“Louise?” Jane was so surprised to see her former partner she’d inadvertently pushed the wrong button and cut Dunstan off instead of putting him on hold. “Damn, your timing stinks. Take a load off and gimme a minute to finish this call.”
She started to redial, then realized Louise would overhear every word, and Louise was still a member of the bar. As in, Louise could be questioned in connection with any grievance brought against another member of the bar.
Thinking like a lawyer sometimes sucked rotten eggs.
“Tough case?” Louise asked as Jane put the receiver back on its cradle.
“Yes—no. Yes and no. How have you been?”
“Art school is wonderful.”
The school was up in York, Pennsylvania, better than an hour’s drive on a chilly, sloppy day, and Louise was not giving off the wonderful vibe.
“And?”
“And I’m thinking of quitting the job.”
Jane came around the desk to take the second guest chair. “Lou, you saved for years to make this jump. You put up with Judge Mansfield, did DUIs until your eyes crossed, and you’re thinking of throwing in the towel? Does this have to do with a man?”
Louise examined her nails, which were naked—not lacquered, polished, or even manicured. Clay was her favorite medium, and hard on the hands.
“Maybe with the absence of a man. Robert informed me last week he’s considering a design job in New York.”
New York was the brass ring in the design field, the Holy Grail, the Supreme Court of the United States—according to the designers working in New York.
“Bastard.”
“Oh, maybe, but I shouldn’t have changed careers to chase a guy.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
Louise was a beautiful woman. Tall, with dark auburn hair, chocolate-brown eyes, and a killer figure, she should have been an artist’s model, if nothing else.
And she was sad, which on her had the gall to look even prettier.
“I didn’t think I was chasing a guy, either,” she said. “But now Robert’s off for the bright lights, and I’m left in good old P-A, trying not to wince every time somebody says ‘you-inz’ and wondering what was so awful about the practice of law.”
Robert was an okay guy, but he didn’t look at Louise the way Louise looked at fresh clay and an afternoon free to spend with her wheel.
“You’re thinking of transferring to a school in New York?”
Louise rose and went to the dish garden, testing the dampness of the moss with her finger, then using Eeyore to give the moss a drink.
“That hadn’t even occurred to me. Do you have court this afternoon?”
“No.” Thank God. Because at the courthouse, she might run into Dunstan, and that would be lovely and awful and difficult and wonderful. Until she was out of the Almquist case, a dram of avoidance would be worth a cask of disbarment.
“If you don’t have court, then let’s go to lunch,” Louise said, shrugging back into her coat.
“Lou, I was in the middle of a phone call. An important phone call.”
“Whoever it was didn’t call you back, did they?” She tossed Jane her coat and shouldered Jane’s carpetbag. “Call them after lunch, because I need somebody to talk sense into me, and you’re all I’ve got.”
“We’ll discuss a hypothetical or two, because I need some sense talked into me too.”
“No, you don’t. You aren’t the risk-taking kind, and that’s why you didn’t waste thousands of dollars relocating for an adjunct position so you could teach drawing to a bunch of fashionably emaciated waifs ten years your junior.”
“We used to be waifs, Lou. Where are we going?” Jane had to hustle, because Louise on a mission was a long-legged, fast-moving train.
“Someplace spicy. Cold weather works up my appetite, and I haven’t found any decent restaurants yet near school. Why didn’t I think of offering to go to New York with Robert?”
“I dunno. If a certain Scotsman told me he was heading home, I would at least hint about a willingness to visit him there.”
Louise slowed to Mach One. “A Scotsman?”
Jane grabbed her by the elbow when she would have stepped off the curb. “Mexican’s the closest. Tell me about these guys ten years younger than you.”
The distraction worked, at least temporarily, but Jane hadn’t been entirely honest with her friend.
If Dunstan went back to Scotland to stay, Jane would offer to go with him, and hang the immigration laws.
Hang all the damned laws.
* * *
“So how’re things?” Mac asked. “Has Judge Blaisdale quoted any Shakespeare at you lately?”
When Blaisdale got out the Shakespeare, somebody’s client was going down hard in the yard, as the denizens of the Detention Center put it.
“Not for a couple weeks,” Dunstan replied. “You’re having a taco salad? How is that different from a chicken salad?” And which case was it that had prompted Dunstan to schedule lunch with MacKenzie Knightley?
“I’m having a taco salad with rice and beans. Carbohydrates fuel the brain,” Mac said, catching the waitress’s eye.
Carby bliss fueled the brain.
“May we have some lemon for our water?” Mac asked. Nothing about MacKenzie Knightley was flirtatious—not one damned thing—but the waitress beamed at him as if his every wish was her darkest fantasy come true.
“How do you do that?” Dunstan asked, tucking his tie away. “How do you appeal to the ladies without so much as batting your eyes?”
Mac took a sip of Dos Equis—no heather ale here. “Maybe the ladies can sense I’m no threat. I’m not buying, they don’t have to sell, and we can all relax.”
Dunstan could not relax. Why had Jane hung up on him?
“Attempted murder keeps you warm at night?”
“The woodstove keeps me warm at night, Cromarty, and most other times. You have lady trouble.”
Dunstan left off staring at the beer menu—whose idea had it been to do Mexican?—while Mac watched him patiently.
“How ever can you tell such a thing, MacKenzie?”
Mac waited until the smiling waitress dropped off a dish of lemon wedges arranged in an artful pinwheel.
“I have two little brothers, one of whom has been through such a nasty divorce, he’s practically a monk. The other is the equivalent of a temple whore, stepping out with any dumped, divorced, or desperate woman. I know when the ladies are giving a guy fits, Cromarty. Sooner or later, everybody gets a turn in that barrel.”
Which left the question of when Mac had taken his turn, or was he still taking it?
“So let’s consider a hypothetical,” Dunstan said. “Family law case, two competent attorneys, parties still talking but not exactly cordial. The money isn’t adding up, somebody has income they’re not disclosing, probably opposing counsel’s client, and opposing counsel may or may not know what’s afoot. The lawyers have a wee, private lapse and get a bit too affectionate on one occasion—”
“You get out of the case,” Mac said. “You both get your sorry, besotted, unethical asses out of the case, and you never, ever oppose each other—unless you’re James Knightley.”
“What?”
Mac squeezed three lemon wedges over his water glass. Something about the dispatch with which he pulverized his citrus reminded Dunstan that the guy also shoed horses.
“Trent and I have our suspicions about our baby brother, and it’s all but bar association fact the state’s attorney was tying ’em on with Danica Showalter before she went to rehab.”
Danica was—had been—a criminal defense attorney. Nobody seemed to know what had become of her after her second trip through rehab.
“Am I supposed to derive comfort from the notion that our very own bar association is less than angelic?”
“Yes,” Mac said, passing the remaining lemons over to Dunstan. “You’re also supposed to get out of the case.”
The pretty pinwheel wasn’t half so appealing with three mangled wedges among its number.
“The clients in this purely hypothetical example aren’t cooperating. One has said he’ll waive any conflict, though the exact nature of the problem hasn’t yet been explained to him. I suspect the second will follow suit.”
Mac again waited until the food had been set on the table, such was his inherent discretion.
“Eat your food, Cromarty. Though why anybody would go to a Mexican restaurant and tell them to hold the rice and beans, I do not know. Who has your knickers in an uproar?”
Not his knickers, his earlobes, his law practice, everything between his earlobes, and his—
The cheery little bell over the door jingled, and who should walk in, but Jane DeLuca and her former law partner. Dunstan wanted to wave, wanted to tackle the woman where she stood—in furry brown boots with low heels—but instead, he took a bite of whatever he’d ordered.
“We were discussing a hypothetical, Mac.” For Jane either hadn’t seen him, or was ignoring him altogether.
“Cromarty, stop looking pathetic. You’re a grown man, and if Jane DeLuca has given you the time of day, so to speak, you’re the first to breach that citadel in living memory.”
“I would also like to be the last.” If nothing else had come clear during the past three days of mooning at his phone like a lovesick juvenile, that had.
“Your clients are in the middle of a divorce when they themselves are likely tempted by all sorts of stupid impulses. Yes, the bar association will take a dim view of what has happened, but you’ll probably get away with a suspension—a pair of suspensions.”
Across the busy restaurant, Jane slid into a booth opposite Louise. Coats were shuffled aside, the Mary Poppins rucksack stayed by Jane’s side, and beneath the table, her boots remained on her feet.
“Jane DeLuca will not be suspended. I’ll turn in my license before I’ll allow that to happen.”
“Then the condemned should enjoy a last meal. What did you order anyway?”
“Food.” Dunstan put a twenty on the table. “I hope you and Louise get along, because I’m kidnapping a member of the bar for nefarious purposes.”
“Those are the best kind,” Mac said, slipping the twenty into his wallet. “Kidnapping is a felony, please recall.”
Dunstan left Mac sipping his beer and muttering a line from MacBeth: Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.
* * *
“Ladies, hello.”
Jane left off fishing for tissues in The Vast Lonely, because that voice was the last one she’d expected to hear.
Her Every Stupid Wish loomed over the table, looking serious, tired, and dear. “Dunstan. A pleasure to see you. You and Louise know each other?”
“Of course we do, though MacKenzie Knightley is in want of a lunch companion, and I was hoping Louise would oblige.”
“What are friends for?” Louise said, abandoning the field without giving Jane a chance to tromp on her foot under the table. “Mac is always good company.”
She was across the restaurant in half a heartbeat.
“And what am I?” Jane muttered, “chopped livva?”
“You are coming with me,” Dunstan said. “You don’t leave a man with sore earlobes and then not call him for three days.”
Across the restaurant, Louise waved while MacKenzie Knightley saluted with his beer and winked.
“Please, Jane. Will you walk with me?”
“We are still counsel of record,” Jane hissed, scooting out of the booth. “You can’t tell me about your earlobes, and I can’t tell you about my—”
He held her coat for her, just as if they were a couple of longstanding. “Your what?”
With her back to him, she could interrupt her flight of lawyer nerves to ask, “Why didn’t you call me?”
His hands stroked over her shoulders, fleetingly. “One doesn’t want to presume.”
She turned and flipped her hair out of her collar. “Bull-poo-poo, Cromarty.”
“Very well,” he said, preceding her to the door and holding it for her. “I wanted to get out of the case before I contacted you again. That plan isn’t working.”
“We are in such doo-doo,” Jane said, while Dunstan scooted around her to take the position closer to the street.
“No, we are not,” Dunstan retorted, with the air of a man who had spent all night rehearsing his closing argument.
And then somebody’s phone chimed to the tune of Scotland the Brave.
“Fook.”
“At least it’s not Dixie,” Jane said, while Dunstan held his phone to his ear.
He went still, dark brows drawing down. “Yes, Doreen. I’ll contact Ms. DeLuca. Two o’clock?”
He shot Jane a questioning glance, and she nodded, for this afternoon she had neither clients nor court appearances nor common sense.
“My office, then, and yes, I’ll make sure Ms. DeLuca’s there too.”
He slipped his phone into a pocket, while Jane tried to memorize what was good about the moment, for it might be among their last as practicing attorneys. Dunstan’s expression was impassive, blaming nobody, and that was good.
Jane was healthy, had some cash stashed, and no ficus plant depending on her.
That was good too.
“Wallace can survive a long time on half rations,” she said. “And I want to take your hand right here on the street. Those are good things, Dunstan. I don’t eat much when I’m nervous, and that’s probably a good thing too. I have tissues in my purse, and that’s a very good thing.”
Dunstan was a resourceful guy. He didn’t take her hand, there on the street for all to see, but he winged his elbow, like an old-fashioned gentleman might, when the way was slippery, and a lady could fall on her backside at any moment.
* * *
“Doreen and Calvin would like to meet with us,” Dunstan said, though that wasn’t quite accurate. Doreen had demanded another four-way meeting and had said Calvin would confirm that request with his attorney if necessary.
Calvin, whose position earlier had been to waive any conflicts of interest, was now demanding a four-way meeting.
“Here’s another good thing,” Jane said. “When I’m in a situation where my law practice can be taken from me, I realize I like being a lawyer. Yes, we have hard days, but what goes on in the courthouse is a big improvement over the ducking stool and the lynch mob. I like being part of solving people’s legal problems.”
Such comforting images, the ducking stool and the lynch mob.
“This is what we tell our clients, then,” Dunstan said. “We tell them I made untoward advances to you, and that’s why we’re getting out of the case. You can report me to the bar association, and they’ll slap my wrist,”—probably with the disciplinary equivalent of a sledgehammer—“and I’ll be able to sleep at night.”
Maybe even with Jane?
She stopped right in the middle of the sidewalk. “That would be lying, Dunstan. I’m the one who propositioned you.”
American English was not a language for the faint of heart.
“You extended an invitation, which I was more than free to decline, Jane. Both of us need not suffer the consequences.”
She got the same look in her eye she’d had when Dunstan had told her to run along.
“Dunstan, do you want to be sent back to Scotland with your tail between your legs? Do you want to spend the next twenty years teaching the same constitutional law cases at the Podunk Highland School of Law and Hangover Remedies?”
He took her arm and resumed their stroll toward the legal gallows.
“Here we come to one of your good things, though why you’d focus on such a litany at this juncture, I do not know. Now, when I’m faced with losing my livelihood, and returning to Scotland is the only reasonable choice, I find instead I want to buy the house I’m living in, get Wallace some company for the long days he’s stuck at home, and otherwise anchor myself here more thoroughly.”
Jane was part of that, but not all of it. Taking a cat to Europe was no easy feat.
“But Scotland is home,” Jane said, ever the advocate—for anybody but herself. “Scotland is where you have nieces and nephews and the wee whatevers, and everybody can understand you when you cuss.”
“You can understand me when I don’t cuss. You can understand me when I don’t say anything at all.”
He should not have said that. Jane fell silent, no argument, no motions, no cross-examination as they ambled along.
“We’re not lying to our clients, Dunstan. That’s not the kind of lawyers we are.”
Now was his turn to argue, to point out that if they put the bald truth on the table, they wouldn’t be any kind of lawyers at all. They waited on a corner for the light to change, though no traffic moved in either direction.
“You’re sure, Jane?”
A leaf drifted by, one of the last golden remnants of the venerable oak.
“I would like to see Scotland someday,” she said. “I’d like that a lot. I can’t imagine an entire country where everybody sounds like you.”
Well, then. He walked along beside his Jane, a lightness suffusing him, despite the afternoon’s agenda.
Get fired.
Refund an entire retainer despite hours spent on the case.
Begin long, messy, ultimately costly disciplinary proceedings.
Shut down a law practice after years of trying to build it up.
And finish falling in love.
Not a bad day’s work.
He stopped outside the building housing Jane’s office, which was around the block from his. “I’ll see you at two. Mind you, don’t leave me to face the dragons alone.”
As if she would.
Jane stretched up to kiss his cheek. “Until two.”
* * *
What sort of man offers to ruin his career for a single night of—
Not sex.
Lovemaking? And cuddling, and talking. And more lovemaking, and sore earlobes, and sore…
Jane took the place across from Dunstan at his lovely conference table and pulled the Almquist file out of her bag, the Complaint for Limited Divorce right on top. Dunstan had on his glasses, his yellow legal pad at the ready, business as usual—except this was every lawyer’s worst nightmare.
And he was ready to face it with her.
“This shouldn’t take long,” Calvin said.
Across the table, Dorie watched him, and not with the guarded, bitchy expression of a woman preparing to do battle. She wore jeans and a UMBC sweatshirt, while Cal was in jeans, a blue button-down, and a tan corduroy jacket.
Counseling, then. They’d finally started counseling. Dunstan must have sensed this too, because under the stable, a large foot gently nudged at Jane’s boot.
“We have as much time as you need,” Dunstan said. “And we’re not on the clock.”
Of course they weren’t. Jane nudged him back: Good call.
“Tell them, Cal,” Dorie said. “It’s not complicated.”
No, it was not, though where was Calvin’s triple-steel reinforced Underwriters Laboratory-approved briefcase?
“My attorney said something that got me thinking,” Calvin said. “Jane said that I hadn’t kept a close enough eye on the household account. I’m the accountant in the family, and I leave all that for Dorie to manage.”
“I don’t mind,” Dorie said. “You put in enough hours with the numbers.”
They exchanged a look, a married-couple-shorthand look Jane couldn’t quite fathom. Divorces weren’t always nasty, though they were usually sad, and that look had held regret, at least.
“In any case,” Calvin went on, “I couldn’t get that observation out of my mind, and I began to look, really look, at what it takes to keep our house going. Having a new water heater installed on an emergency basis was hundreds of dollars. If we’d picked one up ourselves, and I’d taken a Saturday morning to install it—the boys would have helped, would have learned a few things.”
A regret phase then, but where were the Almquists headed with this?
“Cal asked to see the checkbook,” Dorie said, spreading her hands out flat on the conference table. Today her nails were plain, and she wore no rings—suggesting they’d found a good counselor. “At first I thought Cal was snooping, looking for how I’d wasted his hard-earned money.”
“Our hard-earned money,” Cal interjected.
“But then I figured, he’s still my husband, and we won’t get through this divorce by stealing from each other. I showed him the real checkbook.”
Dunstan shot Jane a perplexed look, but kept his thoughts and his toes to himself.
“Dorie keeps excellent records,” Cal said. “I’m an accountant, and I couldn’t see what any fool would have seen.”
“I didn’t want you to see, Vinnie.”
“And I can’t see,” Jane said. “What did you find in those records, Calvin?”
“I found my wife.”
Across the table, husband and wife visually held hands. Dunstan saw it too, because he pushed his yellow legal pad aside, put his pen down, and took off his glasses.
“My lawyer, who has never set foot in my house, picked up on what I’d been blind to,” Calvin said. “One income isn’t enough to sustain the lifestyle we enjoy. Dorie has been tutoring college kids in English, and what I assumed were trips to the gym, lunches with the ladies, and tennis games were Dorie’s way of bringing in extra money without making me feel inadequate.”
“It’s not that much,” Dorie said. “And I like helping young people learn. I have a master’s in English, and I wasn’t doing anything with it. And I would have told Cal soon, because we file our taxes jointly. A 1099 is a tough thing to hide from a CPA. Besides, Dunstan saw the same thing Jane did and was about to go all lawyer on the household financial records. I’d rather Cal learned the truth from me.”
“I lost sight of my marriage, but Dorie is right: I would have noticed a statement of income earned, but I’d become blind to my own wife. What does that say about me and my own accountability?”
“It says you’re human,” Dunstan suggested. “Does this mean you’ll go to counseling?”
Dorie tucked her hair back behind her ear, a curiously girlish gesture. “It means we went to bed—well, the utility closet first. And the shower, and then—”
“Sweetie.” Calvin’s tone was indulgent—or smug? “I don’t think a pair of divorce lawyers needs to know those details.”
“No,” Jane said. “We don’t.” The utility closet? “So where do you want to go from here with the lawsuit?”
“Nowhere,” Dorie replied. “Cal will telecommute two days a week outside of tax season, I’ll try to limit my tutoring to the other three days, and we’ll get back to being married.”
“You might still consider counseling,” Dunstan said.
“Maybe.” The look in Cal’s eyes promised his wife more trips to the utility closet too.
“I’ll be getting my checkbook, then,” Dunstan said, rising. “And I’ll forward to Doreen the contents of the file after I’ve had a chance to copy them.”
When the door had closed, Doreen appropriated Dunstan’s legal pad and pen and began to doodle.
“Is there any point telling that man to keep his checkbook?” she asked.
“None, and I have mine with me too,” Jane said, though it took a moment of fishing to find it. “I’m happy for you folks. This doesn’t happen often, but I’m always glad when it does.”
Calvin sidled around the table to take the seat Dunstan had vacated. “I liked that about you, that you pushed me toward reconciliation and counseling.”
“I don’t always,” Jane said, scrawling out a check. “Each case is different. Then too, sometimes the devil you know is the very best devil for you.”
She pushed the check across to Calvin, who had to inspect the amount.
“This is for the full retainer,” he said. “That’s not what we agreed to. I’m happy to pay—”
Doreen put her hand over his mouth. “Say thank you, Calvin.”
He kissed her fingers, and Jane nearly had to open a window. “Thank you, Jane, but why?”
Tell the client the truth that matters most. “Because this case has done my heart good.”
Doreen left off flirting with her husband long enough to peer at Jane. “Dunstan’s not a bad-looking guy, you know, though he’s a little on the imposing side. He seems kinda lonely to me, all work and no play. You two might get along. You should think about it.”
Jane was preserved from stammering a reply when the not-bad-looking guy himself came back into the room, check in hand.
“Best of luck, folks,” he said, handing Dorie her refund.
“Now, see what I mean?” Dorie said. “This is for the full amount too, and you two didn’t even have to consult each other about it. You might get along with each other better than you think. Honey, put this in the Christmas fund, would you?”
“I think we should start a second-honeymoon fund,” Calvin said, getting to his feet and tucking the check away. “Or maybe an annual honeymoon fund.”
“Out,” Dunstan said, pointing toward the door. “And never come back, because we willna represent you for any amount of money. Consider Scotland for one of those holidays, though. It’s beautiful any time of year.”
Doreen took Calvin by the hand, patted Dunstan’s cheek, and winked at Jane.
And then they were gone.
Saved by the utility closet.
* * *
“Is Scotland lovely any time of year?” Jane asked, tossing her checkbook into that great bag of hers.
What was she really asking?
“Depends on what part of Scotland. One area in the northwest gets close to sixteen feet of rainfall a year. A lot of our sadder, drunker ballads are from that region.”
“I’m neither sad nor drunk,” Jane said, running her fingers over the surface of the conference table. “I’m really, really relieved.”
Dunstan took the place beside her, purely for the pleasure of proximity to her, not because his own knees were feeling weak. “We had a near miss.”
“I don’t like that I put the cart before the horse,” Jane said. “I should have kept my pants on, withdrawn from the case, then jumped your bones.”
He prayed there was a but coming. “I’m not proud of myself in that regard, either.”
“Is there a but coming?”
Dunstan could tell from how Jane scooted a bit that beneath the table, she was shuffling off her boots.
“Yes. Yes, there is a but, or a however. We’re good at what we do, Jane.”
“Very good, which excuses nothing.”
The temptation to take her hand was nearly befuddling him, but he wanted to put his reasoning before her.
“We both know the rules, and for my part, when you gave me the opportunity, I put a higher value on sharing intimacies with you than I did on my continued ability to practice law.”
The grain of the chestnut surface apparently fascinated Jane, because she studied it as if it were an original manuscript of the first Supreme Court opinion handed down.
“Jane?”
“What you’re saying is, if you had it to do over again, even knowing we might be disbarred, even knowing it wasn’t smart or professional, you would have done the same thing—and so would I. What does that say about us, Dunstan? As attorneys, sworn to uphold the law, as officers of the court?”
The answer to her question had kept him up for two nights, and it did matter—some.
“It says the law is important to us, but we’re more important to each other. In this one instance, I can live with that revelation. I can even rejoice in it. I’ve never misstepped like this before, Jane, and I certainly don’t intend to again.”
He trapped her hand in his, lest she stroke the finish right off the conference table.
She turned her hand palm up and laced her fingers with his. “I’m not as ethical as you are.”
The hell she wasn’t. “I cannot believe you’ve ever before taken opposing counsel—”
Her free hand covered his mouth.
“I want to misstep with you a lot, Dunstan. This is a problem. We’re in a small jurisdiction, and the family law bar is smaller yet. We should have opposed each other at least twice a year, and why that hasn’t happened, I do not know.”
“You were willing to toss aside your license to practice law to have at my earlobes, and now you’re not willing to pass on the occasional case because I might oppose you? You’ll let yourself have a taste of something wonderful, then go back to chicken salad on wilted lettuce?”
“I had another option in mind.”
Options were good. The more options, the greater the likelihood of settlements. “I’m listening.” And holding her hand too tightly.
“I was hoping Louise would change her mind about art school, but she’s off to New York next semester, or somewhere. My office is set up for two attorneys, and I hate to do the billing.”
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “You are a fraud, Jane DeLuca. A lovely, brilliant little fraud. Beneath that calculating legal mind beats the heart of a true romantic.”
“I really do hate the billing.”
A true, honest romantic. He tucked her hair back, the better to see the woman he loved. “Are you sure about this? Because clearly, my house has room for a home office.”
She regarded their joined hands solemnly. “Do you have a utility closet?”
“Aye. How do you feel about scheduled sex?”
She glanced at the clock. “I’m okay with it, occasionally. Maybe around 2:53 p.m.?”
“I had 2:55 p.m. in mind because we have one more item to cover in our first partners’ meeting. Will you come to Scotland with me over the holidays? Meet the family, dandle a few bairnies, flirt with Uncle Donald?”
“Yes.” She inched her chair closer. “This all feels very sudden, and very right.”
He gave up her hand for the pleasure of putting his arms around her. “That it does, but you should be warned, I’m no’ asking you to travel home with me simply to show off Scotland.”
“I’d love to see Scotland.”
“I’m scheduling a proposal, too, Jane DeLuca. I want to propose to you on my home turf, when I can tell my family if you’ve accepted and have my choice of fine whiskeys to console me if you turn me down.”
She kissed his cheek. “Does the conference room door lock?”
“Aye. Why?”
“Because it’s 2:55 p.m., and I’ve had ideas about this conference table since I first laid eyes on it.”
Dunstan locked the door, and they held the longest partners’ meeting in the history of Damson County bar association.