Quint pulled Brady’s bedroom door closed behind them when they stepped into the hall. And before Rachel could move, think, or even breathe, she was pinned between Quint and the wall.
She raised her head and met his eyes, seeing the urgency and the passion that he made no attempt to conceal. His gaze held her captive as effectively as his body, which was hard and burgeoning with desire. He made no attempt to hide that either.
She must be getting conditioned to this, Rachel mused dazedly. Because instead of reacting with shock or outrage—certainly her expected response to such overt caveman tactics—she felt giddy with her own feminine power. Quint’s arousal was directly related to his proximity to her; his lack of restraint evidenced a lack of control. Which was especially thrilling because she knew how controlled the man could be.
Not now, however. Not with her.
‘There is something very familiar about this situation,” she murmured huskily. “You’ve got me backed up against the wall again. Literally.”
“And figuratively?”
“If you’re referring to that phony Tilden will—”
“Which is very real.” Quint’s dark brown eyes were alight with amusement.
“Mmm-hmm. You can’t even say that with a straight face, Quinton Cormack.”
“Rachel, speaking as one attorney to another, at this particular moment I don’t give a flying f—um—fig—about anybody’s will.”
“Coming from you, I think that’s something of a compliment.”
She raised her hands slowly. It wasn’t until Quint caught her wrists and pinned them at shoulder height against the wall on either side of her that Rachel realized she hadn’t intended to push him away. She’d been about to slide her arms around his neck.
That startling realization finally cleared her head. What was she thinking, to allow Quint to manhandle her this way? While joking about the fake Tilden will!
Her pride demanded a struggle. At the very least, a token one. She tried to pull her arms away but his steely grip didn’t give even an inch. Having no luck there, she shifted her hips from side to side trying, not very successfully, to dislodge him. But her movements resulted in him settling more firmly between her thighs, which had parted during their little tussle. In addition, the motions of her body had only aroused him further. She could feel how much.
Quint groaned. Or maybe it was more of a moan. “You do it deliberately, don’t you? You’re determined to drive me crazy, you know exactly how to do it, and you won’t quit until I’ve gone totally over the edge.”
Rachel giggled, startling herself. She wasn’t the giggly type, she never had been. But Quint’s lamentations tickled her. He sounded so aggrieved!
She had to sternly remind herself that this was no laughing matter and that Quint had no cause for complaint. She was the one being pinned against the wall—and for the second time that day. She was the persecuted party here.
Although what she actually felt was as far from persecution as MTV was from PBS.
“You think it’s funny, hmm?” Quint nuzzled her neck as he spoke, gently nipping and kissing between words. She felt him pull on her skin with his teeth, drawing it between his lips to suck.
Her breath burned against her throat, and she swallowed with difficulty. “N-No. It’s not funny at all.”
His erection pressed formidably against her and she rotated her hips in an erotic rhythm she hadn’t even realized she knew. She was acutely aware of his strength—and fiercely turned on by it. The shackles of inhibitions and repression that she had maintained for years suddenly disintegrated, leaving her at the mercy of this breakout of desire and need. She didn’t care about anything but this man and this moment.
Quint affectionately rubbed noses with her. “Aren’t you going to tell me to stop?” he whispered.
Rachel gazed deeply into his eyes. She felt as if she were drowning in the dark depths. “No,” she breathed the word. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. Speaking required a concentrated effort.
“No?” His lips brushed hers lightly. “No, you don’t want me to stop?” The tip of his tongue traced the shape of her lips, and she parted them in aching invitation. Which he did not take.
“Do you want me to keep going?” he murmured instead.
“So many questions!” Rachel moaned a protest. And the answers were all too obvious!
“Remember my obsession with accuracy and specificity?” His smile was warm and teasingly intimate and made her shiver with yearning.
His lips flirted with hers, tantalizing her with feather-light touches, but lifting out of reach whenever she raised her mouth for deeper, stronger contact. “I think you carry accuracy and specificity to ridiculous lengths,” she complained.
“Don’t whine, Rachel.” He laughed softly.
“I was not whining!” Rachel was instantly indignant. “I have never whined in my entire life! I can’t tell you how insulted I am that—”
“Shh, baby, I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is insult you.” Grinning down at her, he freed her wrists. “I want to make you feel good, I don’t want to make you mad at me.”
He was teasing her, flirting with her, and Rachel felt the antagonism that should’ve restored her sanity and sent her on her way, dissolving like an ice-cream cone in the sun.
What made her so susceptible to his roguish brand of charm? Rachel wondered desperately. It didn’t seem to matter that she found him irritating, even infuriating; mere moments later she would be completely disarmed by him.
“Does this feel good?” Quint carefully cupped her breasts with his hands.
Though he’d released her wrists, a dazed Rachel kept her arms flexed against the wall on either side of her. Instinctively, she pushed her breasts against his palms. He fondled the rounded softness, and she exhaled on a sigh. “Feeling good” seemed a pallid euphemism for this sensuous bliss.
Yet, it was not enough. Her nipples peaked and strained against her bra; they were taut and sensitive and needed soothing. She was close to begging him to touch her there when his thumbs finally caressed her, alternately making lazy circles and applying gentle pressure exactly where she wanted it, how she wanted it.
Rachel whimpered. He’d worked her into such a sensual frenzy that her whole body was shaking.
“Open your eyes, Rachel,” Quint murmured against her ear. “Look at me.”
Her eyelids opened slowly, and her limpid hazel eyes locked on his lips that were barely touching her own.
“Do you want me to kiss you?”
Rachel could not ever remember wanting to be kissed as badly as she did at this moment. She gave her head a faint nod.
“I didn’t hear you,” he whispered.
She expelled a tremulous breath. “Yes.” The word was full of want and need, her voice soft with surrender.
He nibbled on her lower lip, then the upper one, and a tiny moan escaped from deep in her throat.
“Say my name, Rachel,” he said hoarsely.
In an act of wanton boldness that would’ve scandalized her usual guarded, coolly reserved self, she slid her arms around his neck. “You talk too much, Quint.”
“I should just shut up and kiss you?”
“Yes!”
His arms fully encircled her then, fitting her soft curves against the hard planes of his body, as his mouth closed fiercely over hers. She parted her lips on impact, and, when his tongue thrust inside, Rachel met it with her own to engage in an erotically intimate little duel.
Desire flooded her with an urgency she had never before experienced. Her skilled analytical, rational thought processes were incoherent and overwhelmed, but she didn’t care. She didn’t even notice.
Not when his wonderful hands so exquisitely caressed her breasts. Not when he was hard and thick between her legs, moving against her in a way that sent shock waves of pleasure jolting through her. Swollen and aching and wet, Rachel squirmed, wanting, needing so much more than he was giving her.
His hands lowered to clench her buttocks, his fingers squeezing hard. She rubbed against him provocatively, aware of the empty, achy void within her, experiencing a previously unknown craving to be filled. By him.
The barriers of their clothing were suddenly intolerable to her. Daring and desperate, Rachel tugged his shirt from the waistband of his jeans and slipped her hands under it, gliding her palms along his bare back. His skin was smooth and warm and slightly damp.
She felt as if she were losing herself in him, drowning in the scent and taste and feel of him. But instead of being threatened by his compelling virility, she felt empowered and euphoric.
I want him. Her whole body vibrated with the wild urgency of that admission. And jolted her back to her senses, like an electroshock altering errant brain waves. She tore her mouth from his and stared up at him.
Quint saw the glimmer of uncertainty in her eyes. And rebelled against it. “We both want this, Rachel,” he asserted, with as much certitude as a lawyer arguing his case in front of the Supreme Court.
He dipped his mouth to resume his seduction of her neck, his moist little kisses already beginning to undermine her fledgling resolve. “And it feels wonderful, Rachel. It feels right”
She could hardly argue with that. Still, she tried to present a case for lucidity and restraint. “We shouldn’t do this, Quint,” she whispered weakly.
“Probably not, but we’re going to anyway, aren’t we?”
He claimed her mouth again, his body hard and tight, the blood fizzing hotly through his veins. He wanted her with a ferocious urgency that rocked him. She was so passionate, so responsive, a feminine sensual paradox who was both pliant and demanding.
He was already at the point where kissing wasn’t enough and the clothing they were wearing was way too much. He wanted to carry her into his bedroom and undress her, to feel her bare skin under his hands, to touch her intimately….
He raised his head slightly but kept his mouth so close to hers that she could feel his lips touch her own when he spoke, could feel his warm breath mingle with hers.
“I want to make love to you, Rachel. So much.” His hands slipped under her cotton top, and he skimmed the smooth skin of her midriff with his fingertips. “Let me. Please.”
Before she could reply, he added seductively, “Tell me that you want it, too. Let me hear you say it.”
“You really do believe in validation every step of the way, don’t you?” An unexpected surge of affection swept through her, further destabilizing her.
“Yes,” said Quint.
He stared so intensely at her that she felt he was looking inside her, seeing her exposed and vulnerable, divining all the secret feelings that she’d always managed to keep hidden, even from herself.
“Yes,” she repeated dazedly. Despite her considerable verbal skills in the courtroom, she was inexperienced and inarticulate in expressing need or desire. But Quint was watching her, and waiting.
“Say it, Rachel.”
“I—I want—what you do,” she managed to rasp.
Quint kissed her again, and Rachel responded with all the passion she’d kept locked deep within her for so long. Lost in a maelstrom of lust and longing, she couldn’t remember why she’d ever tried to call a halt to things in the first place.
They were so intensely absorbed in each other that neither one heard the car pull into the carport, neither heard the kitchen door open and close or the footsteps on the stairs.
It wasn’t until an awestruck voice exclaimed, “Wow! Don’t you two ever come up for air?” that Rachel and Quint sprang apart, startled and shocked.
The descent from their private sensual universe to the real one, where a fascinated Sarah Sheely stood in the hall gaping at them, was swift and brutal.
Rachel gasped. Quint cursed. Both began to move slowly in opposite directions.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Sarah said, though her tone was merrily unapologetic. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to stick around and bug you. I’m on my way to my room and I’ll put on the TV—and keep the sound up high.” She gave a jovially conspiratorial thumbs-up and went on her way.
Silently, Quint and Rachel watched her open the door of the room next to Brady’s and disappear inside.
“I have to go.” Rachel’s entire body was one flaming scarlet blush.
“Rachel, wait.”
If he tried to talk her into staying, she would scream. Rachel walked away from him, quickly reaching the staircase and taking the steps two at a time to the ground floor.
But Quint moved even faster and easily caught up to her before she reached the front door. His hand closed around her upper arm.
Rachel prepared herself for a fight, she almost welcomed it. Frustration, embarrassment, and the powerful force of unslaked passion roared through her, seeking an outlet. A ferocious quarrel with Quint Cormack, the cause of it all, would serve nicely.
“I want to thank you for taking such good care of Brady today,” Quint said quietly.
Rachel looked up at him, nonplussed and deflated. She knew at that moment he wasn’t going to do or say anything to keep her with him tonight. Perversely, she was disappointed, though she knew she wouldn’t have stayed.
He released her arm and she unconsciously rubbed the skin there. “If you want to see him again—” Quint paused, looking uncertain. “If you ever feel like visiting—” He took a deep breath and started over. “I just want you to know that you’re welcome to visit Brady anytime, Rachel.”
She nodded her head, not trusting herself to speak. She rushed to her car, blinking back the tears that were burning her eyes. Quint didn’t follow her, but he remained standing in the open doorway. Rachel saw him watching her as she got into her car and drove away.
The pent-up emotions she hadn’t been able to release through lovemaking or fighting surged through her with tidal-wave force. Crying might provide some relief, but Rachel had never wept over a man, and she certainly wasn’t about to turn lachrymose now.
To distract herself, she turned on the radio and hit the button set for a station featuring an all-talk format. An irate voice came blaring over the airwaves, immediately commanding her attention. Tonight’s topic had something to do with a strange plan to resurrect the long-dead dirigible industry, beginning in Camden with two huge hangars that would build a pair of dirigibles every eighteen months and employ fifty thousand people. Most callers blasted the plan as either an insane pipe dream or a ridiculous scam, but a few were hopeful, citing the cottage industries that could be centered around dirigibles, for example, T-shirts and souvenir items of all kinds.
As Rachel had hoped, listening to the show was an ideal diversion. A dirigible factory? The urge to cry was replaced by sheer incredulity as the debate raged on.
“Look what I have for you, Katie.” Wade placed a giant-sized chocolate chip muffin on the top of Katie’s desk.
“My favorite!” Katie exclaimed eagerly. “And from Brunner’s Bakery, too, my most favorite place!”
Wade was aware of that. He’d made a special trip this morning, driving several miles out of his way, to the bakery in Haddonfield to buy this muffin. He knew the younger Sheely siblings were quite receptive to bribery. He and Tim had done enough of it over the years—to buy silence, to gain privacy, to get information.
Information was what he was currently seeking.
Katie swung around in her chair and began to pull the wrapper from the muffin. The phone rang, and she answered it, only to instantly disconnect the caller. “They can call back later,” she said airily. “I want to eat this while it’s still warm.”
Wade winced. When the phone rang again, he answered it and dealt with the caller himself while Katie ate her muffin.
“Dana was really upset when I dropped her off yesterday,” he said casually, tucking the message he’d written into the pocket of his suitcoat.
“Yeah, she sure was mad,” Katie agreed, chomping into the muffin. “And then I had to go open my big mouth and now she’s ticked off at Tricia and Tricia is ready to kill me.”
“Tricia?” Wade stifled a groan. He wasn’t in the mood to follow Katie on one of her pointless flights of ideas. “Did Dana tell you why she was so angry?” he asked bluntly, trying to keep her on track.
“You don’t know either?”
It seemed his bakery bribe had been a wasted effort. Katie was as in the dark about Dana as he was. Wade sighed his frustration.
“Looked like you were pretty mad, too—the way you peeled out of there at a hundred miles an hour! Man!” Katie sounded impressed.
“I did not ‘peel out’ or speed,” Wade said tightly. Her admiration of what could only be described as juvenile behavior irritated him. “You must have me confused with your hotshot brother Brendan, who was doing both in Dana’s car.”
“Sure.” Katie snickered. “Next you’ll be saying you weren’t mad either,”
Wade walked to the window and gazed out at the lush lawn and towering trees in Lakeview Park, bordering the small man-made lake that had given the town its name. “By the time I got home yesterday, I couldn’t remember exactly why I was so furious.”
The admission alarmed him as much as this current scene he was trapped in—having a heart-to-heart talk with Katie who was scanning the entertainment section of the newspaper, more interested in celebrity gossip than anything he might say.
And yet he couldn’t seem to stop talking. “I called your house last night—I actually got through in the five seconds between Emily’s phone calls, and Anthony told me that Dana wouldn’t talk to me.”
It was still bothering him. Sixteen-year-old Anthony Sheely, currently caught up in a dark, brooding, alienated-artist phase had sounded as if he were relishing the melodrama and his own part as messenger. “Dana says she doesn’t want to speak to you,” Anthony had announced in theatrically resonant tones. “She says you know why.”
Could she actually be holding a grudge? He couldn’t remember the last time they had parted in anger. They’d always kidded each other, true, but neither took offense. Certainly not lasting offense.
“Well, just don’t ask me what Tricia said because then both Dana and Tricia would gang up on me,” warned Katie. “And you’d probably be mad, too. So consider my lips zipped!”
“I don’t care what Tricia said.” Exasperated, Wade willed himself to be patient. He hitched a leg onto the corner of her desk and treated her to a buddy-to-buddy smile. “Katie, how close is Dana to Quint Cormack?”
Katie licked chocolate off her fingers. “He’s her boss.”
Wade’s smile turned into a grimace. This was bordering on hopeless. “I know he’s her boss but is she—are they—” His voice trailed off. Trying to subtly pump Katie for information was not working, but he wasn’t sure how blatant he should go.
The possibility of Dana being involved with her boss had occurred to him last night and steadily nagged at him since. True, she was dating Rich Vicker, but he knew that relationship wasn’t serious—maybe she was even using it in an attempt to make Cormack jealous?
Until last night, the idea of Dana having a clandestine affair with her boss—or anyone else—would’ve struck him as absurd. She was not secretive, especially not with him, her best pal Wade. But learning that she’d kept John Pedersen’s appointments with the Cormack firm from him had altered his perceptions.
Dana was fully capable of keeping a secret from him. But why would she want to keep an affair with Cormack quiet?
As a longtime Sheely family satellite, the answer came to him immediately. If Dana and Cormack were having a fling, she would never want her parents to find out. Quint Cormack was divorced, and Bob and Mary Jean Sheely were as inflexible as the Pope himself on the issue of divorce.
Vaguely, then with growing clarity, Wade remembered the uproar a couple years back when Tricia Sheely had dated a divorced claims adjustor in the insurance agency where she worked.
“If you date someone who’s divorced, it could lead to marrying someone who’s divorced, and that marriage could lead to excommunication,” the older Sheelys had said. And shouted. While visiting Dana and the Sheelys during that period, he’d overheard her folks lecturing Tricia over the phone countless times.
Finally Tricia had stopped dating the guy, and only then was she back in her parents’ good graces. No, a savvy offspring wouldn’t want Ma and Pa Sheely to know anything at all about a relationship with a divorced person.
Did Dana think he would snitch to her parents if she confided in him? Wade felt hurt. Then he thought how much he loathed the idea of her with Quinton Cormack. Divorce had nothing to do with it, he assured himself; he simply hated that conniving, client-stealing weasel’s guts. To his dismay, Wade realized that he was entirely capable of telling Bob and Mary Jean Sheely exactly what their darling daughter was up to. And with whom!
He watched Katie polish off the last crumbs of the muffin and daintily wipe her mouth. “Katie, would you know if Dana is—dating Quint Cormack?” he asked brusquely. He waited, stiff and tense, for her answer.
Which he couldn’t quite interpret.
“Whoa, wait’ll Tricia hears that!” Katie burst into laughter. “She won’t be mad at me anymore, she—Oh hi, Rachel.” The girl looked up and greeted a dour Rachel, who had entered the office and stood staring at them.
“Hey, Rach,” murmured Wade unenthusiastically.
He recalled Dana telling him that his cousin had somehow ended up baby-sitting for Quint Cormack’s child yesterday, but he decided not to mention it. Not with Rachel looking grimmer than the Grim Reaper on a pickup mission.
“Aren’t you, like, roasting to death in that?” Katie asked, eyeing Rachel’s dove gray turtleneck jersey that she wore under her navy pin-striped suit jacket. Katie was in a sleeveless chambray blouse and a demin miniskirt, in deference to the presummer heat.
“Rachel never sweats,” Wade drawled. “She could wear that outfit in a sauna, and she still wouldn’t perspire.”
Rachel tugged the high cotton neck of her jersey even higher. “It’s supposed to get cooler today,” she arguedly weakly.
“Yeah, the temperature is supposed to plummet the whole way down to seventy-five,” taunted Wade. “Brrr. Time to bring out the long-johns.”
‘There is no time for anyone to stand around and socialize!” Eve Saxon marched into the office like a five-star general reviewing a less-than-acceptable line of troops. “This is an office, not a chat room! Is it too much to expect the workday to begin with work? Is that a concept any of you can grasp?”
Katie jumped to attention. Wade and Rachel exchanged apprehensive glances. A day that began with a terse, tense Aunt Eve boded ill for everyone.
And Eve did look and sound terse and tense this morning, which was unusual. Eve Saxon almost always maintained her composure, saving her rare displays of emotion for the courtroom where they were calculated to have the intended effect on a judge or jury.
Her anxiety building, Rachel tried to guess what had caused her aunt to “blow her cool” as Katie would say. Something must be very wrong indeed.
After all, Aunt Eve had remained calm when Rachel lost the Pedersen case, although the verdict had galled her. And five months ago, though it hadn’t pleased her, Eve had graciously endured the unwelcome fiftieth birthday bash her brothers and their wives had insisted upon hosting for her. Eve could easily pass for forty, even her late thirties. And she had, until that birthday party, indisputably revealed her age to all.
Rachel covertly studied her aunt, whose skin was smooth and unlined, her makeup artfully applied. An amber-colored rinse had gradually lightened her once-dark hair to conceal and blend with whatever gray had dared to appear. Her hair was cut in a short, chic style that flattered her classic features.
Rachel knew her aunt worked out in a gym at least four days a week, often more, and her body was firm and slim and shapely. The beautiful raspberry-colored suit she wore this morning accentuated her figure to designer perfection. Rachel admired the color and the fit of the suit. She would never dare wear raspberry or anything figure-enhancing for fear of appearing to be a nonserious bimbo, but Aunt Eve had the stately polish, and the age, to carry it off.
Rachel wanted to compliment Eve on her suit, which she hadn’t seen before, but the icy glitter in the older woman’s eye warned her that their aunt-niece roles had been supplanted by their partner-associate status.
And from the way Eve’s eyes flicked over the trio in front of her, none of them passed muster. “Is there coffee in the conference room?” demanded Eve.
Katie nodded her head.
“Who made it?” Eve snapped. “You?”
“N-No, ma’am. Margaret did,” Katie replied, naming one of the two Saxon Associate secretaries.
“Good. Rachel, Wade, come into the conference room with me right now. Katie”—Eve turned back to the girl—”We are not to be interrupted. Especially, not by you. Do you understand?”
“I won’t come near you,” Katie promised fervently.
The three Saxons entered the formal, finely appointed conference room at the end of the small corridor. Eve closed the door behind them and fairly raced to the coffeepot, which stood on the antique cherrywood credenza. “God, this better not be decaf,” she muttered.
“You know that Margaret is a traditionalist,” Wade said lightly. “If it’s not high-test, powered with caffeine, it’s not worth making or drinking.”
“I’m in full agreement with her today.” Eve poured herself a cup and took a bracing swallow.
“Aunt Eve, maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but you’re not your usual congenial self this morning.” Wade flashed his winning, boyish smile, the one he’d perfected over the years, the one that never failed to charm its recipient.
It failed this morning. Eve glared at him. “A brillant observation. How perceptive you are, Wade. If you applied such talents to your career, we might actually have a chance of winning a case around here. Let me amend that to include keeping our clients, too. Because the way things are going now, we might as well stand aside and watch our clients and our chances to win a case fly out the door while—”
“Aunt Eve, what’s happened?” Rachel cut in, more than a little alarmed by her aunt’s uncharacteristic tirade. She had seen Eve exasperated or irritated with Wade, but she’d never ripped into him like this.
“I was getting to that, but you interrupted me!” Eve turned her wrath on her niece. “Am I going to be allowed to finish, or do you intend to break in with more useless questions?”
“I apologize, I won’t interrupt again,” Rachel murmured, sliding into a chair.
Her aunt continued her diatribe and Rachel’s spirits, already low after a confused, nearly sleepless night, sunk to a depth that made the pits seem like high altitude. Bad enough that she’d staggered into the bathroom this morning after the blast from her alarm clock made her feel as if she’d been shot in the head. Worse was to follow. She’d glanced in the mirror while brushing her teeth and nearly swallowed her toothbrush whole because on her neck …
Rachel blushed and drew her neck deeper into her shirt. On her neck was a sizable purple bruise, a bite mark, impossible not to notice, impossible to hide unless one resorted to a turtleneck jersey that was totally inappropriate for today’s warm weather. She knew what the mark was, of course. She remembered the exact moment Quint Cormack had given it to her. A shiver went through her, and she could almost feel his teeth on her skin, sensually biting and sucking.
The erotic memory faded quickly in the harsh light of day. She was humiliated, she looked like she’d had a run-in with Dracula last night. At the advanced age of twenty-eight she had her very first … Rachel cringed. She had never even said the word “hickey” aloud, and now she was sporting one.
Her first impulse was to march into Quint’s office and show him the damage he’d inflicted. The prospect held a certain appeal, and the thought of seeing Quint made her jittery and giddy with anticipation. So jittery and giddy it scared her. She was acting like an infatuated schoolgirl! Of course she wouldn’t go to Quint’s office this morning; she would go to her own.
Which she did, arriving just in time to hear Wade ask Katie Sheely if her sister Dana was dating Quint Cormack. The mark of his passion on her neck had actually begun to throb like a painful wound as Rachel pictured Quint and Dana Sheely together. Kissing and touching the way—
“Have you heard a single word I’ve said, Rachel?” Eve’s voice cut through her mournful reverie.
Rachel didn’t bother to he, she knew the truth was written on her blank face. Eve looked like she wanted to dismember both her niece and nephew, and while Rachel didn’t really blame her, she couldn’t help but wish her aunt had chosen any other morning but this one to regret taking her brothers’ children into her highly successful practice. Her previously highly successful practice.
“With all due respect, Aunt Eve, you can’t blame Rachel and me for Quint Cormack’s arrival in Lakeview,” Wade dared to interject.
“I can’t blame you?” Eve’s hazel eyes flashed fury. “Why is that, because you two refuse to accept any responsibility for Cormack’s success? Well, you should! Instead of assuming he was an imbecile, as incompetent as his father, you two should have been watching him—and I don’t mean watching him accumulate clients and win cases! You two should have been building your own practices, like he’s been doing. Instead, you simply sat back and waited for the right kind of clients to come to you!”
“Aunt Eve, are you saying that Rachel and I should have befriended that lap dancer Misty while she was married to Town Senior like Quint Cormack obviously did?” Wade exploded.
Unlike Rachel, he had been listening to his aunt while she ranted on about her phone call last night from Townsend Tilden Junior. The Tildens wanted to meet with Misty’s attorney immediately to discuss an out-of-court settlement. They had decided paying the little slut a few grand would be worth being spared the aggravation of a court fight over a bogus will—though they fully expected to win, should there be one. Just as they fully expected Misty to jump at their offer for some quick cash.
But when Eve had called Quinton Cormack at his home last night, he’d informed her that he would not discuss the case with her, that she could call him in the morning at his office and set up an appointment for some time next week. By that act of insolence, he’d made it clear that he was not going to cooperate, and Eve knew how enraged the Tildens would be if this dreadful matter was not quickly and conveniently resolved.
“What I am trying to tell you is that our position with the Tildens has become extremely tentative in a very short time.” Eve made an attempt to calm down, though her flushed face and trembling hands didn’t attest to much success.
“As you both know, Tilden Industries has their own legal department. Town hinted broadly that he would consider turning the family’s personal business—which Saxon Associates have always handled!—over to the company’s lawyers if probating this will turns into the kind of protracted mess we know Quinton Cormack is capable of creating!” Eve gave the table a quick dramatic pound with her fist.
Rachel flinched and touched the spot on her neck, concealed by the thick cotton. Was that what Quint had been doing last night when he kissed her and touched her and come within a hairbreadth of getting her into bed? Creating a mess? Messing with her mind by making her feel things she’d never felt before, hunger for something she’d never known?
Wade gulped down his cup of coffee, though it was so hot he feared his esophagus was singed. He thought of Dana’s secret pension rendezous with John Pedersen and what it ultimately meant for Saxon Associates. One look at Aunt Eve’s wild-eyed expression and Rachel’s pained one, and he knew he didn’t have the heart or the nerve to break that news to them. Not at this dismal moment in time.
He slumped in his seat, wishing he could discuss this latest disturbing development with his best friend. But she might be sleeping with the enemy, which made her his enemy, too. The thought was so unbearable he felt his stomach lurch and turn queasy.
“You look like two of the saddest sacks I’ve ever seen!” Eve’s attempt at calm was over; she was revving up for another round of rage. “Where is your fighting spirit? Are you just going to give up and give in? If so, then this is not the place for you, it’s certainly not the profession for you! Wade, why don’t you resign and go join your parents in that nice quiet bank? Rachel, why don’t you quit and get married like your sister, to a paternalistic man who will make sure you don’t use any of your brain cells to think for yourself? Just stop wasting my time and my office space!”
Eve stormed from the conference room, slamming the door behind her.
Rachel and Wade lifted their heads and their eyes connected.
“Work in a bank? Ouch!” Wade’s lips curved into a wry half smile. “Ole Aunt Eve sure knows where to stick the knife. There is nothing that bores me more than banking.”
“That crack she made about Laurel’s husband was entirely uncalled for.” Rachel felt her anger knot in a ball in her chest. “I admit I had my doubts about Gerald myself in the beginning, but he’s been a good husband to Laurel and a wonderful father to Snowy.”
“Aunt Eve’s still incensed that Professor Gerald Lynton is way closer to her own age than to Laurel’s.” Wade guffawed. “He’s forty-three, Laurel’s twenty-three, Aunt Eve is fifty. You do the math.”
Rachel’s lips twitched. “I think you’re actually trying to cheer me up in your own weird way. These really are desperate times!”
Wade instantly sobered. “Rach, you have no idea how desperate.”