I ignore the looks of half the people in the office. Correction, half of the women in the office who are more than likely seething that I’m not taking them to lunch—or having them for lunch.
But part of the reason I’m able to ignore them is because I’m transfixed by the woman walking a few steps in front of me. The way she swings her hips, the way her hair flows behind her, the way her slacks hug her perfectly round ass. Fuck. I turn my eyes away from her ass, not because I don’t want to look at it, but I don’t need the entirety of the office to see me ogling my partner’s daughter.
I don’t need to be ogling my partner’s daughter period.
I shoot a look at the people whose wandering eyes need to be back on their own business and not worried about what the fuck I’m doing. They shift, nervous under my hardened gaze, as we approach the elevator. Serena, who seems to also have noticed the attention we’ve attracted begins to fidget as we wait for the elevator. I watch as she nervously tries to avoid my eyes as I bore a hole into the side of her head. “Don’t worry about them,” I tell her.
Her eyes flash to mine in shock as we move into the elevator. “Everyone was staring,” she says as the elevator doors close and we begin to descend to the lobby. Her body visibly relaxes, no longer under scrutiny of the entire tenth floor.
“That tends to happen when I walk into a room.” It’s the truth. My reputation, virility, and power precede me and people either drop to their knees in fear or in lust when they see me coming. One way or the other, I cause some sort of a physiological reaction in most people. I take a moment to study her beautiful features and try to ignore the stirring in my pants when she tucks a hair behind her ear and pushes her glasses further up her nose.
Fuck. Since when did that become a turn-on?
“That must get old.” Her words feel like a bucket of ice water on my libido and successfully calms my erection. It doesn’t get old. I feed on that power. “What do you mean?” I don’t mean for it to sound accusatory, but the way she blinks up at me and shakes her head, I can already see her backpedaling.
Fuck that.
The doors open and I block the exit, pinning her to her spot with my gaze and I notice her gulp in response. “I just mean...it must be hard to tell when someone likes you…for you, and not just because you’re this untouchable. People treat you like you’re a God and Gods are not meant to walk amongst mortals.” She ducks under my arm and walks towards the exit, her heels clicking against the marble tile with every step towards the door. I jog after her, once I’ve successfully closed my mouth and allowed my brain to register everything she just said.
Most importantly, her referring to me as a God.
“And just what makes you so knowledgeable on how people see me in the office?”
“I’ve got eyes.” She shrugs. “And ears.”
“What did I tell you about not believing everything you hear?” I huff, knowing that Olivia has already been filling her head with thoughts about me. Preston is going to have to get rid of this one, and I am never going to hear the end of it. It irritates me for a reason I can’t quite pinpoint why it bothers me that Serena is listening to whatever gossip is floating around our office. I’m no stranger to the rumors. You can’t sleep with half the paralegals at the firm without someone opening their mouth. I didn’t care.
But, for some reason, I do now.
The wind whips around us, and she pulls her jacket tighter around her. It’s September, which means the temperatures are dropping by the day in preparation for fall, and this is one of those cooler Indian summer days. “Let’s grab a bite. I’m hungry, and I’m interested to know more about you.”
Ten minutes into lunch and I feel like my dick is seconds from breaking through the zipper of my pants. I’ve barely touched my sandwich as I’ve been too focused on her mouth and the way it wraps around her fork every time she takes a bite of her salad. The way her pink lips suck on that straw in such a way I can’t help but picture her lips wrapped around my dick. It takes everything in me not to reach forward and pluck the straw from her lips and warn her to cut that shit out. She eyes me curiously, but a part of me wonders if she’s feigning innocence because I see a hint of playfulness in her eyes. I take a sip of the ice water in front of me wishing I could submerge my dick in it before clearing my throat.
I’ve got to get my shit under control. This is Preston’s daughter. His twenty-one year old daughter.
And you’re forty-three, not dead, my other head, the one a few feet south, replies.
Preston is a few years older than me, but not enough that he wouldn’t do bodily harm to me for looking at his eldest daughter in a way I definitely shouldn’t be.
“So, how’s…school?” School. College. She hasn’t even gone to law school yet. She hasn’t taken the Bar. I might like a young wild girl whose limits I could test, but Serena is too young. Too innocent. Too naive.
“Good.” She clears her throat and nods. “I’m graduating next semester.” She beams with pride. “I only have five credits left to take.”
“Five? Wow, you’re really ahead of schedule…” It’s been a while since I was in undergrad, but I could have sworn you took somewhere around fifteen per semester.
“I worked through summers and took classes during the winter session. I could have graduated this semester, but I wanted this internship. It’s going to look great on my resume.”
“It really will. You’ll be able to get into any law school in the country with a recommendation from our firm and of course, with your last name.”
She furrows her brows. “You don’t think I could get in without my father’s help?”
Fuck. Not what I meant. I mean…it is what I meant. To be frank, the smartest, sharpest lawyers in the world still need help getting their foot in the door. In this game, it’s all about who you know and sometimes who you’ve screwed. “That’s not what I—”
“Because I absolutely can.”
“I don’t doubt that, Serena. Knowing the right people helps, though.”
“And you’re one of those right people?”
“Your father certainly is.”
She tries to hide the hurt on her face but fails miserably, and I wonder what that’s about. Most future lawyers would kill to have Preston Mitchell for a father.
We sit in silence for a few moments, and just as I go to change the subject I feel the chill in the air that could only be brought about by the ice queen. The Wicked Witch of New Haven that is nine times out of ten the cause for my loss of appetite or the need for hard liquor. What the hell is she doing here? Jana West struts through the small deli like she owns it. Sunglasses still sitting on her face, and her shiny blonde bob chopped right under her angular chin. Her lips are painted her signature red—a red that used to make me painfully hard, but now has the power to make me flaccid within seconds. Dressed to the nines as always, she stops at our table, not even bothering to acknowledge Serena’s presence.
“I went by your office. Your secretary said you came here with some new girl.” She finally turns to look at Serena and as she slides her sunglasses to the top of her head, shoots icy blue daggers at her. “A little young for you, don’t you think?” she sneers.
“Out,” I grit at her as I point her towards the door. “Serena, wait here.” I use a very different voice with her; though it’s still authoritative, it’s softer and calmer than the tone I plan to take with Jana. We step outside and she snorts before crossing her arms in front of her.
“Really Landon? What, is she twelve?”
“It’s Preston’s daughter, Jana. He’s in court and she hasn’t eaten. Why the fuck do you care?” I start to make a jab about her being jealous, but I don’t want to open that door over what she’d have to be jealous over.
“Because you’re looking at her like she’s on the menu.”
“You’re delusional, which I know.” I look towards the street before pinching the bridge of my nose. “What do you want?” I’m vaguely aware of the vibration against my chest indicating that my phone is ringing. Probably people wondering where the fuck I am, as I don’t usually leave the office for lunch despite what I told Serena.
“I wanted to make sure you were still taking Griff on Friday and keeping him for the weekend? He has to be at community service at nine AM Saturday.”
I never forgot things when it came to Griff, that was more Jana’s M.O. “You couldn’t have called me to tell me that?”
“You only take calls from my fucking lawyer.”
“You’d think you’d get the hint,” I snap.
In the beginning of the divorce, I tried my best to be cordial. Jana wanted to leave and I made no effort to stop her. We didn’t have what one would call a particularly passionate marriage after a certain point. Jana wanted nice things and I gave them to her. And one day, when the bags and fancy trips weren’t enough to keep her happy, I came home to find a note saying she wanted a divorce and that I needed to move out.
I had turned around and gone back to the office to work through the night.
I hadn’t even attempted to reconcile.
I loved Jana deeply in the beginning, but my love for her crumbled under the weight of the year-long affair she’d had a few years ago. When I first learned that she’d been sleeping with our neighbor three times a week, I was irate, devastated and was soaking my liver in whiskey every night. But I wanted to work it out. I tried to ignore my insecurities and jealousy, but I couldn’t shake it. I couldn’t trust her. Maybe a part of me never did. Unfortunately for me, she hadn’t signed a prenup and frankly the thought of a divorce while I was on the precipice of making partner sounded financially and physically exhausting.
And so, I just checked out.
Now, she’s leaving me but, to be honest, I’m not all that interested in having her stay.
Griffin knows nothing of the affair, and I plan to keep it that way. I don’t want to ruin his perception of his mother, whom until recently, I still respected. Jana, however, doesn’t feel the same way. I was hoping for a polite and quiet divorce where she got what she wanted and I got her the fuck out of my life, but Jana is using our divorce as an excuse to drag my name through the mud to our son and anyone who would listen.
I have always been there for Griff. And she knows it. He is the center of my universe. I’ve never missed one of his football or baseball games, never missed a parent-teacher conference, and certainly never left him stranded at school because my Swedish massage ran late. I’d walked out of a deposition upon hearing about that. Nevertheless, she’d turned Griffin against me, feeding him lies about my alleged infidelity, when actually she’d been the one who’d been unfaithful. That was when the gloves came off.
“I’m going to be in Miami, and I don’t want him home by himself. He’s sixteen and after this shit with this DUI that you can’t seem to make disappear…”
“He hit another car, Jana. While someone was in it,” I grit out. It wasn’t as easy as making it go away when there were witnesses and police reports and a trip to the goddamn ER. The woman was fine, and thankfully Griffin wasn’t going fast enough to do much damage to her car, but the damage to his life had already been done. At this point, the best I can do is get it expunged from his record when he turns eighteen.
“What’s the point of having a father that’s an attorney? You’d think this was the one thing you could do for him.” She rolls her eyes and I resist the urge to get into it with her on the sidewalk in broad daylight like I hadn’t single-handedly raised him myself the last five years.
“Are you fucking serious right now, J?” I hate myself for using my nickname for her, but Freudian slip or whatever.
“Nine thirty, do not be late. My flight is at noon.”
“Whatever.” I shake my head. She begins to walk away towards her shiny new Audi, that she’d purchased just before she filed for divorce when she stops in her tracks and turns around.
“Oh, I faxed over my latest revisions.”
My blood boils. She was already getting more than enough considering the circumstances. “The fuck, Jana, what now?”
“I want the house in the Hamptons.”
“And I already said, you can go fuck yourself. How much clearer would you like me to put it?”
“I decorated it!”
“Fine, take all the shit inside. I’m gutting the entire place the second the ink dries. Frankly, it’s tacky as hell. But I’ll be damned if you own the house, my father designed for us…for me.” I correct.
“Ugh.” She scoffs. “You are so unrefined.”
“And you are such an opportunist. I have to get back to the office. Don’t you have a hair appointment or something to get to? Your roots are looking a little dark,” I snap at her, knowing that anything referring to her looks is a sore subject.
Her mouth drops open, but her expression shifts as her eyes focus behind me. I pray that it’s just an unsuspecting passerby and not Serena Mitchell. And if it is Serena, I hope that she hadn’t been present for this particularly ugly showdown between me and my soon to be ex-wife.
Jana shakes her head, darting her eyes back and forth between me and whoever’s behind me. “You’re pathetic, Landon.” She slides her sunglasses back over her eyes and then as quick as she blew into the deli she leaves, like a tornado, leaving destruction in her wake.
Serena’s quiet the entire walk back to the office. So am I, as I try to let my emotions come down from dealing with Jana. Just before we step inside she stops and it causes me to halt in my tracks. She turns to face me and looks like she’s at war with herself over what to say, her beautiful face displaying a range of emotions. She opens her mouth and then closes it again, worrying her bottom lip. Without thinking, I reach under her chin and pull it away gently. Her pupils dilate, and a dusting of a pink hue colors her cheeks. “Do…do you want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly.” I stare down at her, not wanting to move, even as people enter and exit the building on both sides of us.
“You’re not pathetic, Landon.”
I want to tell her I know that. That she shouldn’t feel the need to reassure me about something my vengeful, estranged wife said because I won’t give her what she wants in our settlement. Her calling me pathetic is the least vindictive or hateful thing she’s said to me and yet Serena is looking at me like the eight letter word somehow bruised my ego. “You’re wonderful,” she continues. And for a second, I think she regrets her choice of words. “I don’t know much about the specifics, but my dad is a great judge of character. He wouldn’t speak highly of you if you weren’t a good person. He says you’re a great dad. Maybe because you let him tag along sometimes when you do father and son stuff,” she shrugs. “You know, since he was cursed with two girls.”
“You’re the furthest thing from a curse, Serena.” And I believe that. Preston adores both Serena and her younger sister. It’s evident in the way he speaks about them both.
“You know what I mean. I just…I know you said not to believe everything you hear but…everything my father has said about you? That I believe.”