Suddenly One Summer (FBI/US Attorney #6)(22)
“Sure, we can have a conversation about that.” He lifted the bottom of his T-shirt to wipe sweat off his brow, revealing—hello—a six-pack of perfectly sculpted abs. “As long as we can also have a conversation about your hair-drying routine.”
She put a hand on her hip. “What’s wrong with my hair-drying routine?”
“You mean, other than the fact that it wakes me up at the crack of dawn every weekday morning and goes on forever?”
Please. “Six thirty A.M. is not that early on a weekday.” She considered this, looking him over. “You do have some sort of actual job, I take it?”
He grinned lazily, drawling, “Nah, no time, Ms. Slade. Not with the cavalcade to entertain.”
All right, so somebody had his boxer-briefs in a bunch over the “cavalcade” comment. “Look, maybe I was wrong in my assumptions about the blonde. But the brunette? I ran into her in the hallway that morning after she left your place. It seemed pretty obvious that she liked you.”
Something flickered in Ford’s eyes—guilt, perhaps? Then it was gone, and he cocked his head. “How long did you say you’ll be in Owen’s place?”
“All summer.”
“Funny. That’s exactly how long my home improvement projects are going to last.” He returned her fake smile.
And then shut the door firmly in her face.
Eight
MONDAY MORNING, VICTORIA sat in Judge Bogg’s chambers as her opposing counsel argued on about what a neglectful father Victoria’s client was.
At issue in today’s pretrial conference was the emergency Motion for Visitation that Victoria had filed on behalf of her client, Nate Ferrara. He and his wife, Heather, had jointly filed for divorce last December and had agreed to alternate the weeks that their two children, ages seven and ten, lived with each of them. Last Sunday night, however, Mrs. Ferrara had called her soon-to-be ex-husband and told him “not to bother” picking up the kids for his visitation week, and also said she wanted to amend their agreement so that he saw them only on alternating weekends.
“Mr. Ferrara isn’t around enough, Your Honor,” argued Greg Jaffe, Victoria’s opposing counsel. “Ever since he was promoted at his company, he travels one or two nights every week, and, even when he is in town, he barely makes it home before the kids’ bedtime. The real person taking care of these kids when they stay with their father is the nanny he hired to watch over them. And while she sounds like a capable enough person, there’s no reason for the children to be in her care when they have a mother who they can be with instead.”
“What Mr. Jaffe is basically arguing, Your Honor, is that my client has less of a right to see his children simply because he’s a working parent,” Victoria said.
“No, I’m saying that given the facts in this particular case, it doesn’t make any sense to have these kids raised by a babysitter during the weeks they’re supposed to be with their dad.”
“My opposing counsel exaggerates the circumstances,” Victoria told the judge. “The facts are that unless he’s out of town, Mr. Ferrara drives his children to school in the mornings and makes a point to be home before they go to bed—even if it means he has to bring work home and finish it while they’re sleeping. He has attended every parent-teacher conference—even before he and Mrs. Ferrara separated—he checks the kids’ homework every night and recently helped his son build a diorama for a classroom presentation. He and the kids also take an indoor family rock-climbing class on the weekends, and just last month, when his daughter came down with the stomach flu, he was the one who stayed up all night and took care of her—not a nanny. Yes, Mr. Ferrara’s work schedule has become more demanding since his promotion, Your Honor, but lots of parents have demanding work schedules. The fact remains that he is a meaningful part of these children’s lives and shouldn’t be punished because he can’t always make it home in time for a family dinner.”
The judge considered this, and then looked at the other attorney. “Any response to that, counselor?”
Five minutes later, Victoria walked out of the judge’s chambers and smiled at her client, who’d been waiting anxiously in the courtroom.
She felt good about today’s victory—if one could call it that. In her line of work, there were seldom any true “winners,” particularly when children were involved. But that didn’t stop her from always doing her best to ensure that her clients’ interests were protected as much as possible throughout the divorce process.
She’d been fortunate in her career. In the beginning, she’d simply been in the right place at the right time: about six months after opening her firm, a former law school classmate passed along her name to a woman, someone in her book club, who was looking for a divorce lawyer. That woman turned out to be the wife of an extremely wealthy riverboat casino owner who had done some very un-husbandly things with eighteen-year-old prostitutes in his casino hotel. When the wife walked away from the divorce nearly fifty million dollars richer in a high-profile case with significant local media attention, Victoria Slade & Associates instantly became one of the go-to family law firms for Chicago’s rich and famous.
Because of her success, Victoria now had the luxury of being selective in the cases she took on. Her clientele tended to be mostly women, although not always. Regardless of gender, she believed that her primary responsibility as their lawyer was to help her clients feel empowered during the divorce process. She was blunt and didn’t sugarcoat, and she asked each prospective client the same question during their initial meeting: “What do you need in order to move on from this marriage and start building your new life?” If the answer was something she thought she could deliver, she took them on as a client.