Page 67 of Cocky Counsel

Thirty One

Eva

“Do you think she’s okay?” I asked Ethan, glancing down at my watch. She had been in the boardroom with Art for over an hour after he agreed to come here instead of having her go to his office. Ethan had explained the last-minute request and threw in lunch to get Art to agree. He might have been the best family law lawyer in Manhattan, but he was also a crotchety old man with a weakness for fried chicken deep down.

“She’s fine,” he laughed and sat down on the edge of my desk. “You have to stop worrying about her.”

“She’s my baby—”

“Sister. Yes, I know.”

I blew out a slow, heavy breath and leaned back against my chair. It was a busy Monday, but I could not for the life of me get myself to focus on anything other than Lucy’s first day at Roberts and Associates or the fact that she was meeting with Art regarding some last-minute change to the custody case. My stomach was in knots as I sat there waiting for an update.

“Okay,” I said, conceding, “Tell me something to distract me. Anything.”

He leaned back and a mischievous smile split his cheeks.

“You taste like honeydew.”

I felt my cheeks flush as I looked up at him under my lashes.

“Well, that is definitely distracting,” I admitted.

“You’re telling me,” he chuckled. “I’m sitting here, knowing that you’re wearing that short-ass skirt, thinking about how I could climb under your desk and eat that sweet pussy without anyone knowing.”

“That does sound very tempting,” I giggled. “But I think we’re going to have to make office sex off-limits now that my sister works here.”

“In all honestly, we probably should have called it off-limits from the start,” he laughed. I heard footsteps coming down the hall and leaned forward, hoping it was Lucy.

Regina turned and walked into my office, crumbling my hopes as she came in.

“Don’t be so excited to see me,” she said playfully, noticing my reaction.

“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I thought you were Lucy.”

Regina peeked her head out into the hallway, checking her desk.

“Is she still meeting with that lawyer?” she asked.

“Yeah, I was hoping they would be done by now.” I reached up and moved my hair over my shoulder. “What’s up?”

“Well, speaking of lawyers,” she said cheerfully, “I’ve spoken to ours about the sexual harassment claims against Ethan.” She closed the door and sat down after Ethan scooted off the desk and stood behind me.

“What’s the news?” Ethan asked, folding his arms over his chest. I could smell the intoxicating scent of his cologne behind me.

“After some digging on Friday, our IT department was able to get some more information about the chat messages that were printed.” Regina paused for a minute and shuffled through the stack of papers in her hand. “It turns out that Kate wasn’t lying about the network glitch and some of her reports had been printed in Eva’s office, however, it’s such a weird coincidence that it would happen at the same time Eva stepped away and left her computer unlocked. It feels as though Kate planned it and that’s what we’re looking into now. How she knew that you guys were chatting about that, I have no idea. But it was the perfect setup, to say the least.”

She stopped to grab a piece of paper out of the pile and laid it on the desk in front of us. It was a printout of the sexual harassment claim Cora had filed at Hyde and Williamson before she filed the actual lawsuit.

“After Ethan sent me the video and pictures of Kate and Cora together, I forwarded them to our legal department. Combined with the information that Ethan had given us about the other lawsuit she filed with Hyde and Williamson, we are trying to find a motive behind it. It seems as though she narrowed it down to two very successful lawyers that she felt she could get the biggest payout from, but we don’t have proof of that just yet. Our IT department is going through Kate’s emails now and they’re recovering Cora’s from when she was employed here. I’ll keep you updated on what we find,” Regina said as she gathered the paper from the desk and stood up.

“Thank you,” Ethan said with a nod as Regina opened the door and left.

I felt some relief after she left, knowing that they were looking into finding the same missing piece that I had been stressing over before everything had happened with Lucy. Was that all on the same day? At this point, it felt like the days were blending together.

“How are you doing?” Ethan asked, as he moved behind me and gently rubbed my shoulders.

“It’s been a long week but I’m hoping that things will be resolved soon, and we will be able to go back to some sort of normal.”

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