Page 14 of Shopping for an Heir
He looked at Old Jorg and imagined the locker room toilet.
Better.
Understanding why he’d had that dream wasn’t exactly rocket science. Stimulus, response.
See Suzanne, dream about her.
But truly grasping why he kissed her—and why she let him—was a puzzle.
He hadn’t even opened those damn inheritance papers. Tucked away in his gym bag, he’d thrown them in on a lark. Vince had a keen way of cutting through bullshit to get to the down-and-dirty heart of an issue.
He’d ask him after they moved the equivalent of a skyscraper in weight.
A pinch at his ear and the muted bliss of death metal was interrupted by Vince’s hot breath.
“Gotta go. Emergency.”
“What’s wrong?”
But Vince was gone, the front door swinging, Old Jorg watching with blinking eyes, like an old wrinkled owl.
Shit.
Gerald tucked his worry away, knowing Vince would have told him if he’d wanted to. Instead, he jumped off the rowing machine and made a beeline for Vince’s tires.
Might as well flip rubber if he wasn’t going to wear any.
Bracing his legs as he lunged down, he lifted the huge, stinking black mass of petroleum, end over end, three times. Glutes screaming, he ignored them. Bodies in motion don’t sound like people screaming, thank God.
Self-torture he could handle.
By the time every muscle in his body shook, he was dripping with sweat and no more enlightened, but at least he wasn’t plagued by a racing mind with nothing better to do.
Vince came jogging back in just as Gerald sat on a boxer’s chair, drinking water.
“Wimped out already?”
“Where’d you go? Tea party?”
“Emergency,” Vince said tersely.
“Sorry. Everything okay?”
“Don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Fine. Don’t talk. Lift.”
“Too edgy. Spar with me.”
Gerald snorted. “I might be a masochist, but I’m not suicidal. I can tell you’re stoked. Too much anger. Too much energy. Pick some naive kid in here and beat him. I’m not going in the ring with you.”
Vince cursed.
“Run with me, then.”
“I’m wiped, man.” Plus, whatever had made Vince leave like that loomed over them like a bad spirit, not quite ready to move on.
“Too wiped to run?” Vince walked over to the weight racks and grabbed a vest. He began tucking little weight pouches into the pockets. By Gerald’s count, he loaded up eighty pounds.
“Three miles,” Gerald said grudgingly.
“That’s like getting your dick stroked over the pants, man.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a tease.”
“You’re comparing being your running partner with that?”
“Sex brain, man. I’ve got it bad.”
Bzzz.
Gerald’s phone buzzed in his bag, which was on a long bench next to him. He grabbed the phone.
James McCormick.
“My boss? What’s one of my bosses doing texting me at six a.m. on my day off?”
“They own your ass, G.” Vince began running in place, wearing a hundred-pound vest. “C’mon. Get it done.”
Gerald read the text:
I have a medical appointment that has been moved to eight a.m. Pick me up at my residence.
The guy got to the point.
Yes, sir, he typed back. Received.
“I gotta work early,” Gerald said with a sigh, half relieved not to need to run, half sad to have to drive James McCormick to the cancer center. For the past half a year, Gerald had managed his boss’s appointments, which the elder McCormick hid from his sons. The old man asked him to keep it quiet, and Gerald was the only one he trusted to see him in a weakened state.
“G, it’s your day off.”
“Not anymore.”
“Fishing for a reason to leave?”
“No. James McCormick needs me for an eight o’clock medical appointment.” He knew he could take a different day off this week. The old man would never say it, but he needed Gerald—and only Gerald—for this errand.
“Haven’t met him yet.” Vince grunted. “Andrew’s decent.” He frowned. “Medical, huh? Is it serious?”
Vince’s casual tone, calling Andrew McCormick, CEO of Anterdec, Inc., by his first name, made Gerald shake his head.
“How do you get away with that? Andrew McCormick insists I call him sir.” Changing the subject meant preserving confidentiality.
“Charisma. Either you’ve got it, or you’re a loser.”
“You misspoke, Vince. You meant to say bullshit.”
Vince grabbed a medicine ball and pitched it at Gerald’s head. Gerald ducked. The thwock of the weight against the padded wall sounded like a gut punch.
“What was your emergency, Vince?”
“My dad.”
Gerald sucked in air sharply. “He’s bugging you again?” Once Vince began making steady money as a trainer, his deadbeat dad came back into the picture. Junkies love success.
“Yeah. This time, he OD’d.”
“He in the hospital?”
Vince’s braid swung across his back as he shook his head. “Nah. Refused transport. One of his junkie buddies knows I work out here, so...”
“I’m sorry.”
Vince gave him the hairy eyeball. “Go to work for the billionaires, Mr. Heir. Just remember we peons when you’re rolling in it.”
Ducking just in time, he laughed and shot through the front doors, wondering if he could beat rush hour traffic to get to Anterdec in time for a shower before his shift began.
As he left, he caught Vince’s eye, the look serious.
And then he remembered the inheritance papers in his bag.
It was going to be a long day.
A very, very long day.
Chapter 8
“I’ve never seen you behave so unprofessionally, Suzanne. What happened to the iron maiden? You’ve been rock solid for seven years. Hell, half the junior associates are convinced you’re part robot.” Norman Phelps, one of the law firm’s founders, glared at her from his desk. Remaining seated, wearing half-glasses, he looked up over the edge of both lenses with the air of a well-fed old man who doesn’t have time for anything but his own agenda.
Eight a.m. was too early for this. Suzanne took a long, hot sip from her black coffee and watched him over the rim of her cup, trying to decide how to respond.
With aggression, or more aggression?
“The fact that I’ve worked here for seven years without a single personal request like this should be a testament to my robotic nature, Norm.” She glared back. Suzanne wasn’t taking crap from anyone. This was anemic compared to the face-offs she’d had over the years from opposing counsel, various judges, and at times, her own firm colleagues.
Norm needed to try harder.
Suzanne wanted someone other than Gerald and herself to be pissed off at.
“I can’t take you off the Hopewell-Wright case, Suzanne.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“The difference matters to me.”
“I said it doesn’t matter.”
“Then how about I take my client base and find a firm where it does matter?”
Never before had she made the threat. She’d thought it, sure, plenty of times over the past year, since making partner. Not quite a year—eleven months.
“I literally cannot take you off the case.” Phelps looked at the open door, and to Suzanne’s amazement (which she hid carefully), he stood, crossed the room, and shut the door with a barely audible click that felt like a signature in blood on a contract from hell.
When he turned to face her, his eyes were tired. Norm Phelps wasn’t the most attractive of men (at least, to Suzanne), with hair the color of a young lion, artfully colored on a regular basis, and overly-white teeth that glowed as a result of his burnt-orange tan.
But he wasn’t an asshole, either.
She had to remind herself of that fact daily. Take nothing personally, his executive legal secretary, Inez, had told Suzanne on her first day. Not one single word.
“Look. The Hopewell case is sensitive. We’re in a nasty grey area with this one.”
“Grey area?” Phelps, Miller and Lin didn’t do grey areas. Nothing but black and white. She stiffened. “Are you asking me to act in ways that could compromise my license?”
“God, no, Suzanne.” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, lifting his reading glasses up over his eyebrows. “You know I would never do that.”
“That’s not quite true. Remember the Kikendaal case?”
His sigh deepened.
“And the Brownlea, and the—”
“Fine. Fine. Let’s just say that your friend—”
“Ex-fiancé.”
“Your ex is inheriting one hell of a mess.”
Protectiveness for Gerald kicked in. “What?”
“It’s an artifact.”
“I know that.”
“A very rare artifact. A pre-Buddhist item that was supposed to have been destroyed by the Taliban.”
She frowned. “What?”
“And allegedly carries a curse.” He rolled his tongue in his cheek, jaw tightening.
“Phelps, now I know you’re pulling my leg. This isn’t a joke.” She let out a derisive snort.
He paled.
“I know. I’m not the type to get caught up in stupid New-Agey crap like this. But Harold Hopewell was clear: Phelps, Miller handles the case, and Suzanne Dayton is the point person. Period. The archaeologist from the MFA will be here at two p.m. for the meeting.”
