Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
M aggie
I double-check the address that Troy gave me. For a small-town lawyer, this is a pretty swanky office. Based on the engraved stone over the door, it used to be a bank. It’s held onto some of its Victorian charm though, despite the modern improvements. To say that the last thing I expected to do within my first month as a new business owner in Bellehaven was take legal action against my landlord is a huge-ass understatement. But every time I turn around, the guy is tacking on a fee, or trying to weasel out of paying for repairs that are structural and not just related to my business. He’s got three other tenants in that building, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna pay to replumb the whole place for all of us.
I get out of my parked van and hit the key fob to lock it. There’s nothing in it right now, but no point in tempting fate. Law offices attract criminals, and unlocked vehicles are an invitation.
Taking the two brick steps, I push open the heavy glass door and step into a well-decorated and very posh reception area. The black-and-white tile floors are original. I’d put money on it. The reception desk probably is too. It’s old, mahogany, heavy as hell, and that kind of carving doesn’t exist in modern craftsmanship.
Behind the desk is a woman somewhere from forty-five to eighty. She’s had enough work done to make it impossible to tell, but it’s good work and everything about her screams high maintenance.
“Good morning. May I help you?”
“Yeah. I’m Maggie Sloan. Troy James spoke with your employer about seeing me this morning.”
She raises—barely—one perfectly microbladed eyebrow. “The landlord thing, right?”
I nod, sighing in relief. “Yeah. The landlord thing.”
“Just have a seat, sugar. Damien—Mr. Sizemore, that is—will be with you in just a minute. He’s on a conference call right now.”
Taking a seat on one of the brocade chairs that flanks a coffee bar bearing an espresso machine that likely costs more than my monthly rent, I try to bite back my general distaste for lawyers. They are a necessary evil. But after a particularly nasty divorce from my cheating ex who managed to still make me look like the bad guy, it’s a knee-jerk reaction.
After a couple of minutes, a heavy wooden door opens and an all-too-familiar man in a suit appears. “You!”
The lawyer, with his blue eyes and dimpled smile, just leans casually against the doorframe with all the cockiness of a man who feels like the world is literally at his feet. “What? No flowers today?”
I’m on my feet in an instant. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time. I’ll find someone else.”
I’m out the door and halfway back to my van before I hear footsteps running up behind me.
“Hold it! Hold on just a damn minute!”
“Nope. Not holding on for a minute. Not for a damn nanosecond,” I snap.
“Do you need help?”
“Not from you.”
“Maggie, just talk to me for a minute. I know we got off on the wrong foot, and I will own that it was completely my fault,” he says. “I was in a shitty mood and acted like an ass. But I’m a damn good lawyer and if your landlord is screwing you over, there’s nobody else in this town who can handle it better than me.”
I whirl around. “Is that supposed to make it okay?”
“I’ll handle it for free,” he says. “I will take your case, sight unseen, and I will do it for free.”
I don’t like him. But I’m not an idiot. “Like no retainer free or just free free?”
“Free free,” he says, drawing an X over his heart. “Troy wouldn’t have sent you to me if he didn’t think you needed someone good. I can help you, Maggie.”
—-
Ten minutes later, we’re back in his office. I’m filling out paperwork. There’s a big line drawn through his fee schedule. A fee schedule that makes my stomach hurt. If he wasn’t doing this for free, I couldn’t afford him. There are very few people in Bellehaven who know how little I walked away from my marriage with. Troy is one of them. He wouldn’t have sent me here if he didn’t think this guy could actually help me.
“This is a pretty steep price point for a small-town lawyer.”
He grins. “I practice in a small town, Maggie. That doesn’t make me a small-town lawyer. I still have some clients from Lexington, Louisville, even Indianapolis and some a bit further beyond. I was on track to be a partner in a national firm but… we had an ethical conflict.”
“What was that?”
He shrugged. “You might find it hard to believe, but I had ethics and they didn’t.”
I sign the contract and pass it back to him. “My landlord is definitely familiar with that whole lack of ethics thing. I renovated my storefront, but now there are structural repairs on the building as a whole that he says I’m responsible for. I don’t know how I’m responsible for replacing the roof on a building with three other tenants in it.”
He looks at the address and grins. “Well, the good news is, you’re not. Those tenants—one is his brother-in-law, one is his mistress, and the other—the apartment upstairs? That’s his poker buddy. And he’s a shit poker player. I’ll handle this. It won’t take more than a phone call.”
“Seriously? He’s been hounding me about this since my grand opening!”
“That’s Shawn for you,” he says with a shrug. “He was selling papers in high school, and the poor dumbasses who bought them still flunked the classes because he’d just copied it all straight from Wikipedia. He’s gotten shadier, but he’s not gotten smarter.”
I can’t stop the laugh that bubbles out of me at that. “I know a few of those.”
“I’ll come by your shop tomorrow and have all this lined out,” he says. “And when I do, that makes me officially not your lawyer anymore.”
“Yeah. I can’t afford you.”
“Have dinner with me tomorrow night and that makes you eligible for the friends and family discount,” he says.
“You’re already working for free,” I point out. “You can’t discount it any more than that.”
“Sure I can. I’ll pay for dinner,” he offers. “And don’t say it’s too much. There’s not a place in Bellehaven where dinner costs more than a tank of gas.”
Clearly, he’s not been feeling the pinch at the pump like the rest of us. “I don’t typically date lawyers.”
“I don’t typically date clients,” he says with a shrug. “I owe you, Maggie. I was a dick the day we met.”
“We didn’t meet. You ran into me,” I remind him. I’m being a hard-ass about it because I need to see what kind of guy he is when he gets pushback. Fool me once and all that.
“I did. And I’m sorry. So let me make it up to you.”
I want to say yes. That’s the strangest part of it all. And that… that is the very reason I say no. “I’m sorry. I can’t. But I do appreciate your help. Now, I need to get to work. Thank you, Mr. Sizmore.”
“Damien,” he corrects me.
“You’re still my lawyer, Mr. Sizamore.”
“Just for today, Miss Sloan . Just for today.”