Page 116 of The Suit

Two.

One.

I looked up at her. “Now.”

She picked up her phone and opened her email, just as mine rang. I knew who it was without needing to look at the screen… someone who cared about her passing the New York Bar almost more than she did.

“Well?”

“Good morning to you too, Pennington.”

“Yeah, yeah. Tell me what I want to hear. Did she pass?”

“She did.” I couldn’t see her face and hadn’t had actual confirmation, but there was no way she was going to fail it.

Beulah Holmes did not fail.

“Great, tell her I’ll meet her in the office in thirty. We have a lot of work to do.” He hung up without waiting for me to tell him I still wasn’t his secretary.

I rounded the kitchen island and wrapped my arms around Beulah’s waist, resting my chin on her shoulder so I could peer at the screen with her.

“Congratulations, Ms. Holmes.” I kissed her cheek. “Looks like you passed just in time.”

She spun in my hold and I lifted her up to sit on the counter, her legs wrapping round my hips instinctively to pull me closer.

“In time for what?”

“That was your new boss. He wants you in the office in thirty minutes.”

She groaned, and not the good type of groan I’d come to crave hearing on a daily basis. “Do I have to? His pop quizzes on baseball are harder than the ones Grady used to give us in second year. This is a stupid idea.”

I kissed her nose before tucking a curl behind her ear. “It’s not. You know contracts, you don’t need to know about player stats. Plus, as it was my idea, I’d say it was genius.”

I firmly stood by my self-assessment.

Beulah had taken the New York Bar exam as a symbol of starting her new life. She hadn’t needed to take it to practice law but was determined to pass as a line drawn under her old Chicago life.

Her old life, period.

Alongside her studying, Penn had continued sulking about the Lions until Murray, Kit, Beulah, and I had called an intervention, which had then lit a fire up his ass and went someway to explain why she was in this position - part of said fire was Beulah coming to work for Penn in the capacity as Head of Legal for The New York Lions. She’d also negotiated a job for Blake, who was more than happy to leave FSJ and come to worksurrounded by hot, strapping athletes.

Her new job provided her with a second reason to pass, even if this came with a little more reluctance, but it had been my idea and I don’t think I’d ever come up with a better one; especially as to get her to agree to it I’d promised her a naked week in St. Barth’s – the first vacation she’d ever taken. Not to mention the added benefit that when I wanted to take her away again, I only had to tell Penn she wouldn’t be working.

It was hard to believe that five months ago my life was completely different, before Beulah came back and turned it upside down.

Like I said, hard to remember life B.B.

Since the day I’d gone to meet her and we’d called a truce, Beulah and I had become inseparable.

It had taken me less than a week to realize exactly how much I wanted her in my life.

It took me less than a month to realize I’d fallen hard and hopelessly in love with her; that perhaps I always had been, that I’d loved her even when I’d hated her.

It had taken me less than two months to realize that she would become my life, because by that point I couldn’t ever imagine her not being in it, not that she’d really left since the day we first met.

The summer had gone by in a whirlwind.

Thanks to Professor Grannery and Agent Diggs, Beulah’s whistleblowing had been kept anonymous. Feather Smythe Jones and Partners had been too busy to notice that Beulah had done anything more than resign in amongst the hundreds of other attorneys who’d also jumped from the sinking ship. And without any of the named partners, plus hundreds of high-profile clients whose names were currently being dragged through the courts and the media, the FSJ ship was on its way to the bottom of the ocean deep, to take its rightful place in Davy Jones’ Locker.

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