Page 29 of Legally Mated
Nonplussed, Laine watched him for a moment, then crossed the two steps between them and laid his chin on Garrick's shoulder to peer at the notes spread out on the desk. "You could comewithme?"
"What good would I be there? And I thought I was persona non grata anyway," Garrick said absently, then turned his head to brush his lips against Laine's. "No, I'm good at the law library. I...want to look up some things, too, to help out the lawyer from Washington who's working with us to get that lawrepealed."
That was new. "Whatlawyer?"
Garrick dropped what he was doing and turned to Laine with a wide grin lighting up his face. "Oh, Laine,” he whispered. “It was wonderful.” He rubbed his hands over his face then ran them through his hair, uncharacteristically careless of its neatness. “The President brought in a constitutional lawyer to talk to us. We sat down together the afternoon we flew home and just talked. I’ve got pages of notes. It was amazing." Laine watched Garrick's face, normally so quiet, grow animated and his speech, usually so measured, grow fast with excitement, and it struck him that Garrick no longer looked at him like that, not with that fervor, and he began to wonder where he was failing. Or if it was even possible to win in this situation--two different species, two entirely different cultures. And the inevitable tension between what Laine was and what Garrick wanted to be. And if he was just wastinghistime.
No, he refused to believe that. NotGarrick.
"So the President is supporting you? That's great!" He called on his courtroom experience to cover the flush of fear that rushed coldly through his veins at the thought of losing Garrick because he'd gotten complacent. Anyone who met the man and sat down with him for even ten minutes had to see what he was capable of, the intelligence and drive and talent. He couldn't imagine anyone coming face to face with him and notwantingthat.
The fact that this lawyer was a woman meant nothing—he knew that shifters were by nature and nurture unbothered by the physical gender of their partners. They mated for the production of pups, but made love with whoever brought them pleasure. He had to do better, be better, because what good was a mate who brought nothing to the table that you needed? "Is there anything I can dotohelp?"
Garrick looked up at him, open mouthed. "Oh, I don't think so. It's not your area of specialty. Andyou'rebusy."
"You aren't? Busy, that is?" Laine raised his eyebrows at Garrick, making the other manlaugh.
"Yeah, I know. But there's more, too. Too much to talk about now. But maybe over lunch?" He smoothed the front of Laine's shirt, then jumped when Laine's phone beeped. "That's probably your newclient."
"You want to sit in? I do like the way your mind works." And other things. Laine pushed those kinds of thoughts away, though he suspected that Garrick had caught a hint of where his mind had gone. He had to keep his eye on the prize now, and that prize was changing shape as fast as he could target it. "Besides, you won't come to courtwithme."
Garrick laughed and moved away to pick up the file Laine had set out for him. “You sure you don’t have paperworkforme?”
"It’ll wait.” He watched Garrick settle into his place in the corner, and felt his determination to give him everything he’d been denied grow as solid as a stone. He could do this, and hewould.
Chapter23
Ididn't always feelslimy after these first meetings with a client, but there were some that just left an oily feeling in the air behind them. Generally, I preferred to stay away, hiding out in the computer lab, or typing up information for files--I was getting good at filling out the forms to request delays in trial dates, to have a court issue a subpoena, at gathering the background information and evidence we needed to defend one of Laine's clients. Still, I would have preferred to sit it out. I knew Laine enjoyed the battle of wits that went on in the courtroom--I preferred to have complete control over everything. But I did like to watch him work. And after one startled look, the clients were generally more concerned with telling Laine their story and having him tell them that it would be all right and he could work a miracleforthem.
Sometimes he was evenright.
Today I took notes, and everything that Laine discussed with the new client, every piece of evidence from the fat file folder on the desk in front of Laine, got passed to me to look at and make a decision on. It felt like he was trying to seduce me over to what I called 'the dark side', which always made Laine wear a pained expression before he cracked a joke about it. I didn't have the heart to tell him that joke was so old it smelled; he really thought he was beingfunny.
But eventually the interview came to an end and I could breathe. Laine sent the client out to make another appointment to come back in a couple of days, and rattled off a list of paperwork he wanted me to pull together to be filed at the courthouse. I didn't mind that--I was good at that detailed work. But it would be one of the firm's real paralegals who would take it down to the courthouse tofileit.
There hadn't been much time to think about it, but I wondered if Eva was right about my being stonewalled by more than some member of the local judiciary. Certainly, the law that had been quoted at me as the reason for my disqualification had been stretched so far it might have twanged like a guitar string if you tried to touch it, but we were used to laws being used that way in the enclave and I realized that we hadn't fought it at all, just nodded and gone our way, as perusual.
It was one of the reasons why it had been so expensive to set up the brewery on enclave land--we had to have everything perfect, and better than it would have needed to be out in the human world. We couldn’t afford to take risks, so we no longer tried to skirt the edges of human rules, having seen what happened in Honisloonz with their water system. It had been condemned from source to tap, all for the sake of a few measurements that were off by less than half an inch. It had nearly destroyed their pack, and it had taken years of smuggled resources from other packs to build them back up to self-sufficiencyagain.
I wondered when we'd become so weak, so much less thanourselves.
Then I wondered if that was really the goal of Quin’s and Abel's plan to bring down the walls. I suspected Holland of something different, something to do with the omegas, but I was keeping my nose out of that. If Quin and Abel had their way, I was expecting more work than I could handle--enough to keep me holed away in my office in Mercy Hills for alongtime.
I wondered what it would take to convince Laine to leave the city and come live in the enclave. And how the pack would react to that.Orhim.
Dumb idea. Go find acomputer.
I headed for the nearest lab that us paralegals and law clerks shared, and settled at the computer as far away from the two humans already there as I could find, though with the room so small there wasn't much to choose from. But I was making an effort not to create tension in the firm, knowing it undermined Laine's position even if he was a junior partner. Maybe because he was a juniorpartner.
Knowing that my last paycheque had gone to help pay for antibiotics for one of the old ones who'd gotten pneumonia and couldn't seem to shake it on their own made it worth the stress. I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep this up--the glow of being able to work with people who should have been my peers was wearing off, and the constant monitoring of my behavior and body language was becoming tiring. It wasn't something I could tell Laine, because he'd want to go to battle for me and it would only make it worse in the long run. I didn't want to lose the job, and I certainly didn't want him to lose his for trying to make sure Ikeptmine.
So I kept my head down and typed as fast as I could, looking up wording, pulling up printable forms, printing the ones that had to be filled in by hand. Pulling together the case file into one neat tidy pile with as much speed as I could manage, because I had Eva's constitutional work to look upaswell.
I had a nice stack of paper for Laine when he came back, looking--to my accustomed eye--tired and a littlefrustrated.
“It didn’tgowell.”
“It started well.” He closed the door, laid his briefcase on his desk and then came to me to rest his forehead on my shoulder. When had that become entirely normal between us? When had I become his shelter? “Promise me you won’t go anywhere alone?” he said, his voicemuffled.
