I couldn’t keep the bitterness completely from my voice. “It should be, but people believe what they want to believe.”
“Miriam,” he guessed.
I nodded.
I’d known in those first moments of meeting Caleb that he wasn’t right in the head, but Miriam wouldn’t listen. He told her what she wanted to hear and convinced her that I was jealous of their relationship, painting me as a control freak who didn’t want her to have her own life. Miriam, who I’d shielded from my father’s abuse since we were kids, had already seen me as bossy and overprotective, and Caleb built on that.
It had nearly destroyed me.
“Do you know how frustrating it is to know someone is lying through their teeth and not be able to do anything about it?”
He nodded somberly. “Yes. Unfortunately, that I know.”
We gathered up our wrappers and tossed them into a nearby garbage can, and then, as per our agreement, got some gelati to take back with us. We didn’t speak along the way, and I wondered if maybe I should have just done what I normally did and kept my mouth shut.
“Are you sorry you asked?” I couldn’t help but ask as we rode the elevator up to the sixth floor.
“No,” he assured me. “But there is one thing that bothers me.”
“What’s that?”
“What gave you that chiver?”
I wondered that myself. It was the second time I’d felt one in as many days, and I didn’t believe in coincidences.
“Probably the woman with the dog. She was shooting daggers at my back the whole time.”
He chuckled. “You are good. That was Nancy. She’s a friend of Stella’s and probably not very happy with me right now.”
I nodded even though I wasn’t convinced. Oh, I’d felt her unfriendly stares all right, but unless she’d been walking her monster dog past Miriam’s apartment at the exact moment we got back from Paul’s the night before, she wasn’t the source of my chiver.
Paul went to his private office, and I returned to the conference room to continue the Herculean task of organizing the case files. The ones from the past twelve months were in the worst condition. Things prior to that had had at least some semblance of logical order to them.
It didn’t take a genius to guess what had changed. What I couldn’t figure out was why Paul had taken Stella on as an assistant to begin with.
My theory, based on spending some time with Paul, was, she’d seen an opening and jumped on it. Probably given him some kind of sob story, maybe even told him she wanted to pursue a career in law and just needed someone to give her an opportunity. Paul was an intelligent guy, but he also had the kind of innate chivalrous instincts that might override his common sense.
That was the kind of thing that was so frustrating to me. Decent people making allowances and excuses for others because they believed everyone had some good in them and that good would prevail if just given a proper chance.
My mother had believed my father was a good man who’d fallen on hard times and that, as his wife, it was her duty to stand by him, no matter what. Miriam had believed Caleb’s irrational possessiveness came from some soul-deep love, not because he was a controlling asshole.
And me? I got to watch the people I loved get hurt, and when it all went to hell, I would try to pick up the pieces.
Chapter Ten: Paulie
I hung up the phone, pleased and surprised that I’d accomplished everything I’d wanted to and then some. I’d almost forgotten how productive a few hours of uninterrupted work time could be.
I stood and stretched, and then I went in search of Allison. It had been hours since I’d last seen her, and I was craving a fix. I told myself that it meant nothing. That I was in need of a break and simply sought her out because she was there.
Yeah, I wasn’t buying it either.
I found her exactly where I’d left her.
“Hey.”
She was sitting on the floor, sorting through a bankers box, when she looked up and smiled at me. I felt it right in the center of my chest.
“Hey yourself.”
I took in the neat stacks of paper covering every available surface, now paper-clipped and color-coded and perfectly aligned in a precise geometric pattern. “Wow. You’ve been busy.”
She beamed. “I think I’ve got just about everything sorted out, but there are some items I couldn’t associate with a specific case.”
She got to her feet and handed me a file, much smaller than I would have expected. I’d go through them later.
I picked up one of the case files and scanned the sheet she’d paper-clipped to the top. Each folder had one.
“What’s this?”
“A checklist of what each file contains for quick reference. For current cases, I also made a to-do list of things pending or still outstanding. I hope that’s okay.”
Okay? It was fantastic.
“You did all this just this afternoon?”
She shrugged. “Yes.”
“How?”
She laughed and averted her gaze, as if embarrassed. “Like Miriam said, I’m anal when it comes to organizing, although I prefer the term fastidious.”
I skimmed over the list with blatant approval. The woman knew her stuff. She’d accomplished more in one day than Stella had done in an entire year and with practically no direction from me. I could only imagine what it would be like to have someone so capable working with me full-time.
And imagine I did. My mind was suddenly filled with images of having Allison here every day. Helping with cases. Offering insight. Sharing coffee and meals. Engaging in some in-office canoodling before I took her home and—
I shut those thoughts down when I felt myself beginning to harden. I had no business thinking any of that. I was a lawyer, for God’s sake. One who understood that those thoughts I was having were way out of line.
I was not going to be that guy. I should thank her for her time, cut her a check,
