Page 3 of Legally Yours

Cherie and Steve waved slurred goodbyes, although Steve’s was a bit lackluster. I checked the bar, where Trevor was patiently waiting for a bartender to ring him up. Once he turned his back to sign his tab, I wove around the crowd and out the front door.

Outside I was met by the makings of a full-on nor’easter as a blast of snow and wind pummeled me in the face. At least ten other people were standing on the curb, trying without any luck to hail cabs driving by, all of them occupied.

“Shit,” I muttered, checking to make sure Trevor hadn’t come out yet. I buttoned my wool pea coat and wound my scarf around my neck, wishing I had foregone my pencil skirt for pants and my goose-down parka. It might have made me look like the Michelin Man, but at least I’d be warm. The nearest T-stop was at least ten blocks away, and I was going to have to walk. Damn.

“Skylar!”

As one particularly cold gust nearly knocked me over, a cab stopped in front of me, with Eric popping out the back window.

“Hey!” I greeted him as I stepped out to the car. “I thought you were already gone.”

“You’re never going to catch a cab right now. Need a lift? Caleb is dropping me at a friend’s place a few blocks away before he takes this one back to Chestnut Hill.” He nodded his head at the unfamiliar guy sitting in the front, who waved. “You could call for a car and wait at my friend’s place if you want. That is, unless you wanted to go home with Douchebag in there.”

I followed his glance to where Trevor was pushing open the pub door. I turned back in a hurry. “Shove over and let me in, will you?”

Two

The cab dropped Eric and me in front of an enormous house on Beacon Street that directly faced the Common. It was built in the nineteenth-century style that was everywhere in Boston, with four or five stories of gray brick punctuated by black bay windows. Unlike most of the buildings surrounding the park, the double-doored entrance didn’t have the telltale buzzer that usually marked multiple units. Only one occupant lived here.

I turned to Eric. “A friend?” I joked. “Or sugar mama?”

“You’re fucking hilarious,” Eric said. “She just works here.”

Handsome in a Norse hero kind of way, Eric had a reputation as something of a player in our class. I had known him since starting law school. Maybe it was because we were both from New York, but I had always thought of him more like a brother type than the ladies’ man he was to everyone else. We shared the same dislike of large social gatherings, but for slightly different reasons. I didn’t like to mix business and pleasure, whereas Eric tended to do it a bit too much, and his exploits often crossed paths at group functions.

“Anyway, definitely no sugar,” he said. “She’s a housekeeper for some rich bastard. Place is freaking amazing; she lives downstairs in the mother-in-law.” He shrugged. “It’s nothing serious.”

I grimaced. “Gross, man. You didn’t have to invite me on your booty call.”

Eric laughed as he walked toward the house. “Don’t worry. I’m sure we can wait at least until your car comes.”

“Wanna bet?” I asked, but followed him anyway.

The snow was starting to come down even harder, and already the pavement was covered with a thick blanket of the stuff. I cursed myself again for forgetting my snow boots, which I normally toted with me to and from work in the winter. Boston sidewalks in January were no place for Manolos.

“Careful!” Eric called back as he turned past and took a short flight of steps to a basement-level entrance, where he pressed a doorbell.

“She doesn’t answer the regular door?” I asked.

“Servants’ quarters,” he said with a smirk. “I guess most of the houses like this on the park have them converted into something different, like a garage, but this guy had them remodeled for the help. He is seriously loaded. He has a live-in driver too.” Eric shook his head, feigning disgust, but the obvious longing in his voice was harder to hide. Who wouldn’t want that kind of money?

“Hey, mister, come on in!”

The door was answered by a petite, pretty girl with wildly curly brown hair and a small, broad nose. The slight lilt in her voice informed me that she wasn’t originally from the United States, and as she smiled warmly, I couldn’t help thinking that was to her benefit. People in New England weren’t known for welcoming strangers into their homes, but she greeted me like an old friend.

“Hi, I’ve been waiting for you! Come in,lindos, you look frozen!”

Eric and I followed her through a narrow hallway that ended in a large common room outfitted with two sectional sofas, a flat screen TV, and a kitchenette at the far end. Across the room, a doorway led to another hall, where I could see several doors in the dim light and a staircase leading up to the main part of the house.

“Thanks for letting me wait here for a car,” I said. “Walking around in this stuff is murder on shoes, you know?”

“No problem,” she said, her accent even more apparent now. “I know exactly what you mean. I’m Ana, by the way.”

“Skylar,” I returned. I took her hand, but was surprised when she pulled me in for a quick peck on each cheek. “Where are you from?”

Ana smiled again. “Obviously not from here, huh? I moved from Brazil a few years ago. I like to see how people react when I kiss them on the cheek. New Englanders are so nervous about it; it’s so funny!”

“Well, I’m not from New England,” I said. “New Yorker, born and bred. We’re not quite so skittish.”

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