update from him.
She heard a clang from the kitchen, and a curse that sounded like Casey’s voice, followed by a quick laugh that might have come from Kyle. She glanced that way, then looked back at the names on her screen, her slight smile fading. Someone on this list had set her up, framed her for leaking confidential client information to the media in return for under-the-table payments. Because of that untrue accusation, she had lost a position she’d spent several long, hard years working to achieve. Until she proved her innocence, her career—her very life—was on hold.
“So, when are you coming home?”
Leaning back in a patio chair on the deck of the tiny, A-frame cabin in which he was staying—one of the two cabins currently under renovation and not rented during this off-peak season, the other being Natalie’s—Casey gazed at the wooded path stretched in front of him, and tried to come up with a satisfactory answer to his cousin’s question. “I don’t know, exactly,” he said into the cell phone he held to his ear. “A couple more weeks, maybe.”
“You’ve been there almost two weeks already,” Aaron Walker complained. “What are you doing there all this time?”
“Kyle and Mack are renovating two of their vacation cabins during the off season, and I volunteered to give them a hand.”
“You’re doing carpentry work?” Aaron made no effort to hide his skepticism.
“Yeah. And a little plumbing. Some painting. Cleaning gutters. That sort of thing.”
“You. Plumbing. That can’t be good.”
Casey was glad Aaron couldn’t see him wince as he remembered the way he’d soaked Natalie with a spray of cold water. Wouldn’t Aaron and his twin, Andrew, have gotten unholy delight out of that scene? Not to mention their slightly older cousin, Jason, who was always commenting on the younger trio’s proclivity for trouble.
Maybe he’d tell them about his first real attempt at plumbing sometime. But not now. “I’m doing okay. Kyle said I’ve been a lot of help.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve had your vacation and you’ve gotten to play with tools. So, don’t you think it’s time to come home now? Everybody’s asking about you. And this hiatus can’t look good to the powers that be at your firm. If it weren’t for the family connections, there’s no way they’d have let a junior associate take off this long without repercussions.”
Casey scowled in response to the reminder of those “family connections.” It was true that his paternal aunt Michelle D’Alessandro was one of the firm’s wealthiest and most prestigious clients. And that his maternal grandfather was a nationally known and admired prosecutor in Chicago, who’d roomed with the senior partner in Casey’s Dallas firm years ago back in their college days and had maintained that friendship ever since. And that Casey’s father was a partner in the largest and most respected private investigation and security company in Dallas and his mother the CEO of an acclaimed accounting firm. All of which might have gotten him hired in the first place, but he’d worked damned hard to justify that decision. He’d earned every dollar of his generous paychecks.
At least, he’d thought so until he’d lost the first truly high-profile case he’d been assigned. Not only had it been a defeat, it had been a particularly painful, public and humiliating one. His friends and family had rallied around him, assuring him that every attorney suffered losses, but there had been more than a few in the Dallas legal community who had taken great pleasure in seeing “the wonderboy,” as they had dubbed him, taken down a few pegs.
A week after that loss, he had suffered a second career blow. Only that time, at the hands of an arrogant young man Casey had successfully defended in a previous charge, an innocent person had died. And Casey still wondered if he was at least partially to blame for that tragedy.
“I just needed some time off,” he insisted to his cousin. “I haven’t had a break in—well, ever. Working every summer during high school and college, straight into law school, and from there directly into the job at the firm. I always meant to take a vacation, but the time never seemed to be right.”
“And you think it’s right now?” Aaron asked skeptically. “After—well, you know?”
“After I lost the Parmenter case, you mean? Yeah. I think I need this vacation now more than I’ve ever needed it before.”
There was a long pause, and then Aaron spoke again, an uncharacteristic note of caution in his voice. “Um, I suppose you’ve heard that Tamara and Fred have been getting a lot of face time around town lately?”
“Yeah, I heard they’ve been seen together at every highbrow event in Dallas for the past few weeks. And that they have an uncanny talent for being in exactly the right place every time a flashbulb goes off so their picture makes the society pages the next day.”
“Carly said she and Richard attended a charity thing this past weekend and Tamara was there flashing a doorknob-sized diamond ring. No official engagement has been announced, but…well, Carly said Tamara was looking very much like a canary-eating cat.”
“That I can believe.”
“So, uh, if they are engaged—how do you feel about that?”
“Honestly, I don’t care. If Tamara wants to marry Fred, more power to her. I hope they’ll have a great life with a couple of McMansions, two perfect kids, and a permanent spot on the social registry. That’s what she always dreamed of.”
“And she thought she was going to get there with you.”
“I guess. Until she decided that Fred will get her there faster, already being a partner in a rival firm and all.”
She had made that decision, at least openly, right after Casey’s big courtroom loss. Apparently, she’d been debating it for some time before that. And she had explored her options by seeing Fred behind Casey’s back, a juicy tidbit that had been discussed in the break rooms and around the water coolers for several weeks before Tamara had bothered to bring him into the loop. She had done so with a blunt announcement that their long-standing, though unofficial, engagement was at an end.
It took a great deal of effort, sacrifice and ruthless calculation to make it to the very peak of the social heap, she had informed him entirely without irony. She had at first thought he was willing to invest himself fully in that mission, but lately she’d been having doubts. She had no such reservations about Fred, who cared every bit as much about status and image as she did.
“You really should come home,” Aaron urged again, breaking into Casey’s grim memories. “Be seen around town with a couple of hot women. Andy and I just happen to know a few to introduce you to. Show Tamara, and everyone else, that you’re not sitting around pining for her. Get back to work, win a couple of big cases, prove you’ve still got the stuff, which we all know you do. Have some fun, raise some hell on the weekends. Just like the old days, you know?”
Casey knew what “old days” his cousin referred to. In their teens, he and the twins had been known in the family as “the terrible trio” because of the lengths they had gone to in pursuit of a good time. Practical jokes, daredevil escapades, impulsive road trips. Weekends had been their time to raise some hell. And they had excelled at that as much as they had in their separate educational pursuits.
“I’ll be home soon,” he said, unwilling to commit any more than that. “Besides, Molly and Kyle really do need my assistance
