She gritted her teeth. “Yes, but my mother won’t let me help her!”
Gareth inhaled deeply and rubbed his chin. “Hazel, can you just be direct?” he asked, his voice surprisingly calm and gentle. “I owe you the favor. I keep my word and my written agreements even more. But you just signed a clause saying that if I ask you a direct question, you’ll be as honest with me as possible. And I can’t decide if it’s an equal favor if you don’t tell me what it’s about!”
He was right. That was perhaps the worst part of all. She hadn’t been honest with him for seven years and she found it hard to break old habits. Being honest around him felt like she was opening herself up and making herself vulnerable — and she never wanted to be vulnerable in front of Gareth again. But what choice did she have? She took a deep breath and forced herself to look into the face of the man to whom she had entrusted her life, her heart, and her entire past years ago. Even then, he had been cold on the outside, but so infinitely warm on the inside…
“Do you think this is easy for me?” she whispered. “To ask you, of all people, for help? But my mother has a potentiallawsuit on her hands and doesn’t want my help; she wants a recommendation for a colleague. But she can’t afford any of my colleagues and no one would take her case seriously – or lie to her about it being me who’s actually paying for it. You, on the other hand, are incapable of not taking anything seriously and have no problem lying. And…” She hesitated.
“And?” Gareth asked quietly.
She clenched her teeth. “And you are – after me – the best lawyer I know.”
One corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “That must have hurt.”
He had no idea.
“Not that I’m not flattered, but for stupid legal questions, you have plenty of other colleagues who are also serious lawyers. Unlike me.”
“No. I…needyou, okay?” She swallowed. “You’ll know best how to proceed. The lawyer who wants to sue her is Billy Kosianos.”
There was an abrupt silence.
Gareth stared at her blankly, for one second. Two seconds…
He stood and pulled his suit jacket off the back of his chair. “Give me your mother’s address. We’ll take my car.”
“We can go separately, we…”
“You’ll use the drive to tell me exactly what this is about. I don’t like wasting my time, Hazel. I’ll grant you the favor, but I’ll do it on my terms.”
She sighed, while at the same time feeling terribly relieved. “Fine. If you can stand being in such a cramped space with me for that long.”
Chapter Nine
Social conduct for hate-free inter-colleague teamwork
Short: SCHIT
Paragraph 9:
The contracting parties answer direct questions as honestly as possible.
They should have taken two cars.
Gareth wanted to have the last word — and didn’t consider that the car was incredibly small and the interior would fill with Hazel’s scent within seconds, would in fact linger in the seats and torment him for weeks. For someone with a ridiculously high IQ, he really wasn’t that smart.
It took two minutes to call Freddie Cravitz to tell him to cancel all his appointments for the morning – which prompted his assistant to ask if he was okay and if they should call a doctor – and it took Hazel eight minutes to explain the exact situation. But the GPS showed they still had another twenty minutes until they arrived at her mother’s house…and he had no idea what totalk to Hazel about thatwouldn’tmake one of them angry, or wasn’t either work-related or about the weather. Those three topics were contractually forbidden in a conversation outside of a work context.
He should have said no; this favor she was asking was too personal. But the name Billy fucking Kosianos alone made him angry. He was the only man Gareth had ever punched because, for three years at Harvard, he'd called Hazel trailer trash and made her life hell. She’d always claimed she didn’t care, that he didn’t deserve her attention, but she’d been lying. Gareth knew that as surely as he remembered Hazel giving him hell for acting like a caveman. And that Billy was afraid of him. Maybe because Gareth had been richer, more powerful, and smarter. Maybe because Gareth had threatened to kill him if he didn’t leave Hazel alone. Who could say for sure?
But the bastard should have expected Gareth to take offense when he loudly asked Hazel in front of a packed bar if she’d only had to give the professor a blowjob or if she'd had to fuck him for her good grades. Kosianos should have considered himself lucky Cian had snatched the pool cue from Gareth’s hand. The wooden implement would have been even more unpleasant than Gareth’s fist.
Regardless, that had all happened ages ago, in another lifetime. Even if it felt like every second he spent alone with Hazel was dragging him right back into it. He didn’t like that. It made him nervous — nervous about meeting Hazel’s mother.
“Why are you so quiet?” Hazel asked, and he felt her looking at him.
“I’m thinking.”
“Thinking about what?”
