Page 16 of The Lawyer & the Christmas Tree Farmer

Best of all, he didn’t expect her tobeanything other than herself, either. Sure, he wanted her to not get rid of the tree farm, last night’s isolation had made that clear. From the moment they’d finished their conversation, things had gone weird very quickly, with Ethan only coming into the trailer to either deliver payment or to warm up when his fingers got too cold that his gloves and pockets weren’t enough. Even after they’d closed up, they both silently acknowledged that his offer of having a drink together was off the table.

But she couldn’t have it all. She couldn’t have the man, the farm, and the house, and the legal career she’d dreamed of for years. And turning her back on the firm now, with partnership so close that she could taste it, was almost a rejection of everything she’d done over the past twelve years. It would make the long nights studying until her eyes burned and her hands cramped, the days when she’d sneak bags of ingredients out in her backpack instead of seeing them get thrown away in the dumpster even though it was against the health code, the long hours at her desk, putting up with the impossible demands of the partners, everything she’d done…

What would it mean, then? To just… give it all up?

The blue jay screamed again, and Laura sighed. “Yeah buddy, that’s sort of how I feel,” she said as she turned and went back inside. Screaming inside.

It wouldn’t help her reach a decision about a choice she never anticipated coming, but at the same time, it wouldn’t hurt things either.

CHAPTER 8

LAURA

“A

re you sitting down?” Irene asked later that very day, and Laura nodded. This wasn’t just a normal phone call, this was a video chat, and more importantly, Irene had started it instead of the other way around. “Good, because I’ve got some news that’ll knock your socks off. Knocked mine off for sure.”

“I’m listening.” Laura propped her phone up on the table and leaned forward. She’d been up most of the night, turning the situation over and over in her head.

Keep the farm, sell the farm?

And more importantly stay… or go home?

And now, this video call from Irene, who pointedly ignored Laura’s total bed head and no makeup to launch into her talk. “I just got confirmation from Steele… I’m lead council on this case.”

“Congratulations!” Laura said honestly. “You deserve it.”

“Thanks, but here’s where it gets interesting and I wanted to talk with you about it,” Irene said. “This isn’t just a civil case.”

“What’s going on?”

“Browning Chemicals,” Irene said, and Laura groaned. She was somewhat of an environmentalist at heart, and having one of the world’s biggest chemical manufacturers on the firm’s payroll wasn’t something she liked. She and Irene had talked about that plenty of times in the past. “I know, but this isn’t the corporation. It’s Nate Browning.”

“So a private matter,” Laura said, and Irene nodded. “Which is why the corporate legal team is shopping this out to us in total?”

“How’d you get that?”

“No offense Irene, you’re a great lawyer and I just said you deserve to take the lead chair in a big case,” Laura said, “but there’s no way that the Browning board or Steele is going to hand off lead chair on a major case as big as you mentioned if it was corporate.”

“Smart girl,” Irene said, and Laura chuckled. She knew when she was getting buttered up. “Okay, low down on what I can say. Nate Browning’s going to be getting served papers very, very soon in relation to a certain ten-year-old blonde girl who may or may not be his daughter.”

“And I’m guessing that the mother isnotFelicity Browning?” Laura asked. “Ouch. And just how is Senator Browning liking this?”

“Oh she’s ready to go scorched earth, flaming the mother and framing her as everything short of a prostitute,” Irene said. “And that’s just the start of things. Thankfully, I’m not handling her, Michael’s dealing with her and her political machine. Hopefully he gets her to see that if she wants to flame anyone, she needs to look at her husband, not the woman.”

“So you believe the story?” Laura asked, and Irene shrugged. She knew that look. A lawyer lived by the rule of it wasn’t the truth that mattered, but what could be proved in a court of law. And rule numbertwo, right behind, was that a lawyer didn’twant to know anything that could hurt their client. After all, a lawyer shouldn’t technically lie in court. But if a lawyer didn’t technically know he or she wasn’t telling the truth…

“The parentage isn’t going to be as big a deal as the other part of the case,” Irene explained. “The mother is saying that the reason she didn’t come forward for as long as she did is that the pregnancy wasn’t… by choice.”

Laura inhaled sharply, her fist clenching. “That willnotplay well. Why isn’t this a criminal case though?”

“Lack of evidence, which plays in our favor,” Irene said. “Look Laura, Michael’s already told the Brownings to settle, to bury this under an NDA so thick that you could build a house on top of it. They don’t want to. Nate Browning is putting on the wounded man act, and saying it’s all a frame-up job by a disgruntled ex-employee.”

“And they’re going to play this to the bone,” Laura added, and Irene nodded in agreement. “Okay, why?”

“I think the Senator thinks this will get her in some of the right people to elevate her career, if that makes any sense,” Irene replied before coughing bitterly. “Sorry, I know it could. You know how the spin machines run nowadays. In any case, she’s not the client technically. It’s Nate Browning.”

“You need to protect him from all sides,” Laura said, and Irene nodded. “Good luck with that.”

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