Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Social conduct for hate-free inter-colleague teamwork
For short: SCHIT
A favor must be returned with an equal favor.
Iknow she’s a fantastic lawyer — the one you advised me not to hire back then.
Hazel gnashed her teeth. She was glad she hadn’t knocked because the conversation she’d overheard had been extremely enlightening.
She’d known it. Always had. But hearing the confirmation still hurt more than she cared to admit. It only gave her the right to be angry with Gareth because the job with the Hawks wasn’t the only one that bastard had cost her!
She just didn’t understand why — and it drove her crazy. Gareth hadn’t been mad when they’d broken up. It hadn’t even bothered him! It had been okay with him. So why had he made her job search hell when she’d moved to LA?
“Ms. Barrow,” Clark Senior greeted her, surprised but friendly. “It’s good to see you again.”
She smiled tightly, doubting he meant it. They’d only met twice, once on the Harvard campus, when she and Gareth had still been together, a few days before Hazel broke up with Gareth.
The second time was when she’d had an interview with him that never turned into a job. Thanks to Gareth.
“Am I interrupting?” she asked politely, immensely pleased to see Gareth’s face screaming yes. “You can keep talking, I’ll wait.”
The faster they concluded and signed their peace agreement, the faster she could…check off Gareth as a completed task. Yes, that was exactly what she wanted to do, check him off. She was so tired of being angry at him. Wasting her thoughts on him was killing her.
Gareth snorted and rubbed his face with both hands.
He looked exhausted. It wasn’t even nine-thirty, and he already looked like he didn’t have the energy to make it through the rest of the day.
It was strange to see him like that. Gareth had never seemed exhausted before, even after only two hours of sleep.
He’d had too much drive, too much to prove, and had had so much fun doing the smallest, most ridiculous things.
Perhaps he’d lost that along with his integrity the day he’d made sure she’d never get a job with the LA Hawks.
“No, you’re not a bother,” Mr. Clark replied lightly. “I don’t think I’ll get anywhere here, so if you have a meeting…”
“We don’t,” Gareth said sharply, glaring at Hazel. “You can’t just barge in here, Hazel.”
“Ah, I see you’re still as inflexible as ever.” She raised her eyebrows innocently. “But since even your father thinks you should appease me somehow, surely you won’t mind squeezing me into your incredibly full and ridiculously important schedule?”
Clark Senior smiled hesitantly. “Take advantage of my next half hour, Ms. Barrow,” he said, standing and picking up a red folder from the table before saying to Gareth, “One more thing: Your mother would like to meet your girlfriend.”
Hazel suppressed a snort. Gareth would never introduce a girlfriend to his mother! As far as she knew, there hadn’t been a single one who…
“All right,” Gareth said impatiently. “Have her call and suggest a time.”
“Wonderful.”
With her mouth gaping, she stared at him.
She was vaguely aware when Mr. Clark left the office, but found it difficult to focus on anything other than Gareth’s neutral expression. He was going to introduce his girlfriend to his parents?
“Either go or sit, Hazel,” Gareth instructed impatiently. “Either way: close the door.”
“Isn’t point one in our contract that we have to be nicer to each other?
” she asked sweetly, trying to shut out the thoughts in her mind: He was going to introduce his girlfriend to his parents.
She didn’t give a damn. “It’s written down here in black and white.
” She closed the door, strode across the room, placed her briefcase on Gareth’s infuriatingly tidy desk, and pulled out the contract she’d sacrificed her Sunday for.
But that didn’t matter. Finally knowing how to behave in every eventuality in Gareth’s presence would make her life so much easier. Because she never knew, otherwise.
Gareth pulled the contract toward him and pointed at paragraph one before reading: “Both parties must be nice to each other when a) other people are within earshot, b) one of the contracting parties says ‘time out’ because they don’t have the energy to argue for personal reasons, or c) it’s one party’s birthday. ”
She smiled broadly. “Oh, right. Does that mean you shouldn’t have yelled at me in front of your father?” she asked innocently.
Gareth narrowed his eyes before whispering, “I haven’t signed anything yet.”
“Well, you’d better hurry.” She handed him a pen from her briefcase.
He ignored it. “Please, as if I’d sign something you shoved under my nose without reading it thoroughly.”
Shit. Well, it was worth a try. “I wrote everything down exactly as we discussed.”
“I won’t believe it until I see it.” He leaned back in his chair, pulled the contract toward him, pulled out a pen, and began to read.
However, he paused on the first line. “Social conduct for hate-free inter-colleague teamwork. For short: SCHIT. Are you serious? We’re not a team. It should be a collaboration.”
“Yeah, but SCHIC didn’t evoke a deep sense of satisfaction in me like SCHIT does.”
She could swear his eyes lit up with amusement, but, with Gareth, it was hard to tell. He had more control over every muscle in his face than she had over her bladder after a beer.
“Fine,” he said gruffly. “We’ll leave it as is.”
He continued reading...terribly slowly.
“Should I just sit here while you study the contract?”
“Or stand, or lie down, I don’t care,” he said absently. He snorted, crossed out a paragraph, and flipped to the next page.
Too bad. It must have been the clause where Gareth had to kiss her hand and give her an original compliment on her good looks whenever he saw her.
Gareth crossed out another line, added one of his own, circled something…
Hazel was almost glad her phone rang, giving her a reason to leave the room so she wouldn’t have to watch him trample her new gummy bear clause – Party A is obligated to sort a pack of gummy bears by color whenever a contract is concluded with Party B, and to hand out only red ones to Party B…
“Hello?” she answered from the hallway.
“Honey, I have a legal question for you. Are you free right now?”
“Hey, Mom.” Hazel peered through the glass door at Gareth, who was still reading the contract. Did it look like he was smiling ever so slightly before he crossed out another clause? No, the glass pane must have distorted his features. “Sure. I’m taking a work break. What’s up?”
“You’re taking a break? You’re self-employed, honey. If I were self-employed and made as much money as you, I wouldn’t be in the office before ten. I only worked so hard so you wouldn’t have to!”
“I like working hard, Mom.”
“Hm. You’re probably wearing one of those horribly tight pencil skirts again.”
Hazel looked down at her pencil skirt. “Nooo.”
“That skirt will constrict your ovaries and you’ll be unable to have children, honey!”
“You overestimate the power of a pencil skirt, Mom.”
“I’m just saying, you’re over thirty, you should…”
“What’s your legal question?” she interrupted impatiently. Once her mother started complaining about Hazel being single and childless at her age, there would be no stopping her.
“Oh. Yes. It looks like I’ve been charged with a hit-and-run and could face jail time. That can’t be right, can it? Also, I’m supposed to pay someone a hundred thousand dollars for causing physical and emotional harm to his dog. He’s going to sue me if I don’t pay the damages.”
Hazel straightened up. “You’ve been reported, and might be sued, and you’re wasting time worrying about my ovaries?”
“I’ve got my priorities straight.”
“Mom! What the hell is going on? You committed a hit-and-run?”
“I didn’t think so! I bumped another parked car a few weeks ago while backing out of a parking space.
It was only a scratch, I thought. So, I left a note with my name and phone number and drove on.
Apparently, my trailer hitch damaged some important car parts, which weren’t obvious from the outside, and there was a dog in there too, which I supposedly injured.
Mentally and physically.” She clicked her tongue in dissatisfaction.
“I left my name! This can’t be a hit-and-run. And I don’t remember a dog.”
Hazel groaned softly and put a hand over her eyes. “Technically, it’s a hit-and-run whether you leave a note or not.”
“Really?” she said, surprised. “Hmm. But this lawyer, this Mr. Kosianos, can’t demand a hundred thousand dollars for his client because I scared his dog, can he?”
Hazel’s stomach tightened. “The lawyer who contacted you is named Kosianos? Billy Kosianos?”
“Yes! How do you know his first name?”
“Fuck! Shit! Fuck!”
Her mother gasped in shock. “Hazel! Watch your language.”
“Sorry, Mom, I know him and…” …the last time I saw him, I spat on his shiny shoes. She cleared her throat. “Let’s just say he doesn’t like me. So if he saw your name and connected it to me…”
“I couldn’t care less. He can't charge me a hundred thousand dollars for a shaken dog with a scratch on its paw!”
Hazel narrowed her eyes, nausea flooding her stomach.
“Yes, he can,” she muttered. “If he does it right.” And Billy Kosianos might have been an asshole who had aggressively treated her like dirt throughout her college years — but shit, he was a smart, sly, shitty lawyer who would walk over dead bodies when it suited him.
The only man whose wrath he’d ever been afraid of sat on the other side of the glass door.
Gareth might have beaten him up once — and Hazel might have been the reason. But that was eons ago, and…
Okay, she needed to focus.
“Shit,” she whispered before squaring her shoulders. “Mom, I’ll come right over and help you with this.”
“No, no. I just want a recommendation for a lawyer. You’re busy enough, honey.”