“I’ll grab him.” Roman traced his fingertip over the apple of Sadie’s cheek and went to Luke.
“Rome?” she called.
He turned, already halfway to Luke. “Yeah?”
“You owe me for not holding up your end of the bargain.” She said the words, but the sly smile on her lips implied she really didn’t mind.
“And Rome?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“You’re a good guy.” She refocused on the pan in front of her and didn’t look up from flipping the fish in the pan.
Roman went to see what kind of negotiations he could make with a newborn.
Chapter Nine
Sadie had seen a whole lot in her years as an attorney. There was the time her divorcing client got it on with her soon-to-be ex just outside of the courtroom where their marriage was to be dissolved.
That happened.
The time she discovered her client had siphoned off hundreds of thousands of dollars from the family business prior to filing for divorce.
Totally happened.
What she had never seen was a super-hot guy with tree trunks for arms cuddling a newborn while she reassured a client about the custody arrangements of her fish.
Dinner was over, and Marlee and Eli were asleep upstairs after coming down long enough to eat and check on Luke. This time, Marlee had fed him upstairs with the door closed.
Roman was now on Luke duty since Sadie was taking a late-night emergency (but not really) client call in the dining room.
Marine-based life form custody disputes were an area of law Sadie had never needed to dig into. However, she believed in expanding her horizons. Mostly, though, intuition whispered that this case was a slam dunk. A slam dunk as a first case in her new practice would break the curse of her former firm and set her free in Denver.
“I promise your fish don’t need their own legal representation.” Sadie yawned, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth.
Luke was adorable, but man, he was needy.
Also, he had her tied around his teeny tiny pinky finger. True to Roman’s word, Eli and Marlee were the recipients of solid—even if sometimes interrupted by Luke’s demands—sleep.
“They’re just so unhappy.” Tonya truly sounded distraught. Prior to this meeting, Sadie’s custody disputes had all involved mammals who breathed air, lived above ground, usually walked on two legs, and mostly went to public school.
“The fish?” Sadie confirmed. She was tired, but she didn’t think she’d missed a whole chunk of conversation.
“Uh-huh.” Tonya’s words were slightly muffled. “They’re not happy at all.”
“How does one determine if fish are happy?” Also, how had Sadie gone to law school and spent tons of money on multiple degrees to end up right here, asking this question?
She wished she was about to embark on some great legal drama, but this was just a standard slam-bam-thank-you-Sadie divorce, Fish Edition.
“They’re like people. If they get depressed, they stop eating. They stop socializing. Things like that.”
When Sadie got upset, she ate everything and called her friends. But to each their own. Sadie wasn’t one of the women who lost pounds after a breakup. No, when the guillotine dropped on her own love stories, Sadie went out to buy a bigger size in pants. Lucky for her, and thanks mostly to Oliver for opening her eyes, she didn’t date often enough for this to be a consistent problem.
“Okay,” Sadie said brightly, ready to move the conversation away from the social life of critters who lived in a confined tank. Their social calendar was clearly more involved than her own, and well, that wasn’t something she wanted to have to discuss with her life coach.
“We’ll go over your requests in the morning and I’ll get them over to Rex’s attorney.” A squirrely guy named David who may seem unsuspecting at first but had a reputation for taking chunks out of his competition. Sadie was watching her back around him. She also knew how law communities like this worked. Once she bested him on this case, she’d officially be in the in-crowd. That meant respect from her peers, more clients, and a strong practice—all good things.
“Should I have seen this coming?” Tonya asked. “I mean, maybe Rex is right, and we just need to try again. Try harder.”
