If the Shoe Fits (12 page)

“Oh.”

He leaned back in his chair, his focus heading toward the guitarist. Then, without any forewarning at all, his gaze darted back to Julianne.

“Why?”

She laughed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why do you want to get to know me?”

“Does there have to be a concrete reason?” she asked him. “I was sort of mesmerized that day when I saw you save the dog. It was such a brave and gallant thing to do, getting out in the rain to rescue him the way you did.”

“Well,” he said as his eyes dropped to the table for an instant, “I couldn’t just leave him out there in the middle of the road like that. I’m not really much of an animal person, you know? But still.”

No church attendance, and not an animal person?
It clinked around inside her ears several times before fading away.

“A lot of people wouldn’t have gone to that kind of trouble,” she said finally. “You did. I think you seem like a really kind man, Paul. I enjoy getting to know kind people.”

He nodded tentatively and tossed back a few half-melted ice cubes from his glass.

“I guess I asked because … well … you’re a lawyer and all. Not that you look like any of the lawyers I’ve ever met. You’re more like one of those lawyers on TV, you know?”

“What does my job have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m a little surprised someone like you would want to go out with a contractor from Clifton.”

Julianne smiled at him. “I like Clifton.”

The corner of his mouth twitched slightly before it turned upward into a full lopsided grin. “You want to get out of here?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Let’s go for a walk. Maybe go get something to eat?”

Julianne sighed. “Sounds good.”

She grabbed her purse and Suzanne’s waistcoat, and she followed Paul Weaver through the front door.

Julianne stared at the screen before her. Something had changed. She tapped her pen on the desktop until it finally hit her.

“Phoebe?” she called out.

“Be right there.”

A moment later, Phoebe appeared in the doorway clutching a spiral notebook and a pen. “Do you need tea? Coffee?”

“No, thanks. Can you come in for a minute?”

Phoebe folded into the chair across from Julianne’s desk and adjusted the braided metallic headband holding back her dark curls. She narrowed her brown eyes and cocked her head slightly, waiting for direction.

“Did you change my sticky notes?”

“I didn’t change them,” Phoebe gingerly replied. “I just organized them. The personal reminders are on the left, the professional ones on the right.”

“Oh.” Julianne cocked her head and skimmed over the multicolored squares. “That’s actually pretty brilliant. Thank you.”

“If that’s the form of note-taking that works best for you,” she said, “you could go a step further and color-code them. Pink for personal, green for business, and maybe use the yellow for the really urgent reminders.”

Julianne sighed as she folded her arms and leaned back into her chair. “Thank you, Phoebe.”

Finally, someone who understands the importance of a good system of sticky notes!

“Hey, I was just looking over the end-of-month report from your email this morning,” Julianne said, tapping on the keyboard to bring it up again. “But before I get into that, can you do me a favor, please? There’s an emergency animal clinic out on Old Taylor Mill. Can you track them down and call to check on a dog that was brought in last week? It’s a yellow Lab that had been hit by a car.”

“Your Prince Charming’s dog?”

“Yes. I’d like to find out how the dog fared.”

“I’ll call them right away.”

“Before you do,” Julianne said. “About this report … where did you gather these figures?”

“From the bank statement that arrived on Wednesday.”

“So we only racked up sixteen billable hours last month?”

Phoebe winced. “Sorry. Yes.”

“Has Will seen this?”

“I emailed it to him. But I don’t know if he’s opened it.”

As if following a stage direction, Will appeared in the doorway right on cue. “Have you seen the end-of-month email?”

“We were just discussing it. Come on in.” Julianne guessed this wasn’t a conversation to have in front of their brand-new assistant. She smiled at Phoebe and said, “You can go. I’ll let you know if we have any questions.”

Instinctively, Phoebe closed the door behind her as she left Julianne’s office.

“Were you as surprised as I was?” Will asked her.

“Yes! Even with the leftovers you brought along from B&B, only sixteen hours.”

“Well. It was a short month for us. Just two and a half weeks.”

“Still.”

“Yeah.” Will groaned and sank into the chair across from her. “I’ve got maybe thirty hours left on the B&B business for this coming month, but that’s going to be it.”

“I’ve got a few more hours left on the Bertinni case. And we’ve got Rand for however long that develops. I think that’s it, Will.”

“We’ll have to figure out how to drum up some new clients,” he told her. “We need to make that a priority.”

Julianne spent their silence watching Jonah circle his fishbowl a few times.

“Do you suppose you could talk to any of your regular clients from B&B?” she asked.

“Getting a reputation as a client poacher this early in the game,” he pointed out, “doesn’t seem like a way to establish our new firm.”

“I don’t mean poaching them. Just … reminding them that you’re out here. On your own. Hungry for their business.”

Will’s eyes met hers, and they both laughed right out loud.

“Okay. You’re right,” she said with a sniff. “If you want to go all
integrity-driven
, sure.”

“What about you?” he asked. “Any coattails you can yank?”

Julianne sighed. “Want to pray?”

Will simply reached his hands across the desk and took hers. “Father, thank You. We are overwhelmed by Your goodness and love for us. You have guided us to this place and we are so very grateful. Now we lift up our business to You once again. We ask for Your favor and grace in prospering the practice by opening those doors that are meant to open. In Jesus’ name we pray.”

“Amen,” she said with a nod.

“Amen.”

Will had only just released her hand when a soft rap at the office door drew their attention.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Phoebe said through a slight opening. “Judge Hillman’s office is on the line for you, Julianne.”

She scrunched up her face at Will before shrugging. “Thanks, Phoebe.” She snatched up the receiver and tucked it into the curve of her neck. “Julianne Bartlett.”

“Miss Bartlett, this is Bridget Ferguson, Judge Hillman’s bailiff.”

“Yes, Bridget. How are you?”

“The judge wanted me to call and ask you to come to his office as soon as possible this afternoon.”

“Is this in regard to the Bertinni matter? Because that’s—”

“I don’t know what it’s about. He just asked me to call you right away.”

“All right. I’ll head over there in about twenty minutes, Bridget.”

“I’ll tell him.”

She hung up the phone, her head whirling with worst-case scenarios.

“What’s that about?” Will asked her.

“I have no clue. I’ve been summoned to Judge Hillman’s office.”

“That can’t be good.”

“No,” she said, and she pushed to her feet and headed for the door. As she slipped into her suit jacket, she turned back again. “Hey, I didn’t get to ask you. How did your date go Friday night?”

“Pretty great, actually. Yours with Prince Charming?”

“The same,” she replied tentatively. Unclasping the chain of her purse from the hook, she turned back toward Will. “By the way, why did you tell Lacey about Paul?”

He stared at her for a moment before replying. “Oh. Yeah. I don’t know. It was just a reflex. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. But check us out, both of us getting back in the game.”

The drive to the courthouse took all of ten minutes, but about two hours’ worth of speculation filled the space.
What in the world could Judge Hillman want from me at two o’clock on a Monday afternoon? And why isn’t he in court like the rest of the judges in Hamilton County?

“Ah, Ms. Bartlett,” he greeted her when she knocked on the open door and saw him seated behind the desk. “Come in.”

Julianne obeyed and stood behind an empty chair, bracing herself on the back of it. The judge looked up at her and scowled.

“Well, sit down.”

“Oh. Thank you, sir.”

She slipped into the chair and folded her hands in her lap. She sat quietly, listening to the rhythm of her own heartbeat as the judge continued reading the brief before him. Finally, he removed his glasses and scratched the edge of his far-receding hairline as he looked up at her. She’d never noticed the deep blue hue of Judge Hillman’s eyes before.

“There is a case before me, Ms. Bartlett, that’s what we judges like to call a migraine with a bullet chaser.”

Julianne snickered. “I’m sorry to hear that, Your Honor.”

“It’s a civil case. Not too complicated until this morning. It seems the plaintiff is suing the defendant for breach of contract.” The judge rubbed his graying moustache and leaned back into his desk chair until it creaked. “However, the defendant’s wife is also named in the suit and—
blah-blah-blah
—the two of them have now filed for divorce, the wife needs her own attorney, says she can’t afford one, the public defender’s office … as you know … is stacked up, so I’ll bottom line it for you, Ms. Bartlett. You are going to handle her case.”

Julianne blinked, and her eyes went instantly dry. “What? Me?”

“You are an attorney, are you not?”

“Well, yes.”

“And I’ve given Mr. Bertinni a great deal of latitude, have I not?”

She sighed. “Yes.”

“For which you … what’s the legal term? … owe me, big-time.”

Julianne deflated, leaning forward slightly. “Pro bono?”

“Yes, but it won’t take more than a couple of days at worst.”

She inhaled sharply. “You don’t understand, Your Honor. Will Hanes and I have just opened our new office, and we had only sixteen billable hours last month. We’re really hurting for new clients. If I go back to the office and tell him I’m doing pro bono work right now when all we have to look forward to is a pig homicide and a few leftovers from—”

“You said a pig homicide, didn’t you, Ms. Bartlett.”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“Two days, tops. Just get with your co-counsel later today and she’ll bring you up to speed. And I will take it as a personal favor, Ms. Bartlett. Not the kind of favor for which you can collect, just to be clear, because that would be wrong. But still, a personal favor.”

Julianne held back the groan that rose from somewhere beneath her ribs. “Yes, sir.”

“Now. I’m due at a little soiree at the office of some friends in an hour and my car is in the shop. Would you mind dropping me?”

She tapped her foot several times and gripped the sides of her chair, but her face betrayed no sign of her irritation. “Of course.” As the thought hit her, she added, “Oh! And who is my co-counsel, by the way?”

“Lacey James,” he replied.

Of course she is
.

They chatted about the judge’s daughter up in Dayton on the drive over—it seemed she was pregnant with her first child, Hillman’s first grandchild—and Julianne filled in the details of Rand’s run-in with Emily’s pet pig. The judge never let out more than one almost-friendly chuckle. By the time they arrived at Caswell Center, Julianne snapped the button to unlock the doors as she pressed on the brake.

“Here we are,” she told him. “Have a nice evening.”

“My back’s bothering me,” Hillman stated. “Why don’t you park so you can carry my briefcase upstairs for me, hmm?” She glanced at the clock, hoping for a convenient time-crunch excuse, but the judge cut her off at the pass. “I’m an old man, Ms. Bartlett. Put your youth to good use, will you?”

She pushed down the inward groan as hard as she could. “You are not old,” she told him as she steered into a parking spot.

“Tell that to my aching joints.”

She grabbed her purse and the judge’s briefcase from the backseat and followed him toward the lobby. He gave a cursory—and unconvincing—pat to his lower back before depressing the elevator call button.

Caswell Consulting, one of the largest business consulting firms in Southwestern Ohio, occupied the entire fourth and fifth floors of the office building bearing their name. The reception area alone took up five times the space of Hanes & Bartlett and teemed with people in suits and high-ticket business attire, all of them holding glasses clinking with ice cubes and small plastic plates filled with aromatic appetizers.

Julianne’s stomach growled as a smiling woman who looked very much like the cover of some corporate magazine approached.

“Bradford, I’m so happy you could make it.” She air-kissed the judge’s cheek and her eyes fell on Julianne. “And you brought someone. Hello. I’m Veronica Caswell.”

“Julianne Bartlett.”

Her handshake seemed amiable, as did her smile.

“Ms. Bartlett gave me a ride over since the Buick is in the shop.”

“Again?” Veronica teased. “Bradford, I think you can afford a trade-in, don’t you?”