Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Last year, it was December 23.
Which is today’s date, and yes, I am obsessively glued to my phone.
Honestly, I don’t think they thought it through all the way. That not getting the call during what’s already a painful time of the year for some people is . . . excruciating.
I know because I’ve been through it a few years in a row now. Hoping. Waiting.
Crying.
Yes. Even Girl-Grinches can cry.
But this year, I’m not just hoping or waiting for the call. I’m expecting it. I’ve been at Kaplan & Gosset for seven years now. I’m thirty-six. I’m the most senior nonpartner, and I’m the best they’ve got.
There’s a knock at my door, and when it opens before I say, “Come in,” I already know who it is because there’s only one person on this planet who can get away with that sort of thing, and she knows it.
Irene Diaz steps inside and shuts the door again, her dark brown eyes expectant. “So? Did he ask?”
I give my assistant a look. “If he’d popped the question, do you think I’d be calmly sitting here?”
“Honey, honestly? I know you as well as anybody, and I don’t have the faintest clue how you react to these things.”
She’s got a point there. Irene does know me as well as anyone. Technically, she’s my assistant, and she’s a damn good one. But mostly, she’s the closest thing to family that I’ve got. Not that I tell her that. But she knows.
I hope she knows.
I glance at my watch. It’s old and delicate and does one thing and one thing only: tell the time. I refuse to get on board with those stupid step-counting monstrosities that also tell me the weather and my next period and every time one of the paralegals has a question.
This watch is my mother’s—one of the few precious things I have to remind me of a woman I barely remember. My dad said she never took it off, so I don’t either.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to the airport?” I ask.
Irene’s face crumples a little, but she tries to disguise it by reaching up and adjusting her huge, oversize red glasses. “Actually, Manny and I decided to spend Christmas in the city this year!”
Her voice is bright. Way too bright.
“What are you talking about?” I say. “How many years have we been working together? You’ve never not spent Christmas in Boston with Dani and the grandkids.”
“I know. But we couldn’t make it work this year. After our cruise and the Europe trip this summer, I’m out of vacation days. We’d have had to fly back on the twenty-sixth, and it just didn’t make sense . . .”
I’m surprised by how much the words sting. I know that Irene doesn’t mean them to wound me—that they’re not even about me.
But it hurts to know that even my beloved Irene thinks so little of me that I’d let her miss Christmas with her family. That she didn’t even bother to ask.
I link my fingers and set my clasped hands on the desk, expression firm. “Irene. If I see you in the office a day before January third, you’re fired.”
She blinks. “Oh, but, Katie, I don’t have the days, and . . . HR—”
“HR, if they ask, which they won’t, will be informed that you’re working remotely, because that’s what I’ll tell them. But don’t get any crazy ideas. If I see a single email or message from you about work, you’re fired for that too.”
Stubborn as ever, Irene shakes her head. “The Hallinger case starts up first week of January. You’ll need me here to prep . . .”
I hold my hands out to the sides. “Actually, I’m all good on that. I just spoke with Jerry, and there’s a settlement on the table that for once is actually looking like a viable option. So we may just be a mess of paperwork that we can handle when you get back.”
Irene looks rightfully confused at my mention of settling. “But you never—”
I shrug. “The client hasn’t made any decisions yet, but no point in you hovering nearby while we wait.”
This is, of course, an outright lie. Irene is quite right; I never settle. And if I did, it wouldn’t be this case. My client is a small-time family company that the massive Hallinger conglomerate is trying to take out at the knees with a nonsensical patent suit.
I’ll take Jerry’s BS offer to my client because I have to. But I don’t expect them to accept because I sure as hell won’t recommend that they do.
Irene gazes at me steadily, and I realize she knows every thought going through my head, knows that I’m lying through my teeth.
She smiles. “Thank you.”
I smile back. “You’re welcome.”
It’s the least I can do for this woman. Irene is . . . how can I put this? A gift. She was the longtime assistant of the attorney who had this office before me. When he retired to Vermont the same month I started, Irene was packing up her desk, planning to follow her former boss’s steps into retirement.