Case for Seduction
Case for Seduction
Ann Christopher
Law Number 1: Never Fall For Your Boss! Too late since Charlotte Evans has been secretly head over heels for Jake Hamilton ever since she started working at his family’s renowned Philadelphia law firm. She’s too smart to expect the diehard bachelor to suddenly turn into Mr. Right. Until the infamous ladies’ man starts putting the moves on her…Jake’s prowess is legendary—in and out of the courtroom. And he’s never met a woman he couldn’t seduce. Except Charlotte Evans. Jake’s lovely assistant may be the only female on the planet who sees past his playboy façade.And now Jake wants forever with the one woman he can’t have. Or can he? Because when it comes to love, some laws are made to be broken.The Hamiltons: Laws of Love Family. Justice. Passion.
Law Number 1: Never Fall For Your Boss!
Too late, since Charlotte Evans has been secretly head over heels for Jake Hamilton ever since she started working at his family’s renowned Philadelphia law firm. She’s too smart to expect the die-hard bachelor to suddenly turn into Mr. Right, until he starts putting the moves—on her!
Jake’s prowess is legendary—in and out of the courtroom. He’s never met a woman he couldn’t seduce, except Charlotte Evans. Jake’s lovely assistant may be the only female on the planet who sees past his playboy facade. And now Jake wants forever with the one woman he can’t have. Because when it comes to love, some laws are made to be broken.
Drifting closer, he stared at her, taking into account her dripping hair, water-streaked makeup and bright gray eyes.
“You don’t know how beautiful you are,” he softly told her. “You don’t know how much I think about you.”
“Jake.” His name was a whisper. A sigh. A promise. She tipped her chin up and watched him with glittering eyes that were already half-closed, surrendering even as she continued to fight. “I thought we agreed we weren’t going to do this.”
Reaching up, mesmerized by everything about this one special woman, he smoothed the wet hair past her temple. Traced one silky brow. Ran his thumb across the dewy velvet of her lower lip.
“I’ve been trying.” He shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t know how hard it would be.”
Leaning in, he dipped his head and, making sure to keep their bodies well apart, kissed her before she could protest—one gentle, lingering, perfect kiss that nearly choked him with desire.
Then he pulled back, knowing he’d crossed a line but unable to remember why that should matter.
Her eyes were bright and glazed now, a vivid mixture of gray and green that should only belong to the finest jewels and sunset-streaked oceans.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said again, shaking his head because life was unfair. Why else would God drop this woman in his life and then make her off-limits? “So beautiful.”
“So are you.”
ANN CHRISTOPHER
is a full-time chauffeur for her two overscheduled children. She is also a wife, former lawyer and decent cook. In between trips to various sporting practices and games, Target and the grocery store, she likes to write the occasional romance novel. She lives in Cincinnati and spends her time with her family, which includes two spoiled rescue cats, Sadie and Savannah, and two rescue hounds, Sheldon and Dexter. As always, Ann is hard at work on her next book.
If you’d like to recommend a great book, share a recipe for homemade cake of any kind or suggest a tip for getting your children to do what you say the first time you say it, Ann would love to hear from you through her website, www.AnnChristopher.com (http://www.AnnChristopher.com).
Case for Seduction
Ann Christopher
Dear Reader,
Are you ready to read about the Laws of Love? I sure hope so!
The Hamilton family is at the heart of this miniseries. The Hamiltons are wealthy and sexy Philadelphians, and almost all of the younger generation are lawyers working at Hamilton, Hamilton and Clark, the family’s law firm.
And what happens when you throw family and lawyers together?
Emotions seethe. Oversized egos collide. Resentments boil over.
In other words, expect D-R-A-M-A, and plenty of it.
First up? My contribution to the series, Case for Seduction, where Jake Hamilton, who loves the ladies, meets his match in the form of his new paralegal, Charlotte Evans, a woman who’s been right under his nose for years. Is Jake ready to be crazy in love? Absolutely not. That’s what makes it so fun!
Next is Pamela Yaye’s Evidence of Desire. You won’t want to miss seeing Harper Hamilton fall—and fall hard—for Azure Ellison, the beautiful reporter who was formerly an ugly duckling at Harper’s prep school. He never noticed her then, but, boy, is he making up for it now!
And the finale? Jacquelin Thomas’s Legal Attraction, where Marissa Hamilton, the baby of the group, must deal with explosive family secrets and the fallout from her night of passion with her coworker and good friend Griff Jackson. What’s the backdrop for all this tension, you ask? The family’s glittering charity ball, of course.…
So, buckle your seat belts. You’re in for some exciting stories!
Happy reading!
Ann
To Richard
Special thanks to Maria Ribas
and the team at Harlequin. It’s always a pleasure.
Contents
Chapter 1 (#ued53803e-5f69-51f3-a6a0-96499269ad9d)
Chapter 2 (#uaefa767a-f847-5c64-a510-464e54e93974)
Chapter 3 (#u3cacea34-1ee4-5554-9ccc-cfcdbf0a1645)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1
Jake Hamilton left the gym and ducked into Starbucks with one pressing question on his mind: Did they have any pumpkin scones left?
Having begun this fine September Saturday morning by working his butt off lifting weights, and then playing a squash match (he won, 3-0, thank you very much), he figured he was entitled to one of his favorite treats, even if he was a little...fragrant at the moment. Skirting the people in line, he peered into the glass display case, his hopes high.
Yes, he had a sweet tooth. He had about thirty-two of them, to be honest.
So, let’s see. They have quite the selection this morning, don’t they? Muffins...apple fritters...the usual assortment of cake slices—iced gingerbread, iced lemon and chocolate—but no pumpkin scones, damn it.
He scowled and made his way to the end of the line, his morning ruined. Well, not entirely ruined, because he could still get a gallon-sized cup of coffee, but it just wouldn’t be the same.
“Morning, Jake.” The last of the customers in front of him got their drinks and moved aside, revealing the pretty barista behind the counter. She’d been making eyes at him the last several times he was there, and he felt terrible for not knowing her name by now. Trying to be discreet, he checked her badge. Ashley, it said. “I saved the last one for you. I figured you’d be needing it.” She held up a pumpkin scone on a plate.
Torn, Jake worked up a grin that he hoped wasn’t too enthusiastic. On the one hand, thank God he’d get his scone. On the other hand, Ashley was now giving him a quick once-over that stripped away the shorts and
T-shirt he was wearing and, while it was always flattering to be noticed, he had no desire to be noticed by Ashley.
Or by most of the females he encountered these days, come to think of it, which was strange. He’d gotten to the unfamiliar point in his life where he preferred to sit quietly and alone in his house, watching ESPN and prepping for his latest trial, instead of hanging out with his brothers and catching the panties women threw their way. The whole club scene had started to exhaust him. The drinks. The dancing. The hookups. The aftermath, which was always awkward to one degree or another.
When had he lost his taste for women who were young, beautiful and eager?
Why would he rather go sit at a table and organize his thoughts for the staff barbecue he was hosting at his house in a few weeks than stand here and flirt with Ashley?
Something was wrong with him, clearly.
But that was no reason to be rude.
“Thanks, Ashley.” Extending his hand across the counter to accept the scone on its plate, he pretended he didn’t feel the lingering brush of her fingers against his. “You just kept my day from turning into a disaster.”
“Well.” She preened as she fixed his coffee, tossing her shiny brown hair over one shoulder and giving him a smile that promised the sun, moon, stars and a ham sandwich if he crooked his little finger at her. “You owe me, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” he told her, keeping his expression pleasant but distant and his little finger uncrooked. He reached into his pocket, grabbed a bill—it was a ten, alas, but oh, well; he’d chalk it up to money well spent—and handed it to her. “Thanks. Keep the change.”
He turned away, aware of her faltering grin, and headed for a table in the most distant corner available, close to the window. He’d just set down his breakfast and was about to pull out a chair and sit, when it hit him: he’d forgotten to pick up copies of The New York Times and the Philadelphia Daily News while he was up at the counter.
He’d have to go back.
Unfortunately.
He wheeled around, determined to make it quick, while Ashley was restocking the cream and whatnot and— Shit.
He plowed straight into someone.
That someone hit the floor with a nasty thud.
Books went flying. A cappuccino mug and saucer shattered with a wet splatter, sending hot coffee in all directions. A slice of lemon cake skittered across the tiles and came to a stop beneath his table. Every head in the place swiveled in their direction.
“Sorry,” he began automatically, his cheeks ablaze with embarrassment. Way to go, Hamilton. Why not just drive a backhoe through the plate-glass window and be done with it? Dropping to a squat, he started to help the person—it was a woman, he realized—gather her things. “I didn’t mean to—”
Whoa.
An irritated and striking gaze—not quite gray, but not quite green, either, rimmed by a thick fan of black lashes—flicked up at him, emptying his brain of all rational thought.
“Hey!” Her husky murmur of a voice slid right under his skin, making nerve endings tighten all up and down his bare arms. “Watch where you’re go...”
The end of her sentence trailed off as she got a good look at him. Her eyes widened with what he assumed was feminine appreciation.
He got that a lot. Women found him attractive, and he knew it. No big deal.
Usually, though, it didn’t make him feel hot and flustered, a feeling he best remembered from sixth grade, when Yvette Connor passed him a note after English class.
He and the woman stared at each other for an electric moment.
Mid-twenties, he decided. She wasn’t wearing makeup and didn’t need it, not with those eyes, that smooth olive skin and that pouty berry mouth. Her hair swung in sleek black curtains, and her tank top dipped in front as she looked away and scurried to pick up her books, revealing a hint of cleavage that would be right at home in a Playboy centerfold.
Her scent was sweet and musky—vanilla tinged with sensual woman, two of his favorite things in the world.
His brain was slow to return, but eventually it slammed back into his body and got to work again.
“Sorry,” he said. “Usually I’m much more graceful than that. The Dance Theatre keeps begging me to join, but I don’t want to make the other dancers look bad.” He shrugged. “You know how it is.”
Lips curling, she eyed his table, where the scone waited for him. “That explains the power breakfast.”
He grinned. She grinned back, and that dimpled flash of white dazzled him like a pound of diamonds glittering in the sun.
But before he lapsed into more staring, he gave himself a swift mental kick along with a reminder to get his head back in the game.
“You’re not injured, are you?”
“Too soon to tell.” At this point, she had all her books and there was no reason for them to remain crouched on the floor. “You could help me up.”
If that meant he could touch her? Hell to the yeah. “My pleasure.”
He surged to his feet and extended his hand. She took it. And as her warm palm slid across his, he felt the charge all through his body. Awareness. Electricity. Chemistry.
Focus, Hamilton.
With a gentle tug, he pulled her up and then, suddenly, they were face-to-face, with only her books between them.
Dropping her gaze and her hand, she backed away first. “Thanks.”
“So.” He tried not to check her out, but it was hard because he was a man and she was smokin’. About a head shorter than he was, she had the toned arms and shoulders of someone who took care of herself in the gym...khaki cargo pants...manicured toes in flat sandals...no wedding ring. There was no unobtrusive way to lean around her and check out her ass, but he wanted to and bookmarked the idea in his mind, not that there was any chance of forgetting. “Let me replace your breakfast. Least I can do.”
“That would be great.” She kept her gaze lowered, which really wasn’t working for him, because he was getting the distinct impression she didn’t want to send him any “I’m available” vibes. Was she here with someone, then? Was the lucky punk in the john washing his hands at this very second? Or had Jake mistaken the look she’d just given him? “Thanks.”
“Cappuccino, right? Lots of that frothy stuff?”
She dimpled and flashed him a quick look. “That would be milk. Whole milk.”
“Well, it’s up to you how you ruin your coffee. And lemon cake?”
“Excuse me,” Ashley the barista said sourly, edging between them with a broom, dustpan and mop. “I better clean this up.”
“Thanks, Ashley,” he said.
Ashley, who’d apparently undergone an attitude transplant in the past couple minutes, split her assessing gaze between the two of them before she worked on the mess. If her thinning lips were any indication, she didn’t like what she saw—not the flirting or the splatter zone.
“Yeah,” the woman told him. “Lemon cake.”
“I’ll be right back.”
He hurried over to the counter and ordered, his mind full of how he and Gorgeous could eat and sip their coffee together, and then maybe grab lunch. Well, no, not lunch, obviously, right after eating breakfast, and he still needed to go home and shower because he probably smelled like the inside of his gym bag. But he’d get her number, and they could meet up later, maybe for drinks, but preferably for dinner, and then—
He swung back around, her cappuccino and cake in hand, and faltered.
She was sitting at the table in front of his, spreading out her books and opening her laptop, and didn’t look like she was in the market for a session of getting to know you with him.
Well, shit, he thought, deflating. That wasn’t the body language he’d been hoping for.
Still, there was nothing a trial lawyer liked better than a challenge, right?
He strode to her table and plunked her items in front of her. She’d put on a pair of sleek black-rimmed glasses and was all business now as she glanced up and gave him a quick nod of thanks.
“I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.”
Opening a notebook, she flipped a couple pages and started tapping on her computer, dismissing him.
Okay, then. He faltered again, deflating a little more. Another minute with this one and he’d be flatter than a sheet of tracing paper.
With nothing else to do, he took a chair at his table so that they were sitting back-to-back, sipped his coffee in a moody silence and remembered, too late, that he’d forgotten his newspapers again. He could go up and get them, of course, but a third trip to the counter in three minutes would just be pathetic.
He sat. Sipped. Took a bite of scone and chewed it, tasting nothing.
Behind him, he heard relentless typing. She was working, then. Good for her. He should be working, too.
And he would leave her alone. It would be rude to disturb someone who was clearly so busy.
Screw it. He twisted at the waist and squinted at her book. “Civil procedure, eh?”
“Uh-huh,” she murmured without looking up.
“That makes you a law student.”
“It does indeed. Part-time.”
“Where do you go?”
“Temple.”
“Good school.”
“It better be, because it’s getting all my pennies these days.”
Well, she wasn’t looking at him, but she hadn’t ordered him to shut the hell up, either, so he chose to believe he was making progress.
“Part-time’s a rough way to go, though. It’ll take you forever instead of just three years, right?”
She shrugged. “Well, you know. Full-time job and all that. Someone’s got to pay for bills and tuition, so what can I do?”
He felt a wave of sympathy, because that was a backbreaking load for anyone. Yet, he felt a stronger wave of admiration, because one look at this woman’s squared shoulders and firm chin told him that she was the determined type, and nothing was going to slow her down.
“What about student loans?”
“No loans for me. If I graduate with all kinds of debt, I’ll have to take a job at a huge firm to pay for it. And then I won’t be able to work with Legal Aid or the government if I want to. I want to keep my options open, you know?”
Another swell of appreciation hit him. “I do know. So are you enjoying it?”
“As much as anyone enjoys law school, I guess.”
He cocked his head, remembering. “I enjoyed law school.”
“Ah, but were you working full-time when you went?”
“I was not,” he conceded. “Props to you.”
Her lips turned up in the beginnings of a smile. “Why, thank you.”
He sipped again. She flipped a page in her book.
He gave up on being subtle, although, to be fair, that horse had galloped out of the barn a while back when he’d first laid eyes on her.
“I notice you have...one, two, three empty chairs at your table.”
That got a laugh out of her. “You didn’t mention you were a math whiz.”
“And I have...one, two, three empty chairs at my table. It seems like a waste of resources, don’t you think?”
She heaved a long-suffering sigh, but he could hear the amusement in her voice. “You do see that I’m trying to study, right?”
“What a nice offer.” Without giving her the chance to object, he gathered up his cup and plate and slid around to one of the empty chairs at her table. “I’d love to join you. I hate to eat alone. And I can help you study.”
She sat back, shifting slightly to sling one of her arms over the back of her chair, and narrowed her eyes at him. “Subtle, much?”
“What’s subtle?”
“Wow.” Her grin was wry. “That explains a lot.”
“Subtlety is overrated. Everyone says so.”
“Well, if you’re going to help me study, here’s what I need.” She held up her hands and started counting on her fingers. “Number one. Read these thirty pages for me.” She pointed to her red textbook which, he knew from personal experience, weighed approximately five pounds. “Number two. Summarize it for me in basic terms. None of that legal mumbo jumbo. And none of that res ipsa nonsense.”
Oh, she was funny. “Anything else?”
“Number three. Type up my outline for me. Number four. Take the final for me. It’s in December. Thanks ever so much. I’m going for a massage.”
“So you want to get through your class with no reading or studying, no Latin and no exam. Does that about cover it?”
“You’re the one who offered to help.”
“True. I’d better keep my strength up, eh?”
His appetite restored, he took a big bite of pumpkin scone. Delicious.
Frowning down at her lemon cake, she tapped her pen on the table.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think I ordered the wrong thing,” she said. “What is that, anyway?”
“It’s my fantastic pumpkin scone. They’re out of them, but since you’re sharing your table with me, I can share this with you. Fair is fair.”
“Oh, no, I―”
“I insist.”
He broke the scone in half and gave her a piece. His reward? A gleeful smile that made something tighten low in his belly. Taking a bite, she made a soft sound of pleasure that rippled over his skin like warm bathwater.
“I have a new favorite,” she told him.
“I knew you would.”
She shoved her plate across the table at him. “You can have it. You probably need the calories after your― What exactly have you been doing to get so sweaty? I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“Just a healthy workout at the gym.”
“Training for the Olympics?”
“Go big or go home. That’s my motto.”
Sometime during this conversation, he realized suddenly, they’d adopted the same posture. Both of them had their elbows on the table and were leaning toward each other. There was an easiness about talking to her that made him feel as though he’d stumbled across a friend he hadn’t seen in years, but sorely missed. It wasn’t hard to imagine sitting here with her until closing time at eleven or so tonight, chatting about every little thing that might cross their minds.
A clang and a scrape startled them. It was with some surprise that he looked around and discovered that they were not, in fact, the only two people left in the Starbucks. Ashley, who’d been wiping down the table next to theirs, clanked another few pieces of silverware into her plastic bin and straightened the remaining chairs with an annoyed clunk. Lobbying a final glare at him, she took her cleaning supplies and marched through a door to the kitchen in the back.
All of this seemed to amuse his companion, who had a brow raised. “I think you’ve offended Ashley.”
Shaking his head, he took a quick gulp of coffee. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She’s into you.”
He took another sip, which was a mistake, given his overheated cheeks. “It’s nothing.”
She laughed and worked on another bite of scone. “If you say so. But I suggest you have your food tested for poison the next time she serves you something.”
“Duly noted. So how do you manage your time with the class and work?”
She waved a hand, dismissing the topic. Apparently, this one didn’t spend too much time feeling sorry for herself. “It’s easy once you stop sleeping. And hobbies are out. And I don’t have as much time to clean my apartment, but you won’t find me crying about that.”
“And what did you do for fun before you started law school?”
“Well, I spent a lot more time with my friends. I read books. Mysteries,” she added, before he could ask. “And I practiced yoga.”
Well, that explained the body. God bless yoga.
“Your friends understand, though, right?” he asked, hoping she might allude to a significant other, if there was one. “They don’t give you a hard time, do they?”
“They do understand. Which doesn’t mean they don’t whine when I miss girls’ night out. But they’re used to it by now.”
“Good.”
“And what do you do with yourself when you’re not working?”
The question threw him for a major loop, probably because he was thirty-one and had no life. He hesitated, thinking of all the exciting things he wanted to do one day when he had time. When he wasn’t overloaded with court appearances, needy clients and a demanding family.
Was such a magical day even possible?
Yeah, he thought sourly. As soon as dinosaurs once again roamed the earth.
“I’m always working,” he said.
Wow. That reeked of dissatisfaction, didn’t it?
She’d noticed. Her gaze sharpened with interest. “So are you a workaholic because you enjoy it or because you can’t see any other way?”
Another tough question. “I have no idea.”
She smiled, and her extraordinary eyes were full of understanding. “You should probably work on that, shouldn’t you?”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Hypocrisy is my middle name.”
That got him. He grinned. She grinned back. The moment lengthened into an interlude so delicious it was almost unbearable.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
He thought about how his day started in the usual manner―yawn worthy―and how exciting she’d made it when he least expected it. He thought about how interesting and beautiful she was, and how she’d already made him smile more this morning than he had in the past week or so, and it wasn’t even noon yet.
She intrigued him more than any woman he’d met in a long time.
A long time.
What if he hadn’t literally stumbled on to her here in Starbucks?
What if his attraction was one-sided?
He didn’t think so, though. Her eyes were too bright and her color too high.
And he’d been around long enough to know when a woman responded to him.
She turned away first, running an unsteady hand through her hair. “Well...”
He cleared his throat, which felt tight with a sudden longing that was all out of proportion with the occasion. Sharing coffee and a breakfast treat with a complete stranger shouldn’t tie him up in knots, he knew, no matter how sexy she was.
Tell that to his raging hormones.
“Well,” he said.
With her head bent low, she flipped a couple pages forward in her book, and then flipped back again. Ultimately, she pushed away the book and pulled the laptop closer, tapping a couple keys. He had the idea she was as flustered as he was, which made him feel a whole lot better, because he was a sudden mass of nerves, desire and uncertainty.
“I should get back to studying.” She tipped up her face just enough for him to see deepening frown lines between her brows. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it.”
Ah, man. Was he a jerk, or what? He rolled his shoulders, trying to release some of his spiking tension. “Sorry. I’m saying that to you a lot, aren’t I?”
“It’s okay,” she said quickly. “It was fun talking to you. But the being-knocked-on-my-butt part? Not so fun.”
He snorted out a laugh.
“But I liked the scone. Thanks for introducing me to something new.”
He slid back his chair with a loud scrape that echoed his frustration. “I’ll just...go on back to my own table and leave you in peace.”
“Give a yell if you get lost.”
The teasing undid him. He wanted more of it. More of her.
The words came out in a rush. “Have dinner with me tonight.”
Her head came up, and she hit him with that intense gaze and eyes that were round and shocked. “Excuse me?”
His hopes crashed and burned via a sickening swoop in his belly. “I knew it. You’re with someone, aren’t you?”
“What? No, but I just don’t think it’s a good idea. Do you?”
“Dinner is always a good idea. You have food, maybe some wine, you get nourishment—it’s great.”
“Don’t you think both our lives are complicated enough without rocking the boat?”
“I thrive on complications.”
“I don’t, though,” she said flatly. “I thrive on smooth sailing.”
Jake took a minute to regroup, thinking hard. He’d asked her out, she’d said no, end of story. He wasn’t in the habit of begging women to be with him, and his pride wouldn’t let him start now. She wasn’t the only woman in Philly, and if she wasn’t interested in him, well, then screw her. Her loss.
So why did he feel like the biggest loser? Why did he have the uncomfortable certainty that something special was slipping through his fingers?
He stared at her, trying to manage his disappointment. “How can I change your mind? I’m just talking dinner here. You have my permission to walk out on me if you’re not having fun. You can duck into the ladies’ room and never come back.”
For a minute, she wavered, dimpling, and he thought he had her.
But then her expression hardened and she shook her head. “I’m not going out with you. You shouldn’t even be asking me.” She gave him a little wave. “Buh-bye.”
Shouldn’t even be asking?
Okay. Why was he getting the feeling he was missing something?
“Why shouldn’t I be ask—”
“Wow,” said a new voice. A mocking female voice, to be exact. “Some things never change, do they? I should have known.”
Hang on. He knew that voice. Jake looked up and— Aah, shit.
Speaking of unneeded complications.
“Avery.” He kept his expression cool. “What’re you doing here?”
Avery, a pretty brunette he’d met at the gym and with whom he’d shared a couple—no, three—memorable interludes at her place, loomed over the table. Apparently she’d also just come from working out, because she had a duffel slung over her shoulder and was wearing shorts and a sports top.
She looked pissed. Her eyes were narrowed, her lips were thin and one manicured hand was firmly planted on a hip. The killing glare she leveled on him warned that she’d be overturning tables and kicking asses in a minute.
His gorgeous companion, meanwhile, had a single brow raised and was watching for his reaction.
“I stopped in for some juice,” Avery said. “But while I’m here, maybe you could explain why you haven’t been returning my texts. Is she the reason? What am I saying? Of course she is.”
A couple nearby heads swiveled in their direction, probably because Avery’s volume was on the increase. As always, when someone was upset, he kept his tone low and reasonable.
“Avery, I told you I wouldn’t be seeing you anymore,” he reminded her.
“No, jackass. What you said was that you were busy at work and would call me in a few days. That was three weeks ago.”
His conscience squirmed guiltily. That did sound like something he’d say.
He opened his mouth with no real idea of how he could smooth things over.
Avery saved him the trouble by dumping her cup of juice in his lap.
Iced juice.
Yelping, he leaped to his feet, dimly aware of the gasps and snickers all around him. Ashley the barista, in particular, gave a loud snort, which he did not appreciate.
Ah, but Avery wasn’t done with him yet.
“Great glasses,” Avery said to Gorgeous. “Dolce & Gabbana?”
Gorgeous, looking startled, touched her frames. “Uh, yes. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Avery hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and gave the woman a rueful smile. “Let me give you a piece of advice, girlfriend. This one?” She jabbed a finger in Jake’s direction; he winced. “He’s good for about three orgasms for about three nights.”
“Avery,” he growled.
“So enjoy it while it lasts,” Avery continued. “But don’t get your feelings involved. Okay? Gotta go, people. Bye.”
Avery wheeled around and swept through the glass door—thank the Good Lord—but the damage was done. Not that he’d been on firm footing with Gorgeous anyway.
Looking grim, she was gathering up her books and laptop and cramming them back into her bag with jerky movements. “I’m leaving, too.”
Fully aware of how ridiculous he looked with the juice stain down his crotch, he tried to do some major damage control. If she walked out of here now, he was certain both that he’d never see her again and that her memory would haunt him for a good long time.
“That’s never happened to me before,” he said quickly.
“Right,” she said, yanking her bag’s zipper closed. “Whatever you say.”
“I know that looked bad,” he continued, lowering his voice because he was anxious not to give the avid onlookers anything else to laugh about, “but we never had a, uh, real relationship. We just, uh, hooked up.”
“It’s none of my business.”
She turned to go. He gave it one last shot. That was his nature. He fought for the important things in life. And he knew, on some instinctual and inexplicable level, that she was important.
“Wait,” he called after her, not caring who was listening. What was a little more humiliation on top of what he’d already endured? “At least tell me your name.”
She swung back around and gaped at him with more horror than he thought was necessary under the circumstances. “Oh, my God. You have no idea who I am, do you?”
Uh-oh. That didn’t sound good.
He froze, thinking hard and fast.
Had they met before? And, if so, how could he ever have forgotten her?
“No,” he admitted. “Who are you?”
Her eyes, which were now a definite and stormy gray, flashed so much ice at him that he felt his veins constrict with the cold.
“Someone you’ll never be hooking up with, buddy. You can count on that.”
Chapter 2
This. Could. Not. Be. Happening.
Charlotte Evans tried to regulate her panicked breathing the following Monday morning, which wasn’t easy while sprinting up the back staircase of Hamilton, Hamilton and Clark. In a pencil skirt and heels.
She should be sitting at her cubicle on the lower level―affectionately known as The Dungeon—of the law firm’s redbrick building, with all the other typing pool peons. She should be keeping her head down and tapping out ninety words per minute so that the work in her inbox didn’t continue to multiply until it smothered her.
Now was no time for a personal crisis.
The appellate brief she was currently working on needed to be filed with the Third Circuit by noon.
N-O-O-N. Which was―she checked her watch―less than three hours from now. Three short hours! How in God’s name was she going to decipher all the microscopic red edits by then? And how was she going to finish―
Later for that alarming thought. Reaching the firm’s reception area, which was on the fourth floor, she took a deep breath, smoothed her skirt and crept through the heavy fire door.
As usual, the stately leather and mahogany made her feel like a clumsy little kid again, as though her mother would show up and smack away her hands if she touched anything too expensive or precious. Which was pretty much anything in the reception area, where clients had their first impression of the firm. There were oversize windows framed by striped silk drapes, potted palms in every corner, Oriental lamps and rugs that probably cost more than her beat-up used car was worth, and a crystal chandelier that sparkled like flawless diamonds against the carved ceiling moldings.
Meredith, the receptionist, gatekeeper and queen of all she surveyed up here, sat at her post behind the granite counter. Her headset was in place and her phone-answering voice was singsong perfect.
“Good morning. Thank you for calling Hamilton, Hamilton and Clark,” she was murmuring into her mic. “How may I direct your call?”
The only thing out of place on this floor that showcased the extreme elegance of one of Philadelphia’s most prestigious law firms, Charlotte thought, was―
“Mommy!”
Right over there. The two-year-old boy taking the M&M’s out of the Waterford crystal candy jar on the nearest coffee table and alternately eating them and hiding them in the dried moss in one of the palm’s pots.
Wonderful.
“Hi, cutie.” Grinning and stooping, she caught Harry, her shrieking son, as he sprinted across the seating area. “Shhh,” she told him, even though she knew it was a useless exercise, because Harry only had one volume, which was loud, and one speed, which was fast. “We use our quiet voice and walking feet at Mommy’s work, okay?”
“I am using my quiet voice!” Harry informed her, his gray eyes wide and affronted.
Ignoring the disapproving glance from Meredith, who was still talking into her headset and pushing buttons on her phone, Charlotte settled Harry on her hip and gave him a discreet mother’s once-over.
The first thing she noticed, due to the telltale area of flattened black curls in the back, was that his hair hadn’t been combed. So that was a demerit right there. On the plus side, he’d brushed his teeth. On the minus side, though, he was sporting dried toothpaste on the corner of his mouth. Oh, and a swath of what looked like dried syrup on one chipmunk cheek. Nice.
Continuing on to the clothes front, there was bad news: he was wearing his Bugs Bunny pajamas. With the feet. Which might explain why his Velcro gym shoes were on the wrong feet, but, then again, might not.
The bottom line? Her adorable and generally clean son had returned from a night with his father looking like a refugee.
Typical.
Still, this two-year-old ragamuffin was the love of her life, and she was glad to see him, even if this was a very bad time. Nuzzling his chubby little face, she turned to his father, whom she was not glad to see.
Roger Miller stood there in blue scrubs and athletic shoes, furiously thumbing buttons on his smartphone.
Also typical.
For the last year of their relationship, which had ended about a year ago, the only parts of Roger she’d seen were the top of his head as he texted and answered emails, and the back of him, as he left to go back to the hospital, which was the love of his life.
She was not in the mood for waiting for the oh-so-important surgical resident to acknowledge her, but she hid her irritation behind a pleasant voice for Harry’s sake.
“What’s going on, Roger? You know I’m working.”
Lowering the phone, he glanced up at her with those brown eyes and managed to look moderately rueful. “I know, but I’m on call, and they called me. I have to get to the hospital in half an hour and scrub in. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“But, Roger,” she said, as sweetly as she could with her spiking temper, “I’m also working. As you can see.”
He waved a hand. “Why can’t you get one of the other secretaries to cover for you until you can take him to day care after lunch? How big a deal could that be?”
Okay. Forget sweet.
“A very big deal.”
They glared at each other across the top of Harry’s head, and then Meredith intervened.
“I’m going to the kitchen for a snack,” she called over the counter. “Does anyone out there want a cookie?”
“Me!” Vaulting out of Charlotte’s arms like an Olympic gymnast in training, Harry ran across the reception area on his tiny little mismatched feet and took Meredith’s hand when she offered it to him. “And I want a double cappuccino iced tea, too!”
Meredith’s laughter disappeared down the long hallway to the kitchen. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, Meredith,” Charlotte called.
Meredith waved.
Charlotte turned back to Roger and took a long minute to wrestle her temper under control. They were a team, and she needed to remember that. A united team with a single crucial goal: to raise Harry into a happy and contributing member of society. As a team, they needed to negotiate and compromise, and as a mother, she needed to not throttle her baby daddy.
No matter how hard said baby daddy made it on her at times.
“I can’t take him right now, Roger.”
A look of absolute befuddlement crossed over Roger’s features, giving Charlotte the feeling that she’d really challenged his imagination by suggesting that anything about her lowly job could matter to anyone.
There went her self-esteem, slipping another several notches.
As though Jake Hamilton hadn’t done enough of a job on it the other day by not remembering her from work. The whole time they were chatting it up at Starbucks, he’d had no idea that she was one of his employees.
None.
True, they worked on separate floors and had only interacted, in passing, at the firm’s occasional staff appreciation luncheons. He wasn’t involved in the firm’s hiring process and had probably never had the need to come to the catacombs, where she worked. True, she hadn’t laid eyes on him in several months, probably since the last staff Christmas party, and then only from a distance across the crowded conference room.
But, still.
How could she feel good about herself when she’d made such a non-impression on him? When she recognized not only him, but all the other Hamiltons who worked at the firm, because she made it her business to know the faces of the people who put food on her table? The bottom line was that she’d been here at the firm for years and he didn’t recognize her or know that he and his family were her employers.
He did not, in short, know her from Adam or Eve.
Yeah. That had been a swift kick to the solar plexus. Especially because she was so exquisitely aware of who he was and had been since the second she first laid eyes on him. She’d been a brand-new employee the day that he strode out of the elevator and gave her a crisp nod as she was getting on.
She’d been stunned.
What woman wouldn’t be?
And now, two days after their interlude at Starbucks, she was still deflated and agitated, her poor stupid head filled with images of the unexpected heat she’d seen in Jake’s eyes, and Jake probably hadn’t given her a second thought. He’d probably hooked up with Ashley the barista, Avery the disgruntled sex buddy, or any one of the dozens of women he probably kept dangling at any given time.
The jerk.
A sexy jerk, yeah, but still a jerk.
Anyway, the issue now wasn’t Jake Hamilton, or how much he’d seemed into her the other day, or how he’d asked her out to dinner, or how he was, in fact, nothing but an inveterate player who’d probably only hit on her at Starbucks because it was a reflex with him, like coughing when his throat was dry.
The issue was her self-esteem, which had been in a steady decline for ages, ever since she told Roger about her accidental pregnancy (ripped condom) and saw the look of absolute horror on his face. It was as though the only thing worse than having an unplanned baby at that point in his life was having an unplanned baby with her.
Then there’d been the breakup, which wasn’t quite as brutal as the one in that old movie The War of the Roses but had been tough nonetheless. Then they’d gone to court to establish everyone’s parental responsibilities, and then she’d shelved her plans to go to law school full-time because she had to also work and support a child.
Roger, meanwhile, had blithely continued with his education and career because his daddy had more money than God and was happy to foot the bill.
Must be nice, eh?
Now she was a typing drone in the secretarial pool, a single mother juggling diapers, toddler tantrums, unscheduled illnesses and pediatric visits, and a part-time law student managing a class a semester. He, on the other hand, was deep into his residency and well on his way to becoming a real-life Dr. McDreamy.
Not that she was bitter, she thought, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him. Much.
But at the rate she was going, he’d be a millionaire with a thriving practice and his first yacht while she was still trying to finish a first-year law student’s course load.
Was it any wonder she felt invisible half the time?
Well, she was sick of it. Sick of being a second-class citizen—and an invisible one, at that. If she didn’t stand up for herself and her needs, who would? Roger? Please.
She was tired of being a doormat, and it was going to stop.
Right now.
Roger seemed to have given up on trying to understand how her job was relevant, and moved on to the only important thing in any conversation, as far as he was concerned: his wants and needs and any petty annoyances that might inconvenience him.
“Why can’t you call your mother to come pick Harry up?” he asked, a note of challenge in his voice now.
“Well, first of all, since today is your day with Harry, it’s your responsibility to care for him. Not mine,” she reminded him. He scowled. “Second, even if I wanted to call her, my mother is in doctor’s appointments and physical therapy for most of the day.”
“Shit,” Roger muttered, mostly to himself. “What am I going to do now?”
His narcissism was really amazing, she thought. True and pure, as unadulterated as winter’s first snow.
“Mom’s doing pretty well, by the way. Thanks for asking. She has much more energy after the heart procedure.”
Roger’s lips thinned with growing annoyance. “Glad to hear it. I always liked her.”
“Right.” She checked her watch and saw how much of her precious time had ticked away. That brief wasn’t going to type itself. Not to mention the fact that this was the floor Jake Hamilton worked on, and the longer she hung out here, the greater her chances of running into him, which would be awkward, to say the least. So she and Roger needed to wrap this up so she could go back to the basement, where she belonged.
“You need to take Harry and go, okay? Drop him off at your mother’s or something. She’s always glad to see—”
“I can’t,” Roger said flatly. “I don’t want to interrupt her spa day. You’ll have to—”
Sentences that began with you’ll have to always ended badly. It was a rule.
Accordingly, she marched up to Roger and got in his face. So much for being a team.
“Kindly do not tell me what I need to do,” she began, keeping her voice low, because he would not reduce her to a banshee here at her place of employment. Thank God there was no one else around at the moment to see this developing scene; the last thing she needed was gossip. She always took great pains to keep her private life private, and the other staff would have a field day with any little tidbit about her personal life. “You need to call in to the hospital and tell them that—”
Roger loomed over her, his features contorted with anger. “I can’t just—”
“Is there a problem?” asked a cool male voice behind her.
Oh, God.
Charlotte stiffened with sudden paralysis, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach like a stone, probably landing somewhere deep in Philly’s sewer system.
She knew that voice. That voice belonged to the absolute last person she wanted to see. That voice, like the person who owned it, was nothing but trouble.
Roger’s arrogant gaze flickered past her shoulder, and his voice, when he spoke, was so condescending that she wanted to dropkick him into next year.
“I don’t believe anyone asked for your input, my brother.”
Apparently Jake Hamilton felt the same way about harming Roger. His frigid tone, when he responded, was like being assaulted with ice chards.
“I’m afraid you’re getting my input, my brother. Since you’re standing in my building and badgering a woman, you’ll be getting a lot of my input.”
Roger’s face turned a blotchy and angry purple.
Uh-oh.
“It’s okay,” Charlotte said quickly, trying to defuse the situation before these two badasses decided to take their dispute outside or something. Embracing her inner coward, she kept her back to Jake and hoped he didn’t recognize her voice. “We were just having a—”
That was as far as she got before Jake swooped in, clamped a hand on her upper arm and spun her to face him. She spluttered a protest; he ignored it. His intent gaze locked in on her face, skating over all her features as though he needed to double- and triple-check to make sure it was really her, and his emotions were raw and as readable as a Times Square billboard.
Surprise. Excitement. Wide-eyed delight.
“It’s you,” he said.
“Yes,” she admitted, trying to calm her racing pulse.
Charlotte knew better than to let this man under her skin. Well, farther under her skin, anyway. She knew he wasn’t for her under any circumstances. He was one of her bosses, for one. He was a womanizer, for another. Most importantly, she had a child to raise, a mother with dicey health to care for, a law degree to finish and no time for nonsense.
A fling with a man who, from all appearances, flirted with anything with boobs, definitely qualified as nonsense.
Duh.
And yet, as she stared into the vivid brown flash of his eyes and saw the color rise over his cheekbones, it was hard to remember any of her concerns.
Jake Hamilton was breathtaking.
On Saturday, he’d been boyish and accessible, his loose-limbed body tall, muscular and athletic in those knit shorts and shirt. She’d been arrested by the span of his shoulders, the sinew of his arms and legs and the unmistakable roundness of his butt.
Today he was all dark-suited, red-tied business. His shirt was starched, his cuff links were shiny, and his shoes were buffed to the kind of polish that required sunglasses to protect the eyes.
And his face—
Intelligent brown eyes framed by heavy brows. Angular cheekbones. Full lips that probably spent an inordinate amount of time kissing one woman or another. Skin so smooth she longed to run her hands all over it—every inch—just to see if she could find a flaw.
When he looked at her, she felt hot.
When she looked at him, she felt breathless.
Not a good combination if she wanted to keep her head, was it?
When you looked like Jake Hamilton, she wondered, was it really your fault that women trailed you the way rats trailed the Pied Piper?
No, she decided.
But that didn’t mean she had to be a rat.
“What’s your name?” Jake demanded.
“Charlotte Evans.”
“What are you doing here?”
Thanks for the reminder, Jake.
He still had no clue that they’d been working in the same building for years. She still meant nothing to him. Never had, never would.
“I work here,” she said flatly.
Those brows lowered, creating a thundercloud effect that would have been pretty funny under any other circumstances. He cocked his ear, probably to make sure it wasn’t playing tricks on him.
“You—” he began, faltering.
“Work here, yes,” she finished for him. “For two years now. In the secretarial pool. Thanks for remembering.”
“Now that the introductions are finished,” interjected Roger, “I’d appreciate it if I could finish up my conversation with Charlotte, okay? Thanks.”
Jake stilled, except for the tightening of his jaw, and focused all his fierce energy on Roger.
Roger blinked, looking away first with a huff of impatience.
“And you are?” Jake asked in a tone appropriate for asking a dog why he was pooping on his freshly shampooed carpet.
“Roger Miller.”
They did not shake hands, which was probably for the best. There was so much negativity in the air at the moment that any physical contact between the two men would probably lead to an arm-wrestling contest followed by the snapping of someone’s arm as it broke in two.
“And why are you here, Roger?” Jake’s voice was silky smoothness over a layer of unyielding granite. “Interrupting my employee’s workday and upsetting her?”
Roger’s lips thinned. He opened his mouth to say something that would probably be pissy if not outright rude, but there was a new interruption.
Small footsteps raced up the hallway from the kitchen, and Harry, now holding a to-go coffee cup that thankfully had a lid on it, ran into view. Please, God, she prayed, do NOT let this child drop his drink on this expensive rug.
“Look, Mommy!” In his typical greeting, Harry launched himself at her legs, giving her a quick, one-handed hug before holding up his arms and demanding to be lifted. She obliged, settling him on her hip. “I have a chocolate milk-a-ccino. Taste it!”
He offered the cup, which was smeared with something that may once have been chocolate but was now disgusting.
She tried to look rueful as she declined this generous offer. “Maybe in a minute, Harry.”
Harry, luckily, rarely stayed on one subject long enough to get his feelings hurt. “Who’s that?” He pointed a fat and smudgy finger at Jake.
“That’s my boss, Mr. Hamilton,” she told Harry. “I work for him.”
Harry gave Jake an appraising look. “I’m Harry. I’m four.” He held up four fingers.
“Nice try.” Charlotte adjusted his fingers down to two. “You know how old you are. Stop trying to pretend you’re older.”
Harry scowled at her for calling him out, and then sipped his milk in what he apparently thought was a dignified manner.
The weight of Jake’s gaze felt as though someone had covered her face with a lead blanket. Deciding that she’d avoided the moment long enough, she hitched up her chin and looked at him over Harry’s head, feeling defiant.
His reaction to this news that she was a single mother—he’d figure out that she and Roger had never been married soon enough—didn’t matter to her. Of course it didn’t. If people judged her harshly, then that was their problem, not hers. She loved Harry, who was the pride of her life, and anyone who thought less of her personal situation was a moron. And her life was too full and busy to waste time with morons.
It was just that she’d had a few painful and best-forgotten experiences with men who had wanted to date her, found out she had a kid, then took the next train to I’m outta here, never to be seen again.
Jake’s expression was still. Dark. Utterly unreadable.
They stared at each other for one lengthy and terrible moment before Jake broke free of whatever had him in its grip. Something about him eased up, making him much less forbidding, and he studied Harry for a second or two.
Harry, all wide-eyed and fat-cheeked behind his cup, stared back.
“So you’re two, eh?” Jake’s lips curled into a half smile. “That makes you old enough to get a job, doesn’t it, little dude?”
Harry darted Charlotte an incredulous glance and squealed with laughter. “A job? No way!”
“Well, you’re welcome to hang out at the office for as long as you need to, anyway. Kids are always welcome here,” Jake informed him.
Charlotte’s jaw dropped.
“We’ll find something for you to do, okay?” Jake continued. “God knows some of the lawyers around here aren’t that much smarter than you. How does that sound?”
Harry grinned, revealing his tiny set of perfectly white teeth. “Great. Yay!”
With a definitive nod, Jake adjusted his cuffs and spared Roger a sidelong look that was none too warm. “I’ll let you two wrap things up.” He paused. “Quickly.”
“Thanks,” Charlotte said.
Jake leveled all of his attention on her, which gave her the uncomfortable sensation of being a butterfly pinned to someone’s board.
“I’ll need to see you in my office,” he said as he strode off. “Five minutes.”
Chapter 3
Jake planted his palms on his desk and leaned into it, struggling to master his thoughts. His thoughts did not want to be mastered. They were, in fact, spinning out of control, as though his head had become a child’s top, ricocheting off walls and furniture legs with no sign of stopping.
After a weekend of high agitation, no sleep and stalking the Starbucks for any sign of her, he’d found his mystery woman.
Well, found wasn’t exactly the right word, was it?
He’d stumbled on to his mystery woman.
He’d discovered that his mystery woman was no real mystery, after all.
She’d been working right here, in this very building, under his very nose, for the past couple years, and he was willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that he’d never seen her before in his life, because how could he have ever laid eyes on a woman like that and forgotten her?
He must have, though.
Which made him a dumbass.
A blind dumbass, to be precise, and that was not a good feeling.
Shit.
Sudden exhaustion made him slump into his leather chair.
Renewed agitation made him get back up again and pace.
Charlotte Evans. A firm employee. And since he was a partner in the firm, that made her his employee.
A man couldn’t go around lusting after his employees, not unless he wanted to get sued for sexual harassment. And if he did enter into a discreet, consensual relationship with Charlotte—a big if, considering he didn’t know the status of her relationship with Dr. Punko out there—word would get out. Word always got out. And what would happen then? Office morale would plummet, for one. And his family would hand him his head on a platter for introducing his personal drama into the workplace, for another.
Double shit.
So where did that leave him?
Screwed, that’s where.
Because he thought about Charlotte Evans, firm employee. He saw her eyes when he didn’t want to. Heard her laugh when he wanted silence. Had been haunted by her all weekend.
Wanted her.
After about the tenth lap of his office, he wore himself out and rested a hip on the edge of his desk. And what about—
There was a soft knock on his ajar door, and Charlotte poked her head inside. “Hi.”
Snapping to attention with an abrupt spike in his pulse rate, he stood. “Come in.”
“Come on, little man.” Tugging Harry’s hand, she ushered him inside the office and tried to steer him toward the tufted leather sofa against the far wall. “I want you to sit right here and be very—”
But Harry had seen the large jar of M&M’s on Jake’s desk.
“Candy, Mommy!”
“Not a chance,” she told him.
No worries. Harry wheeled around, spotted the giant aquarium of tropical fish and plants and veered in that direction with a shout of surprised delight that made Jake grin. “Look, Mommy! Fish!” Harry raced over and pointed at the orange one with black and white stripes. “And look! There’s Nemo! Hi, Nemo!”
Charlotte shot Jake an apologetic look. “Harry ends every sentence with an exclamation point, in case you hadn’t noticed. Don’t tap on the glass, Harry. It disturbs the fish, okay?” It didn’t seem to matter, though, because Harry now had both palms and his nose pressed up against the aquarium and was in toddler rapture, murmuring to the fish. “Sorry about the fingerprints,” she told Jake, lowering her voice. “And I told Roger that I couldn’t have Harry here, but—”
Jake raised a hand, stopping her. “It’s okay. Kids are welcome here.”
“That’s very nice of you, but it’s a law firm, and Harry has no idea what an inside voice is. Oh, and he left a half pound of M&M’s in the potted plant in the reception area, and his typing sucks.”
Jake laughed.
“So I need to get him out of here. And I will. I just need to—”
“I didn’t know you had a child.”
Jake resisted the urge to clap his hand over his big mouth. Whoa. Where had that come from? And why had he said it, even if he was thinking it? He did, thankfully, restrain the follow-up question on the tip of his tongue, which had to do with Harry’s father—who was clearly a punk ass if ever he’d seen one—and whether he and Charlotte had an ongoing romantic relationship.
None of his business, he knew, even if the curiosity was gnawing on his guts with sharp little teeth.
Those striking eyes of hers turned flinty. “Among other things you didn’t know about me, yes.” She seemed to regret her words immediately, because she fidgeted on her feet, checked her watch and then shot a quick glance at Harry to make sure he was staying out of trouble. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a brief to finish typing and it’s got to be filed by noon, so I really need to—”
“Yeah. About that.” Jake waved a hand at her employment file, which he’d grabbed from their HR person and flipped through in the past few minutes. “I didn’t know you graduated from Penn with a degree in international relations. Which makes you uniquely overqualified for the typing pool here at the office.”
A subtle flair of panic crossed over her features but, to her credit, she quickly mastered it. “Yes, but I need the full-time work and the benefits are good. I have a mouth to feed. I need a job. I need this job.”
Admiration tugged at his mouth, making him want to smile, but he stifled it because he didn’t think she’d appreciate it. “You don’t get it. Keeping you in the typing pool isn’t making the best use of your talents, which is foolish. And I may be blind, but I’m not foolish.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed stare of suspicion. “You’ll have to help me out here. What does that mean?”
“It means that I’m making you my new paralegal, effective immediately. Thereby sparing myself the time and trouble of interviewing more people. I’ve been pretty unimpressed with the candidates I’ve seen so far, and it’s been a month since my old paralegal relocated to Boston.”
Charlotte blinked at him, working hard to get her jaw up off the floor. “But—”
“Which means that you get the office next to mine, which has a TV in it for viewing video depositions, but you can use it to let Harry watch kid shows while he’s here.”
Charlotte rubbed her temple and took a moment to get her thoughts together.
“But—” she repeated weakly.
“Mommy!” Harry jumped up and down, pointing into the tank. “It’s a starfish! A STARFISH, Mommy!”
“Wow. I see it,” she answered before turning back to Jake. “What’s going on? I don’t understand this at all.”
Yeah. There was a lot of that going around, apparently, because Jake didn’t understand his attraction to this woman at all, or his strange compulsion to help her out where he could and make her complicated life a little bit easier. Oh, and he also didn’t understand how he thought he’d work closely with her without falling deeper into lust, but he figured he’d tackle that hurdle one day at a time.
“All you need to understand is that I’m giving you a promotion to a job that’s much more educational for a law student. Which comes with a fifty percent raise, by the way. But if you think you’ll miss the tedium of typing for eight or nine hours every day, then feel free to refuse, and I’ll continue my search for a good paralegal. It’s entirely up to you.”
She hesitated.
“Mommy? Mommy! Can we get a fish tank for my bedroom?”
Charlotte rolled her eyes, but Jake wanted to share a high five with the little guy for helping him make his case. Kids were expensive, weren’t they? They needed and wanted things, like food, shoes and fish. A paralegal could afford many more kid things than a secretary could, and Charlotte was more than smart enough to know it.
And if dangling this tempting offer in front of a mother’s nose made Jake a bit of a devil, well, that was a charge he could live with. To get to know her better he could live with it, no problem.
And the fact that he was lusting after a woman who was a mother? Also no problem, he discovered to his own surprise.
However, the fact that he was simultaneously thinking about how he could get closer to Charlotte while issuing himself stern warnings about staying the hell away from her...well, that was a problem.
A big freaking problem.
An even bigger problem was that, the longer he stared at her, the less he cared about problems, big or otherwise.
She was severe today, with her glorious hair scraped back into a bun at the nape of her neck that should be forever consigned to grannies and librarians. Plus, she was buttoned down into a navy blue suit that was so drab it made Jake want to find the designer and bludgeon him.
Even so, there was no hiding the curve of her hips or the hint of cleavage up top. Her long and sexy legs ended in a pair of pointy nude heels, the kind that were a gift to men everywhere, and her ass, in that straight skirt, was nothing short of spectacular.
Her face was tight, her lips thin and her eyes stormy as she struggled with her dilemma. And right there, served up on a silver platter for him, was the answer to one of the questions that had plagued him all weekend.
The prickling electricity he’d felt between them? She felt it, too, and she knew it could very well lead to something complicated...but interesting.
Why else would she hesitate to accept such a great promotion?
Maybe the gentlemanly thing to do would be to give her the promotion as some other attorney’s paralegal. He could snap his fingers, and it would be done.
Too bad he wasn’t feeling gentlemanly.
He was feeling hot and bothered, and he suspected he’d feel that way for a while. Why? Because the only cure he could imagine was unbuttoning all that armor she wore and getting inside her. And, much as he wanted to do just that, he was still rational enough to know it was a bad idea.
But he was feeling pretty irrational, too. “Ticktock,” he murmured, tapping his watch.
The storm behind her eyes had turned to a glare, and her chest was heaving up and down, which was quite the sight to see, even if her ugly jacket blocked the view. She stepped closer, ready to go toe-to-toe with him, even if he was her boss.
He liked that.
“And what’s in it for you?” she demanded, low.
He shrugged. “A good paralegal, I hope,” he said, keeping his tone silky. “What else?”
“You hit on me the other day. Back when you had no idea who I was. I know it doesn’t mean anything, because you probably hit on every woman who stands still long enough for you to ask her what her sign is—”
He scowled. For one, this assessment of his, uh, exuberant dating life cut a little too close to the bone, frankly, and, for another, his fascination with her bore no resemblance to the passing lust he felt for pretty women in general, which disturbed him.
“—but I’m not trying to be the victim of any sexual harassment. So, like I said Saturday, I don’t think our spending time together is a good idea.”
“I’m a professional, Charlotte. Have I done or said anything inappropriate this morning?”
“No, but—”
“You think I want to ruin my career with sexual harassment allegations?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Or maybe you think I’m so taken with you that I can’t think straight or tell right from wrong.”
Her defiant gaze wavered and fell. “Of course not.”
Ironic, eh? His thinking didn’t feel straight at all right now. Good thing she had no idea how his hands twitched for the feel of her.
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Ann Christopher
Law Number 1: Never Fall For Your Boss! Too late since Charlotte Evans has been secretly head over heels for Jake Hamilton ever since she started working at his family’s renowned Philadelphia law firm. She’s too smart to expect the diehard bachelor to suddenly turn into Mr. Right. Until the infamous ladies’ man starts putting the moves on her…Jake’s prowess is legendary—in and out of the courtroom. And he’s never met a woman he couldn’t seduce. Except Charlotte Evans. Jake’s lovely assistant may be the only female on the planet who sees past his playboy façade.And now Jake wants forever with the one woman he can’t have. Or can he? Because when it comes to love, some laws are made to be broken.The Hamiltons: Laws of Love Family. Justice. Passion.
Law Number 1: Never Fall For Your Boss!
Too late, since Charlotte Evans has been secretly head over heels for Jake Hamilton ever since she started working at his family’s renowned Philadelphia law firm. She’s too smart to expect the die-hard bachelor to suddenly turn into Mr. Right, until he starts putting the moves—on her!
Jake’s prowess is legendary—in and out of the courtroom. He’s never met a woman he couldn’t seduce, except Charlotte Evans. Jake’s lovely assistant may be the only female on the planet who sees past his playboy facade. And now Jake wants forever with the one woman he can’t have. Because when it comes to love, some laws are made to be broken.
Drifting closer, he stared at her, taking into account her dripping hair, water-streaked makeup and bright gray eyes.
“You don’t know how beautiful you are,” he softly told her. “You don’t know how much I think about you.”
“Jake.” His name was a whisper. A sigh. A promise. She tipped her chin up and watched him with glittering eyes that were already half-closed, surrendering even as she continued to fight. “I thought we agreed we weren’t going to do this.”
Reaching up, mesmerized by everything about this one special woman, he smoothed the wet hair past her temple. Traced one silky brow. Ran his thumb across the dewy velvet of her lower lip.
“I’ve been trying.” He shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t know how hard it would be.”
Leaning in, he dipped his head and, making sure to keep their bodies well apart, kissed her before she could protest—one gentle, lingering, perfect kiss that nearly choked him with desire.
Then he pulled back, knowing he’d crossed a line but unable to remember why that should matter.
Her eyes were bright and glazed now, a vivid mixture of gray and green that should only belong to the finest jewels and sunset-streaked oceans.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said again, shaking his head because life was unfair. Why else would God drop this woman in his life and then make her off-limits? “So beautiful.”
“So are you.”
ANN CHRISTOPHER
is a full-time chauffeur for her two overscheduled children. She is also a wife, former lawyer and decent cook. In between trips to various sporting practices and games, Target and the grocery store, she likes to write the occasional romance novel. She lives in Cincinnati and spends her time with her family, which includes two spoiled rescue cats, Sadie and Savannah, and two rescue hounds, Sheldon and Dexter. As always, Ann is hard at work on her next book.
If you’d like to recommend a great book, share a recipe for homemade cake of any kind or suggest a tip for getting your children to do what you say the first time you say it, Ann would love to hear from you through her website, www.AnnChristopher.com (http://www.AnnChristopher.com).
Case for Seduction
Ann Christopher
Dear Reader,
Are you ready to read about the Laws of Love? I sure hope so!
The Hamilton family is at the heart of this miniseries. The Hamiltons are wealthy and sexy Philadelphians, and almost all of the younger generation are lawyers working at Hamilton, Hamilton and Clark, the family’s law firm.
And what happens when you throw family and lawyers together?
Emotions seethe. Oversized egos collide. Resentments boil over.
In other words, expect D-R-A-M-A, and plenty of it.
First up? My contribution to the series, Case for Seduction, where Jake Hamilton, who loves the ladies, meets his match in the form of his new paralegal, Charlotte Evans, a woman who’s been right under his nose for years. Is Jake ready to be crazy in love? Absolutely not. That’s what makes it so fun!
Next is Pamela Yaye’s Evidence of Desire. You won’t want to miss seeing Harper Hamilton fall—and fall hard—for Azure Ellison, the beautiful reporter who was formerly an ugly duckling at Harper’s prep school. He never noticed her then, but, boy, is he making up for it now!
And the finale? Jacquelin Thomas’s Legal Attraction, where Marissa Hamilton, the baby of the group, must deal with explosive family secrets and the fallout from her night of passion with her coworker and good friend Griff Jackson. What’s the backdrop for all this tension, you ask? The family’s glittering charity ball, of course.…
So, buckle your seat belts. You’re in for some exciting stories!
Happy reading!
Ann
To Richard
Special thanks to Maria Ribas
and the team at Harlequin. It’s always a pleasure.
Contents
Chapter 1 (#ued53803e-5f69-51f3-a6a0-96499269ad9d)
Chapter 2 (#uaefa767a-f847-5c64-a510-464e54e93974)
Chapter 3 (#u3cacea34-1ee4-5554-9ccc-cfcdbf0a1645)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1
Jake Hamilton left the gym and ducked into Starbucks with one pressing question on his mind: Did they have any pumpkin scones left?
Having begun this fine September Saturday morning by working his butt off lifting weights, and then playing a squash match (he won, 3-0, thank you very much), he figured he was entitled to one of his favorite treats, even if he was a little...fragrant at the moment. Skirting the people in line, he peered into the glass display case, his hopes high.
Yes, he had a sweet tooth. He had about thirty-two of them, to be honest.
So, let’s see. They have quite the selection this morning, don’t they? Muffins...apple fritters...the usual assortment of cake slices—iced gingerbread, iced lemon and chocolate—but no pumpkin scones, damn it.
He scowled and made his way to the end of the line, his morning ruined. Well, not entirely ruined, because he could still get a gallon-sized cup of coffee, but it just wouldn’t be the same.
“Morning, Jake.” The last of the customers in front of him got their drinks and moved aside, revealing the pretty barista behind the counter. She’d been making eyes at him the last several times he was there, and he felt terrible for not knowing her name by now. Trying to be discreet, he checked her badge. Ashley, it said. “I saved the last one for you. I figured you’d be needing it.” She held up a pumpkin scone on a plate.
Torn, Jake worked up a grin that he hoped wasn’t too enthusiastic. On the one hand, thank God he’d get his scone. On the other hand, Ashley was now giving him a quick once-over that stripped away the shorts and
T-shirt he was wearing and, while it was always flattering to be noticed, he had no desire to be noticed by Ashley.
Or by most of the females he encountered these days, come to think of it, which was strange. He’d gotten to the unfamiliar point in his life where he preferred to sit quietly and alone in his house, watching ESPN and prepping for his latest trial, instead of hanging out with his brothers and catching the panties women threw their way. The whole club scene had started to exhaust him. The drinks. The dancing. The hookups. The aftermath, which was always awkward to one degree or another.
When had he lost his taste for women who were young, beautiful and eager?
Why would he rather go sit at a table and organize his thoughts for the staff barbecue he was hosting at his house in a few weeks than stand here and flirt with Ashley?
Something was wrong with him, clearly.
But that was no reason to be rude.
“Thanks, Ashley.” Extending his hand across the counter to accept the scone on its plate, he pretended he didn’t feel the lingering brush of her fingers against his. “You just kept my day from turning into a disaster.”
“Well.” She preened as she fixed his coffee, tossing her shiny brown hair over one shoulder and giving him a smile that promised the sun, moon, stars and a ham sandwich if he crooked his little finger at her. “You owe me, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” he told her, keeping his expression pleasant but distant and his little finger uncrooked. He reached into his pocket, grabbed a bill—it was a ten, alas, but oh, well; he’d chalk it up to money well spent—and handed it to her. “Thanks. Keep the change.”
He turned away, aware of her faltering grin, and headed for a table in the most distant corner available, close to the window. He’d just set down his breakfast and was about to pull out a chair and sit, when it hit him: he’d forgotten to pick up copies of The New York Times and the Philadelphia Daily News while he was up at the counter.
He’d have to go back.
Unfortunately.
He wheeled around, determined to make it quick, while Ashley was restocking the cream and whatnot and— Shit.
He plowed straight into someone.
That someone hit the floor with a nasty thud.
Books went flying. A cappuccino mug and saucer shattered with a wet splatter, sending hot coffee in all directions. A slice of lemon cake skittered across the tiles and came to a stop beneath his table. Every head in the place swiveled in their direction.
“Sorry,” he began automatically, his cheeks ablaze with embarrassment. Way to go, Hamilton. Why not just drive a backhoe through the plate-glass window and be done with it? Dropping to a squat, he started to help the person—it was a woman, he realized—gather her things. “I didn’t mean to—”
Whoa.
An irritated and striking gaze—not quite gray, but not quite green, either, rimmed by a thick fan of black lashes—flicked up at him, emptying his brain of all rational thought.
“Hey!” Her husky murmur of a voice slid right under his skin, making nerve endings tighten all up and down his bare arms. “Watch where you’re go...”
The end of her sentence trailed off as she got a good look at him. Her eyes widened with what he assumed was feminine appreciation.
He got that a lot. Women found him attractive, and he knew it. No big deal.
Usually, though, it didn’t make him feel hot and flustered, a feeling he best remembered from sixth grade, when Yvette Connor passed him a note after English class.
He and the woman stared at each other for an electric moment.
Mid-twenties, he decided. She wasn’t wearing makeup and didn’t need it, not with those eyes, that smooth olive skin and that pouty berry mouth. Her hair swung in sleek black curtains, and her tank top dipped in front as she looked away and scurried to pick up her books, revealing a hint of cleavage that would be right at home in a Playboy centerfold.
Her scent was sweet and musky—vanilla tinged with sensual woman, two of his favorite things in the world.
His brain was slow to return, but eventually it slammed back into his body and got to work again.
“Sorry,” he said. “Usually I’m much more graceful than that. The Dance Theatre keeps begging me to join, but I don’t want to make the other dancers look bad.” He shrugged. “You know how it is.”
Lips curling, she eyed his table, where the scone waited for him. “That explains the power breakfast.”
He grinned. She grinned back, and that dimpled flash of white dazzled him like a pound of diamonds glittering in the sun.
But before he lapsed into more staring, he gave himself a swift mental kick along with a reminder to get his head back in the game.
“You’re not injured, are you?”
“Too soon to tell.” At this point, she had all her books and there was no reason for them to remain crouched on the floor. “You could help me up.”
If that meant he could touch her? Hell to the yeah. “My pleasure.”
He surged to his feet and extended his hand. She took it. And as her warm palm slid across his, he felt the charge all through his body. Awareness. Electricity. Chemistry.
Focus, Hamilton.
With a gentle tug, he pulled her up and then, suddenly, they were face-to-face, with only her books between them.
Dropping her gaze and her hand, she backed away first. “Thanks.”
“So.” He tried not to check her out, but it was hard because he was a man and she was smokin’. About a head shorter than he was, she had the toned arms and shoulders of someone who took care of herself in the gym...khaki cargo pants...manicured toes in flat sandals...no wedding ring. There was no unobtrusive way to lean around her and check out her ass, but he wanted to and bookmarked the idea in his mind, not that there was any chance of forgetting. “Let me replace your breakfast. Least I can do.”
“That would be great.” She kept her gaze lowered, which really wasn’t working for him, because he was getting the distinct impression she didn’t want to send him any “I’m available” vibes. Was she here with someone, then? Was the lucky punk in the john washing his hands at this very second? Or had Jake mistaken the look she’d just given him? “Thanks.”
“Cappuccino, right? Lots of that frothy stuff?”
She dimpled and flashed him a quick look. “That would be milk. Whole milk.”
“Well, it’s up to you how you ruin your coffee. And lemon cake?”
“Excuse me,” Ashley the barista said sourly, edging between them with a broom, dustpan and mop. “I better clean this up.”
“Thanks, Ashley,” he said.
Ashley, who’d apparently undergone an attitude transplant in the past couple minutes, split her assessing gaze between the two of them before she worked on the mess. If her thinning lips were any indication, she didn’t like what she saw—not the flirting or the splatter zone.
“Yeah,” the woman told him. “Lemon cake.”
“I’ll be right back.”
He hurried over to the counter and ordered, his mind full of how he and Gorgeous could eat and sip their coffee together, and then maybe grab lunch. Well, no, not lunch, obviously, right after eating breakfast, and he still needed to go home and shower because he probably smelled like the inside of his gym bag. But he’d get her number, and they could meet up later, maybe for drinks, but preferably for dinner, and then—
He swung back around, her cappuccino and cake in hand, and faltered.
She was sitting at the table in front of his, spreading out her books and opening her laptop, and didn’t look like she was in the market for a session of getting to know you with him.
Well, shit, he thought, deflating. That wasn’t the body language he’d been hoping for.
Still, there was nothing a trial lawyer liked better than a challenge, right?
He strode to her table and plunked her items in front of her. She’d put on a pair of sleek black-rimmed glasses and was all business now as she glanced up and gave him a quick nod of thanks.
“I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.”
Opening a notebook, she flipped a couple pages and started tapping on her computer, dismissing him.
Okay, then. He faltered again, deflating a little more. Another minute with this one and he’d be flatter than a sheet of tracing paper.
With nothing else to do, he took a chair at his table so that they were sitting back-to-back, sipped his coffee in a moody silence and remembered, too late, that he’d forgotten his newspapers again. He could go up and get them, of course, but a third trip to the counter in three minutes would just be pathetic.
He sat. Sipped. Took a bite of scone and chewed it, tasting nothing.
Behind him, he heard relentless typing. She was working, then. Good for her. He should be working, too.
And he would leave her alone. It would be rude to disturb someone who was clearly so busy.
Screw it. He twisted at the waist and squinted at her book. “Civil procedure, eh?”
“Uh-huh,” she murmured without looking up.
“That makes you a law student.”
“It does indeed. Part-time.”
“Where do you go?”
“Temple.”
“Good school.”
“It better be, because it’s getting all my pennies these days.”
Well, she wasn’t looking at him, but she hadn’t ordered him to shut the hell up, either, so he chose to believe he was making progress.
“Part-time’s a rough way to go, though. It’ll take you forever instead of just three years, right?”
She shrugged. “Well, you know. Full-time job and all that. Someone’s got to pay for bills and tuition, so what can I do?”
He felt a wave of sympathy, because that was a backbreaking load for anyone. Yet, he felt a stronger wave of admiration, because one look at this woman’s squared shoulders and firm chin told him that she was the determined type, and nothing was going to slow her down.
“What about student loans?”
“No loans for me. If I graduate with all kinds of debt, I’ll have to take a job at a huge firm to pay for it. And then I won’t be able to work with Legal Aid or the government if I want to. I want to keep my options open, you know?”
Another swell of appreciation hit him. “I do know. So are you enjoying it?”
“As much as anyone enjoys law school, I guess.”
He cocked his head, remembering. “I enjoyed law school.”
“Ah, but were you working full-time when you went?”
“I was not,” he conceded. “Props to you.”
Her lips turned up in the beginnings of a smile. “Why, thank you.”
He sipped again. She flipped a page in her book.
He gave up on being subtle, although, to be fair, that horse had galloped out of the barn a while back when he’d first laid eyes on her.
“I notice you have...one, two, three empty chairs at your table.”
That got a laugh out of her. “You didn’t mention you were a math whiz.”
“And I have...one, two, three empty chairs at my table. It seems like a waste of resources, don’t you think?”
She heaved a long-suffering sigh, but he could hear the amusement in her voice. “You do see that I’m trying to study, right?”
“What a nice offer.” Without giving her the chance to object, he gathered up his cup and plate and slid around to one of the empty chairs at her table. “I’d love to join you. I hate to eat alone. And I can help you study.”
She sat back, shifting slightly to sling one of her arms over the back of her chair, and narrowed her eyes at him. “Subtle, much?”
“What’s subtle?”
“Wow.” Her grin was wry. “That explains a lot.”
“Subtlety is overrated. Everyone says so.”
“Well, if you’re going to help me study, here’s what I need.” She held up her hands and started counting on her fingers. “Number one. Read these thirty pages for me.” She pointed to her red textbook which, he knew from personal experience, weighed approximately five pounds. “Number two. Summarize it for me in basic terms. None of that legal mumbo jumbo. And none of that res ipsa nonsense.”
Oh, she was funny. “Anything else?”
“Number three. Type up my outline for me. Number four. Take the final for me. It’s in December. Thanks ever so much. I’m going for a massage.”
“So you want to get through your class with no reading or studying, no Latin and no exam. Does that about cover it?”
“You’re the one who offered to help.”
“True. I’d better keep my strength up, eh?”
His appetite restored, he took a big bite of pumpkin scone. Delicious.
Frowning down at her lemon cake, she tapped her pen on the table.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think I ordered the wrong thing,” she said. “What is that, anyway?”
“It’s my fantastic pumpkin scone. They’re out of them, but since you’re sharing your table with me, I can share this with you. Fair is fair.”
“Oh, no, I―”
“I insist.”
He broke the scone in half and gave her a piece. His reward? A gleeful smile that made something tighten low in his belly. Taking a bite, she made a soft sound of pleasure that rippled over his skin like warm bathwater.
“I have a new favorite,” she told him.
“I knew you would.”
She shoved her plate across the table at him. “You can have it. You probably need the calories after your― What exactly have you been doing to get so sweaty? I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“Just a healthy workout at the gym.”
“Training for the Olympics?”
“Go big or go home. That’s my motto.”
Sometime during this conversation, he realized suddenly, they’d adopted the same posture. Both of them had their elbows on the table and were leaning toward each other. There was an easiness about talking to her that made him feel as though he’d stumbled across a friend he hadn’t seen in years, but sorely missed. It wasn’t hard to imagine sitting here with her until closing time at eleven or so tonight, chatting about every little thing that might cross their minds.
A clang and a scrape startled them. It was with some surprise that he looked around and discovered that they were not, in fact, the only two people left in the Starbucks. Ashley, who’d been wiping down the table next to theirs, clanked another few pieces of silverware into her plastic bin and straightened the remaining chairs with an annoyed clunk. Lobbying a final glare at him, she took her cleaning supplies and marched through a door to the kitchen in the back.
All of this seemed to amuse his companion, who had a brow raised. “I think you’ve offended Ashley.”
Shaking his head, he took a quick gulp of coffee. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She’s into you.”
He took another sip, which was a mistake, given his overheated cheeks. “It’s nothing.”
She laughed and worked on another bite of scone. “If you say so. But I suggest you have your food tested for poison the next time she serves you something.”
“Duly noted. So how do you manage your time with the class and work?”
She waved a hand, dismissing the topic. Apparently, this one didn’t spend too much time feeling sorry for herself. “It’s easy once you stop sleeping. And hobbies are out. And I don’t have as much time to clean my apartment, but you won’t find me crying about that.”
“And what did you do for fun before you started law school?”
“Well, I spent a lot more time with my friends. I read books. Mysteries,” she added, before he could ask. “And I practiced yoga.”
Well, that explained the body. God bless yoga.
“Your friends understand, though, right?” he asked, hoping she might allude to a significant other, if there was one. “They don’t give you a hard time, do they?”
“They do understand. Which doesn’t mean they don’t whine when I miss girls’ night out. But they’re used to it by now.”
“Good.”
“And what do you do with yourself when you’re not working?”
The question threw him for a major loop, probably because he was thirty-one and had no life. He hesitated, thinking of all the exciting things he wanted to do one day when he had time. When he wasn’t overloaded with court appearances, needy clients and a demanding family.
Was such a magical day even possible?
Yeah, he thought sourly. As soon as dinosaurs once again roamed the earth.
“I’m always working,” he said.
Wow. That reeked of dissatisfaction, didn’t it?
She’d noticed. Her gaze sharpened with interest. “So are you a workaholic because you enjoy it or because you can’t see any other way?”
Another tough question. “I have no idea.”
She smiled, and her extraordinary eyes were full of understanding. “You should probably work on that, shouldn’t you?”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Hypocrisy is my middle name.”
That got him. He grinned. She grinned back. The moment lengthened into an interlude so delicious it was almost unbearable.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
He thought about how his day started in the usual manner―yawn worthy―and how exciting she’d made it when he least expected it. He thought about how interesting and beautiful she was, and how she’d already made him smile more this morning than he had in the past week or so, and it wasn’t even noon yet.
She intrigued him more than any woman he’d met in a long time.
A long time.
What if he hadn’t literally stumbled on to her here in Starbucks?
What if his attraction was one-sided?
He didn’t think so, though. Her eyes were too bright and her color too high.
And he’d been around long enough to know when a woman responded to him.
She turned away first, running an unsteady hand through her hair. “Well...”
He cleared his throat, which felt tight with a sudden longing that was all out of proportion with the occasion. Sharing coffee and a breakfast treat with a complete stranger shouldn’t tie him up in knots, he knew, no matter how sexy she was.
Tell that to his raging hormones.
“Well,” he said.
With her head bent low, she flipped a couple pages forward in her book, and then flipped back again. Ultimately, she pushed away the book and pulled the laptop closer, tapping a couple keys. He had the idea she was as flustered as he was, which made him feel a whole lot better, because he was a sudden mass of nerves, desire and uncertainty.
“I should get back to studying.” She tipped up her face just enough for him to see deepening frown lines between her brows. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it.”
Ah, man. Was he a jerk, or what? He rolled his shoulders, trying to release some of his spiking tension. “Sorry. I’m saying that to you a lot, aren’t I?”
“It’s okay,” she said quickly. “It was fun talking to you. But the being-knocked-on-my-butt part? Not so fun.”
He snorted out a laugh.
“But I liked the scone. Thanks for introducing me to something new.”
He slid back his chair with a loud scrape that echoed his frustration. “I’ll just...go on back to my own table and leave you in peace.”
“Give a yell if you get lost.”
The teasing undid him. He wanted more of it. More of her.
The words came out in a rush. “Have dinner with me tonight.”
Her head came up, and she hit him with that intense gaze and eyes that were round and shocked. “Excuse me?”
His hopes crashed and burned via a sickening swoop in his belly. “I knew it. You’re with someone, aren’t you?”
“What? No, but I just don’t think it’s a good idea. Do you?”
“Dinner is always a good idea. You have food, maybe some wine, you get nourishment—it’s great.”
“Don’t you think both our lives are complicated enough without rocking the boat?”
“I thrive on complications.”
“I don’t, though,” she said flatly. “I thrive on smooth sailing.”
Jake took a minute to regroup, thinking hard. He’d asked her out, she’d said no, end of story. He wasn’t in the habit of begging women to be with him, and his pride wouldn’t let him start now. She wasn’t the only woman in Philly, and if she wasn’t interested in him, well, then screw her. Her loss.
So why did he feel like the biggest loser? Why did he have the uncomfortable certainty that something special was slipping through his fingers?
He stared at her, trying to manage his disappointment. “How can I change your mind? I’m just talking dinner here. You have my permission to walk out on me if you’re not having fun. You can duck into the ladies’ room and never come back.”
For a minute, she wavered, dimpling, and he thought he had her.
But then her expression hardened and she shook her head. “I’m not going out with you. You shouldn’t even be asking me.” She gave him a little wave. “Buh-bye.”
Shouldn’t even be asking?
Okay. Why was he getting the feeling he was missing something?
“Why shouldn’t I be ask—”
“Wow,” said a new voice. A mocking female voice, to be exact. “Some things never change, do they? I should have known.”
Hang on. He knew that voice. Jake looked up and— Aah, shit.
Speaking of unneeded complications.
“Avery.” He kept his expression cool. “What’re you doing here?”
Avery, a pretty brunette he’d met at the gym and with whom he’d shared a couple—no, three—memorable interludes at her place, loomed over the table. Apparently she’d also just come from working out, because she had a duffel slung over her shoulder and was wearing shorts and a sports top.
She looked pissed. Her eyes were narrowed, her lips were thin and one manicured hand was firmly planted on a hip. The killing glare she leveled on him warned that she’d be overturning tables and kicking asses in a minute.
His gorgeous companion, meanwhile, had a single brow raised and was watching for his reaction.
“I stopped in for some juice,” Avery said. “But while I’m here, maybe you could explain why you haven’t been returning my texts. Is she the reason? What am I saying? Of course she is.”
A couple nearby heads swiveled in their direction, probably because Avery’s volume was on the increase. As always, when someone was upset, he kept his tone low and reasonable.
“Avery, I told you I wouldn’t be seeing you anymore,” he reminded her.
“No, jackass. What you said was that you were busy at work and would call me in a few days. That was three weeks ago.”
His conscience squirmed guiltily. That did sound like something he’d say.
He opened his mouth with no real idea of how he could smooth things over.
Avery saved him the trouble by dumping her cup of juice in his lap.
Iced juice.
Yelping, he leaped to his feet, dimly aware of the gasps and snickers all around him. Ashley the barista, in particular, gave a loud snort, which he did not appreciate.
Ah, but Avery wasn’t done with him yet.
“Great glasses,” Avery said to Gorgeous. “Dolce & Gabbana?”
Gorgeous, looking startled, touched her frames. “Uh, yes. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Avery hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and gave the woman a rueful smile. “Let me give you a piece of advice, girlfriend. This one?” She jabbed a finger in Jake’s direction; he winced. “He’s good for about three orgasms for about three nights.”
“Avery,” he growled.
“So enjoy it while it lasts,” Avery continued. “But don’t get your feelings involved. Okay? Gotta go, people. Bye.”
Avery wheeled around and swept through the glass door—thank the Good Lord—but the damage was done. Not that he’d been on firm footing with Gorgeous anyway.
Looking grim, she was gathering up her books and laptop and cramming them back into her bag with jerky movements. “I’m leaving, too.”
Fully aware of how ridiculous he looked with the juice stain down his crotch, he tried to do some major damage control. If she walked out of here now, he was certain both that he’d never see her again and that her memory would haunt him for a good long time.
“That’s never happened to me before,” he said quickly.
“Right,” she said, yanking her bag’s zipper closed. “Whatever you say.”
“I know that looked bad,” he continued, lowering his voice because he was anxious not to give the avid onlookers anything else to laugh about, “but we never had a, uh, real relationship. We just, uh, hooked up.”
“It’s none of my business.”
She turned to go. He gave it one last shot. That was his nature. He fought for the important things in life. And he knew, on some instinctual and inexplicable level, that she was important.
“Wait,” he called after her, not caring who was listening. What was a little more humiliation on top of what he’d already endured? “At least tell me your name.”
She swung back around and gaped at him with more horror than he thought was necessary under the circumstances. “Oh, my God. You have no idea who I am, do you?”
Uh-oh. That didn’t sound good.
He froze, thinking hard and fast.
Had they met before? And, if so, how could he ever have forgotten her?
“No,” he admitted. “Who are you?”
Her eyes, which were now a definite and stormy gray, flashed so much ice at him that he felt his veins constrict with the cold.
“Someone you’ll never be hooking up with, buddy. You can count on that.”
Chapter 2
This. Could. Not. Be. Happening.
Charlotte Evans tried to regulate her panicked breathing the following Monday morning, which wasn’t easy while sprinting up the back staircase of Hamilton, Hamilton and Clark. In a pencil skirt and heels.
She should be sitting at her cubicle on the lower level―affectionately known as The Dungeon—of the law firm’s redbrick building, with all the other typing pool peons. She should be keeping her head down and tapping out ninety words per minute so that the work in her inbox didn’t continue to multiply until it smothered her.
Now was no time for a personal crisis.
The appellate brief she was currently working on needed to be filed with the Third Circuit by noon.
N-O-O-N. Which was―she checked her watch―less than three hours from now. Three short hours! How in God’s name was she going to decipher all the microscopic red edits by then? And how was she going to finish―
Later for that alarming thought. Reaching the firm’s reception area, which was on the fourth floor, she took a deep breath, smoothed her skirt and crept through the heavy fire door.
As usual, the stately leather and mahogany made her feel like a clumsy little kid again, as though her mother would show up and smack away her hands if she touched anything too expensive or precious. Which was pretty much anything in the reception area, where clients had their first impression of the firm. There were oversize windows framed by striped silk drapes, potted palms in every corner, Oriental lamps and rugs that probably cost more than her beat-up used car was worth, and a crystal chandelier that sparkled like flawless diamonds against the carved ceiling moldings.
Meredith, the receptionist, gatekeeper and queen of all she surveyed up here, sat at her post behind the granite counter. Her headset was in place and her phone-answering voice was singsong perfect.
“Good morning. Thank you for calling Hamilton, Hamilton and Clark,” she was murmuring into her mic. “How may I direct your call?”
The only thing out of place on this floor that showcased the extreme elegance of one of Philadelphia’s most prestigious law firms, Charlotte thought, was―
“Mommy!”
Right over there. The two-year-old boy taking the M&M’s out of the Waterford crystal candy jar on the nearest coffee table and alternately eating them and hiding them in the dried moss in one of the palm’s pots.
Wonderful.
“Hi, cutie.” Grinning and stooping, she caught Harry, her shrieking son, as he sprinted across the seating area. “Shhh,” she told him, even though she knew it was a useless exercise, because Harry only had one volume, which was loud, and one speed, which was fast. “We use our quiet voice and walking feet at Mommy’s work, okay?”
“I am using my quiet voice!” Harry informed her, his gray eyes wide and affronted.
Ignoring the disapproving glance from Meredith, who was still talking into her headset and pushing buttons on her phone, Charlotte settled Harry on her hip and gave him a discreet mother’s once-over.
The first thing she noticed, due to the telltale area of flattened black curls in the back, was that his hair hadn’t been combed. So that was a demerit right there. On the plus side, he’d brushed his teeth. On the minus side, though, he was sporting dried toothpaste on the corner of his mouth. Oh, and a swath of what looked like dried syrup on one chipmunk cheek. Nice.
Continuing on to the clothes front, there was bad news: he was wearing his Bugs Bunny pajamas. With the feet. Which might explain why his Velcro gym shoes were on the wrong feet, but, then again, might not.
The bottom line? Her adorable and generally clean son had returned from a night with his father looking like a refugee.
Typical.
Still, this two-year-old ragamuffin was the love of her life, and she was glad to see him, even if this was a very bad time. Nuzzling his chubby little face, she turned to his father, whom she was not glad to see.
Roger Miller stood there in blue scrubs and athletic shoes, furiously thumbing buttons on his smartphone.
Also typical.
For the last year of their relationship, which had ended about a year ago, the only parts of Roger she’d seen were the top of his head as he texted and answered emails, and the back of him, as he left to go back to the hospital, which was the love of his life.
She was not in the mood for waiting for the oh-so-important surgical resident to acknowledge her, but she hid her irritation behind a pleasant voice for Harry’s sake.
“What’s going on, Roger? You know I’m working.”
Lowering the phone, he glanced up at her with those brown eyes and managed to look moderately rueful. “I know, but I’m on call, and they called me. I have to get to the hospital in half an hour and scrub in. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“But, Roger,” she said, as sweetly as she could with her spiking temper, “I’m also working. As you can see.”
He waved a hand. “Why can’t you get one of the other secretaries to cover for you until you can take him to day care after lunch? How big a deal could that be?”
Okay. Forget sweet.
“A very big deal.”
They glared at each other across the top of Harry’s head, and then Meredith intervened.
“I’m going to the kitchen for a snack,” she called over the counter. “Does anyone out there want a cookie?”
“Me!” Vaulting out of Charlotte’s arms like an Olympic gymnast in training, Harry ran across the reception area on his tiny little mismatched feet and took Meredith’s hand when she offered it to him. “And I want a double cappuccino iced tea, too!”
Meredith’s laughter disappeared down the long hallway to the kitchen. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, Meredith,” Charlotte called.
Meredith waved.
Charlotte turned back to Roger and took a long minute to wrestle her temper under control. They were a team, and she needed to remember that. A united team with a single crucial goal: to raise Harry into a happy and contributing member of society. As a team, they needed to negotiate and compromise, and as a mother, she needed to not throttle her baby daddy.
No matter how hard said baby daddy made it on her at times.
“I can’t take him right now, Roger.”
A look of absolute befuddlement crossed over Roger’s features, giving Charlotte the feeling that she’d really challenged his imagination by suggesting that anything about her lowly job could matter to anyone.
There went her self-esteem, slipping another several notches.
As though Jake Hamilton hadn’t done enough of a job on it the other day by not remembering her from work. The whole time they were chatting it up at Starbucks, he’d had no idea that she was one of his employees.
None.
True, they worked on separate floors and had only interacted, in passing, at the firm’s occasional staff appreciation luncheons. He wasn’t involved in the firm’s hiring process and had probably never had the need to come to the catacombs, where she worked. True, she hadn’t laid eyes on him in several months, probably since the last staff Christmas party, and then only from a distance across the crowded conference room.
But, still.
How could she feel good about herself when she’d made such a non-impression on him? When she recognized not only him, but all the other Hamiltons who worked at the firm, because she made it her business to know the faces of the people who put food on her table? The bottom line was that she’d been here at the firm for years and he didn’t recognize her or know that he and his family were her employers.
He did not, in short, know her from Adam or Eve.
Yeah. That had been a swift kick to the solar plexus. Especially because she was so exquisitely aware of who he was and had been since the second she first laid eyes on him. She’d been a brand-new employee the day that he strode out of the elevator and gave her a crisp nod as she was getting on.
She’d been stunned.
What woman wouldn’t be?
And now, two days after their interlude at Starbucks, she was still deflated and agitated, her poor stupid head filled with images of the unexpected heat she’d seen in Jake’s eyes, and Jake probably hadn’t given her a second thought. He’d probably hooked up with Ashley the barista, Avery the disgruntled sex buddy, or any one of the dozens of women he probably kept dangling at any given time.
The jerk.
A sexy jerk, yeah, but still a jerk.
Anyway, the issue now wasn’t Jake Hamilton, or how much he’d seemed into her the other day, or how he’d asked her out to dinner, or how he was, in fact, nothing but an inveterate player who’d probably only hit on her at Starbucks because it was a reflex with him, like coughing when his throat was dry.
The issue was her self-esteem, which had been in a steady decline for ages, ever since she told Roger about her accidental pregnancy (ripped condom) and saw the look of absolute horror on his face. It was as though the only thing worse than having an unplanned baby at that point in his life was having an unplanned baby with her.
Then there’d been the breakup, which wasn’t quite as brutal as the one in that old movie The War of the Roses but had been tough nonetheless. Then they’d gone to court to establish everyone’s parental responsibilities, and then she’d shelved her plans to go to law school full-time because she had to also work and support a child.
Roger, meanwhile, had blithely continued with his education and career because his daddy had more money than God and was happy to foot the bill.
Must be nice, eh?
Now she was a typing drone in the secretarial pool, a single mother juggling diapers, toddler tantrums, unscheduled illnesses and pediatric visits, and a part-time law student managing a class a semester. He, on the other hand, was deep into his residency and well on his way to becoming a real-life Dr. McDreamy.
Not that she was bitter, she thought, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him. Much.
But at the rate she was going, he’d be a millionaire with a thriving practice and his first yacht while she was still trying to finish a first-year law student’s course load.
Was it any wonder she felt invisible half the time?
Well, she was sick of it. Sick of being a second-class citizen—and an invisible one, at that. If she didn’t stand up for herself and her needs, who would? Roger? Please.
She was tired of being a doormat, and it was going to stop.
Right now.
Roger seemed to have given up on trying to understand how her job was relevant, and moved on to the only important thing in any conversation, as far as he was concerned: his wants and needs and any petty annoyances that might inconvenience him.
“Why can’t you call your mother to come pick Harry up?” he asked, a note of challenge in his voice now.
“Well, first of all, since today is your day with Harry, it’s your responsibility to care for him. Not mine,” she reminded him. He scowled. “Second, even if I wanted to call her, my mother is in doctor’s appointments and physical therapy for most of the day.”
“Shit,” Roger muttered, mostly to himself. “What am I going to do now?”
His narcissism was really amazing, she thought. True and pure, as unadulterated as winter’s first snow.
“Mom’s doing pretty well, by the way. Thanks for asking. She has much more energy after the heart procedure.”
Roger’s lips thinned with growing annoyance. “Glad to hear it. I always liked her.”
“Right.” She checked her watch and saw how much of her precious time had ticked away. That brief wasn’t going to type itself. Not to mention the fact that this was the floor Jake Hamilton worked on, and the longer she hung out here, the greater her chances of running into him, which would be awkward, to say the least. So she and Roger needed to wrap this up so she could go back to the basement, where she belonged.
“You need to take Harry and go, okay? Drop him off at your mother’s or something. She’s always glad to see—”
“I can’t,” Roger said flatly. “I don’t want to interrupt her spa day. You’ll have to—”
Sentences that began with you’ll have to always ended badly. It was a rule.
Accordingly, she marched up to Roger and got in his face. So much for being a team.
“Kindly do not tell me what I need to do,” she began, keeping her voice low, because he would not reduce her to a banshee here at her place of employment. Thank God there was no one else around at the moment to see this developing scene; the last thing she needed was gossip. She always took great pains to keep her private life private, and the other staff would have a field day with any little tidbit about her personal life. “You need to call in to the hospital and tell them that—”
Roger loomed over her, his features contorted with anger. “I can’t just—”
“Is there a problem?” asked a cool male voice behind her.
Oh, God.
Charlotte stiffened with sudden paralysis, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach like a stone, probably landing somewhere deep in Philly’s sewer system.
She knew that voice. That voice belonged to the absolute last person she wanted to see. That voice, like the person who owned it, was nothing but trouble.
Roger’s arrogant gaze flickered past her shoulder, and his voice, when he spoke, was so condescending that she wanted to dropkick him into next year.
“I don’t believe anyone asked for your input, my brother.”
Apparently Jake Hamilton felt the same way about harming Roger. His frigid tone, when he responded, was like being assaulted with ice chards.
“I’m afraid you’re getting my input, my brother. Since you’re standing in my building and badgering a woman, you’ll be getting a lot of my input.”
Roger’s face turned a blotchy and angry purple.
Uh-oh.
“It’s okay,” Charlotte said quickly, trying to defuse the situation before these two badasses decided to take their dispute outside or something. Embracing her inner coward, she kept her back to Jake and hoped he didn’t recognize her voice. “We were just having a—”
That was as far as she got before Jake swooped in, clamped a hand on her upper arm and spun her to face him. She spluttered a protest; he ignored it. His intent gaze locked in on her face, skating over all her features as though he needed to double- and triple-check to make sure it was really her, and his emotions were raw and as readable as a Times Square billboard.
Surprise. Excitement. Wide-eyed delight.
“It’s you,” he said.
“Yes,” she admitted, trying to calm her racing pulse.
Charlotte knew better than to let this man under her skin. Well, farther under her skin, anyway. She knew he wasn’t for her under any circumstances. He was one of her bosses, for one. He was a womanizer, for another. Most importantly, she had a child to raise, a mother with dicey health to care for, a law degree to finish and no time for nonsense.
A fling with a man who, from all appearances, flirted with anything with boobs, definitely qualified as nonsense.
Duh.
And yet, as she stared into the vivid brown flash of his eyes and saw the color rise over his cheekbones, it was hard to remember any of her concerns.
Jake Hamilton was breathtaking.
On Saturday, he’d been boyish and accessible, his loose-limbed body tall, muscular and athletic in those knit shorts and shirt. She’d been arrested by the span of his shoulders, the sinew of his arms and legs and the unmistakable roundness of his butt.
Today he was all dark-suited, red-tied business. His shirt was starched, his cuff links were shiny, and his shoes were buffed to the kind of polish that required sunglasses to protect the eyes.
And his face—
Intelligent brown eyes framed by heavy brows. Angular cheekbones. Full lips that probably spent an inordinate amount of time kissing one woman or another. Skin so smooth she longed to run her hands all over it—every inch—just to see if she could find a flaw.
When he looked at her, she felt hot.
When she looked at him, she felt breathless.
Not a good combination if she wanted to keep her head, was it?
When you looked like Jake Hamilton, she wondered, was it really your fault that women trailed you the way rats trailed the Pied Piper?
No, she decided.
But that didn’t mean she had to be a rat.
“What’s your name?” Jake demanded.
“Charlotte Evans.”
“What are you doing here?”
Thanks for the reminder, Jake.
He still had no clue that they’d been working in the same building for years. She still meant nothing to him. Never had, never would.
“I work here,” she said flatly.
Those brows lowered, creating a thundercloud effect that would have been pretty funny under any other circumstances. He cocked his ear, probably to make sure it wasn’t playing tricks on him.
“You—” he began, faltering.
“Work here, yes,” she finished for him. “For two years now. In the secretarial pool. Thanks for remembering.”
“Now that the introductions are finished,” interjected Roger, “I’d appreciate it if I could finish up my conversation with Charlotte, okay? Thanks.”
Jake stilled, except for the tightening of his jaw, and focused all his fierce energy on Roger.
Roger blinked, looking away first with a huff of impatience.
“And you are?” Jake asked in a tone appropriate for asking a dog why he was pooping on his freshly shampooed carpet.
“Roger Miller.”
They did not shake hands, which was probably for the best. There was so much negativity in the air at the moment that any physical contact between the two men would probably lead to an arm-wrestling contest followed by the snapping of someone’s arm as it broke in two.
“And why are you here, Roger?” Jake’s voice was silky smoothness over a layer of unyielding granite. “Interrupting my employee’s workday and upsetting her?”
Roger’s lips thinned. He opened his mouth to say something that would probably be pissy if not outright rude, but there was a new interruption.
Small footsteps raced up the hallway from the kitchen, and Harry, now holding a to-go coffee cup that thankfully had a lid on it, ran into view. Please, God, she prayed, do NOT let this child drop his drink on this expensive rug.
“Look, Mommy!” In his typical greeting, Harry launched himself at her legs, giving her a quick, one-handed hug before holding up his arms and demanding to be lifted. She obliged, settling him on her hip. “I have a chocolate milk-a-ccino. Taste it!”
He offered the cup, which was smeared with something that may once have been chocolate but was now disgusting.
She tried to look rueful as she declined this generous offer. “Maybe in a minute, Harry.”
Harry, luckily, rarely stayed on one subject long enough to get his feelings hurt. “Who’s that?” He pointed a fat and smudgy finger at Jake.
“That’s my boss, Mr. Hamilton,” she told Harry. “I work for him.”
Harry gave Jake an appraising look. “I’m Harry. I’m four.” He held up four fingers.
“Nice try.” Charlotte adjusted his fingers down to two. “You know how old you are. Stop trying to pretend you’re older.”
Harry scowled at her for calling him out, and then sipped his milk in what he apparently thought was a dignified manner.
The weight of Jake’s gaze felt as though someone had covered her face with a lead blanket. Deciding that she’d avoided the moment long enough, she hitched up her chin and looked at him over Harry’s head, feeling defiant.
His reaction to this news that she was a single mother—he’d figure out that she and Roger had never been married soon enough—didn’t matter to her. Of course it didn’t. If people judged her harshly, then that was their problem, not hers. She loved Harry, who was the pride of her life, and anyone who thought less of her personal situation was a moron. And her life was too full and busy to waste time with morons.
It was just that she’d had a few painful and best-forgotten experiences with men who had wanted to date her, found out she had a kid, then took the next train to I’m outta here, never to be seen again.
Jake’s expression was still. Dark. Utterly unreadable.
They stared at each other for one lengthy and terrible moment before Jake broke free of whatever had him in its grip. Something about him eased up, making him much less forbidding, and he studied Harry for a second or two.
Harry, all wide-eyed and fat-cheeked behind his cup, stared back.
“So you’re two, eh?” Jake’s lips curled into a half smile. “That makes you old enough to get a job, doesn’t it, little dude?”
Harry darted Charlotte an incredulous glance and squealed with laughter. “A job? No way!”
“Well, you’re welcome to hang out at the office for as long as you need to, anyway. Kids are always welcome here,” Jake informed him.
Charlotte’s jaw dropped.
“We’ll find something for you to do, okay?” Jake continued. “God knows some of the lawyers around here aren’t that much smarter than you. How does that sound?”
Harry grinned, revealing his tiny set of perfectly white teeth. “Great. Yay!”
With a definitive nod, Jake adjusted his cuffs and spared Roger a sidelong look that was none too warm. “I’ll let you two wrap things up.” He paused. “Quickly.”
“Thanks,” Charlotte said.
Jake leveled all of his attention on her, which gave her the uncomfortable sensation of being a butterfly pinned to someone’s board.
“I’ll need to see you in my office,” he said as he strode off. “Five minutes.”
Chapter 3
Jake planted his palms on his desk and leaned into it, struggling to master his thoughts. His thoughts did not want to be mastered. They were, in fact, spinning out of control, as though his head had become a child’s top, ricocheting off walls and furniture legs with no sign of stopping.
After a weekend of high agitation, no sleep and stalking the Starbucks for any sign of her, he’d found his mystery woman.
Well, found wasn’t exactly the right word, was it?
He’d stumbled on to his mystery woman.
He’d discovered that his mystery woman was no real mystery, after all.
She’d been working right here, in this very building, under his very nose, for the past couple years, and he was willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that he’d never seen her before in his life, because how could he have ever laid eyes on a woman like that and forgotten her?
He must have, though.
Which made him a dumbass.
A blind dumbass, to be precise, and that was not a good feeling.
Shit.
Sudden exhaustion made him slump into his leather chair.
Renewed agitation made him get back up again and pace.
Charlotte Evans. A firm employee. And since he was a partner in the firm, that made her his employee.
A man couldn’t go around lusting after his employees, not unless he wanted to get sued for sexual harassment. And if he did enter into a discreet, consensual relationship with Charlotte—a big if, considering he didn’t know the status of her relationship with Dr. Punko out there—word would get out. Word always got out. And what would happen then? Office morale would plummet, for one. And his family would hand him his head on a platter for introducing his personal drama into the workplace, for another.
Double shit.
So where did that leave him?
Screwed, that’s where.
Because he thought about Charlotte Evans, firm employee. He saw her eyes when he didn’t want to. Heard her laugh when he wanted silence. Had been haunted by her all weekend.
Wanted her.
After about the tenth lap of his office, he wore himself out and rested a hip on the edge of his desk. And what about—
There was a soft knock on his ajar door, and Charlotte poked her head inside. “Hi.”
Snapping to attention with an abrupt spike in his pulse rate, he stood. “Come in.”
“Come on, little man.” Tugging Harry’s hand, she ushered him inside the office and tried to steer him toward the tufted leather sofa against the far wall. “I want you to sit right here and be very—”
But Harry had seen the large jar of M&M’s on Jake’s desk.
“Candy, Mommy!”
“Not a chance,” she told him.
No worries. Harry wheeled around, spotted the giant aquarium of tropical fish and plants and veered in that direction with a shout of surprised delight that made Jake grin. “Look, Mommy! Fish!” Harry raced over and pointed at the orange one with black and white stripes. “And look! There’s Nemo! Hi, Nemo!”
Charlotte shot Jake an apologetic look. “Harry ends every sentence with an exclamation point, in case you hadn’t noticed. Don’t tap on the glass, Harry. It disturbs the fish, okay?” It didn’t seem to matter, though, because Harry now had both palms and his nose pressed up against the aquarium and was in toddler rapture, murmuring to the fish. “Sorry about the fingerprints,” she told Jake, lowering her voice. “And I told Roger that I couldn’t have Harry here, but—”
Jake raised a hand, stopping her. “It’s okay. Kids are welcome here.”
“That’s very nice of you, but it’s a law firm, and Harry has no idea what an inside voice is. Oh, and he left a half pound of M&M’s in the potted plant in the reception area, and his typing sucks.”
Jake laughed.
“So I need to get him out of here. And I will. I just need to—”
“I didn’t know you had a child.”
Jake resisted the urge to clap his hand over his big mouth. Whoa. Where had that come from? And why had he said it, even if he was thinking it? He did, thankfully, restrain the follow-up question on the tip of his tongue, which had to do with Harry’s father—who was clearly a punk ass if ever he’d seen one—and whether he and Charlotte had an ongoing romantic relationship.
None of his business, he knew, even if the curiosity was gnawing on his guts with sharp little teeth.
Those striking eyes of hers turned flinty. “Among other things you didn’t know about me, yes.” She seemed to regret her words immediately, because she fidgeted on her feet, checked her watch and then shot a quick glance at Harry to make sure he was staying out of trouble. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a brief to finish typing and it’s got to be filed by noon, so I really need to—”
“Yeah. About that.” Jake waved a hand at her employment file, which he’d grabbed from their HR person and flipped through in the past few minutes. “I didn’t know you graduated from Penn with a degree in international relations. Which makes you uniquely overqualified for the typing pool here at the office.”
A subtle flair of panic crossed over her features but, to her credit, she quickly mastered it. “Yes, but I need the full-time work and the benefits are good. I have a mouth to feed. I need a job. I need this job.”
Admiration tugged at his mouth, making him want to smile, but he stifled it because he didn’t think she’d appreciate it. “You don’t get it. Keeping you in the typing pool isn’t making the best use of your talents, which is foolish. And I may be blind, but I’m not foolish.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed stare of suspicion. “You’ll have to help me out here. What does that mean?”
“It means that I’m making you my new paralegal, effective immediately. Thereby sparing myself the time and trouble of interviewing more people. I’ve been pretty unimpressed with the candidates I’ve seen so far, and it’s been a month since my old paralegal relocated to Boston.”
Charlotte blinked at him, working hard to get her jaw up off the floor. “But—”
“Which means that you get the office next to mine, which has a TV in it for viewing video depositions, but you can use it to let Harry watch kid shows while he’s here.”
Charlotte rubbed her temple and took a moment to get her thoughts together.
“But—” she repeated weakly.
“Mommy!” Harry jumped up and down, pointing into the tank. “It’s a starfish! A STARFISH, Mommy!”
“Wow. I see it,” she answered before turning back to Jake. “What’s going on? I don’t understand this at all.”
Yeah. There was a lot of that going around, apparently, because Jake didn’t understand his attraction to this woman at all, or his strange compulsion to help her out where he could and make her complicated life a little bit easier. Oh, and he also didn’t understand how he thought he’d work closely with her without falling deeper into lust, but he figured he’d tackle that hurdle one day at a time.
“All you need to understand is that I’m giving you a promotion to a job that’s much more educational for a law student. Which comes with a fifty percent raise, by the way. But if you think you’ll miss the tedium of typing for eight or nine hours every day, then feel free to refuse, and I’ll continue my search for a good paralegal. It’s entirely up to you.”
She hesitated.
“Mommy? Mommy! Can we get a fish tank for my bedroom?”
Charlotte rolled her eyes, but Jake wanted to share a high five with the little guy for helping him make his case. Kids were expensive, weren’t they? They needed and wanted things, like food, shoes and fish. A paralegal could afford many more kid things than a secretary could, and Charlotte was more than smart enough to know it.
And if dangling this tempting offer in front of a mother’s nose made Jake a bit of a devil, well, that was a charge he could live with. To get to know her better he could live with it, no problem.
And the fact that he was lusting after a woman who was a mother? Also no problem, he discovered to his own surprise.
However, the fact that he was simultaneously thinking about how he could get closer to Charlotte while issuing himself stern warnings about staying the hell away from her...well, that was a problem.
A big freaking problem.
An even bigger problem was that, the longer he stared at her, the less he cared about problems, big or otherwise.
She was severe today, with her glorious hair scraped back into a bun at the nape of her neck that should be forever consigned to grannies and librarians. Plus, she was buttoned down into a navy blue suit that was so drab it made Jake want to find the designer and bludgeon him.
Even so, there was no hiding the curve of her hips or the hint of cleavage up top. Her long and sexy legs ended in a pair of pointy nude heels, the kind that were a gift to men everywhere, and her ass, in that straight skirt, was nothing short of spectacular.
Her face was tight, her lips thin and her eyes stormy as she struggled with her dilemma. And right there, served up on a silver platter for him, was the answer to one of the questions that had plagued him all weekend.
The prickling electricity he’d felt between them? She felt it, too, and she knew it could very well lead to something complicated...but interesting.
Why else would she hesitate to accept such a great promotion?
Maybe the gentlemanly thing to do would be to give her the promotion as some other attorney’s paralegal. He could snap his fingers, and it would be done.
Too bad he wasn’t feeling gentlemanly.
He was feeling hot and bothered, and he suspected he’d feel that way for a while. Why? Because the only cure he could imagine was unbuttoning all that armor she wore and getting inside her. And, much as he wanted to do just that, he was still rational enough to know it was a bad idea.
But he was feeling pretty irrational, too. “Ticktock,” he murmured, tapping his watch.
The storm behind her eyes had turned to a glare, and her chest was heaving up and down, which was quite the sight to see, even if her ugly jacket blocked the view. She stepped closer, ready to go toe-to-toe with him, even if he was her boss.
He liked that.
“And what’s in it for you?” she demanded, low.
He shrugged. “A good paralegal, I hope,” he said, keeping his tone silky. “What else?”
“You hit on me the other day. Back when you had no idea who I was. I know it doesn’t mean anything, because you probably hit on every woman who stands still long enough for you to ask her what her sign is—”
He scowled. For one, this assessment of his, uh, exuberant dating life cut a little too close to the bone, frankly, and, for another, his fascination with her bore no resemblance to the passing lust he felt for pretty women in general, which disturbed him.
“—but I’m not trying to be the victim of any sexual harassment. So, like I said Saturday, I don’t think our spending time together is a good idea.”
“I’m a professional, Charlotte. Have I done or said anything inappropriate this morning?”
“No, but—”
“You think I want to ruin my career with sexual harassment allegations?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Or maybe you think I’m so taken with you that I can’t think straight or tell right from wrong.”
Her defiant gaze wavered and fell. “Of course not.”
Ironic, eh? His thinking didn’t feel straight at all right now. Good thing she had no idea how his hands twitched for the feel of her.
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Ann Christopher
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Law Number 1: Never Fall For Your Boss! Too late since Charlotte Evans has been secretly head over heels for Jake Hamilton ever since she started working at his family’s renowned Philadelphia law firm. She’s too smart to expect the diehard bachelor to suddenly turn into Mr. Right. Until the infamous ladies’ man starts putting the moves on her…Jake’s prowess is legendary—in and out of the courtroom. And he’s never met a woman he couldn’t seduce. Except Charlotte Evans. Jake’s lovely assistant may be the only female on the planet who sees past his playboy façade.And now Jake wants forever with the one woman he can’t have. Or can he? Because when it comes to love, some laws are made to be broken.The Hamiltons: Laws of Love Family. Justice. Passion.