Indiscretion

2 weeks later

I reluctantly clicked on the photos I’d been tagged in a few days ago—for what is probably the tenth damn time. So far, I’d managed to stay on the outer rim of the rabbit hole by limiting myself to the wedding photos Lily had posted. But I craved more. And it was the second time I’d found myself back on social media in as many hours this afternoon. I had damn work to do. But maybe if I fed my curiosity a little, I might be able to focus.

Yeah, that’s it.

I needed to click through the tag and check out Naomi’s page—get it out of my system once and for all. I was doing a smart thing, not a stupid one…

Knowing full well that I’d only be able to buy my own bullshit for so long, I scrolled to one of the group photos and clicked on Naomi Heart before I changed my mind.

The first picture that popped up was her and that rat dog. It had been posted two days ago. It must’ve been one of their birthdays because both Gumby and Naomi had on bright purple party hats with furry pom-poms at the top. It was ridiculous, yet I found myself smiling.

I kept digging. A photo labeled Happy Mother’s Day led me to her sister, Frannie Heart-Mason, and that vein led me to a shitload of family photos. Naomi and her sister looked alike, though her sister was taller and bordered on too thin, whereas Naomi had sexy curves. Her sister had a couple of kids—a boy and a girl. Both looked under ten, and the boy seemed to be older. Further back, I found one of Naomi in a cap and gown with a big sign behind her that said University of Virginia. She had multiple tassels looped around her neck, so she’d probably graduated with honors and maybe was in a sorority, too. There were pictures of family barbecues, vacations, lots and lots of birthdays—typical shit that women post. But what was noticeably absent were couple’s photos. Ben had mentioned that Naomi had been engaged, and I was curious about the type of guy she went for.

Naomi’s Facebook page went further back than her sister’s—she’d been a cheerleader in high school, and the top of her graduation cap had been bedazzled with something, but I couldn’t make out what. More digging brought me to her law school graduation and pictures of her and Lily smiling. But I still didn’t see any photos of her and her ex—no engagement photos or photos of her with a guy at all. Probably she’d deleted them when they split up—the modern-day equivalent of scribbling across someone’s face in a photo.

I was just about to dig into another folder of pictures when I heard the door open and close in the lobby. There were no appointments left on my calendar today, and the staff were all long gone. So that meant one of two things—either I was getting robbed, or my partner was here, Emily.

Heels click-clacking on the tile made me wish for that masked felon.

“Oh good. You’re still here.” Emily helped herself into my office, leaning on the back of one of my guest chairs.

“What do you want?”

“I’m leaving.”

I wasn’t sure exactly what she was talking about, but I clasped my hands behind my head, elbows out, and leaned back in my chair. “The country, I hope?”

She pursed her lips. “The office. You win. You can have it.”

“What’s the catch?”

“Nothing. I found a new space. It’s bigger and better.”

The greatest mistake of my career had been to get involved with my partner. Emily was a good lawyer, and we’d been good friends. I should never have dipped my pen in the company ink. Looking back, I’d always known she was vindictive. If she lost a trial, opposing counsel became a sworn enemy. When her supposed best friend invited someone other than her to a movie premiere she’d gotten tickets to, she never spoke to her friend of fifteen years again. And don’t even get me started on the evil things she did to her dad when she caught him cheating. But with us, I couldn’t understand it. She had nothing to be vindictive about. She was the one who’d done something wrong.

I folded my arms across my chest. “Excellent. When can you be out?”

Emily straightened. “You can at least pretend you’re a little broken up about it.”

“I think we moved past the point of pretending the night I found you bent over my desk getting fucked by my buddy.”

She rolled her eyes. “Get over it.”

“I am. Now I’d like what I’m over to be gone. So I repeat, when can you be out?”

“The movers will be here at the end of the week.”

“Perfect.”

Emily walked to the door, stopped, and looked back over her shoulder. “Oh…and I’m taking the staff, so you’re going to have to find some new people to boss around.”

My brows pulled together. “Who?”

Her lips curved into a wicked smile. “All of them.”

We had five people working for us currently—an attorney, two paralegals, an office manager, and our receptionist. Lisette, our staff attorney, was Emily’s friend, so I wasn’t surprised that she would jump ship, and Renee had been Emily’s paralegal at the firm we’d both worked at before we became partners. LeeAnn, the receptionist, was relatively new, as was the office manager, but Margaret, my paralegal, had come with me from the previous firm. Hell, she’d been with me since the day I started as an attorney.

“You’re lying. Margaret doesn’t even like you.”

“Maybe not, but she has three mouths to feed. I gave her a big, fat raise. Oh, and I made them all sign an employment contract already, so don’t bother trying to make them a better offer.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

She looked at her nails and smiled again. “I am pretty great, aren’t I?”

“Get the fuck out of my office.”

The bitch blew me a kiss.

***

Four days later, I stood in the lobby of the office on a Saturday afternoon, watching boxes being carried out. Not only had Emily taken all of our staff, but she’d somehow managed to transfer the leased equipment from our joint firm’s name to her new solo one. Now I didn’t have any help, and I also had no photocopier or video-conferencing equipment, and some guy was currently ruining the wall in the reception area by prying off one half of the channel letters that spelled out Reed & Miller.

My buddy Ben walked in and almost got run over by two guys carrying out the top of Emily’s desk. He’d only gotten back from his honeymoon yesterday. I hated that I’d welcomed him by unloading on the phone this morning. He held up a bottle of tequila. “I figured you’d need a drinking buddy.”

I shook my head. “If I start with that shit, I might need you to carry me home after the week I’ve had.”

Sheldon, my pet tortoise, moseyed out from where he’d been hiding in the corner. Ben lifted his chin when he saw him. “Is it bring your son to work day?”

“I was at the park for his daily sunshine soak when I got a call from the alarm company. Emily gave the movers her key, but apparently, she didn’t give them the code to turn off the alarm. That’s the only reason I knew something was going on. Otherwise I might’ve showed up later and thought I’d been robbed.”

The guy working on removing Emily’s last name freed her part of the sign, but there was nothing left to support my last name now, so when he let go, Reed dangled from the wall. The guy looked over at me. “Sorry, man.”

I waved him off. “It’s fine. Though I have no idea what she’s going to do with that piece of the sign since her name is connected to the ampersand. She’s not going to hang up something that says, And Miller.”

He frowned. “No, she’s not. Miss Miller told us to take this part of the sign down because it belonged to her. But she instructed us to toss it in the dumpster downstairs before we leave.”

“Man…” Ben shook his head. “That’s cold. Just didn’t want you to have it. You’d think you were the one who’d fucked her friend on her desk and not the other way around.”

“She’s still pissed that I wouldn’t accept her apology and pretend it never happened.”

“I still can’t believe she brought that idiot to the wedding.”

“I can. She feels like she won because she had a date and I didn’t. Everything is a contest to her. It wasn’t enough to end our partnership. She had to steal all the staff and take all the equipment so she felt like she won. I’ve seen her be this ruthless for her clients, but I never thought I’d be on the receiving end of it.” I sighed.

“Think of the bright side.”

“I didn’t realize there was one.”

“Your receptionist’s nasally voice drove me fucking nuts, and now I won’t have to hear it when I stop by. Win for me.” Ben patted my shoulder. “And it’s better you found out now what she was capable of than a few years down the road.”

We spent the next ten minutes sitting in the lobby, watching the movers go in and out. There was an awful lot of boxes, so I was pretty sure there wasn’t even going to be any toilet paper in the bathroom. But it would be worth it to get rid of her. She’d made the last few months since we split pretty miserable.

“That’s it,” the moving guy said.

“You sure? I think there’s some lint in my pants pocket you didn’t take.”

“Sorry. Just doing what we were hired to do.”

“I know.”

He waited a few uncomfortable heartbeats, until I realized he was looking for a tip. “Dude, the tip comes from the bitch who hired you. Not me.”

He frowned, but didn’t argue.

Ben chuckled as the guy left. “You want to get out of here and go drown your sorrows at the bar?”

“Pretty sure she took all the chairs in the office, so I don’t think we have a choice.”

He eyed Sheldon. “What about him?”

“I have his carrier. The owner won’t care. Sheldon smells better than half his patrons.”

O’Malley’s was a dark and dreary old-man bar. A handful of guys sat alone drinking, spaced apart from each other like they weren’t looking for conversation. The depressing setting felt appropriate for my mood. I ordered a vodka seven and Ben ordered a beer.

“So how’s married life?” I asked.

He smiled. “Great.”

I smiled back. It might’ve been the first genuine happy feeling I’d had since I got back from Michigan. Unless you counted the too-many times I’d showed my laptop my teeth while looking at pictures of Naomi.

“How was Italy? Where’d you go again?”

“We started in Rome and then drove down to the Amalfi coast.”

“How was that?”

“Nice. But those people drive like lunatics. They make New Yorkers seem tame.”

The bartender brought our drinks. Ben lifted and sipped. “So what happened after the wedding? You left so early the next morning, I didn’t get to talk to you. Lily said you and Naomi shared the cabin.”

I nodded. “We did.”

“And…”

“And nothing. I slept on the couch, and she slept in the bedroom. I got up the next morning and left.”

“Really? I thought for sure you two would hook up. I saw you sucking face out on the dance floor.”

“That was to piss Emily off.”

“Looked like a lot more than that from where I was sitting.”

I sucked back my drink. “Nope.”

Ben rubbed the stubble on his chin. “You know, Naomi is looking for a job.”

“You mentioned that before.”

“And you need a paralegal.”

“I thought she was looking to change careers?”

“She is. She worked as a paralegal in Virginia for a few months before she left.”

“Why would she want to do that? She’ll make half the money an attorney would for doing all the grunt work.”

Ben shrugged. “Does it matter why? She’s smart and available, and you need someone.”

But the last thing I needed was to mix business with pleasure again. And if I told my buddy that, I’d be admitting I thought of Naomi as pleasure, and then he’d tell his wife, and she’d sink her teeth in and never let it go. I loved Lily, thought she was great for Ben. But she loved doing coupley things, and she’d be relentless if she saw an opportunity for her friend and her husband’s best friend to potentially get together.

“No thanks. I’m hiring an all-male staff.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because the men in my life don’t abandon me for ten grand extra and an expense allowance.” I shook my head. “I still can’t believe Margaret did that.”

Ben grinned. “It would take at least twenty for me to ditch you.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

“I’m not going to harp on the subject, but Naomi could take a lot off your plate. She can do more than just a paralegal—graduated second in our class, and Lily says she’s the best researcher she knows.”

“Oh yeah? Then why don’t you or Lily hire her to work at the DA’s office? They’re always looking for people.”

“We both tried. They wouldn’t hire her.”

My brows pinched. “Why not?”

“Long story, and not mine to tell.”

That made me curious. But I managed to not push and instead added it as yet another reason to steer clear of the woman. Clearly she had some skeletons in her closet.