Page 117 of The Suit

The authorities had found another two hundred thousand accounts used for money laundering, tax evasion, and avoiding international sanctions - some of which had been going back decades. The courts were having a field day, and firms including Latham’s were reaping the benefits of cleaning up the mess which had been left in their wake. I also reaped a little benefit of my own, in the form of the Ford GT, the nineteen sixty-four Ferrari, and the nineteen fifty-nine Ferrari. I was yet to take ownership, seeing as they were still tied up in the court case, but they were mine the second the courts released them.

I’d been promised.

Beulah had kept herself busy helping Professor Grannery with her summer school, and when she hadn’t been there, she’d been up at the hospital reading to the kids or studying. Any free time was spent at Cliffside with Murray, Kit, Bell, and Penn; or up in Kent County making regular visits to her parents’ graves, or hanging with Bell and Kit. In fact, she spent so much time with Kit I wasn’t convinced she didn’t prefer her to me.

The only place we hadn’t been this summer was a Yankees game. Now Penn owned The Lions and had decided to take it seriously, he couldn’t bring himself to watch them play. Instead, his time was spent channeling energy into what Kit had ordered him to do - build the team he’d always wanted. Not that anyone knew as it was under embargo until the season was over.

My one job for the summer had been to help Beulah find an apartment, because with studying and teaching she hadn’t had time. When she wasn’t staying at her hotel to make a wholly unnecessary point that she was an independent woman and we weren’trushing our new relationship, she was staying at my place and instead of helping, I didn’t.

Deliberately.

I had no plans to take a leaf out of Murray’sI can wait a bit longer,book. Now Beulah and I were together, I didn’t want to be apart from her any more than I needed to. Even Cliff had come around to Beulah’s unique charms, and she’d moved in with me after six weeks.

Officially after ten.

I’d won that fight by default, and it still counted. Obviously.

Mostly the fights had stopped, though I’d be lying if said I didn’t orchestrate them to my benefit on the odd occasion, because the make-up sex was out of this world.

Now the fights were over who cooked dinner – we ordered in, or what temperature to have the shower – we comprise on somewhere between normal human (me) and scalding (her), or taking turns to hold Bell, though Penn was also involved in those fights.

But the best thing about living together, beside the sex, obviously? I leave the office as early as possible, because now I have someone at home who I can turn to for advice; someone who knows what I’m going through with my clients, and who could reassure me I was doing the right thing when I decided that employing not just Downy Shaw as a summer intern, but also my brother because Blaine and Amory flat-out refused to have him on account of him taking nothing seriously.

I kissed her again, quickly, because we didn’t have time for what I was really after. “I promise, you’ll be fine. But if your new boss gives you a hard time, send him my way and I’ll deal with him.”

She rolled her eyes hard, then took my arm from behind her waist and fixed the cufflink for me.

“Thank you.” I stepped back, and poured out a coffee in a to-go cup. “Here you go, Ms. Holmes.”

She jumped off the counter, landing squarely on the sky-high heels she was wearing. She might have swapped the pencil skirts for jeans, but nothing was going to part her from the Manolos, Choos or Ferragamos. I’d even extended my closet to fit her collection – one which rivalled my mother’s, something they’d bonded over the first time they’d met.

“Thank you.” She took it and leaned in for another kiss, which I obliged before walking her to the elevator.

I held out her new briefcase. “Don’t forget I’m picking you up at four p.m. sharp.”

“I’m not going to be able to leave early on my first day,” she tutted.

“You are, I’ve already sorted it. Blake put it in your calendar.”

“You’re going to get me in trouble with the boss.”

“Don’t you worry about it,” I winked.

She didn’t need to, Penn would let her go even if he didn’t know what I had planned, but he’d helped me plot this out.

Last weekend, he’d kept Beulah busy by giving her a tour around her new place of work – The New York Lions stadium in West Harlem, situated on the banks of the Hudson - while I’d taken a visit to Kent County. Specifically, to the cemetery, where I’d sat with her brother, and parents, and asked for her hand in marriage.

At four p.m. I’d be collecting her in the helicopter for a short ride up to Cambridge, where I’d arranged to have lecture room thirty-three, the same room we’d taken our first class together, filled with candles for the evening.

Eleven years to the day I’d put her at the top of my list of outright enemies, I would be asking her to wear the six-carat, emerald-cut yellow diamond currently burning a hole in my pocket, and to sit at top of my list of favorite people.

The elevator door pinged open, and I held it back for her. “Have a good day, I love you.’

“Love you, Latham. See you later.” She raised up on her tiptoes for a final brief kiss and was already checking her emails without a second glance at me before the doors closed.

Beulah had had a lot of change the last six months; leaving her job, leaving Chicago, finding her family, finding me. Finding each other.

Her life was about to change again. Big time.

Funny how things work out.

My worst enemy has become my best friend.

Beulah Holmes was my ultimate nemesis.

Now she’s my favorite win.

- THE END -

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