Page 12 of Love JD

The thought came out of nowhere, and I almost shook my head in response. What the fuck was that? I blew out a breath and gave her a reserved smile. “Water, thanks.”

“You sure?” she pushed, pouting a full lip.

“I’m sure.”

Shrugging, she went to pour me a glass of tap water. I craned a look over my shoulder, looking for Hawk, the other partner in our law firm. He’d flown from Denver just to talk to me, which I thought probably didn’t bode well for our firm. We had problems, to put it lightly. Last year, Azura had uncovered a money-laundering scheme that several of our high-profile clients had taken part in, and while she had done the right thing in blowing the whistle, it had been catastrophic for our firm.

Many of those dickwads had managed to wriggle their way out of charges, but they certainly weren’t going to use us after Azura had been the one to expose them. Azura had saved lives, but it had cost us millions. Hawk had almost sold out of our firm entirely, but Azura and I had busted our asses to bring in new clients and make up the deficit. We were just about there, but we were also one failed merger away from total ruin.

I got a text and peeked at it.

Starla: Hey when you coming back? Drinks at SnV?

Slate and Velvet was a favorite club/bar for my group of friends, but I hadn’t been in months. It was getting weird to keep turning them down, but I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t want to party with them. Especially not when they would give me a hard time for it. I pocketed the phone and kicked that can down the road.

Hawk walked through the door, his eyes on his phone and his suit wrinkled from his flight. It looked like he’d left work and come straight here. Definitely urgent and not good, I decided.

Azura had gone to Seattle with Tristan for the rest of the weekend, and I’d spent the day working on our merger with GreenTech from my hotel room. I’d technically taken the weekend off, just like Azura, but I suspected that she, like me, had not actually kept her laptop closed. Not working felt like more of a mental strain than working over the weekend, at this point. Our futures depended on it.

Hawk looked up, and his faded, brown eyes found me. Hawk was about as soft and middle-aged as it got, with a hook nose on the longer side, an age-heavy jaw, and slicked back, thinning brown hair. He dressed well, though, and none of his mediocre attributes seemed to keep him from finding girlfriends. And wives. Repeatedly.

He dropped his carry-on bag and took a seat next to me with a weary wave. “Gin and tonic.” He glanced my way. “You having anything?”

The waitress set down my water, and I gestured to it. “Yep.”

Hawk gave me a confused look. He hadn’t been out of the office with me for a long time, I realized. I hadn’t had a drink for more than a year and a half, but not even Azura had noticed. Which suited me just fine. If people didn’t notice the absence of my drinking, then I didn’t have to tell them why I had chosen sobriety.

Hawk took a deep swig of his drink, plopped the glass on the gummy bar surface, and then turned to face me, leaning on his elbow. “We got problems.”

“I assumed,” I replied placidly.

“I can’t explain this over the phone. I have to show you, and I sure as shit won’t send it over email. Not after the hacker disaster last year.”

He meant Azura’s whistleblowing, and I couldn’t disagree with him there. Hacking had been involved, and the people we’d pissed off were exceptionally good at it. “What is it?” I asked.

Hawk slid the file across the bar to me. “It’s GreenTech. Behold, pictures of their not so green exploits.”

“What do you mean, ‘not green?’” My brow creased as I opened the manila folder and flipped through pictures. GreenTech was in the middle of a gigantic merger with Earth Care Global. If GreenTech was a tasty, environmentally conscious morsel, then Earth Care was Pac-Man. Earth Care had been gobbling up every “eco-something” company with promise for the last decade, and before long, they would have a virtual stranglehold on the environmentally safe, successful businesses. It was brilliant on their end. That’s where we were headed, and whoever held all those cards was going to cash out big time when we all eventually agreed to be more environmentally responsible.

But it turned out that GreenTech really wasn’t very green. From the looks of it, they were dumping battery waste in the waters of the developing countries they based their operations in. They’d said they wanted to help developing countries and their economies, but apparently, they were more interested in finding somewhere to hide their run-off.

I sighed heavily, flipping through the pictures. “Who knows about this?”

“Not Earth Care,” Hawk grunted, swallowing the rest of his drink. “But the press will get a hold of it eventually, I’m sure.”

“You’re sure Starla doesn’t know?” I pressed. As the head attorney for Earth Care’s acquisitions and mergers, Starla and I often worked together on similar projects. And I’d dated her. Messy… and not in the fun way.

“Not that I’m aware of. You think she’d let her client go forward with that?” he asked incredulously.

“Fuck,” I muttered. I closed the file and kneaded my forehead. We needed this merger. It wasn’t just nice to take the paycheck it offered. It was essential, or we would go under. But if we let our client scam Earth Care into a merger, we’d be screwing them over. “How long before it gets out?”

Hawk shrugged his pudgy shoulders. “Hell if I know. It’ll ruin Earth Care if it gets out after the merger, though.”

I nodded, tapping my fingers on the folder. It reminded me of the way Isla had drummed her fingers on my neck. I screwed my eyes shut. For God’s sake, I thought. What is going on with me today?

“I say, it’s not our problem,” Hawk ventured to say. He dipped his head, as if watching my reaction. “Earth Care didn’t do their research… not our problem.”

I let out a grunt. “Maybe.”

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