Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Aelix~

Though my office looked organized and almost like no one worked in it, my life was a chaotic mess, and I loved it. Even as a kid, I hadn’t been a fan of downtime, so being a corporate lawyer really was my dream job, and I knew how lucky I was to be able to say that. However, while I was a fan of chaos, I was also a neat freak, and being a neat freak felt more stressful than being a lawyer, if you could believe that.

Growing up, my parents had inspired us to live life to the fullest, but my sister and I had followed their examples more than we had listened to their words of advice. My father, Oliver Palmer, was a circuit court judge, and my mother, Carlie Palmer, was a law professor. So, while they’d done their best to encourage us to just be kids and have fun while we could, we’d also seen the importance of financial stability and rules. Being raised by a judge and law professor had impressed upon us just how serious life could and should be at times.

So, by the age of sixteen, I’d known that I was going to be a lawyer, only I hadn’t wanted to go into criminal law. Guilty or innocent, I hadn’t been too thrilled with the idea that someone’s life would be held in the palm of my hand, so I’d gone into corporate law. While it was possible to go to jail for embezzlement and stuff like that, the math that led you there was pretty simple and concrete. It was very rare that someone innocent went to jail for fraud. Plus, even if you did end up in federal prison for misuse of funds, there’d have to be a few dead bodies to go along with those charges to get you the electric chair. No matter what other people believed, I didn’t want that kind of responsibility on my shoulders. Companies had insurance for financial losses, a lost life didn’t have that.

At any rate, while I’d gone into law, Judith had decided to be a stay-at-home-mom, and though she had a degree in economics, Judith had been meant to be a mom. She was three years older than me at thirty-six, and she already had three kids, two boys and a girl, and her husband, Dennis Horn, was a CEO of a vineyard, which made him the perfect man in my eyes. I mean, how could a man with access to unlimited wine be bad?

Dennis’ access to unlimited wine also helped with the stress of my job. Now, while I was good at what I did and could juggle ten cases at once, I worked a lot of hours and barely had time for myself. So, in the rare instances that I did have some downtime, I liked to enjoy it with a bottle of wine because glasses were just a waste of my time. Granted, that wasn’t to say that I was an alcoholic, but just the right amount of wine, beer, or liquor had a way of making me sleep like a baby, sleep being something that I didn’t indulge in often.

There was also my best friend, Dexter Holland, who loved himself a good wine and was always down for vineyard tours. Dexter was thirty-six, had blond hair, blue eyes, and at six-foot, he kept himself in shape for his job as a court bailiff. While I wouldn’t say that our friendship was one-sided, I was always busier than he was, but he didn’t hold that against me. Being gracious enough not to take my career personally, he was always up for a last-minute wine tasting trip if he could. I was also grateful that his girlfriend didn’t have a jealous bone in her body.

Now, if I had any complaints, it’d be my love life. While my sex life was the best that it’d ever been, my love life was non-existent. Two years ago, I’d caught my boyfriend cheating, and it’d almost been enough to make me bitter because it hadn’t been the first time that a man had cheated on me. I’d had about seven serious boyfriends from the age of fifteen to thirty, and three out of those seven had been caught with their dicks out.

Granted, I hadn’t been serious with Thomas, but that hardly factored. As far as I’d known, we’d been in a committed relationship, so finding out that his secretary was pregnant by him hadn’t been a good time. It had also given me the ick after finding out. So, like all the other times that I’d been cheated on, I’d gone to my doctor to have a full checkup, and it hadn’t been fun to have to tell him that I needed bloodwork because my boyfriend had been a cheating douchebag.

Nonetheless, for all that Thomas was a scumbag, had it not been for him, I never would have taken Cotter Moore up on his sex-only arrangement, and a girl wasn’t living until she got invited into Cotter Moore’s bed. As the CFO of Moore Industries, he was just as busy as I was, so his sex-only arrangement worked perfectly for us. In fact, so perfectly that we’d been doing it for two years already. No phone calls, no spending the night, no going to dinner, no anything apart from sex. If Cutter wanted to get laid, then he texted the time and place, and if I had an itch that needed to be scratched, I did the same. Two years later, he was still the best sex that I’d ever had, and he always made the lack of sleep worth it. It didn’t hurt that he had a big dick, either.

Still, for all his good qualities in bed, Cotter Moore was temporary, and I knew this. While some people might argue that two years didn’t sound temporary, the only reason that we’d been doing this for so long was that neither of us wanted to take the time to find something else more permanent. However, I knew that we couldn’t go on like this for much longer. Sooner or later, I’d want a family, and I wasn’t getting any younger. It was just so hard to find someone that understood and respected the pressing demands of a career like mine.

I glanced over at my phone again, Cotter’s latest text fresh in my mind.

CM: I’ll b at ur place around 9 2nite

I hadn’t bothered to respond because there’d been no need. Cotter had a key to my condo, and he was allowed to show up whenever he wanted to. Granted, he was considerate enough to always text me first, but the last thing that Cotter needed was my permission to come over. After all, that was the agreement, right?

A knock at my door snapped me out of my thoughts, and when I looked up, Kent Racier was grinning at me from the doorway, and I couldn’t help but grin back.

At thirty-four, Kent Racier had blonde hair, blue eyes, and fit his suit well. He was the same height as Dexter, but to my five-foot-two, six-foot was tall enough. He was also a fellow coworker, having started about six months ago. In addition to his good looks, he was very smart, driven, and was not afraid of hard work, which I could appreciate. He was also a gentleman, something that stood out in this day and age. While I was all for female empowerment, I didn’t need to emasculate men to make myself feel more accomplished. I appreciated strong men, and a gentleman even more so. A man opening the door for me didn’t put me in the defensive; I simply saw it as a sign of good manners.

Anyway, last month, our boss had paired us up for a case, and it turned out that Kent and I made a good team, if I did say so myself. Kent loved to do research, and since I was a neat freak, I was good at organizing all his findings. I was confident that we were going to kick ass tomorrow in court, and I knew that Kent was feeling the same way.

“Ready for tomorrow?” he asked.

“Are you?” I countered.

Kent walked into my office, utilizing his open invitation into my sanctuary. “I’m always ready,” he teased.

“Truman Financial isn’t going to know what hit them, and a part of me almost feels sorry for them,” I quipped.

Taking a seat in front of my desk, Kent said, “I’m going to call bullshit.”

I laughed. “Okay, you got me. I don’t feel sorry for them at all.”

His blue eyes twinkled. “How about we catch lunch afterwards? A celebration of sorts?”

I arched a brow. “That confident?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I know arrogance is an unattractive trait, but you know just as well as I do that we’ve got this one in the bag, Aelix.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“Where were you thinking?”

“Rouche is good for fast service,” he said, suggesting one of the restaurants that were close enough to the offices of Walter & Kramer.

“Sounds good,” I replied, not against a celebratory lunch. “But if we lose, then we’re skipping lunch, so that I can head out early to drown my arrogant sorrows at the nearest bar.”

Kent stood up. “As long as you save the empty barstool next to you for me, I’m game.”

“Deal.”

I smiled as he left my office, and I really hoped that we would be celebrating at lunch tomorrow versus getting drunk at the bar after work. Now, while I’d lost cases before, it wasn’t anything that I wanted to get used to. I didn’t like letting myself down, and since I tried my best at everything that I did, it felt like failure every time that I lost a case, even knowing that it was a loser when I took it on.

Letting out a sigh, I knew that I was going to have to let Cotter know that I was only going to be good for one round tonight, two at the most. I needed to be up early to meet Kent, and I wanted to be ready when we reached the courthouse.

Okay…three at the most.