Indiscretion

I glanced back at the booth while waiting at the bar for our drinks. Naomi’s story was something else. The woman was really something else—gorgeous, curvy, smart, a smart ass, and a badass, too. If you asked me, she’d gotten the sharp end of the stick. She should’ve received an award for making it so that piece of shit could never touch a child again, not been stripped of everything she’d worked for.

I returned to the table, trying not to feel even more attracted to her than I was before as I passed her a fresh glass of wine.

“Thank you.” She sipped. “I have to say, you have my curiosity piqued. I expected one of those canned, every-person-has-a-right-to-a-defense answers like all criminal-defense attorneys keep in their cash-lined pocket.”

I spread my arms across the back of the booth. “Based on that statement, it sounds like you don’t think very highly of defense attorneys. Yet you came in to interview for a position working for one. Why is that?”

She bit her plump bottom lip. “Truth?”

I took a page out of her book. “No, lie to me. It’s what us lowlife criminal-defense attorneys like.”

She smiled. “The thought of representing criminals doesn’t sit well with me. But I’ve been on at least fifty interviews since moving here, and as soon as the person I’m talking to hears about my disbarment, my resume gets round-filed. I thought I might have a better shot with you.”

“Because Ben and Lily are my friends?”

Her lip twitched. “No, because you’re a criminal-defense attorney, so your moral standards are likely lower.”

I covered my heart with my hand. “Ouch.”

She chuckled. “Sorry.”

I wasn’t sure I could fault her for feeling that way after working in a DA’s office. No doubt she’d witnessed some pretty shitty tactics to get some pretty shitty clients off. “It’s fine. I get it. Some days it’s not an easy job.”

She sipped her wine. “So what’s your war story?”

Very few people knew the reason I’d gone into criminal-defense work. Ben did, but he was tight-lipped like me and didn’t discuss a friend’s private life. I wasn’t even sure why I’d mentioned to Naomi that I had a story, but maybe her sharing made me want to gain some respect from her.

“I grew up in a family that was pretty well off. My mom didn’t work, we had a summer home, and I went to private school. My dad was an executive at a brokerage firm. In seventh grade, I came home to a team of federal agents swarming my house. There were like thirty of them. My mom was standing on the lawn crying, holding my little sister. I think Sarah was two or three at the time.”

“The feds were there for your dad?”

I nodded. “The firm he worked at was being investigated for running a Ponzi scheme. He was being investigated. The feds froze all of my parents’ assets, and all of their friends and family quickly scattered. No one wanted the stench to attach to them. My mom wound up selling her mom’s jewelry to pay for a terrible lawyer, and I remember the guy kept pushing my dad to take a deal because there was so much evidence against him. My dad wouldn’t, though. He was steadfast that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and he was being set up to take the fall. Long story short, my dad was convicted and sentenced to twenty years. Nine months into his sentence, he committed suicide in prison.”

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

I nodded. “Thank you. But it gets worse. Not long after, a guy who worked at the same firm in the accounting department was diagnosed with end-stage heart failure. He was never accused of anything and hadn’t been part of the case in any way. One day, he walked into the local precinct and admitted that it had been him who cooked the books and funneled hundreds of millions into an offshore account. He handed over all the proof to clear my father of any wrongdoing, because he wanted to make things right before dying.” I scoffed. “Make things right for who, I don’t know. But that’s what happened. Years later, when I was in law school, I got my father’s case files from the DOJ under the Freedom of Information Act, and I had my mom get my dad’s attorney’s files. I was still a student, and I could’ve poked a million holes in the government’s case that his attorney had missed.”

“So you decided to go into criminal law to try to stop that from happening again?”

I nodded. “White-collar cases are complex. The people running scams are usually smarter than the prosecutors and the defense attorneys. So you have to work harder to put on a defense for an innocent person.”

Naomi sat back in the booth. “Wow. So we’ve both lost a lot because the legal system failed people.”

“I’m not going to lie, the money is pretty damn good, too. But that’s not why I went into the field.”

“That story makes me look at you differently.”

“Yeah?” I drank my beer. “Like maybe you want to come home with me and make me forget for a little while?”

She smiled. “No chance. But maybe, just maybe, you’re not as big of a jerk as I thought.”

“Give it time.” I winked. “I’ll make you question that opinion.”

We both laughed. Too soon, our drinks were empty again. I gestured to her glass. “You want another?”

“I should probably get going.”

Disappointment hit me harder than it should’ve. “Alright. I’ll call you an Uber.”

“Oh, you don’t really have to do that. I can just take the subway.”

I swiped my phone on and called up the app. “No way in hell I’m letting you take the train after two drinks.”

The Uber was only four minutes away, so I quickly closed the app, and we walked outside to wait together.

“Thank you for the drinks,” Naomi said. “And the ride home.”

A black Acura pulled to the curb. I double checked that the license plate matched the driver assigned and opened the rear car door. “This is you.”

“I guess I’ll see you at the next event the happy couple hosts.” She smiled. “Maybe it will be a baby shower next year.”

A bizarre panic washed over me. Pregnancy was nine months long, and I didn’t think Ben and Lily were going to start a family for a few years. The thought of not seeing this woman for any extended period of time made me feel off-kilter. An odd tightness gripped my chest.

Naomi waved one last time and folded into the back of the car. When she reached for the door, my off feeling turned into a full-blown panic attack. I grabbed it just as it was about to close.

“Wait!”

Naomi’s brows drew together. “What’s wrong?”

Apparently I’ve lost my mind. “Come work for me. The job is yours if you want it.”

***

“It’s not that fucking funny.”

Ben held his stomach while he continued to cackle his ass off. “You’re wrong. It’s fucking hysterical.”

I raked a hand through my hair. “Why don’t you tell her you don’t think it’s a good idea that she works with your friend? Tell her what an asshole I am.”

“Me? Why would I think it’s not a good idea? I’m not the one who’s going to screw myself again by fucking around with someone at work. That’s your specialty.”

I shook my head, staring down at the carpet. “What the hell was I thinking offering her the job?”

“You were thinking with the wrong head, my friend.”

After ten minutes of standing on the street, trying to figure out why the hell I’d done what I’d just done, I walked back to Ben and Lily’s from the bar. Why had I panicked at the thought of not seeing Naomi again? The obvious answer was that I liked her, which I couldn’t deny that I did, but I liked the women I slept with too, and never wanted to spend eight hours a day around them. Lord knows, Emily could attest to that.

Ben laid his hand on my shoulder. “She’ll do great.”

That wasn’t the issue. I had no doubt Naomi was intelligent and could do the job. But…but…she’d gotten disbarred for assaulting a criminal. How was she going to deal with some of my dirtbag clients? Mr. Wendell had been indicted for bribing a public official, but when his wife didn’t back his story, he’d pushed her down a flight of stairs. That would surely hit close to home. And Dr. Elgin was charged with Medicare fraud for billing for reconstructive surgery after car accidents when he was really doing nose jobs and chin implants. When his face hit the news, twelve women came forward to claim he’d fondled them during their exams. My clients were the people Naomi loved to put behind bars, not help set free.

“What if she attacks a client?”

Ben shook his head. “You’re just fishing for a reason to get yourself out of the mess you made by hiring a woman you’re already attracted to. Naomi is good people. She’s not violent. That guy just got under her skin.”

“What if one of my clients gets under her skin?”

“What if one of them gets under yours one day? Lord knows you used to have a temper when we were kids. Anything can happen.”

“Yeah, but it hasn’t to me. I don’t have a track record like she does.”

Ben went into the fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer. He twisted the cap off one and passed it to me, then put the cap between his thumb and pointer and snapped his fingers. It flew directly into the garbage can.

“Nice shot.”

“Thank you. You want to know what I think?”

“Definitely not.”

He smirked. “That’s because you know I’m going to say something you don’t want to hear.”

“Then maybe you should keep it to yourself.”

“That’s not how our friendship works. We not only call each other on our bullshit, but we trust the other will. It’s our version of checks and balances.”

I groaned. “Why did I come back here? I should’ve just gone home.”

“I think you hired her because you feel something for her, something more than just a physical attraction.”

“I don’t do feelings.”

“No, you don’t want to do feelings. But sometimes you can’t stop them, my friend.”

“I’m keeping my distance from her—at least ten feet at all times.”

Ben smiled. “Good luck with that. Especially since her desk is about two feet from the door of your office.”