Redemption: A British Stepbrother Romance (30 page)

I
’d never been so
enthusiastic to review the work of a law student before. Usually any work prepared by a junior attorney went right to the bottom of the pile, to remain there untouched until the issue became urgent.

Projects from April got my immediate attention. The quicker I looked at her work and made my edits, the quicker I could call her back into my office a late-night review session. Those never went according to plan.

I imagined her coming into my office late in the evening, where we would chat and flirt, until she opened a button on her blouse and told me to stop talking and fuck her.

April had grown in confidence ever since the meeting with Jacob, but I still knew such an upfront demand was a long way off.

That didn’t stop me from getting hard every time she walked into my office. My cock knew what it wanted, and no amount of sensible thinking on my part could convince it otherwise.

I’d stand a much better chance of getting her bent over my desk, if I could stop insulting her father, but every time we met, he would somehow end up in the conversation and I couldn’t resist calling him out for chasing after Mom’s money.

Even now, they were both off at some lodge for the week, and you didn’t have to be a genius to guess who was paying for that.

Money-grubbing bastard.

None of this was April’s fault, and I didn’t directly blame her, but she clearly didn’t like me talking shit about her father. She’d need to develop a thicker skin if she was to become an attorney. No one sugarcoated anything in this profession. If you fucked up, you paid the price. Fortunately, I never fucked up.

At least Mom’s mini vacation meant she hadn’t had the opportunity to lay into me for the way I’d treated Alan at the client meeting. I’d ignored all her calls until she finally sent an email tearing me a new one, but emails were easy to ignore, and that’s exactly what I did.

I pinged April an email telling her to come to my office. She’d be along as soon as she’d gathered up her trusty pen and paper, so I used the minute of free time to scan my unread emails.

I didn’t like what I saw.

The first was an invitation to a networking event at April’s law school. The school wanted lawyers to show up and talk about their careers. I’d been to plenty of those before. It was just a bullshit excuse for law students to network with lawyers in the faint hope we might offer them a job after graduation.

I didn’t have time for that shit right now, but the sponsor for this event was none other than Cooper & Cooper. They were sending a few partners along, together with a junior associate. No need to guess which one.

Could I really sit on a panel with Zach and treat him with respect? Probably not. But if April was going… I opened her calendar and saw that she had blocked out a few hours for the event. I couldn’t risk her bumping into Zach again without being there to keep an eye on things.

I replied to let the career counselor know I would be there to talk about M&A transactions for twenty minutes and answer a few questions. Not exactly my idea of an exciting evening, but what choice did I have?

The second email that caught my eye held even worse news.

April knocked on the door and walked straight into my office without waiting for me to respond.

“What the fuck is this?” I yelled, scanning an email from Simon about doing
pro bono
work at some old folk’s home.

“Something the matter?” April asked, with a butter wouldn’t melt expression on her face. She knew.

“Why do I have an email with information about doing
pro bono
work with old people? You know what
pro bono
means, right?”

“It means for the public good, I think?” April replied.

“It means it’s a waste of my fucking time, that’s what it means.”

“I don’t think that’s the literal translation.”

“Is this your doing?” I asked.

“I signed up for the
pro bono
program, yes. And I requested working on elder law because I believe it’s an important and underserved area.”

“That’s lovely. I’m sure you’ll get a medal for your efforts. But why the fuck am I getting emails about it?”

“Because I can’t appear in court by myself and need to work with a licensed attorney.”

“Again, why me?”

“Because I love spending time with you, and I think we make a great team.”

“Oh.”

Well that was a kick in the nuts. I’d been thinking much the same thing recently, but this was the first time she’d said anything to that effect.

I didn’t want us to “make a great team.” I wanted us to fuck. A lot. But I suppose being a great team meant April had recognized the chemistry between us. I’d picked up on it the first time she’d looked at me. I could always pick up on the signs. It stopped me wasting time chatting up the few women in this city who weren’t interested in having me fuck their brains out.

“And also you’re obsessed with money, and I think this will make a nice change,” April added. “It’s about time you realized the world doesn’t revolve around you.”

Way to knock the wind out of my sails, April.

“Sounds like you just want to spend more time with me,” I teased. “If that’s the case, all you had to do was say so. I’ve got a nice bottle of wine back home, and enough condoms to get us through the night. We don’t need to spend time with old people. That’s not exactly my idea of foreplay.”

“I wasn’t aware you knew what foreplay was?”

“Foreplay is when I spend so long kissing the insides of a woman’s thighs that she screams and begs me to fuck her.”

April pursed her lips to fight back a smile. She didn’t get angry at my references to our night together any more. That had to be a good sign.

If I had to do some shitty
pro bono
project just to get back between her legs then so be it.

We spent some time going through the brief I’d redlined. April still took my criticism on board, but she now fought back on certain points, insisting that her sentence was grammatically correct, or that we should be citing a case against us because the opposition would find it easily enough anyway.

I’d created a monster.

As April left my office, I opened the blinds and watched her as she wandered over to get some coffee. She stopped by Paul’s office on the way back and stood in the doorway for five minutes laughing and joking with him. Her back always straightened as she laughed, which pushed her breasts up into the air. I couldn’t have been the only one in the office who’d noticed that.

I always relished the challenge of taking a woman off another man, or taking on the competition of another admirer, but this time it was different. I would rather no other men in the office spoke to her at all, as ridiculous as that sounded.

April didn’t belong to me.

Not yet.

But soon that would all change. I could sense it in the way she was looking at me. Her attitude towards me was warming. It wouldn’t be long now. I looked down at my cock, making itself known in my pants. I looked away from April before my dick exploded in my pants.

“Not long now,” I said out loud to my penis. “Not long at all.”

“
Y
ou know
I’m only doing this to get in your pants?” Foster said, as he parked his BMW in front of the nursing home.

“I don’t believe that for a second,” I replied. “First, you know full well that this isn’t going to get you into my pants. Second, I saw you reading up on elder law yesterday evening, so you’re taking this seriously.”

“I’m a lawyer. I take all my work seriously, even when the clients can’t pay me. That doesn’t mean I want to be here.”

He was lying. Simon had told me that he’d offered Foster a chance to back out after finding out that Paul would like to do the work, but Foster insisted on going through with it. That heart of his did have some warm blood pumping through it after all.

I introduced myself to the receptionist, who then led us down the hall to Mrs. Andrews room for our meeting. Foster had insisted that I take the lead with the client, and this time he wasn’t joking.

After Jacob, I didn’t think Mrs. Andrews would prove all that intimidating. The important thing was not to give away how little I knew about issues surrounding elder law and wills and trusts.

“Remember,” Foster said before we entered the room, “you need to get the client’s confidence. Don’t worry about giving them the answers right now. We can always do the research back at the office, or call in the expertise of another lawyer. God only knows we have enough of them at the firm.”

“In other words, we just need to not sound stupid?”

“Exactly.”

“In that case, let me do the talking.” I smiled and walked inside before Foster could respond, leaving him standing there looking speechless. That didn’t happen often. Would it have been completely inappropriate to take out my phone and snap a picture?

“Good morning, Mrs. Andrews,” I said loudly. “My name is April. And this is Foster. We’re your lawyers.”

“Bloody hell, love,” Mrs. Andrews responded in an English accent. “I’m old, not deaf.”

Foster snickered behind me, while my face became a faint shade of pink.

“Sorry,” I responded more quietly.
Way to go, April. What do they say about first impressions?
I’d even introduced myself as a lawyer before having graduated law school and passed the bar exam, so I’d offended the client and breached ethics rules in the space of ten seconds.

“That’s alright. Take a seat, you two.” Mrs. Andrews motioned to two old chairs against the wall, while she perched on the side of the bed. “I actually am a bit deaf, truth be told, but I have my hearing aid in so I can hear you loud and clear.”

Foster had mentioned starting the meeting off with small talk, but I had no idea what to say to someone like Mrs. Andrews. What could I ask her?

“Do you have any exciting plans for today, Mrs. Andrews?” I asked, trying to effect a casual tone of voice, but instead coming off stuffy and formal.

“No, dear, not really. Just trying to not die.”

Foster laughed, but I didn’t turn to look at him. No doubt he was loving watching me mess this up.

Screw the small talk.
“How can we help you today, Mrs. Andrews?”

“For starters, love, you can call me Doris. I can’t be doing with any of that ‘Mrs. Andrews’ crap.”

“Okay, Doris.”

“I’d like your help preparing a will. As you might have noticed, I’m on my last legs and I want to make sure my money gets to my son. I might not look rich, but I have a few quid tucked away, and some shares that might be worth something now.”

A will. That should be easy enough. You could buy do-it-yourself wills online, so a big law firm like Arrington & Hedges was bound to have some templates on their servers.

“No problem at all, Doris,” I said confidently, opening up my pad of paper to a clean sheet. “We’ll just need to get some basic information from you.”

Doris gave me her full name, date of birth, and address, which I made sure to write down slowly to give myself time to think. What else did I need to know? Details about the son, obviously, and other living relatives. That should be about it.

“What about your son, Doris? Can you give me his information?”

“I can give you his date of birth, but not his name or current address.”

“You can’t give me his name?”

“No. This is the tricky bit, I’m afraid. You see, I had him adopted immediately after he was born. I’ve never met him. I never had any children after him, so he’s my only offspring. Assuming he’s still alive anyway.”

“A will has to be very specific,” I said, reciting about the only thing I did know about the law around wills. “If you’re too vague then a court will hold the declaration invalid and the money will pass to your nearest relative through the intestacy laws.”

“Someone read a book last night as well,” Foster whispered in my ear.

“My closest relative is my sister,” Doris said. “But I do not want her getting her hands on my money. That bitch has been nothing but a thorn in my side for the last seventy years.”

I wrote “sister = bitch” on my pad, and then turned to look at Foster to see if he wanted to offer any assistance. He just smiled at, as he sat there with one ankle resting on his knee as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“What about the father?” I asked. “Is he still… with us? Perhaps that could help track down your son.”

“The father?” Doris repeated softly. She looked around the room, but wouldn’t look me in the eyes. “Yes, the father. Well, uh...”

Foster laughed, completely insensitive to the situation as usual, but he leaned forward and finally looked ready to help me out.

“Doris, you dirty girl,” he joked. “You don’t have a clue who the father is do you?”

“Foster,” I yelled, turning to glare at him and slapping him hard on the arm. “You can’t talk like that to a client.”

“And you aren’t supposed to slap your boss,” he replied.

“It’s okay, dear,” Doris said, grinning like a schoolgirl with a crush. “He’s right. I don’t have a clue. Couldn’t even narrow it down to single figures to be honest.”

I stared at her wide-eyed in shock. She looked like such a sweet old lady. I couldn’t think of her as a crazy young woman, partying the night away with loads of different men.

“It was the sixties, dear,” Doris continued. “Crazy times. Drink, drugs, and dick, that was how I spent my evenings. Don’t tell me you don’t like to have the odd wild night every now and again?”

“I couldn’t agree more, Doris,” Foster said. “Unfortunately, young April here can be a little uptight sometimes. She does enjoy the odd wild night though, I can vouch for that.”

“Oh my God,” I mumbled, biting my pen and looking down at my pad of paper hoping it would offer some resolution to this conversation.

“I bet you can,” Doris replied. “I’d have been all over you in my day. I was quite the looker, you know.”

“I believe you,” Foster agreed. “And that English accent? I bet you were beating them off with a stick.”

“If I’d stuck to just beating them off, then I wouldn’t be in this predicament,” Doris replied.

I nearly choked on my pen. “Maybe we should get back to the topic at hand.”

“Alright, love, but take a bit of advice from me. Don’t be afraid to live a little. For example, if you have a sexy boss who could show you a good time perhaps you could let him.”

“Did you pay her to say that?” I asked Foster.

He held his hands up and shook his head. “The lady speaks the truth, that’s all.”

I tried to remain serious, but when Doris winked at me, I couldn’t help but break into a smile.

We did our best to get all the information we needed from Doris, including details on the adoption center used, but there was a long road ahead of us if we were going to track down Doris’ son. I didn’t even know if it was possible.

“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” I asked Foster as we got back in the car.

“I can’t help it if I’m a likable guy,” he responded. “Women of all ages love me. You should be able to understand that.”

“Not really,” I lied. “How did you have the balls to speak to her like that in the first place?”

“You just need to learn how to judge the client, that’s all. Why do you think I sat back and let her speak at first? I don’t joke around with every client like that, but Doris looked game for a laugh. Plus I saw she had a small calendar by the bed with shirtless men on it. Figured she wasn’t really the shy type.”

“Alright, Sherlock, I’m glad you had a good time.”

“You had a good time as well. Don’t try to deny it.”

“Fine, it was fun,” I admitted.

Too much fun.

What did it mean if someone like Doris could spot the chemistry between Foster and I so quickly? Who else had noticed? People in the office? Kathleen? Dad?

“I’m still not happy about losing all these billable hours,” Foster said. “You completely set me up there.”

“As per usual, you came out on top.”

“That’s not the point. Don’t expect to get away with it. I’m going to make you pay for that one.”

“How?”

“That would be telling, wouldn’t it?”

Foster liked to tease. I knew that all too well from our night together. I crossed my legs in the passenger seat to try and quell the desire that always arose inside me when I thought back to that night.

Foster was the expert manipulator. I couldn’t stop him even when I knew he was doing it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.