Dating for Two (Matchmaking Mamas) (12 page)

She patted the man’s face. “Not that I don’t appreciate the thought, Mike, but we also don’t have money to bail you out of jail, and Baker was the type to play dirty.”

“I think my grandmother has an old steamer trunk in her storage unit,” Christian called after her as Erin walked away to her office.

Instead of responding to the offer, Erin raised her hand above her head and waved at him. Or, more precisely, waved away the thought.

In the tiny glass-walled enclosure that served as her so-called private office, Erin sat down and pulled out the card that Steve had given her. She looked at it for a long moment. This was probably going to kill the movie date, she thought, but she’d already made up her mind. They needed the company more than she needed to go out on a date with him.

With anyone, she amended, striving to put distance between herself and what she was about to do.

Taking a deep breath, she hit the numbers on the keypad of her landline.

She assumed that she would be connecting to the law firm’s secretary and prepared herself for a female’s voice. Instead what she heard was Steve’s deep voice on the other end of the line. The second she did, Erin felt her pulse start accelerating.

The reaction was automatic.

She needed to get control over that, Erin told herself.

“Hi,” she said, her mouth growing even drier than it already was. “Is this a bad time?”

Now, there was a conversation stopper, she upbraided herself. He was going to think he was talking to a mental midget.

There was a slight pause and then she heard Steve ask, “Erin? Is that you?”

Considering that they had only talked on the phone once, that was a remarkable guess on his part. “You’re very good,” she told him.

He thought it wiser not to tell her that she’d been on his mind since last night, not just because his son kept talking about her last night as well as this morning, but because even if Jason hadn’t said a single word in reference to her, she still would have been lingering on his mind like a deep perfume that had infiltrated all his senses.

It was still early in the game and saying something like that might very well spook her. Not to mention that he might, after all, be reacting prematurely, giving her more credit than she deserved.

But with his other less-than-thrilling experiences in the dating world, it was easy to see why he would get carried away with Erin. She was bright and witty, and she had made a connection with his son.

“I’ve got a good memory for voices,” he told her, shrugging off her compliment. “So what can I do for you?” he asked.

“I need some advice.”

“Go ahead—I’m listening,” he urged.

“Turns out I’m being sued.”

“As of this morning?” Steve asked, a sliver of skepticism entering his mind. She hadn’t mentioned anything about being sued last night. It seemed like the perfect opportunity, if what she was saying now was the truth.

Or had last night been all about setting him up just for this? Had she just been pretending with his son in order to get on his good side? He disliked being this suspicious, but he disliked getting burned even more. Besides, this wasn’t about just him. It was
never
about just him anymore. He had to think in the plural because everything he did affected Jason.

“Actually,” she answered, “as strange as it sounds, yes. I didn’t find out about this until just this morning.”

Okay, he’d play along for now. Who knew? Maybe she
was
telling the truth. “Who’s suing you?”

“It’s a little complicated to get into over the phone,” she told him. “By any chance, are you free for lunch?”

As he spoke, he took out his cell phone and glanced at the entries on his daily calendar. He had something scheduled for noon, but it wasn’t written in stone and could easily be rescheduled.

“I could be,” he allowed, then remembered what she had told him yesterday about her time constraints. “I thought you said that you were really busy,” he reminded her.

Erin laughed shortly. “If this suit goes through and he wins, then the only thing I’ll be busy doing is looking for a job.”

Erin’s fear was almost palpable. He was beginning to believe her. She was either very good or very worried. “That bad?” he asked.

She thought of putting up a brave front, but he was, for all intents, almost a stranger and she had to be able to let her hair down with someone. He, at least, wasn’t going to be affected by anything that happened, one way or the other. She didn’t have to be the brave trooper, soldiering on for him.

“Worse than bad,” she confessed.

“Hold on a second—let me see what I can do with my schedule,” he said.

“I don’t want to disrupt anything,” she protested belatedly. When she received no answer, she realized that she was talking to dead air. He’d put her on hold.

This was a bad idea, she told herself. She was imposing on a man she hardly knew—and most likely wouldn’t get to know since he probably thought, at the very least, that she was using him.

The problem was that she didn’t know anyone else to turn to. She supposed that maybe her mother knew—

“I’m back,” Steve declared. “I’ve cleared ten o’clock to eleven o’clock this morning. Can you get down here by ten?”

Even if she couldn’t, she would. After all, he’d put himself out for her.

“Absolutely,” she told him.

“Okay, then, I’ll see you at ten,” he said. He had to admit, at this point his curiosity was more than just a little piqued.

“I really appreciate you making time for me like this.”

“I was at the end of my rope with Jason. You managed to bring him back around and on top of that, you made it seem effortless on your part,” he said quite honestly. “Trying to help you out is the very least I can do.”

“No, it really means a lot,” she countered. “It’s not as if I have any legal counsel to turn to. Thank you,” she told him, feeling that the paltry words weren’t nearly enough. But she had no others at her disposal. With the threat of an embarrassing spate of dead air stretching out between them, she quickly hung up.

Though he wasn’t happy about it, both his life and his vocation had taught him to be suspicious, which in turn had him wondering again about this phone call from Erin. Hopefully, he thought, returning the receiver back into the cradle, he wasn’t going to regret this.

He still hadn’t quite made up his mind about that yet.

Chapter Eleven

A
little more than an hour later, Erin was walking into the ground floor of Steve’s building, a recently constructed office tower that was the last word in savvy architectural design. The outer walls were all dark, smoky glass. It looked as if it should have been home to an art museum instead of various professionals.

More than one law firm was listed in the first-floor directory. The one Steve was associated with had the largest letters, she noted.

I can’t afford this,
Erin thought, getting on the elevator.

She was even more convinced that she couldn’t afford Steve’s services when she got off the elevator. It appeared that Steve’s law firm rented the entire fourth floor.

Erin approached the long, regal-looking reception desk that was facing the elevator bank on slightly shaky legs. Behind the desk were twelve-inch-high frosted silver letters that proclaimed the name of the firm: Donnal, Wiseman, Monroe and Finnegan, the four senior partners who had initially started the firm.

She probably didn’t have enough money in Imagine That’s assets to pay for the sign, much less the services of one of the lawyers associated with the sign.

This was a mistake, Erin thought. She shouldn’t have come.

For one fleeting moment, she thought of turning around and heading back down in the elevator, but her getaway was curtailed because at that exact moment, the sleek redhead behind the desk looked up from her keyboard and saw her.

“May I help you?” She asked the question in a slow, deliberate cadence.

Well, she was here—she might as well go through with the rest of it, Erin told herself. “I’m here to see Steven Kendall.”

The woman, an administrative assistant by the name of Ruby Royce, regarded her dispassionately for a second, as if taking measure of her. “Do you have an appointment?” she finally asked her in a calm, cool voice.

Erin pressed her lips together. “I’m not sure you could call it an appointment exactly.” Damn it, she was tripping over her own tongue, something she did when facing another adult without the benefit of a stuffed dinosaur in her hands. Taking a breath, she tried again. “I mean—”

“She has an appointment, Ruby,” Steve said, walking up behind the receptionist. “She’s my ten o’clock,” he specified.

“Hi,” Erin said with visible relief when she saw Steve coming to her rescue.

“Funny, she doesn’t look like a Harvey Rothstein,” Ruby observed wryly.

As far as administrative assistants went, there was none better than Ruby. All the associates made use of her skills. With that in mind, he played along with her wry observation.

“Mr. Rothstein was good enough to let me move his appointment to twelve o’clock,” he told Ruby. “You might want to make a notation of that on your schedule.”

Ruby nodded, doing just that. “I wish you’d let me know before you decide to play musical chairs with your appointments, Mr. Kendall.”

“I’m letting you know now, Ruby,” he told her, unfazed. “I’ll try to improve my timing the next time around.” Looking at Erin, he said, “All right, let’s go into my office and you can tell me all about what has you so upset.”

Erin nodded, falling into step beside him as he led the way from the reception area down the hall to his office. But as they walked away from the reception area, she could swear she felt Ruby’s eyes watching her every move.

“I don’t think she likes me,” Erin told him in a low, hushed voice.

“It’s nothing personal,” he assured her as they turned down the hall. “Ruby just doesn’t like being caught off guard, that’s all. It interferes with her self-image—that of being the world’s best administrative assistant. Just between you and me, for the most part, she really is.

“Right this way,” he said, gesturing toward the office on his right.

Erin had almost walked right by it. She backtracked a couple of steps and crossed the threshold into the spacious, airy yet decidedly masculine office.

Feeling just a little intimidated, Erin paused inside the doorway, looking around.

“Something wrong?” he asked her, curious.

“No,” she answered a little too quickly, then said, “I was just thinking that my whole company could probably fit into this office with room to spare.”

Steve gestured toward the chair on the other side of his desk as he sank into the soft leather of his recently purchased chair. “The firm’s been around for close to fifty years. They’ve had time to build up.”

Erin began to follow suit and sit down. But, her hands still gripping the armrests, she stopped in midmotion, perched just
above
the actual seat. She reverted back to her feeling that coming here was most likely a mistake.

She might as well give him the negative news first. “I can’t afford to pay you,” Erin told him. “I mean, not right away. Not all of it,” she corrected herself again. God, but she wished she could have words deftly slide from her tongue rather than come out in choppy bits and pieces when she was nervous.

“What I’m trying to say is that I don’t have much available cash. Almost all the money I make gets plowed right back into the company, but I can pay you in installments—probably a lot of them,” she guessed, looking around at the sleek bookcase and the volumes of leather-bound law books that were neatly arranged on the shelves. “No matter how long it takes, I
will
pay your bill off,” she promised earnestly, “but if you decided that’s not how you do things, I’ll understand,” Erin concluded. She wanted him to understand that she wasn’t looking for special treatment.

“Are you finished?” he asked when she finally paused for air.

“Out of breath,” she admitted.

Steve nodded. “Same thing,” he allowed. “For now, why don’t you tell me the problem that has you so worried? We’ll talk about terms and fees later.”

“Okay.” She didn’t let go of the armrests, even as she sank down in the chair. “I’m being sued.” The words felt as if they were sticking to the roof of her mouth, scraping the skin there.

“By who?” he asked.

“By Wade Baker.” Even his name left a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Is that someone you know?” he asked, trying to get a few more details out of Erin.

“Yes.” She took a deep breath, then added, “I fired him.”

His eyes never leaving hers, Steve rocked back slightly in his chair. “I see.”

“I didn’t want to,” she told him, her voice gaining back some of its momentum. “I really hated firing Wade, but he gave me no choice.”

Waiting for her to continue, he coaxed, “I’m listening.”

Did he want background? She could give him that, Erin thought. “Wade was one of the first people I hired. We all go way back.”

“‘All’?” Steve questioned.

“The rest of the people at Imagine That and I.” That sounded awkward to her, so she elaborated a little more. “We all went to college together. When I started the company, I turned to them and we went into business together,” she explained.

“And then you fired Wade,” he supplied.

That made it sound abrupt and whimsical—it was anything
but
that. “Well, not right away. We worked together for three years, long nights, living on mustard sandwiches, things like that,” she said. “It was pretty tough going and, to be honest, I thought about quitting a couple of times. I think most of us did,” she admitted.

“And then about a year ago, after a reporter ran a story about Tex that got picked up by a national TV newscast, we were finally on our way. Sales jumped, then doubled more than a couple of times. We were having trouble keeping up with the orders.” And it felt like heaven, she couldn’t help thinking.

“Tell me about the suit,” Steve urged. “Why is this Wade Baker person suing you?” he asked.

It upset her to even talk about it, but ignoring it wasn’t going to make the problem go away. “Wade claims that Tex and a couple of the other toys were really his idea.”

“But they weren’t.” It wasn’t an assumption or a question. He was just stating what he assumed she was going to maintain.

“No!” Erin cried. “They weren’t. Like I told you the other day, I came up with Tex when I was ten, maybe closer to eleven years old. I was in the hospital. My mom came to see me every day, but I just wanted a friend, a friend who wasn’t sick, who wasn’t getting treatments but who was there for me all the time. I always liked dinosaurs, so one day I made him out of an old green sports sock. Then my mother got some green felt.

“While I was getting my treatments, she would sit in my room waiting for me to come back, working on Tex and keeping him a surprise. When she was done, I added my own touches. Between my mom and me, we gave ‘birth’ to Tex.”

That sounded plausible enough to him. Which left him with another question. “Why do you think Wade’s suing you?”

Rather than answer him, Erin took out a sealed plastic baggie from her purse and placed it on his desk. Inside was the letter she’d gotten yesterday.

“What’s that?”

“That’s a letter I found in my mailbox yesterday. There’s no return address and there’s only one line written on the page, but I have a feeling that it’s from Wade.”

Steve took possession of the plastic baggie and pulled out a handkerchief before extracting the envelope and then the single sheet inside the envelope.

He skimmed the note, then looked up at Erin. “My first guess is that you’re probably right.” He set the note and envelope aside for the time being. “I have to ask this,” he prefaced, then continued. “Were you and Wade in a relationship?”

“Not the kind that you mean or that he wanted,” Erin told him.

“Could you be a little clearer?”

Not without being nauseated, but then, her comfort wasn’t what was at stake here. “Wade thought that because we spent so much time together every day, putting in long hours at the office, that meant I was willing to sleep with him. I wasn’t,” she said fiercely. She wanted Steve to know that, to know she wasn’t the type to take that sort of thing casually. “I regarded him as a friend, not anything more. I thought he’d back off when I didn’t respond to his advances and suggestions, but that just made him try harder.”

She frowned. “When that didn’t work, he got nasty. He’d start getting into arguments with the other people working with us and it got to be so uncomfortable I finally had to let him go. That just made him angrier.” She had really felt helpless at that time. “He knows the company means everything to me. Suing me and tying up production is his way of getting back at me. He’s going to force me to close the company. Right now I can’t meet my orders, can’t pay the people working with me. This lawsuit is going to make working a living hell,” she lamented.

He’d been nodding thoughtfully at her statements as Erin had quickly filled him in. Now that she’d finished, he offered her a sympathetic smile.

“Let me look into this and see what I can do.” He glanced at the letter she’d brought. He’d tucked it back into the baggie, together with the envelope. “Mind if I keep this for now?” he asked, nodding at the baggie. “The firm keeps a couple of top-notch private investigators on retainer and I can get one of them to have a friend of his run the prints, see if we come up with anything.”

That all sounded wonderful, but she hesitated giving him the go-ahead. “We haven’t discussed your fee yet,” she reminded him, afraid that once they did, this feeling that maybe things could be worked out after all would completely vanish.

His fee might be completely out of her league. But she had never been the type to stick her head in the sand and she couldn’t just pretend that the practical aspect of all this would just fade away because she wanted it to. If she couldn’t afford Steve—and she strongly suspected that she couldn’t—she needed to know right now.

“No, we haven’t,” Steve acknowledged.

Since he wasn’t saying anything further on the subject, she asked him, “Shouldn’t we?”

“Why don’t we just set that aside for the moment?” he suggested.

Erin’s back grew instantly straighter, stiffer, as she said, “I know we’re pretty much a start-up company and there are no assets per se, but that doesn’t mean that I’m looking to accept charity—”

“No one’s offering you charity,” he quickly told her.
At least, not exactly,
he added silently. “Tell you what. Let me bring this matter up before the firm and I’ll get back to you on their decision. In the meantime,” he urged her, “try not to worry too much. I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

Optimistic lines like that had ordinarily been her domain. But with her trust trampled on and her faith in people blown to bits, she was finding that remaining optimistic was not nearly as easy to do as it used to be a few short months ago.

“That makes one of us,” she murmured in response to his impromptu pep talk.

“Go back to work,” he told her. “Rally your troops and I’ll get back to you as soon as I have any information to pass on.”

She wasn’t nearly as naive as she might appear to be at first. “Is that lawyer-speak for ‘Don’t hold your breath’?” she asked him, actually afraid to allow herself to get hopeful.

“No, that’s lawyer-speak for ‘I’ll get back to you as soon as I have any information to pass on,’” he said patiently. Getting up from his chair, he told her, “I’ll walk you out.”

But Erin shook her head. “That’s okay. I’ve taken up enough of your time. I can find my way out—I had Tex drop bread crumbs,” she said. Then, in a much higher voice, she had Tex say, “And I did—except for the bread crumbs I ate. Hey, I was hungry.”

Steve laughed, delighted. “I guess I should consider myself lucky that Tex didn’t take a bite out of me while he was at it.” Then, sobering just a touch, he asked her, “Are we still on for Sunday and the movie?”

It wasn’t that she’d forgotten about the movie date; it was just that first the note and then the news about getting sued had chased the other thoughts right out of her head.

“Am I allowed to see you after hours?” she asked him.

“I think Jason would insist on it,” Steve told her. “As long as he’s included.”

“Oh, he’s definitely included,” she assured Steve. Even so, she had to ask, just to be perfectly clear, “So there’s no conflict of interest?”