behind her, and, since she couldn’t hear, her next best option was teeny motion detectors that would send a message to her cell phone. Durango had designed them for her.

Back in her cubicle, she logged in under the username they’d given her downstairs and opened her first assignment, setting everything up so that it looked like she was working hard. Then she opened another dialogue box, inputting another set of credentials provided to her by Spencer White himself.

Five days and counting.

 

***

 

Stevie was disturbed three times in less than fifteen minutes. Her phone would buzz, and she’d pull up the assignment she was supposed to be working on before turning and finding someone speaking to her from the doorway of her cubicle. Usually another secretary. She forced a smile and nodded, sometimes commenting on what they were saying, sometimes not. She got a few weird looks. No one here was aware that she was deaf. She’d thought it would make things less complicated that way, but her inability to hear nuances, her inability to respond to subtleties, always caused a little bit of awkwardness. On top of that, she’d forgotten what it was like to work in a place where people actually wanted to socialize.

Operatives were a different sort of breed. Most of them were used to working alone.

She worked as quickly as she could, digging into the system Spencer White had given her access to, searching for the person who had logged onto the files that had—according to White—been compromised. It didn’t take her long to see that a user by the name of MHassociate had accessed all the files. It also didn’t take her long to discover that MHassociate belonged to a lawyer who worked on the fifth floor.

What she needed was a real name. She was about to access the employee list when her phone buzzed again.

Someone was coming.

Stevie pulled up the document she was supposed to be working on, quickly beginning to type as a shadow fell over her computer screen. She turned and forced a smile when she saw the woman who’d escorted her up from human resources.

What was her name? Julie…something.

“One of the associates on the fifth floor needs a temp to take over for his secretary. She had a fall during lunch and will be out for the rest of the week, maybe longer. Do you think you could handle that for me?”

Stevie rolled her shoulders. It was actually the perfect assignment. She needed to have an excuse to be close to her suspect, and this was better than anything she could have dreamt up. But she didn’t want to seem too eager.

“If that’s where you need me.”

The woman’s eyes darkened slightly. She glanced over her shoulder, blocking Stevie’s view of her lips for an instant.

“…will do it because the associate in question is Senior Hop Along.”

“The one you told me about?”

“Yes. The one who can’t keep it in his pants.” Julie leaned forward, apparently to keep what she had to say next between her and Stevie, yet it was so close that Stevie had to pull back just slightly to be able to see her lips. “He went to a club last night and hooked up with Mia—” she gestured over her shoulder toward one of the other cubicles. “Danced hot and heavy with her on the dance floor and then invited her up to his exclusive table up on the balcony. Made her think he was going to take her home, but when he was ready to leave, he just left. Made her pay for her own Uber, which cost her a fortune! Such an ass.” Julie sighed, her hot breath washing across Stevie’s cheek. “Thinks because his father is a famous director and his mother is a well-known actress that he can get away with anything!”

Stevie wiped her hands on her thighs, wondering what Julie would think if she knew that one of Stevie’s closest friends was the son of Jackson Chamberlain, one of the most popular producers in the history of blockbuster movies.

Or that her ex-husband’s parents were—

Well, she wasn’t going to go there, even in her thoughts.

“Some men are just too arrogant for their own good.”

Julie nodded in clear agreement. “Especially the men who work here. Hop Along isn’t the worst. He’s just the most prolific.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“Of course. We all have to stick together.” Julie gestured at the computer. “Go ahead and decline your current assignment. That will push it back into the system and assign it to someone else. Then you can log out and head up. His office is to the left of the elevator bay, five doors down.”

“Okay.”

Her instructions were clear enough, but Stevie found herself distracted by the artwork on the walls—some by modern impressionists she recognized—and the faces that she passed in the corridor. She was pretty sure Kevin Spacey brushed past her on the way to the elevator, and that actor from Game of Thrones, the one with the Russian name.

Damn, but he was hotter in real life!

She paused, turning slightly to watch him walk by. He caught her look and smiled, a dimple appearing low in one cheek.

Damn!!

When she finally made it to the fifth office, she found herself in a small alcove that contained a narrow desk pushed to one side that barely fit the teeny space. Beside it was a large, heavy door that opened into what she assumed was the junior associate’s office.

He must be something special if he’d earned this space. From what she could tell just by this slow walk down the corridor, the rest of the associates had to answer their own phones and send their own emails.

This was always one of those things that made her feel awkward. Should she knock on the door before going in? But what good did knocking do if she couldn’t hear the response from the other side? Yet, walking in without a knock could create a whole different array of problems. What if this guy was locked in an embrace with some woman? What if he was changing out of his dress shirt because of some lunchtime spill? What if he was…there were a lot of what ifs. And she’d seen a good number of them over the years.

Once, she had walked in on her father sobbing over a picture of her mother she didn’t even know he still owned, sobbing tears he’d previously told her weren’t a possibility. Another time, she’d found her college roommate making out with a professor who had three kids and a sick wife at home.

Being unable to hear could sometimes lead to some really uncomfortable situations.

However, she was here, and she was expected. It’d be foolish to hesitate.

Stevie turned the knob and pushed the heavy door open, revealing a medium-sized office that was surprisingly bright, the large set of windows behind the massive walnut desk filling the room with Los Angeles’s fabled sunlight. There was a small leather couch to her right, and a small conference table to her left, behind which was an impressively stocked minibar. The desk was piled high with file folders, legal books, and portable filing boxes. A wide computer screen and a professional, multi-line phone were shoved off to one corner. And behind it all was a familiar face that made Stevie’s skin begin to burn and then cool, like she’d been doused not once, but twice, in freezing water.

He didn’t see her immediately because he was barking something she couldn’t read into a cell phone. But when he did look up, his dark eyes burned through her with a pure shock that she could feel vibrate clear through her body.

He dropped his phone and stood, one hand moving to make the sign for joy. It was her sign name.

Stevie shook her head, backing up just slightly. A flash of memory popped into her head, so vivid that it seemed intensely real for just that instant. She was lying in a narrow bed, naked save for the sheet pulled up around her waist. He was stretched out beside her, his dark eyes filled with amusement as she moved her hands quickly, showing him how his name would be spelled in American Sign Language. And then she made that little sign, for joy.

“That’s me.”

“That doesn’t spell Stevie.”

“No. It means joy. The woman who worked with me in preschool, teaching me sign language—she said that I was such a joy to be around because I was always so ready to work, so excited to learn something new, that it was the only word needed to describe me. It became my sign name.”

It hurt. Physically.

She couldn’t believe he still remembered. A part of her had thought he would have forgotten everything she’d ever taught him, everything they’d ever shared between them. She’d even convinced herself that he had to have forgotten their child.

But she couldn’t forget.

“Mika.”

She formed the word with her mouth, but couldn’t hear the breathlessness with which it was given life. She didn’t bother to utter the other word that was bouncing around inside her head.

Husband.