So it was lucky we were on the same page, right?
Right.
CHAPTER 8
MILLER
Islept through my alarm on Friday morning, and it meant I missed my morning run and skated into my office with minutes to spare.
Normally that might have put a crimp in my day, but not today because Danny had agreed to catch up again on the weekend. I was hoping that this time he’d stay for breakfast.
I didn’t usually care if the guys I hooked up with were gone by morning, but with Danny it was different—maybe because he wasn’t just some stranger from a club, or maybe because he was a likeable guy. I’d seen the way he took care of his roommates and how concerned he was for his grandma. Everything about him screamed that he was a decent human being, which made me want to get to know him better.
Besides, the sex was out of this world. I liked to take control in the bedroom and some people weren’t into that, but Danny? He took what I gave him and begged for more.
My musings were interrupted by the intern sticking his head around the door. “Hey. I’m going for donuts. You want some?”
“It’s barely nine, Marty. It’s too early for donuts.”
Marty shrugged. “If that was true, bro, why would the donut place open at six? Besides, you have a full day booked, so Ifigured you could use a kickstarter. Two bear claws and a black coffee?”
Okay, maybe Marty was kind of useful after all. “That sounds perfect.”
I pulled out my wallet and handed him my card to cover the order. “Get whatever you want on me.”
Marty beamed at me, and I remembered too late that I’d once seen him demolish an entire box of glazed donuts in one sitting. Still, he was bringing me sugar and caffeine, so I wasn’t going to quibble over the cost. Once he’d gone I pulled up my calendar for the day and started making notes of what I’d need, and by the time Marty came back, I had a list of files I needed him to pull. I could have done it myself, but what was the point of having an intern if it wasn’t to do crap like this?
Speaking of mindless jobs for interns. I handed him the list and said, “Did you remember to check the property lines in the Hall case?”
“The Hall case?” His brow creased, and I swore I could almost hear the wheels turning before his expression cleared and he said, “Oh, you mean cute Goose Creek guy? Bro, you should totally tap that.”
“Goose Run, not creek,” I said, ignoring the rest of his comment. “Did you check the county records or not?”
He gave a half-shrug. “I’m on it. It’s pretty cut and dried, though. The tree’s on their property and the neighbor is a giant dickwad who cut it down without permission.”
I bit back a sigh. “Pretty sure ‘giant dickwad’ isn’t an accepted legal term, Marty.”
He grinned. “No, but that guy still sounds like one.”
“Just check the records, okay?”
“Sure thing. And I’ll send the tree for DNA testing.”
“You don’t need to?—”
He’d wandered out of the office before I could finish my sentence, so I let it go. Hopefully, he’d forget all about it.
I’d finished my bear claws and coffee by the time he dumped the files on my desk. “Did you get lost on the way to the filing room?”
“Nah, the bros sent me new pictures of Squirrel. Wanna see?” He pulled out his phone and shoved the screen under my nose, showing me a photo of a whippet lying on a couch on its back, fast asleep with four legs in the air.
Marty loved his dog a ridiculous amount and was forever showing me pictures. Squirrel had been a birthday present from Marty’s boyfriend, Dalton. I wasn’t sure how he’d wrangled permission to have a dog live with him at his fraternity house, but he had. In fairness to Marty, Squirrel was pretty cute. From the photos I’d seen, so was Dalton. It made me wonder sometimes what I was missing when it came to Marty because, to look at him, you’d think the guy was a walking disaster area, but somehow he had a frat that let him bend the rules, an internship, and a hot future doctor boyfriend. Marty was living his best life, and honestly? I was a little jealous.
“He’s cute,” I said, and Marty grinned as he tucked his phone away, satisfied.
I spent the morning buried in paperwork and clients. A guy in his thirties wanted to make a will, which was pretty simple. The case after that, though, was anything but. Marcia Alsop wanted to update her existing will with the express intention of making sure her sister would never see a cent. She gave a long-winded retelling of the unforgivable offense that had occurred at the latest family gathering. The crime that had her cutting all contact with her sister? An argument over a family recipe. So, y’know. High stakes right there. I nodded and tried to look sympathetic, but it was a struggle.
As soon as she left, I escaped the office and headed for the tiny sandwich shop around the corner. I took a seat under the lazily creaking ceiling fans and ordered an iced tea and a sub. As I sat there, I couldn’t help but compare Marcia’s attitude toward her family to that of Jane. Danny’s grandma had thought nothing of moving out of her house so that Danny and his friends could have space to learn how to be adults, and she’d happily taken in what she called her bonus grandkids. I’d seen a hint of that same protective streak in Danny when he was talking about Chase and Cash. Even though technically none of the guys who lived there were related to him, it didn’t seem to matter to Danny. As far as he was concerned, they were family.
