A Convenient Affair

“It still wouldn’t hurt to be nice to him,” Brenton argued.

Yes, it would, Hannah thought. It would hurt a great deal. Compared to the effort involved in being nice to Cooper Winston, suffering through an impacted wisdom tooth would be like winning a prize.

Within two hours of arriving at work, Hannah was beginning to feel as if she’d been buried alive in the law library archives. Her table, located in the farthest corner, was surrounded by boxes stuffed with crumbling documents, and each time she moved a page, the musty aroma made her want to sneeze.

The first few days of digging through Jacob Jones’s old files hadn’t been so bad, but with each passing hour her claustrophobia seemed to grow worse. This case was nowhere near as interesting as the transfer of the restaurant chain had been.

But so long as she was merely an associate, the lowest-level attorney the firm had, the tedious details would fall to her. The restaurant case had had its dull days, too, she reminded herself. In fact, it had been pretty much routine right up until the instant before the deal was consummated, when Hannah had thought of one more small thing to be considered. The one small thing which everyone else, on both sides, had overlooked completely. The one small thing which had cost Cooper Winston fifteen million dollars.

Brenton Bannister poked his head around the corner of a bookshelf. “How’s it going?”

“Not very well. I haven’t found a shred of evidence yet to support our client’s case.”

“Don’t sweat it just now.” He perched on the corner of her table.

Hannah looked at him in disbelief. What on earth did he have on his mind to make him suddenly regard the Jones case as insignificant?

“Ken Stephens wants to see you in his office this morning,” Brenton said briskly. “It’s about your Aunt Isobel’s estate.”

“Cousin,” Hannah said automatically.

“What?”

“I’ve told you before, Isobel wasn’t my aunt, she was my grandfather’s cousin.”

“Aunt, cousin, whatever.” Brenton shrugged. “I suggest you hurry right upstairs and find out what he wants. You don’t keep a senior partner waiting.”

“Why take up his time at all? He sent a message through you to say I could stay in the condo. I wonder why he didn’t just do the same to tell me it’s time to leave.”

“Don’t be silly,” Brenton scoffed. “You’re too important for that kind of treatment now.”

Hannah frowned. “Important? What do you mean?”

Brenton hesitated, as if he’d said more than he’d intended. Then he shrugged. “Just a guess. Considering how agreeable he was about you staying on in the first place, I’m betting Isobel left you the condo.”

Hannah shook her head. “I doubt she’d will her home to a distant cousin whom she’d met for the first time just weeks before she died.”

“Why not?” Brenton said coolly. “Who else is there to inherit it? Anyway, she invited you to move in with her—which is more togetherness than a lot of elderly people would offer their young relatives. She must have had something of the sort in mind.”

“I think,” Hannah mused, “that she saw a chance to acquire a personal maid and social secretary for the cost of room and board. Not that I minded helping out, but there never was a time she didn’t have a list of things for me to do. Letters to write and phone calls to return and errands to run and even canapés to hand around when she entertained—”

Brenton laughed. “Maybe this is her way of paying you back. From everything I’ve heard about Isobel, waiting to reward you till she was certain she wouldn’t need the money anymore would be right down her alley.”

Hannah had to smile, for Brenton was unquestionably right. Her elderly relative had been anything but the fluffy, generous, grandmotherly type.

“Anyway, Ken Stephens is waiting for you.” Brenton slid off the corner of the table and added casually, “I’ll be tied up with clients all afternoon. But I’ll take you out to dinner tonight at the Flamingo Room and you can tell me all about it.”

Hannah was startled. In the months she’d worked under Brenton’s supervision, they’d spent countless evenings together over pizza or Chinese takeout and one case or another, and they’d grown to be friends. He’d taken her to the theater for her birthday, and she’d taken him to a concert for his. But there was something different about this invitation. Perhaps it was the restaurant he’d chosen—the nicest one in the city. Or perhaps it was something in the tone of his voice…

Her surprise must have registered in her face, for Brenton suddenly looked as self-conscious as a schoolboy. “We’ll make a special evening of it. A very special evening. Over the last few months, Hannah, as I’ve gotten to know you…” He cleared his throat. “But you haven’t got time for that now. You can’t keep Ken Stephens waiting.”

Hannah brushed the musty scent of Jacob Jones’s files off her suit as best she could and took the elevator to the uppermost level of Stephens & Webster’s three floors, to the most-prized corner office belonging to the senior partner.

She was still a bit dazed by Brenton’s declaration of love—if, indeed, that was what it was. But what else could he have meant?

As I’ve gotten to know you…A very special evening…

The very idea that Brenton might actually be serious about her created an all-gone sensation in the pit of Hannah’s stomach. She wasn’t sure she liked it. She’d looked on him as a friend, that was all. If he wanted their relationship to be more—

But she’d deal with that later, she told herself. Right now, she needed to concentrate on Ken Stephens and whatever he had to say about Isobel’s estate.

And who knew? Maybe Brenton was right after all and Isobel had left her something. Not the condo at Barron’s Court, of course—that was far too much to expect. But it wouldn’t take much of an inheritance right now to make a big difference in Hannah’s life.

Ken Stephens’s waiting room was a great deal larger than the cubicle Hannah used as an office, and it was far more luxurious. Furthermore, the young woman who sat at his secretary’s desk was much better dressed than Hannah herself was.

But then—unlike Hannah—Ken Stephens’s daughter didn’t have law school loans to repay, so she could afford designer clothes. Of course, that begged the question of what Kitty Stephens was doing here at all; if she was in the habit of acting as her father’s secretary, Hannah had never heard about it.

Hannah took a chair and entertained herself by making a mental list of the things she would buy, if indeed Isobel had left her a small legacy. A few more really good suits would be first. Clothes might make the man, as the old saying went, but they could destroy a woman. A man could get by with a minimally stocked closet and a good dry cleaner, since one masculine pinstriped suit looked so very much like another. A professional woman, on the other hand, needed a wide variety if she wasn’t to get looks of the sort Cooper Winston had given her this morning.

Not that her desire for new clothes had anything to do with him. For all she cared, he could look at her in the same green suit from now till Armageddon. After all, he didn’t have to pay attention to what she wore.

And it wasn’t that she was getting her hopes up for a legacy, either. She was just killing time. So much for Brenton’s idea that Ken Stephens was waiting for her; it was too bad she hadn’t thought to bring along a carton of Jacob Jones’s old receipts so she could keep working. But of course the musty smell would hardly have been a welcome addition to the senior partner’s waiting room.

A chime on the secretary’s desk sounded, and—looking bored—Kitty Stephens waved a hand toward the heavy door of the inner office.

Hannah tapped and went in.

Behind a desk that was roughly the size of Hannah’s entire cubicle, a silver-haired man half rose and pointed toward a pair of chairs pulled up directly across the polished surface from him. “Have a seat, Ms. Lowe. I’m sorry to have interrupted your day. I understand you’re working with Bannister on the Jones case now.”

Hannah smiled faintly. “I wouldn’t say I’m working with, exactly. I’m simply going through all the papers so I can brief him on the background before the case comes to trial.”

“Well, that’s the kind of support we rely on our young associates to provide.” His gaze coolly assessed Hannah. “I understand you’re also the genius who caused a bit of a panic at the last minute over Cooper Winston’s restaurant chain.”

Hannah wished that he’d made it sound more like a compliment. “Yes, sir.”

“Our client was quite grateful. I thought you’d like to know.” He leaned back in his chair. “In a few minutes we’ll get started on tidying up the details concerning Isobel’s estate. But in the meantime, tell me how you came to be living with her. I’m afraid I never knew the fine points.”

And as Isobel’s attorney, he probably would have known all about me, Hannah thought, if Isobel had left me anything of significance. Obviously, it was a good thing she’d never really gotten her hopes up—much less decided what color her new suits should be.

“It’s quite simple,” Hannah said. “When I first came to town, of course, I was very busy with my new job here at the firm. But after a few months, I went to visit Isobel. It was just a social thing, really, to go and pay my respects to a senior member of the family.”

“You’d known her for some time, then? Years, perhaps?”

“Actually, no. I mean, I knew her name, of course, but I’d never met her before. It hasn’t been a very close family. And it wasn’t a very close relationship, either—she was my grandfather’s cousin—but since much of my family is gone, I wanted to make contact with Isobel.”

“So you visited her often?”

“No. Just the one time.”