Page 12 of A Christmas Negotiation

He sighed heavily. “I think so. I ended up taking in a stray cat. It’s a long story.”

“Sounds like a lot.”

“It’s like everything in my life right now. Just one more thing on an endless list of obligations.”

Isabel nodded, a bit chagrined that she’d been so right about Jeremy—he was not the guy who liked to be tied down. “Okay, then. You can tell me over dinner. Eight o’clock? The Monaco?”

Jeremy looked surprised. “It’s impossible to get a reservation.”

Isabel shrugged. “I know a guy.”

“But you’ve only been in the city for a few weeks.”

“Trust me. I got this.”

FIVE

Dinner with Jeremy—hot and absurdly handsome Jeremy—was not the best plan. To some, it might seem like a particularly poor one. Did Isabel have a choice? Of course she did. She never liked to think that she didn’t. But wrapping up this case on Mr. Summers’s proposed timeline would take some artful work on Isabel’s part if she was going to come out on top. For herself, her brother and his new family, she wanted nothing less than a win.

She did not want to be quibbling with this in January or having it drag out into February or March. She wanted this done so she could move on to the next phase of her career, adoption law. It would be a lot easier to get something out of Jeremy if the two of them had a good rapport, and well, the way things had played out at the Bacharach the night they met had not been a great start. She wanted to put that behind them, and in her experience, nothing cured a few bruised feelings faster than a glass of wine and some conversation over a delicious meal. Plus, the pasta carbonara at the Monaco was to die for.

First, she needed to get back to the Bacharach from the Sharp and Sharp offices. Wanting to clear her head, she opted to walk, even if she had to do it in heels. A crisp December wind whipped between the tall buildings of Midtown Manhattan, bringing Isabel the focus she craved. All around her, the city was abuzz with the holidays. She strode past storefronts with extravagant window displays, hosting scenes of Santa and snowy ski chalets, candy canes and snowflakes. Red-cheeked shoppers bustled along the sidewalk, loaded down with department store bags, including silver-and-white bags from Eden’s, which was only seven or eight blocks away. Isabel hadn’t celebrated Christmas in years. Well, not for real, with a tree and gifts and the Wham! song some people try to avoid hearing. She and Sam typically got together on Christmas Eve and spent a few quiet days together, cooking and talking, content with each other’s company. It had been like that since their parents died, when Sam was in high school and Isabel in college. The holiday simply didn’t have the same meaning without their entire family together. Losing both parents in a six-month period had left them no time to adjust. So she and Sam slipped into a new tradition, made up of celebrating the one thing they still had—each other.

Isabel wasn’t sure what would happen this year. Sam had Mindy now. With that big lovely ring on her finger, they were buying their big house and talking about children. Of course, Isabel was over the moon about the whole thing. Yes, she’d been reluctant to accept Mindy after the heartbreak she’d caused Sam, but in the end, she’d been won over by Mindy’s magnetic personality and determination. Plus, Isabel had to be nothing but in awe of her future sister-in-law. She’d accomplished the impossible, something no one else had managed in his thirty-six years on this planet—Mindy had found a way to make Sam happy.

Isabel arrived back at the Bacharach and dashed in through the revolving door, crossed the lobby and pressed the button for the elevator. She couldn’t help but notice the woman in the fire department uniform speaking to the man she knew to be the hotel manager.

“The entire system?” the manager asked.

“I’m afraid so, sir. One minute it passes the test, the next minute it fails.”

The elevator dinged and Isabel didn’t hang around to hear more about the hotel’s faulty alarm system. Hopefully it would get fixed soon.

Upstairs, she keyed into her room, unwound herself from her black wool coat, which she tossed onto the bed. She kicked off her pumps, sat at the desk and opened her laptop. She probably should have just given in to the urge to look into Jeremy yesterday, when she first learned that her one-night stand was opposing counsel. Less than a second after hitting the return button onJeremy Sharp, a flurry of tabloid articles appeared. The first headline suggested exactly what Mindy had: Kelsey Kline Leaves Husband, Says Marriage “Loveless.”

Isabel wasn’t much for pulp or gossip, and she’d never even heard of Kelsey Kline before that morning, but the story was fascinating. The only daughter of a shipping magnate, heiress to a vast fortune, Ms. Kline was well-known in NYC as a party girl turned fashion blogger turned wedding planner. She was flat-out gorgeous, fit yet curvy, with high cheekbones, full lips and a stunning head of chocolate-brown hair. Isabel didn’t know Jeremy particularly well, but Kelsey seemed like the kind of woman he might choose—fun and carefree.

As Isabel read on, the story turned dark and sad. Kelsey claimed that Jeremy was inattentive and unaffectionate, not the marrying type or a guy who was meant to settle down. She said point-blank that he broke her heart, getting married to him was a mistake, and she might never recover. There were even a few hints that he might have been unfaithful, although it was a subject carefully tiptoed around. No matter whether that was true or not, this was all another sign that Isabel might have dodged a bullet.

Kelsey filed for divorce less than three years after she and Jeremy had tied the knot in a lavish ceremony at a historic cathedral in the city. Other than being blamed for the end of the marriage, Jeremy was hardly mentioned in the article at all. It said that he had declined to comment, which Isabel took as confirmation that everything Kelsey had said was true, at least on some level. Otherwise, why not stick up for yourself?

Isabel took in a deep breath through her nose and closed her laptop, not wanting to read any more. She felt that familiar crawl over her skin after having peered into someone else’s life. She realized there were plenty of people who lived for such salacious details, but Isabel had seen too much of the personal toll. At least she was now certain that she had made the right call when she’d let Jeremy off the hook after their first night together. She would have dinner with him tonight, get this case worked out and move on. That would be the end of her chapter with Mr. Sharp. And from the sound of that article, that was the best case scenario.

A few minutes before eight, Isabel climbed out of a town car in front of the Monaco. From the outside, the restaurant was a mystery—a dark wood facade with a large arched center door, the name in gold above. No random passersby would ever bother to step inside unprompted, out of either ignorance or perhaps fear of the unknown. But it was one of Isabel’s favorite spots in Manhattan, owned by a former client who had top-tier restaurants all over the world—London, Madrid, Los Angeles, DC. Isabel’s last assignment for the restaurateur had been to get his college-age daughter out of jail when she was arrested in Belize on spring break. It had been Isabel’s job to not only deal with the legal side of getting her out and back into the US, but to keep the story out of the papers and away from her university. Thus had been her life of a lawyer turned fixer.

Isabel ducked through the door and into a dimly lit vestibule with an ornate tile floor, coat check and host stand. The sounds of the restaurant, a steady hum of conversation and clinking glass, filtered into the small space, even through the heavy emerald-green velvet drape that obscured the entrance into the dining room. Isabel gave her name to the hostess just as a rush of cold came in behind her. She turned and there was Jeremy. He was clearly flustered, his cheeks full of color as he pushed his hair back from his face. Isabel endeavored to ignore the way her pulse raced when she saw him. He turned his shoulders out of a charcoal-gray wool coat, dressed in black trousers and suit jacket, with a midnight-blue dress shirt that turned his gray eyes an even darker and more intense shade. Isabel had to hope that at some point the zap of attraction would subside. Hopefully it wouldn’t always feel like this to be around him, as if her body was on perpetual high alert.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

He smiled thinly. “Basically, yes. Just a crazy afternoon.”

“Crazy good or crazy bad?”

He blew out a breath. “The stray cat I told you about? I thought it was a male, but it’s a female. And she’s pregnant.”

Isabel pressed her lips together tightly to stifle a laugh. For the guy who seemed to be bothered by responsibility, this was pretty funny. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to buy you a drink as soon as we’re seated for dinner. That’s what.”