Dirty Little Secrets: A Stepbrother Romance (2 page)

“
S
o as you can see
, ladies and gentlemen, the evidence is quite clear. My client entered into a business relationship with Mr. Talmadge under totally false understandings. Imagine if you were in my client’s shoes. You trust your best friend, the guy you’ve known since high school, on a business deal, and he lies to you. He lies to you, and you end up losing all of your retirement funds and more. Your house is now mortgaged, your kids are facing college without the funds you’ve been setting aside since before they were born. Now, how would you feel?”

“I know that some of you are saying to yourselves,
‘Who cares?
That’s Greg Maxwell, the guy’s got a contract that gets him millions of dollars a year. He’s got shoe deals and more.’
And, you’d be right. My client is Greg Maxwell. And yes, he makes a lot of money for his ability to play basketball. But that doesn’t mean what Mr. Talmadge did to him is right. Mr. Maxwell isn’t trying to be vindictive. Notice that all he’s asking for is for Mr. Talmadge to pay him back the money he invested under false pretenses. That’s all. Thank you.”

I sat down next to my client and watched the jury. These civil cases are the riskiest part of my job, but also the part I looked forward to the most. First off, if anyone can afford to hire a lawyer of my caliber, it means that they’ve already got a lot of money. I don’t come cheap, and that right off the bat loses you a lot of sympathy points with any jury.

You must understand that nowadays, most juries are made up of people who fall into one of three categories. You have the people who are too broke, either retirees or unemployed people, that are more interested in getting the pitiful jury duty stipend along with the fact that the court will pay for lunch if the trial goes on long enough. The second group are the ones who are too lazy, as in they can’t even bother to come up with a decent enough excuse to get out of jury duty. The final group are the ones deemed too unimportant by the court to be dismissed. Let’s face it, if your job is running the register down at the local supermarket, the court isn’t going to buy an argument that you are so indispensable to your job as to make jury duty onerous.

In a case like Greg Maxwell vs. Bryan Talmadge, I’d have loved to have a trial filled with female millionaire entrepreneurs who also happened to love basketball and were all mothers with kids in college. Instead, I had three retirees, two stay-at-home moms whose kids were in elementary school, four men whose jobs meant they couldn’t even pay my client’s income taxes, and three unemployed people. Eight men, four women. Men were harder to convince in these cases than women, who tend to have a greater sense of fairness than their testicle-bearing counterparts. And, not to put too fine a point on it, my looks helped me sway female jurors to my side more often than not.

“Thanks, Kade,” Greg whispered to me as I sat down. I was tempted to tell him that since he was paying me a lot of money, not just for this case, but also in regards to being his legal agent, I didn’t deserve his thanks. Besides that, part of me agreed with the defense. Greg hadn’t understood the risks involved with the investment, not so much because Talmadge had totally misrepresented them, but because Greg Maxwell was a four-time NBA All-Star who had the reading comprehension level of a ten-year-old kid whose favorite reading material probably consisted of
X-Men
comic books.

However, specifically because Greg paid me well over two hundred thousand dollars a year, a flat percentage of his contract and a cut of his endorsement contracts that I negotiated on his behalf, I avoided saying anything that would annoy him. Instead, I waited while the defense got their
lasties
, as is tradition in American court cases, and the jury filed out. I had a good feeling that we’d win, but I’ve been in the law game long enough to know that in civil cases, you’re often better off just taking your money to Vegas instead.

“
S
o what’s going on
, Dad?” I was back at the office, listening as my Dad talked. I love my Dad a lot, he’s a great guy, but he does have the tendency to ramble on and on without getting to the point.

“I just wanted to see how your case went, son,” Dad replied. Like me, Derek Prescott was a lawyer, a named partner in a big firm out in Los Angeles that specialized in real estate and admiralty law. He had tended more toward community outreach in the last decade, however, and I suspected that he was trying to buff his image toward making a turn to politics. Dad had always been a bit of a crusader, if you know what I mean.

“We got the win, Dad. Maxwell’s happy, the jury gave us about ninety percent of what we wanted. I was able to convince him that it was a good win, and the defense isn’t looking at appealing.”

“They never do against you, my boy,” Dad replied. It was one of the best things about him. I knew a few other lawyers whose fathers were also in the legal profession, and each of them had anticipated their child going into the family firm. It caused a lot of friction if they didn’t.

Dad, on the other hand, was a self-made millionaire whose father had been a high school chemistry teacher. He knew that going out on your own and making your own path made you a stronger person, so when I told him coming out of Stanford Law that I wanted to hang out my own shingle and that I was moving to Portland to boot, he hadn’t batted an eye. He supported me without a moment’s hesitation.

Now, we still talked two or three times a week, sometimes about work, sometimes not. “Thanks, Dad. But I doubt you called me just because you wanted to see how my case went. That may have flown a year or so ago, but I’ve been in court enough since then that I think you don’t have the nervous jitters for me any longer.”

Dad chuckled and I could hear the acceptance in his voice. “You’re right, of course. That’s what makes you so damn good of a lawyer, Kade. Actually, I wanted to call to see if you’re free next week? It’s my anniversary with Layla, and I was kind of hoping we could all get together to celebrate.”

I thought about it, then smiled. It’d been a long time since I’d been down to Los Angeles, too long in fact. “That sounds great, Dad. But, only on one condition.”

“Sure, what’s that?”

“You take Layla out for at least one night of just the two of you. I’m not letting you turn your anniversary into a family trip to Disneyland just because you want to ride Space Mountain.”

“Hey there, buddy, oldest ride, longest line,” Dad quipped. “But yes, I promise. Just the four of us, and I was going to have a family weekend before taking Layla up to Big Sur for the actual anniversary week.”

“Wow, that’s pretty big. Quite a lot for a five year anniversary.” I knew from the first time I met Layla Nova that she was the woman meant for my father. After my mother had walked out back when I was only three while in the process of taking Dad for quite a lot of money, he’d spent over a decade in a funk. Oh, he was a devoted father, and a hell of an attorney, but that was it. He never dated, he never had a girlfriend, he just worked or spent time with me. By the time I was an upperclassman in high school, I thought that perhaps Dad was going to be a bachelor for life.

Then, during my senior year in high school before doing my undergrad work at USC, he’d met Layla Nova. Tall and vivacious, she was a perfect balm to my father’s wounded soul. I still don’t know how she got through his emotional defenses, but she did, and by the time Dad introduced me, I could see in his eyes the truth. He was head over heels for her, and after she spent the weekend at his house in Beverly Hills with the two of us, I could see why.

There was only one dark corner to the whole thing. “Uhm, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, Dad, but you said four. Is Alix going to be there?”

My Dad’s sigh told me everything I needed to know. “You know, Kade, it wouldn’t hurt for you to at least be more forgiving when it comes to your stepsister. Give it a try. For me, please?”

If he only knew. “Okay, Dad, I’ll try. Uhm, let me clear my calendar. I’m pretty open right now, and I’ll email you exactly when I’m getting into town. Think you’d mind if I drove?”

“It’s your time, son. Although with that Lexus you drive, I can see why. Just make sure you’re here by next Friday.”

“I’ll be there, Dad,” I said. We hung up, and I immediately called my secretary, Monica, and my paralegal investigator, Vince, into the office. “All right, Monica, I need you to clear my calendar starting this Tuesday until Thursday of the following week. Vince, whatever Monica can’t clear, I’m putting in your hands. There shouldn’t be too much, just routine paperwork and continuation on the Carter case. Think you guys can handle it?”

“I’m good,” Monica said. She was an experienced secretary, who I hired on the advice of my father. His advice to me coming out of law school was that a new lawyer should always have an experienced secretary to help as a guide through the areas of the law that they didn’t teach you in law school. Dad’s wise words had paid off, even with the higher salary she demanded over a younger secretary. “Uhm, there is a deposition scheduled on Thursday, you want that pushed back?”

“What’s the case?” I asked, looking at my schedule on the computer. “Never mind, I got it. The Dufrense case. Nah, don’t push it back. Vince, you take that one, you’re good for it. Just go by the script I leave, and if you have any urges to strike out on your own, keep it within reason.”

Vince, in addition to being my paralegal, was studying for the bar exam himself. He was a good guy who’d come up the hard way through the legal system, taking night classes while working a full-time job as a short-haul truck driver. I finally hired him as a paralegal six months ago while he finished off law school. He was a good investigator and had connections that often came in handy when dealing with some of the people my clients worked with or grew up with. “No problem, Kade. So, Dufrense and Carter.”

“Thanks. Okay guys, I’ll have my phone on me, but I’d prefer if you don’t call. It’s my Dad’s anniversary.”

After Vince and Monica left, I sat back and pondered the situation. Finally, unable to clear my head, I left the office, taking a walk along the river. The Willamette River cuts Portland in half, and along a lot of it there are walkways and other pedestrian-friendly areas. As I walked, my mind kept swirling around the idea that I’d be seeing Alix again.

My stepsister is four-and-a-half years younger than me, and at twenty-one was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Tall, with long, blonde hair that framed her face, crystal blue eyes, thick, bow-shaped lips and a pert little nose, she’d been sought after as a fashion model from her early teens, doing her first professional big shoot when she was only sixteen. I’d read somewhere that Alix was her generation’s first “sublime English Rose,” which I had no clue what it meant until I looked it up. Regardless of the name of her look, Alix had a face that was so beautiful it could stop a riot or start a war. Helen of Troy had nothing on her.

The rest of her was just as amazing. At five ten, she had curves in all the places a man dreams of, especially up top where, for a fashion model at least, she was quite gifted. A stomach you could see yourself licking wine off of led to a waist that flared out into hips that you wanted to hold in your hands and squeeze, and legs that wrapped around you in your dreams. Or at least, that was what they did in mine.

But there was my problem. You see, besides those dreams, I also had darker, more forceful ones. They started when I was at Stanford Law and, as part of the student experience, was sharing an apartment with a couple of other guys. Nothing abnormal about that, and they were pretty decent guys overall.

Alix had just turned eighteen at the time, and she’d gotten featured in one of those bikini spreads. Being college guys, of course my roommates had a copy, and they constantly teased me about it—partly because they knew it annoyed me, but mostly because she truly was hot.

That was around the time that I began to see Alix as a sexual creature and not just a stepsister, and it tore me apart. Because in addition to her beauty, there was a dark side to Alix that I didn’t like. Raised a total Daddy’s girl, Alix thought that her father, Paris Nova, was the epitome of perfection. From all accounts, and from her own words, I learned soon after meeting her that Alix practically worshiped the ground Paris walked on.

What Alix didn’t know, or perhaps had suppressed in her head, was that Paris Nova was a bastard of the highest order. A sadistic abuser, he’d broken Layla’s arm once and orbital bone twice before she worked up the courage to leave, according to court documents, when he threatened to go after their six-year-old daughter. In an attempt to save her daughter from mental trauma, Layla never told Alix about any of the injuries she suffered at the hands of her father.

Unfortunately, this meant that Alix bore Layla and my father an ill will. Thinking her mother a gold digger who left her father when she was little and kept her from seeing her Daddy, she cast Layla as the villain in her life and Paris as the hero. The reality was a lot grittier, as Paris Nova was arrested in Singapore when Alix was seven for beating a call-girl while being high on cocaine, crippling and blinding her for life. The resultant room search discovered nearly half a pound of uncut coke in his bags, and he was sentenced to death under the country’s draconian drug laws. While I’m normally one who favors a libertarian view in terms of the War on Drugs, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy.

Alix didn’t know, and ever since Layla had started dating Dad, she had acted like a total bitch to both of them. More than once, I’d been tempted to shatter her little fantasy world, but each time a look from Dad stayed my tongue. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep my words in check.

So I had a stepsister who was tall, beautiful, a perfect physical specimen, and who, other than that one area, was a wonderful person . . . but one who deserved a spanking. A naughty girl who so deliciously deserved a spanking. The thought circled around and around in my head as I walked along the Willamette River, and I could feel the blood rushing down below. Groaning in frustration, I adjusted myself and carried on.