If the Shoe Fits (26 page)

“Why are you asking me about him?” Will asked as he flipped the turkey burgers. “You should ask Julianne.”

“I just might do that,” Suzanne replied. “But right now I’m asking you.”

Will tossed a glare in her general direction before returning his attention to the grill. “Yes. He called and agreed to take her to the gala for the cool price of five hundred big ones.”

“Five hundred dollars, Will,” she repeated, shaking her head. “And the cost of his tuxedo, too!”

“Maybe she’ll get lucky and find a discount coupon in the weekend paper.”

“For him?” Suzanne asked with a chuckle. “Or the tux?”

He considered biting his tongue for letting the bitterness show in his tone.

“Man, she must really be hurting.”

Will jerked toward her with a laugh. “Hurting! What do you mean by that?”

Suzanne sighed. “The way that legal crowd of yours treats her. All those comments people make about a cute little thing like Julianne Bartlett not being able to hold on to a guy, how you’re the only one that sticks, and only because you have to. Don’t you think that cuts pretty deep after a while?”

Will shook his head and fidgeted with the spatula. “Well, I’m not attached to anyone either.”

“You had Holly.”

“For all the good—”

“She’s terrified that they’re right, Will.”

He turned and looked at her, taken aback by the softness in Suzanne’s eyes.

“Her pride can’t take any more of it. She wants the fantasy. And if she can’t catch ahold of it on her own, then she’ll pay for it. Even lie about it, Will. I know you realize how far out of character that is for her, but she’s doing it, even though it’s just for one night.”

“Then on Monday,” he countered, “she’s unattached again and facing the same sort of comments and looks and … whatever.”

Suzanne leaned against the wooden railing and stared at him. He tried to look away, but he felt like a fish on a hook as she reeled him back again.

“Just tell her, you dope.”

Her tone blended with the look in her eye to leave a stinging sensation at the back of Will’s throat.

Tell her what?
he wanted to ask, all indignant and surprised. But he didn’t have the energy in him for the deception.

“Everyone knows except Julianne,” she said softly.

“They do not,” he managed, and he flicked the edge of one of the burgers with the tip of the spatula. “What are you talking about?”

“Look, you’ve had twenty years to come clean. Don’t you think it’s about time that you did? Before she finds another Paul, only for real this time?”

“You said everyone knows except Julianne. Why do you suppose she hasn’t figured that out, Suzanne? Huh? In all these years, why does everyone in southern Ohio know how I feel except her?”

Suzanne smacked her thighs with both hands. “I don’t know, Will. Maybe because you’re
both
dopes?”

“She doesn’t know—” Will said, and he took a moment to swallow before saying out loud the one thing he’d been most afraid of for those twenty years since they were kids “—because she doesn’t
want to know
.”

Suzanne leaned forward and looked him squarely in the eye. “Can you both really be this delusional? You’re going to lose it, Will. It’s going to slip right through your fingers if you don’t respect the gift that’s been trying to come your way. Come clean with each other.”

He tossed the spatula next to the grill and spat out a laugh. “What, you’re trying to tell me she feels the same way? I don’t think so, Suzanne.”

After a moment of silence, Suzanne pushed herself upright and headed for the back door. Pivoting toward him, she softly said,

“Don’t be an idiot, Will. Timing is everything, and yours is all but up.”

Before she could turn the knob, the door burst open and Julianne flew out to the deck, waving her phone at him as she shouted, “Will! Will, look at this! It’s on the home screen of CincyBiz.com.”

He peered down at the screen and groaned at the headline:
New Local Law Firm Forgets to Check Closet for Skeletons
.

The photo beneath showed a pale and handcuffed Phoebe, Julianne behind her with her mouth wide open as she raged at the arresting officer.

“We’re hosed,” she exclaimed.

And Will couldn’t disagree.

“It turns out that
Queen City Magazine
owns the Website,” Will explained to Julianne and Phoebe. “And since the reporter and photographer were here by permission, they didn’t violate any privacy laws by what they did. Moral ones are another story.”

A flock of butterflies swarmed Julianne’s stomach as she wondered if their fledgling firm would survive a hit like this one. Their executive assistant charged with fraud, arrested in their reception office. She imagined the Cincinnati legal community buzzing about it.

Phoebe dabbed her eyes with a tissue and pushed her chair away from the conference room table. “I’m so sorry. I’ve embarrassed the firm, and both of you. It seems like ever since I walked through that door and you mistook me for your pastor’s friend …”

“Phoebe, stop it,” Will told her with a sigh. “These things happen, and we will survive.”

Julianne rubbed Phoebe’s shoulder. “Last week, someone from the public defender’s office shot someone. This week, Will and I have hired a dangerous and felonious assistant.” Phoebe giggled, and Julianne nudged her arm. “Who knows what the flavor of the week will be once we wait this out.”

She exchanged a quick glance with Will, and Julianne knew that neither one of them felt the lighthearted dismissal they’d donned for Phoebe’s sake. But there was no use kicking her while she was down.

“If you ask me,” Will offered, “I think it was a genius plan.”

Phoebe looked at him with hope, tears spilling from her wide-open eyes.

“Do tell,” Julianne urged, albeit suspiciously.

“Well, you were so concerned about what everyone was saying about your
love
life,” he said, deadpan. “Now they won’t even give it a second thought when we’ve got them so occupied imagining what other crimes our diabolical assistant has committed. I mean, just look at her.”

Phoebe giggled again, and Julianne snickered before shooting Will a grateful smile.

“Look how scary she is! No one knows what she’ll do next.”

“You know what I heard about her?” Julianne teased. “On one of her cross-country sprees, she sought out a hairdresser in Abilene, just to watch him dye.”

And with that, all three of them burst out laughing.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve the two of you,” Phoebe told them. “But I want to thank God for whatever it was.”

“That’s the beauty of God,” Julianne told her as she smoothed one of Phoebe’s wayward curls. “You don’t have to earn it. He’s just generous that way.”

“I hate to break this up,” Will interrupted. “But I’ve got a meeting with the assistant D.A. about your buddy, Rand. We’re going to finalize the deal.”

“I’m headed over to see Veronica,” Julianne added. “I’m hoping the Queen of Image Repair has some preemptive advice for us. I’ll head out with you.”

Will squeezed Phoebe’s arm as he passed. “Hang in there.”

“See you in a couple of hours,” Julianne told her.

She grabbed her purse and hurried out the door after Will. By the time she caught him, the elevator door had slipped open and the two of them boarded.

“She’s going to be okay.” Julianne wasn’t sure if she meant it to reassure Will, or perhaps herself. “We all are.”

After several beats, Will turned toward her and asked, “All of us? Are you sure?”

Her mind raced for his meaning, thought fragments ricocheting around her brain like some sort of intellectual pinball game. The only thing missing were the bells.

“I’m just asking,” he continued, “because I haven’t really been sure of that lately.”

“No?” She grimaced and tilted her head awkwardly. “What am I not getting?”

Will snorted. “So much, Julianne. There’s so much you don’t get.”

She opened her mouth to inquire further just as the elevator car shimmied and clunked to a bumpy halt, and she ended up biting her tongue.

“Ouch!” she muttered. “What’s going on? Are we stuck?”

He gave her one of those crooked frowns of his, the ones that told her in no uncertain terms that she’d irritated him, that she’d come off as ridiculous somehow.

“Okay, yes. We’re stuck. But what do we do?”

Without reply, Will moved to the panel and pushed a red knob until it chimed.

“The super will call someone, I guess,” she deduced. “We just relax and wait, huh?”

Still no reply. Julianne blew out her frustration in a long puff of a sigh, leaning one hip against the elevator wall with a groan.

“I don’t like closed-in spaces,” she remarked. “It makes me feel like all of the air is sucked out of the place. I mean, I know it’s not really, but it feels that way, you know? Like we might be on borrowed time, oxygen-wise; like we might … I don’t know … suddenly start to feel—”

“Jules,” he stated in a firm and controlled tone of voice. “Someone will be here soon. There’s plenty of air for both of us. Chill out awhile.”

Julianne flicked the zipper of her purse and stared at her shoes while she tried to figure out just what made Will so touchy.

“Ever since dinner at your dad’s last night,” she said softly, “you’ve been like this with me, Will. Are you going to tell me what I did to put the bee in your bonnet?”

He stared straight ahead as if he hadn’t even heard her.

“What, are you in junior high again?” she prodded. “Because you look like you did that Monday after I forgot we were supposed to ride horses up at Alec’s farm on Sunday afternoon.”

Just when she thought he might have gone deaf, Will turned toward her and glared.

“You should have just told me you would rather go skating with Denny Witherhorn. You didn’t have to keep me waiting there half the day before I found out you weren’t even coming. It was two years before you finally admitted you had no intention of ever getting in a saddle anyway.”

“I don’t like horses,” she defended. “I’m sorry. But I just don’t trust them.”

“How is it that you’re like the pied piper of all things animal kingdom, and the one animal you don’t like is the one that I connect with the most?”

She scratched her head and sighed. “I don’t know, Will. I just don’t.”

“That was so like you, Julianne. Just taking off with Denny, and never even bothering to call next door and tell me you weren’t going with me.”

“I meant to. I just … forgot.”

“You forgot,” he snapped.

“Will, we were in the seventh grade! Don’t you think you should have forgiven me by now? I mean, this is what you’re mad at me about today, all this time later? You just woke up this morning and thought, ‘Wait a minute! I can’t believe Julianne didn’t go horseback riding with me in the seventh grade. I think I’ll treat her like dirt on my shoe.’”

He groaned and turned away from her, muttering something that she couldn’t quite make out.

“What did you say?”

“I said no one would know about treating someone like dirt on their shoe better than you.”

Julianne gasped, and her entire body straightened. It felt like a rod had been rammed straight up her back. “What a horrible thing to say to me!”

His expression melted slightly, and he gave a deep rub to his temple. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Will. What is wrong with you?” She waited at least twenty seconds for his answer, but it never came. “We might be stuck in this elevator all afternoon, for all we know. And I’m not letting up until you tell me what you’re so mad about.”

Another several beats thrummed by before he finally rolled toward her and stared her down.

“You’re really going to pay that idiot five hundred dollars to take you to the gala?”

Oh, for crying out loud
.

“
That
is what’s got you all worked up?”

He sighed, shifting the weight of his entire body from one foot to the other, but he never broke eye contact even for a heartbeat.

“Will, are you kidding me? Why does this bother you so much? Okay, it’s kind of humiliating that you know what I’m doing, but it’s not like I’m putting him on the payroll. I just want to have
one magical night
… a night where all of our friends and acquaintances—for just one perfect minute—can’t look at me and see Loser. Why can’t I have that? And why is it so offensive to you? I don’t understand. Please help me understand.”