He shrugged with mock innocence, so I flipped him off. He just laughed and clapped my shoulder. “Anyway, I’ll let you get back to your lunch. Just wanted to say hello.”
He bowed out and continued over to his usual seat by the fireplace.
Kelly glanced over his shoulder, then lowered his voice to nearly a whisper. “Am I imagining things? Or is he a Dom?”
I barked a laugh and squeezed his arm. “What gave him away?”
“Wait, I was right?”
“Mmhmm. He even does demos here sometimes.”
“Here?” He tapped the table. “You mean, here, like here at the coffee shop?”
“Well, not out in the open.” I motioned past him. “There’s a back room where they sometimes have private events. Including kinky ones.”
His lips parted. “No way.”
“Hand to God. I’ve done a few of them myself.”
“Okay, that does it.” Kelly pushed his chair back. “Give me a sec. I’m going to see if they’re hiring.”
And as he strode toward the front, I just chuckled.
Something told me he’d love working here.
Thirty-One
Aaron
When I’d told Will the other day that I was pretty sure I was in the calm before the shitstorm, I’d been right on the money.
Two days after our lunch date with Kelly, things had gone from quiet to me seriously wondering if some other city was kicking some of their criminal case overflow to Laurelsburg or something. What the hell.
Today was one of those days I’d been warned about repeatedly in law school—one thing after another, and it all just rudely kept on coming long after I’d hit the wall. Tom had apparently been getting hammered by work too, because he was still typing away in the office across the hall even though six o’clock was a distant memory.
My morning had started at the courthouse with three—three—DUI clients on the docket. One had wisely taken the wet reckless charge offered by the DA, which meant she wasn’t going to jail or losing her license. She still had to pay a fine and take an alcohol treatment course, but she wouldn’t have a DUI on her record. With as shaken as she was by the whole ordeal, I strongly suspected she was going to be one of those offenders who never drove under the influence again. She knew she’d messed up, that she could’ve killed someone, and that the conviction could’ve upended her entire life. So I was confident this was one of those times when the system worked and scared someone straight.
The second client was a repeat offender, and who’d also wisely pled out. The DA and I had quickly come to an agreement of what was fair, and the client would be spending a few months in jail, paying a serious fine, and losing his license. Upon completion of an alcohol treatment course when he got out, he could start the long, expensive process of getting his driver’s license back, but any additional alcohol-related offenses would mean he lost his license for good. He’d better hope the threats stuck this time.
Client number three…ugh.
Sometimes, I swore I had clients who were bound and determined to go to jail. Maybe they liked the food there. Maybe they liked the ambiance. Or maybe they were just too damned full of themselves to understand that there came a time when the best thing to do was damage control. In this case, damage control meant trying to negotiate for a lesser charge and an easier sentence.
When a dozen people had witnessed three others trying to physically stop you from leaving the bar that cut you off because you were too drunk, and then you totaled three parked cars—including a police cruiser with its dashcam running and the body-camera-wearing officers watching from ten feet away—before crashing into a lamppost? That was damage control time.
But nooo. He wanted to go to trial. He wanted his due process, and he wanted a jury to decide, and no one was going to persuade him otherwise.
So that had happened, and now I had a trial to prepare for in addition to catching up on everything I’d had to put off while I was at the courthouse longer than I’d anticipated. Especially after we’d gone into the courtroom and he’d nearly found himself in contempt of court because he would not keep his mouth shut. And then we’d stood in the hallway outside the courtroom for an hour discussing whether this was actually a good idea or if he was