Legal Action (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles)

LEGAL ACTION

Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles

Book One

By Kimball Lee

This book is a work of fiction. All characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
.

Copyright 2013. Kimball Le

ONE

             
Charlotte sat at the red light, sipped her nonfat white mocha and thought about getting a massage. She didn’t have time for a trip to a spa and she didn’t feel like going to one of those generic, walk-in set-ups in the mall. She wanted a massage like the one a gorgeous, naked, man, rippling with muscles, had given Holly Hunter in the movie, Living Out Loud. She needed an anonymous man, sexy and hot and nameless straining the front of his boxer-briefs, unfolding his massage table in her living room.

             
It was no good, the thought of briefs made her think of the paperwork piled on her office desk. More pressing than that was her need to be angry and aggressive, yet cool-headed and in control in the courtroom the next day. She’d spent months working on a major lawsuit and she intended to bring the jury to its knees and win.

             
A car horn honked and she looked to her left as a handsome man pointed at the light, which was green.

             
She smiled at him and pulled forward only to be caught at the next red light. He tapped his horn again and rolled down his window, he didn’t look like he was going anywhere and neither was she. She put her window down and he lifted his sun glasses and she noticed the brilliant blue-green of his eyes even at a distance.

             
“I believe we know each other,” he said.

             
She hesitated for a minute and studied him, he was seriously handsome. He had the kind of smoldering sexuality that made her sure his body would look as good as his face. Of course, most of the men in Southern California were good looking. She’d realized that when she’d moved from Mississippi to UCLA for college.

             
“Yes,” she said, “I’m sure we were in the fourth grade together.”

             
The light turned green and she drove away.

             
Was that just rude
, she wondered?  She almost wished she had time to flirt with him, but winning her case was all she could think about. She was starving and she wondered if she should run through In and Out Burger or if the guys would have something cooking at home. She pulled into a parking lot to call JP and ask. As she parked and dialed his number there was a tap on her window. She jumped and dropped her cell phone, she could hear JP’s voice saying hello from somewhere on the floor.

             
The man from the red light was standing outside her car window loosening his tie, he looked impatient.

             
She panicked, checked that her doors were locked and reached in her purse for her pepper spray. She groped on the floor and found her phone, said “JP, hold on there’s some strange guy at my car window!” She put the cell phone on speaker and held it and the pepper spray up for the man to see.

             
He closed his eyes and shook his head, then gestured broadly at his Bentley and held his open wallet with his ID to the window.              

             
JP was talking wildly on the phone, “get the fuck out of there Char, just floor it. Do
not
roll down the window.”

             
She gasped as she read his ID, “I’ll call you back, JP. I know him.”

             
She rolled the window down, looked into those blue-green eyes, then put her hands to her face in embarrassment.

             
“It’s okay,” he said, “I don’t blame you, it’s a crazy world. I knew it wasn’t the fourth grade, by the way, unless you went to an all-boy’s school in Switzerland.”

             
“Alexander Bly, I’m sorry, my mind was somewhere else. I have a huge thing in the morning…”

             
“Wow,” he said, “a huge thing, that sounds scary.”

             
Charlotte blushed again and he laughed. Her cell phone rang and she tapped it and said, “I’m okay, JP, I’ll be home in ten minutes.”

             
“It’s not fucking JP, and what the fuck, Charlotte? Is some pervert molesting you or what? I’ll track your phone and kick his ass!” A man’s voice with a British accent yelled.

             
“Finn, I’m fine, everything’s okay, I’ll be there in a few, goodbye.”

             
  “Listen, Charlotte, I just wanted to say hello, it’s been a long time. I should let you get home to your husband, boyfriends, whatever. You look great, by the way.” He hesitated for a minute, ran his hand through his dark, wavy hair. Looked at her with those wide, sea-glass colored eyes, then he smiled a small smile and walked away.             

             
She knew she should stop him, he was not only dangerously sexy, he was one of the most powerful men in the world, not to mention one of the richest. She’d met him, worked for him, in a sense, six years before.

             
He’d been an arrogant twenty eight year old with the world at his feet and women at his beck and call. He was breathtakingly handsome then and it was hard to believe he was even more so now.

             
Oh well
, she thought,
he’s either still racking up conquests or he’s married and ready to cheat on his wife.

             
She drove to her loft, parked on the street and stepped in to the freight elevator. She lived on the top floor of a vintage warehouse in downtown San Diego with two other residents who happened to be men.

             
They were also her closest friends and had become her only family. The three of them bought the building two years before and converted the top floor into three apartments and rented out the retail spaces below. One loft for each of them, although JP and Finn felt free to lounge in her living room or use her rooftop deck and each had a key to her apartment.

             
They’d gone through law school and graduated together. The two men were in school on some kind of military funding, having both been in Special Forces. They’d all lived together since law school and it was assumed that the guys were either gay or the three of them had a serious ménage a trois going on. Neither was true and the constant string of hot girls in the men’s bedrooms was proof. They were the obnoxious brothers Charlotte never had, the trio had a blast just being together and she had zero time for a love life.

             
After graduating, Charlotte had been recruited into the best corporate law firm in San Diego. JP and Finn had been recruited by the government to do who knew what and they half-jokingly said if they told her, they’d have to kill her. So she didn’t ask.

             
In the beginning they’d both pursued her romantically until she’d marched into their college dorm room, ripped the pages of American Jock off the wall and told them to “
get the fuck over it
.” After that the three of them had become inseparable buddies and even shared a little house the last two years of law school. Of course the guys had replaced the magazine pages on the wall just to piss her off and because every red-blooded American boy, (or British, as was the case with Finn) had her scandalous photo layout on display.              

             
The article happened to have appeared in Alexander Bly’s magazine, one of them, anyway. Bly Publishing owned more magazines and newspapers than any other single corporation in the world.
Bly
, she thought and she could still see the look in those wide, sexy eyes all those years ago at the photo shoot.

             
It had been a closed set and only persons of absolute importance were allowed at Charlotte’s insistence. But, how could she refuse to allow Alexander Bly? He’d agreed to the astronomical fee she demanded although she wasn’t a model, just a college cheerleader who was engaged to an NFL quarterback. She knew the school would kick her out when she made the cover, naked. Well, naked except for her famous football player fiancé’s arm and hand covering strategic areas. The inside shots were as explicit as the cover and although the pictures left something to the imagination, the sexual tension on the pages was palpable.

             
She’d married the football player, Jorgen Christiansen, a seriously hot, Viking God, before she’d finished her last cheerleading season. They’d run off to a cheesy Las Vegas wedding chapel and Elvis had tied the knot. 

             
Jorgen was playing for the San Diego Chargers and she’d just been accepted to law school at USD the following year, so it was a dream. It lasted from September to May and that quick she’d had enough of his alpha-male, domineering bullshit. They’d divorced over the summer before she entered law school, but they talked on the phone still. He was traded to the Miami Dolphins and was always offering to send the team jet for her, he’d become a celebrity with his Nordic good looks and athletic prowess. However, she knew he’d want sex and she wasn’t going back there.

             
Alexander Bly had watched the photo shoot, to be specific, he’d watched her.

             
She’d been conscious of his eyes on her, but then there was Jorgen with his shoulder length blond hair and long, chiseled body. He was the first lover she’d allowed herself to have. He whispered things in her ear as they posed for the camera, held her with his sky blue eyes, pale stubble on his strong square chin. She was twenty one and he was twenty five and they were
HOT
for each other. The world had melted away as they had contorted and practically had sex for the camera. When the magazine hit the newsstands the whole world loved it.

             
She’d been expelled from Ole Miss but UCLA had accepted her readily, dazzled by her beauty and instant fame.

             
They’d welcomed her onto the cheerleading squad with a full scholarship which she needed to complete her degree. The money from the famous magazine layout was socked away to pay for law school.

             
She’d had dozens of offers to model and even do a TV pilot, but she turned them all down. She intended to be a barracuda lawyer someday and she didn’t need a string of American Jock covers haunting her.

             
              She had seriously harsh words with Alexander Bly the last time she laid eyes on him. She’d adamantly refused to don a bit of dental floss and do the magazine’s yearly swim suit edition.

             
He wasn’t used to taking no for an answer he told her and she said she was glad she could introduce him to a new experience. His eyes had flamed then, she’d never forget it. In them was a mixture of fury and pure sexual need and he’d said she might make a hell of a lawyer, after all.

             
She’d shaken his hand as she left his office and felt the chemistry between them as they said good-bye. When she walked across the massive penthouse office and stepped into the elevator, she looked up as she pressed the button and he still stood at his office door, watching her.

             
She’d gone to her tiny apartment, locked the door and masturbated to the sound of his voice in her head as they’d argued. She loved a good argument and she always wanted sex afterword, although, too often, there was only her vibrator. She knew then, as she pictured his beguiling eyes, that she wanted to be a great lawyer and test her wits against powerful men.  As her hand slipped between her legs she wanted to call him up and say, “I’ll do your demeaning photo shoot if you’re cock is as powerful as you are.”

             
The phone had rung just then, as she was shuddering with release, and she answered it without thinking.

             
“Charlotte,” Alexander Bly’s voice was gruff as he spoke, “I’d like to see you, socially.”

             
“No,” she said and her voice was husky.

             
“I’ll come meet you now,” he said, “where are you? Wait for me.”

             
“Too, late,” she said, and hung up the phone.

             
She shook those thoughts from her mind as she walked through the door of her loft. JP was cooking something that smelled delicious and Finn was shouting at the British footballers on TV. She dropped her briefcase and purse, kicked her shoes off and lay down on the sofa with her feet in Finn’s lap.