Page 9 of Cease and Desist

“Okay,” she said as she stood and pulled her jacket off the back of the stool and tugged it on. Turning, she gestured to the door and waited for Hawk to go outside. She was damn tempted to lock the door after him and pull down the shades. Then she could hide from those eyes. She could go upstairs to her grandfather’s apartment and spend the night there, face this mess in the morning when she would feel stronger and more equipped to deal.As if that was going to happen.

That was the real reason she wanted to see Lacy tonight. She was off-kilter before all of this happened and just wanted her friend to make her feel better. Instead, she had this man trying to help her with her legal problems. Served her right for not just telling Lacy that she was struggling. Telling people about her feelings had always been hard for her but admitting someone had assaulted her, tried to intimate her was, for some reason, humiliating. And now, her emotions zoomed past the scope of her ability to deal.

Instead of hiding, she followed Hawk out and then paused to lock the door. She checked the lock and then stepped back. She pointed. “See? That’s the logo.” It was an old-fashioned skeleton key in a round hole that was supposed to be a lock. It was done in gold and the head of the key was a winking skull with a grin. It was like her great-grandfather she’d been told… stately with a dry sense of wit and, more importantly, very distinctive.

Hawk held up his phone and took a picture. He turned to her and nodded. “Got it.”

Without another word to him, she turned and strode down the block. The scuff of shoes on cement told her that he’d followed her. Sure enough, a moment later, he was abreast of her, and it was then she realized how much taller he was than she was. Remy barely came to his shoulder.

When she turned right at the corner, the wind took her breath away. She hadn’t realized that it was so damn cold and windy outside. That was the thing about New York. Sometimes turning the corner led to a brutal surprise. She immediately wished she’d brought her scarf, hat, and mittens. Her hands, in particular, were freezing. She jammed them into her pockets.

Hawk must have noticed because, in the next minute, he was offering her his gloves. “Here, take these.”

“Thanks, but I’m okay,” she said, fighting to have her voice heard above the wind.

He smiled down at her. “Your hands will hurt and get chapped. Take them.” He held the gloves out to her.

She could keep refusing, but it wasreallycold, and he was right, her hands ached with the wind. She pulled on the gloves as they walked along. She was a mitten girl, but the gloves were warm and soft. Were they cashmere lined?

“Thanks,” she said, and he offered her another polite smile.

Lock and Key was at the end of this block, and when they reached the store, she turned and pointed up at the front of the building. “See?”

Hawk looked up and squinted at the sign. It wasn’t illuminated like hers was at this hour. He pulled out his phone and zoomed in on the logo. He snapped a couple of pictures of it.

Suddenly, his opinion mattered. “What do you think?” she asked.

She knew he was right about the lawsuit. She’d graduated from law school even if she didn’t pursue a career in law. But she’d let her emotions get the best of her and she wanted to file as quickly as possible, so Patterson knew she wasn’t frightened off.

“It certainly looks like yours,” he said.

“It’s identical.”

He nodded. “We need to establish when they designed it.”

“What do you mean? They just opened about a month ago.”

“Yes. Here. But did they have that logo on a shop somewhere else in the city? Has it been there for more than a hundred years? The trademark information will be vital to your case. I need to do some research on all of this before I can do anything else. We have to know what we’re up against.”

Dammit!Why hadn’t that thought occurred to her? Stupid. He was right, of course. That just annoyed her more. This just couldn’t be happening. Why did everything suddenly have to turn to shit? And what was this ‘we’ business?

“I’ll poke around a bit tomorrow and see what I can come up with.”

She tried to rein in her temper. She was mad at herself for not seeing the obvious. But yelling at Hawk wasn’t going to help. “You don’t have to. Really. I’ll put everything together and then I’ll get Lacy to look it over. You’ve been too kind, but I can’t impose on you like that. Besides, tomorrow is Saturday,” she said. “I thought lawyers didn’t work on the weekend.” She tried to smile up at him, so he understood she was joking.

He snorted good-naturedly. “We work all the time. There’s some stuff I can do even though it’s a weekend. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

This man and his willingness to help affected her in ways she didn’t understand. It was too damn cold to argue anymore. If he wanted to do the work, that was on him. “Okay then.”

He gestured for her to start walking back in the direction they’d come. She moved along the sidewalk. It was so damn cold, maybe she should stay at her grandfather’s apartment. The thought of walking the twelve blocks to her own place seemed daunting and cold wasn’t her thing at all. But she hadn’t cleaned out her grandfather’s place. It would be difficult to be in there with all his stuff. It was why she hadn’t done anything with it over the last six months. She couldn’t bring herself to throw anything out just yet.

There was another matter that she just didn’t want to deal with either. Going through her grandfather’s papers would mean she would find out all the details of his life and she wasn’t sure knowledge in this case was a good thing.

They rounded the corner and came to a stop in front of the shop. “Well, thanks for coming,” she said.

He nodded, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking over her shoulder into her shop. “You locked the door, right?”

“What?” Yes, she’d locked the door. She whirled around and stared into her shop windows. She didn’t see anything, but she moved over and pulled on the door handle. It opened. A chill went down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

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