Egomaniac

“You what?” Roman Olivet stared at me like I’d just told him I killed Queen Elizabeth. He shook his head. “Bad idea, man.”

I looked down at my scotch, swirling the amber liquid in my glass for a minute before bringing it to my lips. “She’s going to help me while Tess is out for three months in exchange for rent. It’ll give her a chance to find a place she can afford and get back on her feet.”

Roman sucked back his beer. “I asked you to rent me space two years ago, and you told me you couldn’t share space with anyone.”

“I can’t. This is temporary.”

He squinted at me. “She’s hot, isn’t she?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You’re such a dick.”

“What the hell? Emerie said the same thing.”

Roman’s eyebrows jumped. “She called you a dick, and you’re letting her share office space with you? She must have some ass.”

I tried to maintain my stoic face, but Roman and I have been friends forever. He caught the slight tick at the corner of my lip.

He shook his head and laughed. “A good ass is your kryptonite, my friend.”

To be honest, I was still trying to figure out what the hell had come over me a few hours ago. Not only did I invite this woman—yes, she had a spectacular ass—to move into my office, but I’d had to convince her to take me up on my offer. I repeat, I talked her into moving into my Park Avenue office—the space I loathed sharing with anyone—for free.

I tossed back the rest of my scotch and held up my hand to call for a refill.

“What kind of law does she practice?”

“She’s not a lawyer. She’s a psychologist.”

“A shrink? You’re going to have a bunch of crazy people walking around your office?”

I hadn’t exactly thought of that. What if her patients were psychotic with a variety of multiple personality disorders? Or ex-cons who slit the throats of old ladies but escaped hefty prison sentences because they were insane? I’m going to be murdered because of a great ass. No ass is worth that.

Then again…how sane are my own clients? Seventy-one-year-old Ferdinand Armonk, who is worth a hundred-million dollars, was arrested last year for assaulting his twenty-three-year-old bride with his cane because he caught her tongue between his physical therapist’s legs. This is the crazy I deal with on an everyday basis already.

I shrugged. “Her crazy can’t be much worse than my crazy.”

Candice Armonk had her husband arrested for hitting her with a cane and was trying to get half his net worth out of the divorce. Roman wasn’t just my best friend, he was also my private investigator and had worked the Armonk case. He’d found an old girl-on-girl porno Candice did at eighteen while she still lived in France. It was titled Candy Caned—she got off on women caning her, but apparently her husband giving her one whack that didn’t leave a mark was worth fifty mil. When she came to my office with her lawyer for a settlement conference, she’d refused to sit in the conference room with Ferdinand until I put the cane outside of the building.

The bartender brought my new drink and I sipped. “Crazy will fit right in.”

After a morning conference across town, I walked into my office and found Emerie pacing back and forth in my spare office wearing a headset as she talked on the phone. Her back was to me as I turned up the hallway, which gave me a chance to take my time checking her out. She had on a black fitted skirt that hugged her in all the right places and a white silky blouse. When she heard my footsteps, she turned, and I noticed her feet were bare. The bright red polish on her toes matched her smiling lips. An odd tightness in my chest had me smiling back while wondering if I needed to take a Prilosec or something. I waved and walked into my office, which was filled with my office furniture—though I hadn’t arranged for it to be redelivered yet.

Ten minutes later, Emerie knocked lightly on my door even though it was open. Her shoes were back on—red heels covering her red toes. Nice.

“Good morning.”

“Morning.” I nodded.

She lifted a pad and took a pencil from behind her ear. “You had a busy morning. Six calls: Jasper Mason, Marlin Appleton, Michael Goddman, Kurt Whaler, Alan Green, and Arnold Schwartz. I wrote down the messages on a message book I found in your supply closet. Hope you don’t mind me helping myself.”

I waved a hand. “By all means, help yourself. I don’t know where anything is without Tess around anyway.”

She ripped the messages from the carbon copy message book and put them on my desk. “Here you go.”

“Thank you. By the way, did you have something to do with getting my furniture back from storage?”

“Oh. Yes. I hope you don’t mind. The storage company called this morning and wanted to schedule the delivery for today, so I took the first appointment he had available. The contractor was here cleaning up when I got in this morning, and said he was done with anything that would make a mess. He’s going to send one of his guys by later to do the last few things like hang the light switch covers and put the sign back up in the lobby. The boxes with your personal items from your office are on the floor. I was going to go through them and set it up for you, but thought that might be overstepping.”

“I wouldn’t have minded. But thank you. Thanks for taking care of all that this morning. I thought I was walking in to sit on the folding chair and table again. This is a nice surprise.”

“No problem.” She looked down at her watch. “I have a video conference in a few minutes, but I’m open from twelve-thirty to two today if you want help setting up your office. I can order in and make it a working lunch, if you want.”

“That would be great. I have a call that should end before twelve-thirty.”

“What do you feel like for lunch?”

“Surprise me.”

“Anything I want?”

“Anything. Unlike you, I’m not picky.”

Emerie smiled and turned to walk back to her office. I stopped her to ask a question that had been on my mind since dinner with Roman last night.

“What kind of psychologist are you? Do you specialize?”

“I do. I thought I told you. I’m a marriage counselor.”

“A marriage counselor?”

“Yes, I work to save troubled marriages.”

“We definitely didn’t discuss that. I’d have remembered, considering I also work with troubled marriages—to dissolve them permanently.”

“Is it a problem?”

I shook my head. “Shouldn’t be.”

Famous last words.