“Well, come on into Chris’s office with me,” Simon said, his eyes crinkling. “He’s meeting with his wife and their lawyers in there in about two minutes. You can see for yourself.”
Alex frowned. “Is this legal? I mean, I was fuzzy on what we’re going to do here—just point the wand at her and say, ‘Tell the truth, harlot!’?”
Simon sputtered and put a proprietary hand to the small of Alex’s back to herd him along. He’d made the announcement that the two of them were dating at the Monday morning staff meeting. He’d been very clear that Alex would be shouldering the same workload he’d always had, and somebody in the room had quipped, “So twice as much as the rest of us, still? That’s good to hear!” and that had been about it. Something about having their dating on the up-and-up—not a secret, not hidden, very aboveboard—had told Alex dating his boss wasn’t going to be a problem. He didn’t want a ticket to the top, and his boss wasn’t trying to manipulate him in any way. They just loved each other and worked together well.
It seemed so simple.
“No,” Simon told him, that hand in the small of his back reassuring. “All I’m going to do is hand her the wand and ask her to hold it. Trust me. I can be very persuasive.”
Alex laughed as they walked in between the nooks and crannies of the office. The owners tried to give them all space to work and privacy if they needed it without keeping the place sterile. The result was sort of an eclectic office space that lent itself to the occasional coffee klatch and lots of quiet, happy activity. None of that was interrupted now as Simon steered Alex toward Chris’s opulent showcase of an office.
Whereas Simon’s office was sleek and professional and comfortable, Chris Lockhart’s office boasted a marble desk and the kind of trendy sharp-angled furniture that looked blessedly uncomfortable.
As they entered, Chris’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Jasmine, glanced sharply at them, her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail at her nape and her porcelain-doll complexion made up with gentle pastels. When Alex had first seen Jasmine, about a year after he’d started working at Reddick, Lockhart, and Baldwin, she’d had her hair teased to the sky, wore glitter polish, glitter eyeshadow, and glitter body spray, and dressed in short skirts and six-inch heels. It was funny how Gabby Baldwin dressed with a lot of flash too, but next to Gabby, Jasmine managed to look like a dumpster fire next to a cathedral.
Even now, when it was obvious she was going with “innocent as a despoiled nun” as her fashion guideline.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked as Simon and Alex entered. “This is a prehearing negotiation. He doesn’t need a fucking character witness.”
Alex tried to keep his eyes from going wide. Apparently Jasmine was a dumpster fire no matter where she parked.
Simon winked at Chris and then smiled at the two lawyers, a man and a woman, sitting quietly and professionally on Chris’s torture rack of a couch. “Are you taping this?” he asked, and they both shook their heads no.
“We could,” Chris said.
“How about we flag Gabby in here,” Simon told him. “She can tape this. I think it’s going to be very informative.”
“What’s informative?” Jasmine demanded. “This asshole knocked me up and is trying to rob me of my divorce settlement.”
Simon gave her a thin smile. “We’ll go over that in a moment.” His smile improved as Gabby strolled in, resplendent and classy in a short autumn-colored skirt and an honest-to-god orange blazer. Only Gabby could have pulled it off, and next to her, Jasmine still looked like a dumpster fire—just a drab dumpster fire instead of a glittery one.
The women bared teeth at each other, and then Gabby kissed Alex on the cheek. “How you doing?” she asked, her warmth genuine. “Kate, Audra, and I are getting together soon to learn how to knit. Something about that woman trying to get knocked up makes me want to make her a blanket. I think your friends have infected me with craft fever or something, but I don’t want the cure.”
Alex grinned at her. “I think you were just excited to get a heroine’s welcome from Kate,” he said, and she wrinkled her nose back at him.
“Well, hearing ‘Oh my God! There’s women!’ sure did make me inclined to bond,” she admitted. “Now, what do you need me to do?”
“Well,” Simon began, taking the meeting over from Chris and his lawyers in one syllable, “from what I understand, this is a negotiation before we visit the judge. The lawyers are going to hear each party’s statement and then try to negotiate a settlement.” He dimpled at the two lawyers in the room. “Did I get that right?”
“Yes,” the woman, Chris’s lawyer, Nancy, answered. “In this case, the judge wanted us to try to negotiate as much as possible before he heard this in divorce court.” She narrowed her eyes. “Something about making sure both parties are being as truthful as possible.”
Jasmine sniffed disdainfully, folded her arms over her pregnant belly, and cocked her hips.
“Good,” Simon told them expansively. “So that’s why I’m here. I know what Jasmine has said in the past, but I need her to repeat it with one little caveat.”
“Why the hell would I want to do that?” she snarled.
“Because it’s so easy, refusing to do it would make you look guilty as hell,” Simon told her, and Alex wanted to shiver. Three years of seeing Simon kind and smart and leading by good example and he’d never seen him defend someone he cared about.
Jasmine’s eyes narrowed. “What do you need?”
Simon looked at Alex, who nodded and then pulled the wand out of its protective sheath and handed it over.
“Nothing hard, darling. Gabby, are you ready to film?”
“Ready, Simon,” she practically sang.
“Excellent. Now come here, Jasmine, and take this stick from me.”
Jasmine snatched it out of his hand and frowned. “What the—”
“Now, darling, just hold on to that wand and tell the truth.”
Jasmine scowled at them all and said, “This is bullshit! It’s like I told you all before, I was fucking my Pilates instructor, Chris caught us, and I didn’t want to divorce him without getting my share of his goddamned fortune.”
A lightning-struck silence fell, and Jasmine gasped.
“That’s not what I meant to say!” she snarled. “I meant that I never had any intention of staying married to Chris Lockhart, and he was such an easy fucking mark, I figured getting knocked up would set me up for life! The Pilates guy just made sure I didn’t have to sleep with Lockhart more than necessary, because seriously, his touch repels me.”
Her mouth fell open, and she looked around the room, stunned.
Simon’s throaty laughter rocked the office. “Alex?” he said, his voice breathy with triumph.
“Yeah?”
“Tell Jordan he’s a genius, and he’s got nothing to worry about. I’ve got all the faith in the world.”
And with that, Simon, Gabby, and Alex all slipped out of Chris’s office as Jasmine vocally—and still truthfully as she hadn’t relinquished the wand—continued to give the lawyers some profane veracity. Alex was just as glad they left as that was going on—it wasn’t pretty.