and Brock smiled at her in answer. He relaxed for the first time in days and held her close to him.
“Just make sure good manners don't keep you married to him, or my manners are going to fall apart in a hurry. I may kill him.” Brock was the gentlest person she knew, and she knew he didn't mean it. He just wanted her out of her marriage to Sam, and she didn't blame him. She wanted that too. But in the right way, at the right time, without causing even more damage.
They spent an easy weekend on the beach, and packed up their things with regret on Monday. He had rented a station wagon to take everything home with them, and they were unpacking her things at her apartment when Sam came home with Annabelle. And she looked a lot happier than she did after her weekends with Daphne, but this time Sam looked a little startled. Suddenly, seeing Brock help her unload the car made Sam realize that there was more to it than just work at the office.
“Can I give you a hand?” Sam asked politely, carrying a box into the front hall. He suddenly felt like a stranger in what had been his home, and he realized he didn't belong there. Brock was painfully polite to him, and Alex was very pleasant, but when he saw Annabelle with them, he realized that this was a unit he could no longer interfere with. They were part of it, and he wasn't.
He left shortly afterwards, feeling depressed, and Brock looked pleased. There was no question. The message had been clear. “She's mine now,” and Sam had got it.
Chapter 21
Annabelle went back to nursery school after Labor Day, and the rest of them went back to their usual routine. Alex had taken on her full workload again, and she appeared in court almost daily. Brock was still helping her, but he had his own cases too, and they didn't work as constantly together as they had while she was in chemo. And they both agreed that they missed it.
Several of her partners had commended her for her fortitude in hanging in while she was sick, and she had become something of a legend in the law firm. And in spite of the amount of time they still spent together almost every day, no one had yet figured out that she and Brock were seriously involved with each other. It had remained a well-kept secret.
Brock spent every night with them after work, but he still kept his own apartment, and most of the time, he slept there. Neither of them thought it would be good for Annabelle to have him living there full time, so he forced himself to get up in the middle of the night and go home, which they both hated. He only spent the night there, in the guest room, on weekends. And both Brock and Alex were anxious to tell Sam about the divorce, and get their life in order quickly, if only to get a good night's sleep, as Brock put it. But Annabelle was crazy about him, and probably wouldn't have minded if he'd moved in completely.
In September, Sam's trial was more than two months away. And by October, his meetings at the firm had stepped up radically with Phillip Smith and the team he'd created to mount Sam's defense. It was going to be a tough case to win, and they all knew it. Even Sam had few illusions. He'd closed his office by then, and all of the employees had been discharged. In the end, they had cheated people out of roughly twenty-nine million dollars. It could have been a lot worse, but Sam had done what he could to minimize clients' losses, and he was trying to activate whatever insurance policies he could to reimburse people for the difference. But no matter how you looked at it, it was ugly. His efforts to help people recoup what they could was not to improve his defense but simply part of who he always had been. If anything, he seemed more himself now. He seemed happier and more at peace, although when Alex saw him at meetings with Phillip, he was strained, and often nervous. The prospect of going to prison terrified him, but he also realized it was a strong possibility. Phillip had told him more than once that keeping him out of jail was going to be a long shot.