Man at Work Read online

  Elaine Fox

  Man at Work

  For Greg,

  who proves that lawyers can make great heroes

  Contents

  1

  They pinched her toes, slid slightly on her heel, were…

  2

  Marcy stared at her computer but didn’t see the letters…

  3

  It didn’t strike Marcy until the next day, as she…

  4

  Truman was a fool. No doubt about it. He was…

  5

  “Tonight?” Trish stared at her, mouth agape in, of course,…

  6

  “Hello, you have reached the Paglinowski residence. I can’t take…

  7

  They walked down the hall in silence, their footsteps soft…

  8

  Marcy stabbed her key in the lock, twisted the knob,…

  9

  Marcy drove thoughtfully along the city streets, sure of her…

  10

  Friday afternoon Marcy barely left her office. That morning she’d…

  11

  It was after midnight when they practically fell into Truman’s…

  12

  Truman trudged wearily up the sidewalk to his apartment. He’d…

  13

  Marcy sat at her dining-room table and unfolded the yellow…

  14

  Truman yanked his wallet out of his back pocket and…

  15

  Marcy was nervous. Truman was picking her up in fifteen…

  16

  Despite misgivings about contacting him, Marcy messengered Truman a note…

  17

  Marcy popped the cork on the bottle of wine that…

  18

  Marcy was a mess. It was seven A.M. the day…

  19

  As the judge left the courtroom, Marcy stood and gathered…

  20

  It was Christmas Eve when Marcy cast a final critical…

  About the Author

  Other Romances

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Thursday, October 3

  WORD-A-DAY!

  FOLLY: n., a foolish deed, perhaps an imprudent involvement with a member of the opposite sex

  They pinched her toes, slid slightly on her heel, were perilously high and would make her calves feel like bowling pins by the end of the day, but Marcy had to have them.

  They were the perfect shoes for her newest red power suit, which she just happened to have on.

  Dressing for success is no joke, she could hear her boss saying. He of the three-hundred-dollar tie and Egyptian cotton shirts. He had actually held a seminar on the topic for all the new junior associates the year she’d joined the firm.

  You’ve got to spend money to make money, her friend Trish had said on too many shopping trips to mention. Easy for her to say. Trish had been born with money.

  But over the last couple of years, Marcy had realized they were both right. At least as far as being a Washington, D.C., lawyer in the firm of Downey Finley & Salem—Downey Fin, to most—was concerned.

  Gotta play to win, Marcy thought gamely, handing over her gold American Express card to the salesman.

  “Don’t bother putting them back in the box,” she said. “I’m going to wear them.”

  They’d have to be her stakeout shoes, she thought with a private grimace. She’d forgotten her sneakers and she had a very important meeting right after lunch—a meeting to be attended by several senior partners, making the power suit and perfect shoes imperative.

  So she’d be wearing the new shoes to her lunch hour “stakeout” at the Planners Building & Design construction site—or rather, at the restaurant across the street—to surreptitiously investigate the details of a case she was working on. It was her first solo case, a personal-injury lawsuit by a former subcontractor against Planners Building & Design.

  Not that she was working on it strictly alone. Her boss, the renowned Win Downey of Downey Fin, was overseeing everything she did and supervising the case. But for the most part, it was hers to conquer.

  She held up one foot as she leaned against the counter, listening to her credit card come through approved on the machine, and studied her latest purchase. Never in her wildest childhood dreams would she have imagined spending three hundred and eighty-two dollars on a pair of shoes.

  Dressing for success is no joke, she thought again. Damn right it wasn’t.

  She signed the credit slip and took up the bag containing the box with her old shoes in it.

  “You enjoy those now,” the salesman said. His thick graying eyebrows were raised over a face that smiled with a million laugh lines. She hoped he was working on commission.

  “I will. Thank you very much.” She gave him a bright smile and strode from the store in her brand-new, stiletto-heeled stakeout shoes.

  “Hey! Hey you! Cut it out!” Marcy glared across D Street at the unkempt, beer-bellied man leveling another kick at a puppy. The whimpering creature cowered against the chain-link fence. Mud coated the dog, the man’s steel-toed work boots, the gravel parking lot of the construction site, and the street across which she marched with all the rage a five-foot-four-inch woman could project. “I’m talking to you, lowlife.”

  She crossed the muddy gravel impervious to what it was doing to the hem of her camelhair coat and the brand-new stakeout shoes.

  “Hey, buddy.” She grabbed the man by one arm to get his attention. “I’m talking to you.” She was too angry to feel fear for this bully, this grubby, stupid excuse for a person, though some part of her warned that fear might be the healthiest emotion.

  The man—quite large, now that she was close, and smelling strongly of sweat and smoke—turned to glare at her with flat, red-rimmed, milk-chocolate eyes. “What the f—”

  “I said, cut it out,” Marcy said through gritted teeth. She couldn’t stand men like this. Men with the attitude that anything smaller and weaker than they were deserved whatever they felt like dishing out. “Are you aware that what you’re doing is called animal cruelty and is punishable by a twenty-five-hundred-dollar fine and up to two years in prison?”

  Marcy had no idea if this was correct—the type of law she practiced was corporate, insurance, personal injury, not criminal cases involving ill-bred miscreants—but he didn’t know that.

  He laughed once. “You expect me to believe you’re a cop?” He spat a wad of something dark to the ground by her feet. She noticed a brown fleck on the toe of her shoe. If they hadn’t been so expensive she’d have thought about throwing them away when she got home.

  “Yeah, or something.” She bent down to grasp the little dog’s collar, but the band was so tight she could barely get her fingers inside it.

  The puppy cowered against the fence, looking at her with brown, fear-filled eyes, but making no move to bite or fight back. Its black ears lay tight against its head and the black, white-tipped tail curled around its scrawny haunches with the tender impotence of a child’s security blanket.

  “It’s okay,” she crooned, pulling the puppy gently toward her by the scruff.

  But Rambo had other plans for her. She felt his burly grip on her upper arm as she was yanked upright. He turned her to face him, so close she had to hold her breath against the foul smell of his.

  “That’s my goddamn dog, bitch, and if you don’t take your goddamn hands off it I’m gonna break your goddamn neck into a buncha goddamn tiny pieces.”

  She leveled a cool glare at him, revealing none of the fright that was beginning to blossom in her breast, and said the first thing that popped into her head. “That’s very good. Excellent vocabulary. Now can you make goddamn into a verb?”

  Honest to God, for a second she t
hought he was going to hit her. His grip tightened so that she could almost picture the bruises he would leave and his opposite shoulder drew back as if to wind up, when suddenly he spun around so quickly she was dragged sideways by his hold before stumbling out of his grasp.

  “You graduating from dogs to women now, Chuck?” a new male voice asked. This one was deeper, calmer, and free of that construction-worker accent they all seemed to put on with their hardhats.

  So she was understandably confused when she regained her balance and straightened to see a tall, broad construction worker with dark brown hair that was badly in need of a cut and torn jeans that were badly in need of a needle, hauling her nemesis nearly off his feet by the collar of his down vest.

  “What the hell you doin’, Harley? Get the hell offa me.”

  The dark-haired man—Harley? she repeated to herself with inexplicable disappointment—let Chuck bat his hand away, but there was no illusion that he was backing down. He merely stepped forward and looked down on the shorter—fatter—man and asked in that deep voice, “You going to leave her alone or not?”

  Chuck shrugged his vest back into shape and took a step back, belligerent but clearly not interested in fighting the new guy. “She’s trying to take my goddamn”—here he glared at her—“dog. Not that it’s any business of yours. Why’ren’t you on the job, anyway?”

  The dark-haired man tilted his head. “I heard yelling. Female yelling. Thought someone might be in trouble.”

  He passed his gaze over to Marcy and she felt her pulse trip. He had stunning eyes. Light, light gray, piercing as sunlight and steeped in intelligence. Maybe he was the architect, she thought brightly, before he turned back to the other man.

  “Nobody here you need to worry about, Harley. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get back to work.” Chuck pushed the back of his hand across his nose and sniffed loudly. “I don’t know what the hell kind of bee flew up your butt this morning anyway. Shoving your nose into everyone’s business but your own, carping about them railings, or that scaffolding, or the damn OSHA regulations. Who the hell’s superintendent around here anyway? Me, that’s who. Why’nt you just get back to your own damn job while you still got one?”

  OSHA? Marcy thought. If this guy was complaining about the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s regulations, then her case could be even more solid than she’d thought. She took the opportunity of the man’s diatribe to coax the little dog away from the fence and gather it up in her arms. She wasn’t going anywhere without this puppy, she told herself. If she left it here it’d just get kicked again. And who knew? possibly killed. No, this little guy was one she could save. She tilted the dog briefly on its back, looked, and amended mentally, little gal.

  The brute turned suddenly back to her and grabbed the dog from her arms before she could protest. “Now Max and me’ll just be getting back to our coffee.”

  “Wait just a minute,” Marcy commanded.

  In the moment it took for the man to realize her order did not need to be heeded, he’d stopped and she tried to snatch the puppy from him again. But he yanked it back and held the dog at his side by the scruff of its neck.

  Marcy winced at the strangled look on the dog’s face.

  “Now you listen here and you listen good,” the superintendent said, stepping close and grabbing her by the lapel.

  This time, however, before he could get another word out he was spun away from her once again and sent to the ground with one efficient, well-placed punch. The puppy scrambled toward the trailer at the edge of the parking lot.

  Marcy stared up at the dark-haired man, who stood over his victim with a calm, hard expression. “I told you to leave her alone,” he said in that low voice.

  Like Clint Eastwood, she thought, only not as hokey.

  He turned to her and she closed her gaping mouth.

  “You might want to get going now,” he said mildly.

  She raised her brows. “Right. Sure. Thanks.” She glanced around for the dog but didn’t see it. Chuck climbed to his feet, brushing futilely at his mud-covered clothes.

  “That’s it, Harley,” he growled. “You’re fired, you hear me? Fired. I don’t wanna ever see your ugly face again. You set foot on this property again and I’ll have you fucking shot, you hear me? You know I ain’t lyin’. Jesus. Sticking up for chicks and dogs like some kinda…”

  As the man ranted on, Marcy started backing away, thinking perhaps it would be best to come back later for the dog, maybe with a police escort. She glanced around the lot and saw a chain-link dog run next to the trailer. He probably kept it in there at night, she thought. She could come back later and get it. That little padlock would be a cinch to get past. Despite her law-abiding bent, she knew a thing or two about vandalism. The neighborhood she’d been raised in had encouraged it.

  The dark-haired man turned his back on the superintendent’s tirade and walked toward her.

  “Let’s get moving,” he said. His voice was quiet, with no urgency. It was pitched more as if he were in a library and didn’t want his words to carry. She found it ridiculously sexy.

  She turned and they both started down the street on foot, trailed by the superintendent’s vitriol.

  “You think that’s gonna get you some, Harl?” the vile man called after them. “Huh? You think she’s gonna give you a look at that hot, rich-girl body now you stuck up for her? Well I wouldn’t count on it, jackass. That bitch thinks she’s too good for you, and some damn dog ain’t gonna make you look any better. She prob’ly more worried you gonna pee all over her prissy clean rugs than any dog…”

  They reached the corner of the block and Marcy turned to the man with a cautious expression. He’d just lost his job because of her. What on earth could she say to mitigate that? What if he was angry?

  But when she looked up at him he was smiling. Not a big moronic grin, just a small, interested smile.

  “You got your nice coat all dirty,” he said, shifting those startling eyes from her coat to her face.

  She glanced down at her mud-streaked coat, then back at him, amazed he wasn’t mad or at least upset.

  “I’m so terribly sorry,” she said. “About your job, that is. Thank you so much for trying to help me but I feel just awful that he fired you because of it.”

  He shrugged and gazed at her assessingly. “It’s just a job. I’ll find another one. You come to this part a town lookin’ for trouble or you just happen to get lucky and find it?” He moved one hand to encompass the decaying, trash-strewn street, the empty storefronts and the car nearest them that was gray with rust and resting on cinderblocks.

  She smiled and scratched absently at one of the splatters of mud on her sleeve. “I was having coffee in that diner.” She indicated the one place up the street with life in it, across from the construction site. “Then I saw that man kicking the dog. And it’s just a puppy, for goodness’ sake. It’s not like it could fight back, or do anything even to warrant such brutality, so I had to do something. I just had to.” She swallowed hard. “But I’m very sorry my concern got you into trouble. I’m sure it was folly for me to get involved in the first place, but how could I have just watched him kicking the little thing without doing something?”

  The man’s face registered something like surprise, and then amusement. One eyebrow rose and he said, “‘Folly’?” with a mocking smile. “Where you from, sugar?”

  Marcy felt her blood stall with disappointment. Sugar. Oh, how she hated that. Sugar, darlin’, dear, honey. She hated all of those names, endearments meant to charm that only belittled.

  All the guys from her old neighborhood were like this, and she wasn’t having any. No pretty boy with dirt under his fingernails was going to charm her. Not again. She knew what she wanted and it wasn’t someone like this. Been there, done that.

  It was a shame about him, though, she thought. He was awfully good-looking, but she wasn’t going to go all mushy over a pair of nice eyes in a face that said “
sugar.”

  “I don’t think where I’m from is important. But I thank you for your help, and I’d like to help you.” She reached into her purse for her pen and paper. She had a client who owned Donneville Construction Company, one of the biggest in D.C., and she was sure she could get this man a job. But before she could even get the pen from her purse he was turning away.

  “No thanks, doll,” he said. “I don’t need a check that’s just gonna clear your conscience and cloud mine. Charity’s not my thing, so I’ll just be on my way.”

  Marcy glared at his retreating back. She should let him walk away, she knew, but she couldn’t stand his condescension. “I wasn’t going to write a check, smart guy,” she called after him. He turned back to her, his expression openly skeptical. “I was going to help you get another job. But since you’re such an all-fired macho big shot, I’m sure you’ll do fine on your own.”

  “‘Macho big shot’?” he repeated, that same ironic look on his face. “That the best you can do, sugar?”

  “Oh!” she growled and spun on her heel. Infuriating, insufferable—vainglorious! she thought triumphantly (she’d been unable to use yesterday’s word from her word-a-day calendar until this guy came along)—man.

  Before she got too far, however, she stopped and turned back. “Hey!” she called.

  She watched his steps slow before he turned, involuntarily noting his athletic physique.

  He didn’t say anything, just looked at her with his head cocked.

  “Does that guy live in that trailer?” she asked, gesturing back toward the construction site. “The superintendent.”

  He paused as his lips formed another mocking smile. “Sure. Didn’t you see his swimming pool out back?”

  She took a deep breath and counted to five. “I’ll take that as a no.”