Clint sat back, listening, his expression smug. When she’d wound down, he turned to Connor. “I assume you can counter that.”
“I can,” Connor confirmed. “But I’d rather this not get ugly.” He took a longer look into Barbara Wilder’s eyes and saw not avarice, but sorrow, not revenge, but fear. Out of the blue, for the first time since he’d been handling divorces, he saw the other side more clearly, in human, rather than monetary terms.
When she met his gaze, there were tears in her eyes. “Obviously you have the pictures,” she said. “I was sixteen years old and living on the streets when I resorted to letting myself be photographed in the nude. At the time, I thought it was better than the alternative.”
Connor winced at her matter-of-fact recitation. “The alternative?”
“Prostitution. Pictures of myself were one thing, but I don’t think I could have sold my body to one man after another the way so many young girls in my position wound up doing. I was a naive kid from Wisconsin. You’ve heard this story before, I’m sure. I came out to Los Angeles with such high hopes. I didn’t know that it would be impossible to get an audition with no agent and no experience. Everyone back home said I was beautiful, that I ought to be in the movies. I’d gotten the lead in my school plays practically since first grade. When things got bad at home, I ran toward a dream. It turned out to be a nightmare.”
She regarded Connor with defiance. “I’m not proud of those pictures, but I’m not ashamed, either. I did what was necessary to survive.”
That, of course, was the part Connor couldn’t have known. Once again, he had to face the human side of a very real tragedy. Sympathy wasn’t in his client’s best interests, but he could practically hear Heather yelling in his ear that he had to take this woman’s story into account, not use it against her.
Mrs. Wilder gave him a plaintive look. “I hate what I did. I certainly don’t want it to go public so that my kids will find out about it.” She turned to her husband. “But if that’s the way it has to be for me to get what’s fair, then you go for it, Clint. I’m not the one who’ll come out of this looking sleazy—it’ll be you. See how many of your leading ladies will crawl into your bed once they’ve seen how you treated the mother of your children.”
Connor drew in a deep breath. “She’s right,” he told his client.
“I don’t give a damn,” Clint exploded.
“You have two children,” Connor reminded him. “They will care if their father drags their mother through the mud just to save a few bucks he can well afford.”
Barbara Wilder regarded Connor with surprise, while his client stared at him with barely banked fury. They all waited.
“Okay, fine,” Clint said, shoving back his chair. “Double it, but that’s my final offer.” He stormed from the room.
Barbara Wilder stared after him.
Her attorney stood up and shook Connor’s hand. “You did the right thing. Thank you.”
“Yes, thank you,” Mrs. Wilder said softly, tears in her eyes. “The saddest part of this is that even now, after everything he’s done, I’d still rather have him than all the money in the world.”
“You’re better off without him,” Connor told her candidly.
She gave him a rueful smile. “You’re not the first to tell me that. I suppose one of these days, I’ll believe it.”
After everyone had gone, Connor walked back into his office and sat down. He found himself wanting to pick up the phone and call Heather, to tell her about what had happened here today, the epiphany he’d had. Okay, maybe epiphany was too strong a word for what had happened. He’d simply opened his eyes and seen two sides to a very sad story. He couldn’t help wondering if that was an entirely good thing. It might make him more human, but it could make him a less effective attorney, at least when it came to divorce law.
He supposed the old saying was true—time would tell.
* * *
As Friday drew closer, Heather became more and more anxious. Though she was pretty sure she could avoid most contact with Connor, they were bound to be thrown together more than she’d prefer. She had a hunch he’d see to it.
When Bree popped in on her way to her theater company rehearsal, she regarded Heather with curiosity. “Why are you so jumpy? Is it because Connor’s coming down tomorrow for the weekend?”
“I just didn’t expect him to start spending so much time here,” Heather admitted, unable to keep a plaintive note out of her voice. “He hardly ever came to Chesapeake Shores before.”
“Because you and his son weren’t here,” Bree said. “You’re the big draw.”
“It’s little Mick who’s the draw,” she contradicted, though she knew otherwise, too. She just didn’t want to acknowledge the truth—it was too disconcerting. “I don’t know why Connor wouldn’t let me send little Mick up to Baltimore tomorrow with Abby.”
Bree gave her a disbelieving look. “Really? You have no idea why he preferred coming here to that option? Do you really need me to spell it out for you?”
“Okay, maybe it is about me,” she conceded reluctantly, “but why now? And to what end? Nothing’s changed. I still want a future. Connor doesn’t.”
“Oh, Connor wants a future with you,” Bree said. “He just wants it the easy way.”
She pulled out a chair at the table where Heather gave her quilting lessons and lowered herself slowly into it. “Let me give you a little insight into my brother,” Bree said. “Things have always been easy for him. He cruised through school without having to study too hard. He was a star ballplayer without much effort. He even managed to get himself noticed by a big law firm without much of a struggle. He wins some huge percentage of his cases in
