Kitabı oku: «Legally Tender»

Chapter One

She had never felt so incompetent in her life. It was her fault the thick gray smoke billowed, the fire alarms blared and the fire trucks honked obnoxiously in the distance.

This time it wasn’t because she’d burned the Thanks-giving turkey. No. This time she’d ruined Halloween.

Her eyes watered as the acrid smoke traveled from the large gym into the elementary-school cafeteria. She could almost hear her ex-husband’s condescending voice over the clanging fire-alarm bells: “Christina Sanchez Jones, when will you learn to do something right?” And yet Christina had graduated with honors from prestigious Harvard Law School.

“Mama? Are you crying?” a tiny voice asked as the harsh bells finally ceased.

Christina blinked and glanced down at her eight-year-old daughter. Bella sported black cat whiskers. A beaded black headband complete with furry black-and-pink cat ears held her dark-blond hair away from her face. “We won’t have to cancel the Halloween party, will we, Mama? There wasn’t a fire. Only fake smoke.”

“No,” Christina said, wiping the back of her left hand across her eyes. Through the cafeteria windows, Christina could see that a fire truck had pulled into the parking lot. “We are not canceling. We still have bobbing for apples and a craft left to do. We just won’t have the haunted house.”

“That’s okay! I don’t care!” Bella shouted. She turned back to the other second-grade members of her Brownie troop. Like Bella, they were dressed in Halloween costumes. “The party’s still on!” she whooped.

“Why don’t you all go eat your snacks,” Christina suggested as a group of firemen raced through the cafeteria into the gym. Their heavy boots thudded on the freshly buffed floor. “Mrs. Sims,” Christina called, “let’s do snack now. Does that sound good?”

“Absolutely,” Mrs. Sims replied. Darla Sims was an unofficial troop leader, and within seconds, she had all the girls organized at a cafeteria table, eating pumpkin-shaped cookies and drinking witches’ brew—a concoction of orange juice, lime sherbet and white soda pop.

Christina sighed and entered the gym. The firemen were checking out what was to have been a haunted house.

There really hadn’t been a fire, but Christina should have known better. She should have realized that a smoke machine would not only create a spooky atmosphere, but it would also trigger the smoke detectors and, in turn, the school’s fire-alarm system. She’d known exactly what was happening the moment the first fire bell pealed. Now her mother’s voice resounded in Christina’s head. The good woman had supported Christina’s divorce from Kyle Jones, but she hadn’t wanted her daughter to move to Morrisville, Indiana. Too Midwest, too far from Houston, too small town and simply too far from home and the myriad of relatives who lived just a short plane ride over the Mexican border. “If you’re such a hotshot lawyer,” her mother had argued, “you should have been able to get around that seventy-five-mile child-custody restriction in your divorce decree. You should have been allowed to move anywhere. Like home. Morrisville, Indiana? Do they even have a McDonald’s in that town?”

The answer was yes. Morrisville did have the fast-food restaurant, right at the Highway 74 overpass and next to the town’s new gas station—

A deep voice cut through her turbulent thoughts. “They said you were the one in charge.”

Actually, the woman in charge of the Brownie troop’s Friday-night Halloween party was home with the flu. Her directions had included plugging in the smoke machine. But that didn’t give Christina an excuse. One of her role models was law-school graduate and thirty-third president of the United States, Harry S. Truman. To paraphrase Truman, The buck stopped with her.

Prepared to accept full responsibility, she turned and looked behind her.

And into the clearest blue eyes she’d ever seen. She resisted her instinct to step back, and took a deep breath. “I’m in charge,” she admitted.

“So you’re responsible for this?” The fireman made a wide sweeping gesture with his right hand, his serious gaze holding hers.

“Yes,” she replied as her breath lodged in her throat.

He had to be six-foot-one, only a smidgen shorter than her ex-husband, Kyle. As the firefighter continued to stare at her, Christina shifted under his appraisal.

She knew exactly what he saw: skin the color of a light suntan, hair the color of ripened wheat, brown eyes with a hint of gold, and a genie costume complete with exposed midriff and curled blue shoes that were fast causing her feet to ache. At five foot nine, she was model tall, and she’d long ago accepted that she was the nonstereotypical one in her Mexican family. She didn’t have the cliché dark hair and dark skin. Instead, her lighter hair and skin came from genes dating back to the time of Cortez, and intermingling of Spanish and Aztec blood.

She regained her composure. She’d dealt with being labeled incompetent and second rate long enough. She’d lived with not meeting anyone’s expectations, and she’d determined that, with her move to Morrisville, the only ones she had to live with now were her own.

She was a take-charge woman at this point in her life, in control of her own mistakes and her own destiny. She would lace on metaphorical boxing gloves and step into the ring with anyone who wanted to teach her otherwise.

She lifted her chin slightly to answer the attractive firefighter who waited impatiently. “Yes, I’m the one who plugged in the smoke machine. As soon as the alarm went off, I knew why. I guess the lady who left me directions for setting up the party thought the gym ceiling was high enough.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Obviously,” Christina said dryly. She would not let this college-age boy affect her or her newfound empowerment. However, as he took off his black helmet, she saw he was much older than she’d thought. Late twenties, perhaps, judging from laugh lines that weren’t showing any amusement at the moment. But if he smiled….

The man shrugged out of his firefighter’s coat. Underneath he was wearing a long-sleeved navy Morrisville Fire Department T-shirt. Suspenders held up his black firefighter pants. The man’s muscular build indicated he was a strong believer in physical fitness. Bodies were something Christina noticed—especially after having been married to a professional football player whose body was his life. The man in front of her wasn’t bulky enough to play pro football, but the hard, lean lines of his physique communicated innate strength.

The helmet had flattened the firefighter’s dark-brown hair. Now he tousled the strands with his free hand. “We’ll use fans to air out the gym and cafeteria and clear away any residual smoke. That’s about all we can do. You’ll need to clean the rest up yourselves,” he said.

“We will,” Christina promised.

He shook his head, obviously still disgusted by her foolish mistake. He moved aside as a member of his crew carried in a huge steel fan and proceeded to set it up on the floor by the gym exit door. “You’ll also need to leave the outside doors open. Luckily for you, it’s unseasonably warm tonight. It won’t get too cold in here.”

“Yes,” Christina said. She glanced down as a small hand tugged on hers.

“We want to see the fire truck,” Bella said hopefully, speaking for her friends. “Please, Mama?”

Christina shot the firefighter an apologetic look. Children, she tried to tell him. “Honey, he’s busy, and you should not be in here.”

“I’m never too busy for a group of kids,” the firefighter said, surprising Christina. He finally cracked a smile, one so endearing she suddenly wished he could have directed it at her, too, instead of only at Bella. “Come on, now that all you little girls have got us out here, you must see the fire truck.”

“Do you live at the firehouse?” Bella asked as she followed him, her long black cat tail swishing behind her.

“Nope,” the man said as the Brownie troop gathered around him. “We’re all volunteers. We come from our homes whenever we get the call that someone needs us.”

“The smoke machine set off the alarm,” announced Megan, the girl who had become Bella’s best friend.

“And that’s why we’re here,” he said with another large smile. “Now, walk around this big fan—careful now—and you can all see the fire truck.”

The firefighter’s grin widened, revealing straight white teeth. It was a Dennis Quaid smile, Christina decided, like in The Parent Trap or The Rookie. She’d watched both films recently with Bella. The grin, complete with dimples, covered the firefighter’s entire face. A lifetime ago he might have been her type, she thought wistfully.

The Brownie troop dutifully followed him outside, past the circular fan. Careful not to bump into it herself, Christina hovered at the door as several firefighters began to show the girls the equipment on the fire truck.

“Well, that’ll keep them occupied for a bit,” Mrs. Sims commented as she approached.

“Yes,” Christina said, her gaze never leaving the scene in the parking lot. “Even though it appears everything’s okay, I should probably go out there and supervise.”

“That sounds wise. I’ll get the crafts set up. The girls are pretty much finished eating. At least one thing will go right tonight. I don’t know what Lula was thinking. A smoke machine.”

“What a fiasco,” Christina agreed.

“Mistakes happen to the best of us. Don’t worry, Christina, those guys get called out of their homes all the time and at all hours. They know it when they sign up to volunteer.”

“Volunteer?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Sims’s brow creased for only a second. “I forgot that you’re not from here. Morrisville’s fire department is an all-volunteer force. No one’s paid. Even Batesville’s fire department is entirely volunteer, and Batesville is a much larger town that’s home to a Fortune 1000 company.”

Christina winced. She hadn’t realized that volunteer fire departments still existed. Actually, up until two weeks ago, she hadn’t realized quaint little rural communities like Morrisville, population 4,231, still existed. When she’d first interviewed with the law firm of Lancaster and Morris, she’d received a tour of the place, but it had lasted all of ten minutes—the time it took to drive from the Highway 74 exit, through the town square, to the farms on the other side of town.

“Most people around here who aren’t farmers work ten miles away in Batesville at one of the Hillenbrand Industries,” Reginald Morris, the senior partner, had told Christina during the tour. “There are several other smaller manufacturing companies in the area, but none with a large output. We’re hiring you for the case against the Morrisville Garment Company, a small company located just on the outskirts of our town. A Title VII class-action suit is being brought on behalf of a group of Hispanic women, mostly of Mexican descent. One priority for our success in this harassment case is having a partner who can speak Spanish and relate to our clients.”

“That’s a task I’m ready for,” Christina had replied. As a Hispanic female herself, she was drawn by the opportunity to help those women. They belonged to the same ethnic group as Christina, but they had never had any of the chances Christina had had. She felt compelled to help.

Of course, being an hour’s drive west of her philandering ex-husband Kyle in the city that revered him as a football god was also a bonus to landing the job. Bella could see her father, and Christina could meet the court-imposed distance restriction.

She’d been in Morrisville two weeks now, and had used the time to rent a house, enroll Bella in school and get herself involved with some of Bella’s classmates’ parents, before starting work on Monday, November first.

When she’d been asked to help with the Brownie-troop function, she’d jumped at the chance. And had made an absolute mess of things.

She approached the fire truck, and caught an ongoing conversation.

“He’s so hunky,” one of the little girls was whispering to a friend as the fire ladder lifted skyward. “My mom’s always wanting a new man. Says my daddy sleeps too much.”

“Mr. Hunk,” some other little girl agreed, latching on to the nickname.

With a smile to die for and a body to match, the man was compelling. Mr. Hunk. Christina could definitely agree with that assessment of the sexy firefighter.

Then again, Kyle had been a hunk, and look where that had landed her. Just because a man was as handsome as a prince didn’t make him one. These days a woman was better off if she was selective. Thankfully, Bella hadn’t overheard the girls’ conversation regarding the fireman. Christina had no desire to explain what a hunk was.

“Come on, girls, let’s do our crafts,” Mrs. Sims called from the cafeteria doorway.

“Coming,” Bella called.

“I’m going to go check the gym again,” one of the firefighters said. He followed the girls back inside.

Christina turned to the firefighter who had spoken to her earlier. Mr. Hunk. Although the moniker fit, she really had to purge how attractive he was from her mind. Finding a new man was not a priority. Establishing her career and raising her daughter away from the glitz of Cincinnati was. “Thank you for your patience.”

The firefighter shrugged, the high-wattage smile bestowed on the Brownies dimming fast. “It’s all part of the job.”

“Yes, but it isn’t actually your job. You volunteer.”

His blue eyes narrowed. “Exactly. I volunteer to do this job. We choose to do it because we help the community. This has been one of my easier calls.”

“You’re not disappointed when there’s no fire?” Christina pressed, oddly finding herself wanting to understand what made a man like him tick.

His crossed his arms. “In a way I am. Once the adrenaline high wears off, though, believe me, we don’t mind false alarms at all.”

“But you dropped whatever you were doing, and on a Friday night.”

“Yeah, well, that comes with the territory.” He paused as one of his partners passed by with the big fan. “Seems like the place is all aired out. Duty calls to help load up. Excuse me.”

Christina stood there for a moment. He deliberately ignored her presence and walked off, entering the school to retrieve the other equipment.

She laced her arms across her bare midriff and followed at a safe distance. Perhaps she was being too intense, too serious. She’d been so driven her whole life to prove herself—to her family, to Kyle. Perhaps she should just take things at face value. Maybe the firefighter meant exactly what he’d said. This was Morrisville, Indiana, and she was a fish learning to live in new waters.

And just because Mr. Hunk was the first man who’d aroused her interest in years—that meant nothing. Even if he found her appealing, she wasn’t ready to date again.

She reentered the cafeteria, and within moments the last of the firefighters had left the school. Soon the fire truck pulled away, taking Mr. Hunk with it. Thank goodness she’d never see him again, Christina thought. She could bury the bad memory of this night forever.

BRUCE LANCASTER TOSSED his firefighter gear on the coatrack and hooked his black helmet over a peg. He stepped through the laundry room and into the kitchen of his small three-bedroom ranch. He’d dropped everything the moment the fire call had come through, and the TV still blared the ESPN sporting event he’d been watching. His plateful of chicken strips was gone, his dinner now in the stomach of the very sleepy and contented cat sleeping innocently near the heat register.

Bruce set the bag of just-purchased fast food on the kitchen table. Wise men with chicken-loving felines knew how to make stops at drive-through restaurants on their way home from firefighting gigs.

Bruce sighed and snagged a French fry, the rustling of the bag waking the cat. Boris, more interested in food than sleep, had come to investigate the smells and was sniffing the sack. Bruce finished one more fry and put the bag in the microwave for safekeeping. After every firefighting run he always wanted a shower before he ate, and tonight was no exception, even though the fire had been a false alarm. He was making his way to the bathroom when the phone rang. He glanced at the Caller ID and picked the phone up. “Hi, Granddad.”

“Hi, Bruce. I didn’t have a chance to touch base with you this afternoon. Welcome back. You ready for Monday morning’s meeting?”

“Yes. I’ve got some files here at home and I’ll be making final notations over the weekend.”

“Great. I told your father not to take that three-month cruise with your mother. Not that I haven’t always liked her, mind you, but this is a crucial time for the firm. We would never have hired some outsider as a full partner while I was at the helm, that’s for sure, especially at the expense of a family member. You should have been named to that spot this year. Or two senior partnerships should have been offered. It’s an insult that they weren’t, and I’m in a mind to go talk to Reginald Morris again. He’s certainly not like his father. No family values whatsoever. I’m sure your father knew nothing about it. If he did, I’d have to disinherit him. Just who is this upstart Chris Jones, anyway? Heard he went to Harvard. Probably an upper-crust New Englander who speaks six languages.”

Tired, tonight Bruce didn’t smile the way he normally did at one of his grandfather’s legendary tirades. At seventy, Roy Lancaster had once argued a case successfully in front of the United States Supreme Court and received the majority opinion in his favor. Roy’s father had founded the firm, but Roy had been the one to build Lancaster and Morris into the reputable and respected law firm it was today.

“I’m not certain who Chris Jones is,” Bruce said slowly. He really didn’t have any idea. “I’ve been in Indianapolis for the past four weeks, finishing up the Benedict appeal. Since I returned only two days ago, I still haven’t met the guy. Heck, I’ve barely been in the office. The case requires someone who speaks Spanish, and I’m sure we’ll get along fine.”

“Always the politically correct one, aren’t you? In my day everyone learned English,” his grandfather scoffed. “None of this multicultural and bilingual fluff.”

“And I’m sure our plaintiffs will learn English, as well. They are legal immigrants, Granddad. It just may take them a while. Their rights have been violated, English or none.” Bruce raked a hand through his hair. He hated that his fire helmet made his hair stick to his head. “Can we talk later? I just got back from a fire call. I’m off to the shower.”

“Ah, firefighting. How I miss it,” his grandfather said wistfully, even though he hadn’t fought a fire in at least forty-five years. “Was it a big one? I didn’t hear anything on my police scanner.”

“No, just a smoke machine that set off the alarms at the elementary school.”

“Ah.” His grandfather sounded disappointed for a second. “So, will I see you at the club this weekend? Golf season’s just about over. This is probably the last nice weekend we’ll have. The grass gets really brown in November, and it becomes way too cold for golf.”

“I’m not planning on playing.”

His grandfather chuckled. “I see. A woman. Well, I’d better let you go.”

“Yeah.” Bruce let the fib stand and, after saying goodbye, dropped the cordless phone on his king-size bed. He’d been without a woman for a couple of months now, and celibate for longer than that. Maybe he was losing his touch, but the appeals case he’d just worked on had meant long hours and little free time to date. And he’d never been the one-night-stand type.

Now that the case was in the hands of the federal judges, Bruce hoped he’d have some leisure hours to scope out some new female companions. After all, the firm had hired Chris Jones as a full, senior partner. He could do the work.

Bruce backed into the hot shower spray and leaned forward so that the water cascaded over his neck and back. Who knew how much longer he’d be able to stay on Morrisville’s volunteer force. While Bruce would have loved to be a paid firefighter on some department in a larger city, it wasn’t what Lancaster boys did.

For multiple generations they’d been lawyers. Heck, one of his great-great-great-grandfathers had worked in Congress with Abraham Lincoln. The family accepted Bruce’s volunteer firefighting only because the Morrisville citizenry considered it an honor, a duty and a matter of civic pride. The fact that Bruce’s grandfather had once served in the fire department had also helped convince Bruce’s worrying parents that a few more years wouldn’t hurt. After losing one child at four months, his parents refused to lose another.

All in all, Bruce knew that he had a great life. At twenty-nine, he was well into his bachelorhood and enjoying it, much to the dismay of his parents. Morrisville girls married early, and the few women he’d met in Cincinnati didn’t want to move more than an hour west to Podunkville, U.S.A. Heck, the closest Wal-Mart was twenty-seven miles away in Greensburg. Domino’s Pizza didn’t even deliver out here. Bruce liked it that way.

His thoughts drifted to the woman he’d seen at Morrisville Elementary. She wasn’t local; his gut instincts told him that. And her ethnicity wasn’t pure Caucasian. Was she Mexican? The water pounded on his back, and he turned and let it cascade over his chest for a moment before he reached for the soap. Not all Mexicans fit the dark-skinned, dark-haired stereotype.

The surrounding counties had been experiencing an influx of legal immigrants lately, especially those from Mexico. That was why the Title VII case Lancaster and Morris was representing was so important and why Bruce wanted to take it to trial so badly. Those workers deserved the same legal protections that native-born American citizens had. Just because the immigrant women didn’t know the civil rights law didn’t mean that companies like Morrisville Garment could circumvent it.

Winning this case would be a landmark, and he could ride the wave of his success with it for a long time. He agreed it had been important to hire a partner who spoke Spanish and who could better communicate with the victims. He had taken French, which got him only as far as impressing a woman at Chez Jacques in Cincinnati.

But making this person a full partner? Admittedly, it stung Bruce that he hadn’t been named senior partner this year the way everyone, including him, had expected.

Luckily, he’d been in Indianapolis at the time and had avoided the town gossip, which for a week had centered on his being passed over in favor of an outsider. However, winning this case, even under someone else’s leadership, would seal his senior partnership.

Bruce tossed the soap back into the holder, reached for the shampoo and let his mind again remember the woman he’d seen at the elementary school. She’d seemed frazzled by the fire alarm. She’d been beautiful, though. Her brown eyes had been haunting, with a depth to them he hadn’t seen too often before. He’d wanted to smile and reassure her, but had deliberately kept himself aloof and professional.

Unfortunately, she had a child, that cute little girl dressed up for the party as a black cat. A child made whoever the woman was off-limits, despite the absence of a wedding ring on her left hand. No, he liked his women young, single and dependent free. He wanted them to be able to pick up and go on a weekend trip at a moment’s notice—which as a busy lawyer was often all he could afford. That meant no strings. No restrictions. No instant family. Although, when he did marry he wanted a lot of kids. He knew too well what being raised as an overprotected only child was all about. He rinsed his hair and turned off the water.

Besides, even if seeing her didn’t break the parameters he’d set for himself, he was on call this weekend, plus he had to finish the case file so he could discuss it with Chris Jones Monday morning. He had other things to worry about than a woman with a child, no matter how beautiful or intriguing the woman was. Before he had to turn the water on again, this time to cold, he pushed her image from his mind and reached for the towel.