Playing By The Rules

“And he’ll get it. Eventually. She’s just going to make him jump through a few hoops first.”

“See all the games and garbage we can avoid with our arrangement? Doll?”

I laughed, but I think it came out a little hoarsely. “What else are we avoiding?” I asked him. “Did you decide on your ground rules yet?”

“Sure. They didn’t take much thought.”

For a brief moment, I hated him. “Great,” I said. “So you go first.”

“All right. No sleepovers. Also no sharing of toothbrushes. Those two sort of go hand in hand.”

I frowned. They fell into my “companionship” category, but I had been getting by without that sort of thing for a while now and I figured I could keep on doing it. “Okay.” But then my curiosity got the better of me. “Why not?”

“It’s just part of keeping it uncomplicated,” he said. “It will be neater if we just keep all that cuddly stuff out of it. You know, that’s always where I get into trouble.”

“With cuddly stuff?”

“Yeah. That’s the point of this, right? We’re friends. We don’t have to cuddle. We don’t hold hands. We’re talking sex and companionship here. Period.”

He didn’t seem awkward with it today. He really had it down. “My turn,” I said, and I latched on to the rule I’d mentioned earlier—in part because for a moment I couldn’t remember any of the others. “None of those endearments of yours. Absolutely no…you know…darlings and dolls and snookums and babycakes.”

“Honestly, Mandy, you’re not the babycakes type.”

I wasn’t sure if I was insulted or pleased. I decided not to try to figure it out.

“No complaining or handing out guilt trips,” he said, ticking off another rule on the fingers of his free hand, the one that wasn’t holding his briefcase.

Now I was insulted. “When have I ever done that sort of thing?”

“You haven’t. Yet. But that was when we were just…you know, us. Now we’re getting into uncharted territory so I’m just putting it out there. If I decide I want to stay in some night and read, there can’t be any whining and making me feel bad about it. Also, it works both ways. You get to go to the gym like you’re always doing without me busting your chops because I wanted to see you.”

My head was spinning. But he was right. It made a certain amount of sense, I supposed. He wanted to take a break from the whining and the guilt trips. That was the whole purpose behind this thing. That, and getting him out of my system.

“Your turn again,” Sam said.

I dredged through my memory. “I, um, don’t have to run around picking up the apartment just because you’re coming over.” It sounded as lame now as it had last night.

“You never do that,” he pointed out. “Your living room is a Barbie metropolis.”

“Uncharted territory,” I reminded him.

He frowned. “Okay. No picking up.”

“And Chloe comes first. She’s my top priority.”

“Of course she is. And, anyway, that’s part of my rule. No whining or guilt trips if you prefer to spend time with her.”

I nodded. So far, this was very…civilized, I thought. “What else?”

“It’s not necessary for us to touch base every day.”

“Sam, we’ve been touching base every day for the entire six months I’ve known you.” For some reason, this was starting to bother me.

“But things are different now, so if it should ever happen that we don’t touch base for some reason, there won’t be a major conflagration.”

“No conflagrations,” I repeated.

“And nobody’s going to go falling in love,” he said. “That’s the big one. I don’t need to be going there again.”

I finally laughed at that. It came up from my belly. “I think you’re safe, Sam. I’ve already seen you at your most impressive and it hasn’t overwhelmed me. I’ve also seen you at your worst. Wearing pink, for instance. Or remember when you broke your finger putting in my air conditioner? You howled more than a woman giving birth.”

“The hell I did.” He scowled. “Anyway, this brings us back to throwing drinks and timing devices like Frank Ethan’s watch.”

“Exactly where we came in,” I agreed.

“Right.” He opened the courthouse door for me.

I stepped inside, but then I turned back to gape at him. “You never open doors for me.”

“That was before, when you were one of the guys. Now you’re my girl.”

“I’m—” I broke off. Somehow, it seemed diametrically opposed to everything we had just discussed.

“Figuratively speaking,” Sam explained.

“Oh. Of course.”

I knew then that I had to get a grip. This wasn’t going to work if the world kept tilting on its axis with everything he said. I was supposed to feel clinical and practical about this, not light-headed and weak-kneed and on the constant verge of passing out.

“They’re meeting for lunch right about now,” Sam said, looking at his watch. “Or at least they are if she agreed to see him.”

“Who?” I asked dazedly.

“Lisa and Lyle Woodsen.”

“Where?” And what the hell difference did that make?

“The same restaurant where they had their first date. So where’s ours going to be?”

I grabbed my wits about me halfway across the lobby. “I have show tickets for Atlantic City this weekend.” No, I thought immediately, that wouldn’t work. It would be better to take Grace or Jenny along, because that sort of occasion would almost necessitate an overnight. Would one of us sleep on the floor? Would we take two separate rooms? How would that fit into our rules?

“I was thinking more along the lines of tonight,” Sam said while I was picking at the problem.

Tonight? That was…soon.

I looked at him. He grinned that crooked, bad-boy grin, and I knew—suddenly I just knew—that he realized how flustered I was by all this. And he liked it. I decided I was damned if I was going to let him keep yanking my chain.

That was the only reason I did what I did next in full view of a lobby bustling with lawyers, litigants and various law enforcement personnel. Okay, maybe Mill had a little to do with it, too. I knew it would get back to him. I caught Sam’s tie with my left hand and gave it a tug until he stepped closer to me.

“Hey,” he said, startled.

I kissed him hard on the mouth. That had been my intention anyway—one strong smack to reestablish my upper hand. But then something happened. A rolling kind of jolt went through me. Because while I’d meant to smack, his mouth turned out to be as soft as a wish, and I stayed a little too long. At some point while I lingered, he obviously recovered from his surprise…and I forgot all about Mill.

His tongue slipped fast, neatly, past my lips, tangling with mine. It teased a moment. Then it was gone. I reeled back.

“Sneak preview,” he said, and winked at me. “Good idea.” Then he left me standing there like a dumbstruck idiot and headed for his courtroom.

Chapter Four

I have no recollection of being in court that afternoon, though I know I must have been because I billed Robert Awney for my time. The man was grinning when he left the courthouse. His wife had left him and he’d never gotten over it, so he took her back to court once a year, trying to change his child support or his visitation, just to harass her. Celia Awney Neulander’s expression was predictably murderous as she stalked off.

I stood on the cold, aged tile of the lobby floor watching them go, then I looked around for Sam. He was nowhere to be found. I found myself thinking about our arrangement again, and I was suddenly swept by the conviction that it would never work. Nothing between us would ever be as simple as he was making this whole thing out to sound. We both had our egos. We were both strong-willed. Each of us had a decided preference for being in charge. This was going to be a tug-of-war, I thought.

I decided that what I really needed to do about the situation was talk to Grace. I whipped around, swinging my briefcase like a deadly weapon, and headed for the elevator bank instead of the lobby doors.

I found her at her desk outside Judge Castello’s chambers on the sixth floor. She was snarling into the phone at someone who apparently mistook her for a woman who cared about the terms of his parole. I waited for six minutes and during that time, Grace told the caller no less than eight times that he ought to get a lawyer who would then tell it to the judge.

She hung up the phone a little too hard and looked surprised to see me. “If it’s five o’clock already, then this must be my afterlife.”

I hated to disappoint her. “I need to talk to you,” I said. “About Sam.”

Her brows did a slow slide up her forehead. “Have you decided to claw with him?”

I think I gave a jerky little nod before I shook my head.

“Which is it?” she asked. “Yes or no?”

“Yes. But I’m having doubts now.”

“That would make you an idiot.”

I glowered at her. “I should have gone to Jenny with this.”

“Jenny would already be out buying floral arrangements for your wedding.” Grace stood from her desk. “This requires coffee,” she decided.

I followed her out of the chambers area to the balcony that overlooked a lot of empty air all the way down to the ground floor. I generally avoided standing near the railing because it made me dizzy. Grace went right over to it and leaned against it, folding her arms over her chest, utterly unperturbed by the fact that if the wood suddenly gave way, her life would be over.

“What happened to the coffee?” I asked, surprised.

“This can’t wait for the elevator.” The cafeteria was on the third floor. “I want to hear what you two have been up to.”

I cleared my throat. “Well, it’s an arrangement,” I said. “It’s…uh, sex. Only.” But that wasn’t entirely true. “Also companionship,” I added.

“Conversation?” she asked.

“Of course.” I scowled. “We’re hardly going to claw with our lips sealed.”

“Comfort?”

Suddenly I saw where she was headed with this. I threw my hands up in surrender.

“Am I to take it that you two talked about this,” Grace asked, “set some guidelines and decided to get naked together?”

“We…” I trailed off. “That’s about the size of it.”

“It’s about time.”

“You don’t think it’s odd that we discussed it first?”

“You’re both lawyers. This is what lawyers do.”

“We made bylaws, too.”

She nodded as though this made all the sense in the world. “Less chance of chaos and misunderstanding that way. So what’s the problem?”

“My motives aren’t the purest.” There—I said it aloud. After all, confession is supposed to be good for the soul. “I’m not doing it to dodge the dating pool,” I admitted. “I haven’t been in the dating pool for a while.”

“So dodging the dating pool is the motivation behind all this?”

“It’s Sam’s.” We finally set off toward the elevators.

“What’s yours?”

“It’s entirely possible that I just want to rip his clothes off,” I admitted.

I said this just as the elevator doors slid open. There were three people inside. An elderly woman gasped mildly. An overweight man in red suspenders grinned at me. The child with him seemed to have no reaction to my comment whatsoever.

Grace sailed into the elevator car without a qualm. I followed, feeling ridiculous.

“How long is this arrangement supposed to last?” she asked me.

“Can we finish discussing this when we get to the cafeteria?” I looked left and right to find that we still had the rapt attention of both the other passengers over the age of ten.

The elevator doors slid open again, and I fled through them, refusing to look back. “Until one or both of us decide we want to move on,” I explained finally.

“This will get him out of your system so you can finally start dating again. You know, you’ve been hung up on him for a very long time now,” Grace observed.

I frowned. Teenagers got “hung up,” I thought. Cinderella had pined for Prince Charming, and Snow White had been prepared to sleep forever without that kiss. I, on the other hand, was a thirty-five-year-old professional just stuffed to the brim with common sense and independence. I did not get “hung up” on anyone.

“So when does this deal start?” Grace asked when we reached the cafeteria.

“Maybe tonight.”

“Ah. There’s the floor that makes the feet feel cold.”

“I’m not hung up and I don’t have cold feet.”

“Mandy, you’re jumping around like a ballerina here. Whose idea was this anyway—yours or Sam’s?”

I thought about it as we collected our coffee. “His.”

“That makes it even better.”

We sat at a table and reached for the sugar canister at the same time. We both took our coffee black except when we were at the courthouse. The brew there is abysmal. I got to the little packets first and plucked out a whole handful of them. We divided them up, four apiece.

“I have another ulterior motive,” I said suddenly. “I’m thinking maybe it will get back to Mill that I’m seeing someone.”

Grace very rarely made a move that wasn’t smooth, but this almost made her snort her first sip of coffee out her nose. “What does Mill have to do with it?” she asked.

“He’s suing me for custody of Chloe.”

She went very still. “Bastard.”

“It’s the election.”

“Of course it’s the election. That’s what makes him a bastard.”

I felt the tension continue to uncoil and relax inside me. That’s the thing about friends. The good ones, the real ones, don’t just talk you down when you’re nervous about something and they don’t just reserve comment about why you need four sugars in your coffee and what that might do to your health. Real friends are always on your side. If you take it into your head to shoot someone, a real friend will help you hide the body before she asks you why you did it.

“What are you going to do?” Grace asked me now.

“Tear him limb from limb and use him for fertilizer.”

“You should ask Sam to represent you,” she said. “He’s got that amazing winning percentage.”

A lot of it had come at my expense, too. “He offered,” I said. “I think if Judge Larson is going to hear this, I’ll probably take him up on it.” The complexion of things had changed since we had talked about it last night and I had declined his offer. We had an arrangement now and I wanted Mill to know about it. And Larson would probably give Sam the moon and the stars if he batted those blue eyes at her just the right way.

Grace finally drained her coffee—courageous soul that she is—and stood. “I need to get back upstairs. The criminal element calls. If tonight turns out to be the big night for you two, would you like Jenny to take Chloe off your hands?”

Some people might have thought it odd that she would offer up her roommate’s services that way. I was used to it by now. “I’ll let you know.”

“Don’t use Mrs. Casamento,” she warned. “She’d be knocking on your door on an hourly basis, and that would be very tough on the libido.”

“Sam’s or mine?” I asked, standing as well.

“Sam’s. Yours is so primed, a scud missile couldn’t take it out.”

I didn’t even try to argue that one. I had been ignoring the little shock waves he created inside me for quite some time now. So I just nodded again. My neck was starting to hurt from all the up-and-down jerks I’d given it in the past twenty minutes or so, but I knew I could probably count a good neck rub in my immediate future.

We went back to the elevator bay, and Grace rode up while I headed down. When I hit the lobby again, I rooted my cell phone out of my briefcase. I called the office and told my secretary that something personal had come up so I wouldn’t be back today. It wasn’t really a lie. This was definitely personal with a capital P.

Wine had gotten me into this, I decided, and wine would get me through it. I stopped at a liquor store on my way home and hit the front door of my building at the precise moment a cab pulled up to the curb, toting Chloe and three other classmates whose mothers I’d made kiddie-travel arrangements with for purposes of school. It was my week to pay. Mrs. Casamento was waiting at the curb to collect Chloe for me and I took back the money I’d given her for the taxi.

“I’m home early today,” I explained. Then Chloe bulleted out of the taxi and threw herself into my arms. I caught her neatly and didn’t even come close to bobbling the bottle of Cabernet I’d bought.

“How come, Mom? This is cool!” Chloe shouted. I felt a spasm of guilt that she was so glad to see me. I wasn’t around after school nearly enough.

“Hard to make a living if you don’t work normal hours,” Sylvie Casamento judged.

“I don’t get paid by the hour,” I assured her. “It’s okay.”

“Thing is, I count on this money every afternoon,” she complained.

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