Egomaniac

I lifted my buzzing cell to my ear, catching the time as I did. Almost eleven p.m.—late for anyone to call.

“Hello?”

“Emerie?”

That voice. I didn’t have to ask who it was. In person, his voice was deep and raspy, but it was downright gravelly on the phone.

“Drew? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Because it’s sort of late.”

I heard the phone move around and then, “Shit. Sorry. I had no idea. I just looked at the time. I thought it was maybe nine.”

“Time flies when you spend most of the day in court with criminals, doesn’t it?”

“Guess so. I went back home, started to catch up on some work, then stopped in my office. I must’ve lost track of time.”

“I came back home, had a few glasses of wine, and felt sorry for myself some more. Your evening sounds way more productive. Are you still in the office?”

“Yeah. That’s what made me call you. I’m sitting here thinking that when you find a new office, it’s going to look very nice.”

What an odd thing to say. “Thank you. But what makes you say that?”

“Glass and dark wood. I like it. I would have taken you for something more girly, though.”

“What are you—oh, no. They delivered my office furniture today?”

“They did.”

“How? How did they even get in when you were with me all day?”

“My contractor was here finishing up, and I hadn’t had a chance to tell him what went down yet. He thought he was doing you a favor by letting them in.”

I banged my head against my kitchen counter, then kept my forehead pressed to it to stop from bludgeoning myself. I couldn’t catch the groan that came from my mouth, though.

“I’m sorry. I’ll deal with it right away. First thing in the morning.”

“Take your time. My stuff is still in storage. I can keep it here for a while.”

“Thank you. I’m so sorry. I’ll get on the phone first thing in the morning and make them come back and get it. Then I’ll come wait at your office so you don’t have to deal with it, if that’s okay.”

“Of course.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying you’re sorry, Emerie. Ex-cons are hardened. They don’t apologize. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I laughed, because it kept me from crying.

“Hello?” I knocked on the half-opened door and listened to my voice echo back to me. The door pushed open, and I was surprised to find the lobby area still empty. I thought my furniture would have been dropped here.

In the distance, I heard a voice, but couldn’t make it out. I stepped inside and yelled a little louder. “Hello? Drew?”

Rapid footsteps clanked against the new marble flooring, each step growing louder until Drew appeared from the hallway. He had his cellphone up to his ear and held up a finger as he continued with his call.

“We don’t want the house in Breckenridge. My client hates the cold. She can keep it, but it will be the only property she’s leaving this marriage with.” A pause, then, “No, I’m not nuts. After I hang up, I’m going to send you some photos of the Breckenridge property. I think they’ll convince you that Mrs. Hollister really enjoys that house.”

Just then, a FedEx deliveryman appeared with a hand truck full of boxes. Drew moved the phone from his ear to speak to him. “Give me one minute.”

Deciding the least I could do was help him out, I signed for the delivery and asked the nice delivery man to stack the boxes on top of the plastic-covered reception counter. Drew mouthed thank you and continued his call.

While he was semi-yelling at whoever was on the other end of the conversation, I took a minute to check him out. He wore what I assumed by the fit was a very expensive suit. The sleeve on the arm holding the cell was pushed back, revealing a big, expensive-looking watch. His shoes were shiny and his shirt crisply pressed. His hair was dark and too long for a man who shined his shoes, and his skin was tanned from his recent vacation, which made his very light green eyes stand out even brighter.

But it was his lips that were impossible not to stare at—so full and perfectly shaped. He really is beautiful. I wasn’t sure I’d ever thought of a man as beautiful before. Handsome, yes. Hot, even. But beautiful fit the bill to describe Drew Jagger—no other word did him justice.

He finished up his call. “Seriously, Max, how many cases have you been on the other side of the table staring at my pretty face? You don’t know when I’m not bluffing by now? Look at the photos, then let me know your answer on the offer. I think you’ll find it more than fair after things are put in perspective for you. Her twenty-year-old ski instructor was teaching her a new kind of snowplow. Offer’s on the table for forty-eight hours. Then I have to make another phone call to you, which means my client gets another bill and your offer goes down by a fuck of a lot.”

Drew pushed a button on his phone and looked up at me, about to speak, when it started to buzz in his hand. “Shit.” He sighed, eyes flicking to his phone again and back to me. “Sorry. I need to take this, too.”

A Poland Spring delivery guy wheeling big jugs of water knocked at the front door. I looked at Drew. “I got it. Go take your call.”

Over the next fifteen minutes that Drew was on the phone, I turned away a solicitor, answered the ringing office phone buried under a tarp—twice—and signed for some legal documents served to the Law Offices of Drew M. Jagger. I was bluffing my way through a prospective client call when Drew reappeared.

“We’ll have to thank Mr. Aiken for recommending you.” I listened for a moment and then added, “Our rate is…” I caught Drew’s eye. “Seven hundred an hour.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“Sure. Why don’t I make you an appointment for an initial consultation? Let me put you on hold for just a minute so I can look up Mr. Jagger’s calendar.”

I pressed the button and held out my hand, palm up. “Is your calendar synched on your phone?”

Drew pulled his phone from his pocket and handed it to me. “It is.”

Opening his mobile Outlook calendar, I scanned for the next opening. There was nothing for a solid month. “Can you move your dinner with someone named Monica from six to eight, and I’ll book Mr. Patterson for four-thirty next Wednesday? He said it’s urgent. He may need a restraining order to protect his assets like you did for Mr. Aiken.”

“Done.”

I reconnected the call. “How about four-thirty next Wednesday, the eighth? That’s perfect? Great. And our standard retainer is—” I looked to Drew, and he held up ten fingers. “Twelve thousand…Okay, thank you. We look forward to seeing you then. Goodbye.”

Drew looked amused as I hung up. “Did I raise my hourly rates from six seventy-five to seven hundred?”

“No. That extra twenty-five dollars is mine. For every hour you bill him, you can take it off of what I owe you. I figured out that my bill for eight hours yesterday is fifty-four hundred dollars—I pay the standard rate, of course, not Mr. Patterson’s inflated rate—so if you could bill Mr. Patterson for a few hundred hours, that would be great.”

Drew chuckled. “There’s the spitfire who attacked me with her mad Krav Maga skills a few nights ago. Your lack of tenacity had me concerned yesterday.”

“I was arrested and almost thrown in jail.”

“I’m heartbroken. You had such little faith that I would get you off?”

“That woman was out for my blood at first yesterday. What did you say to her to get her to change her tune anyway?”

“We made a deal.”

I squinted. “What did you have to give her in return for lightening up on me?”

Drew looked me in the eyes. “Nothing important.”

The office phone began to ring again behind me. “Do you want me to…”

He waved me off. “The answering service will pick it up. Come on, I’ll show you your furniture.”

“I thought it would be in the lobby.”

“Tom thought he was helping, so he had them set it up in my office.”

I followed Drew down the hall, and he opened the door to the large office next to the file room I’d been working in. The other day when I was here, it hadn’t been done—moldings and trim still needed to be hung, and everything was covered by tarps. The contractor must have worked all day yesterday to get it finished.

“Wow. It looks beautiful in here. Except…” I thought better of sharing my thought and shook my head. “Nothing. It looks beautiful.”

“Except what? What were you going to say?”

“The office is beautiful. It really is—tall ceilings, wide crown moldings, except…everything is white. Why didn’t you paint any color? It’s kind of boring all white.”

He shrugged. “I like things simple. Black and white.”

I snorted. “Good thing you came back when you did, then. I’d already picked out a bright yellow for your office. Copy room was going to be red.”

My beautiful desk actually did look amazing in his giant office, even with the boring white paint. The top was a thick tempered glass, and the bottom had dark mahogany legs shaped like a workhorse. I wasn’t generally a modern furniture person, but the desk was so beautiful and serene-looking that I had to have it.

“The furniture company wouldn’t give me a time, but they’re supposed to come today to pick it back up. They wanted to charge me a forty-percent restocking and pickup fee. Took me an hour on the phone with a manager to explain they’d violated their own delivery contract by letting an unauthorized person take delivery.”

“You’re good on the phone.”

“I worked as a customer service rep for a printer company through college. I remember what made me really listen and bend the rules for a customer after a long day of complaint calls.”

Drew’s cell phone began to ring again. He looked down at it, then decided not to answer.

“Take it. I’ll get out of your way. God knows I’ve taken up enough of your time. And you seem really busy.”

“It’s okay. I don’t need to answer it.”

“Is it just you in this big space all alone?”

“I normally have a paralegal and a secretary. But my secretary went out on a few months of medical leave two weeks ago, and my paralegal decided to go to law school out of state.”

“Sounds like you’re going to be pretty busy.”

His cell phone rang again, and this time he said he needed to take the call. He told me to make myself at home, but…there wasn’t really anything to do. Drew went into the file room and sat down at the table I’d been using as my desk, and I went back to the lobby. After removing the rest of the plastic from the reception desk, I found some cleaning supplies in the bathroom and wiped it down before setting up my laptop.

In between catching up on emails, I answered the office phone and took messages.

When Drew came back out an hour later, he looked annoyed. “My cell phone died. Could I borrow yours for a few minutes? My cordless is in storage with the rest of my crap, and I was almost done hammering out a settlement. I don’t want to give the attorney time to reconsider all the stupid things he just agreed to.”

I lifted my phone. “By all means.”

Drew took a few steps away and stopped. “What’s the password?”

“Ummm. Fuck.”

“You don’t want me to know your password?”

“No. My password is fuck.”

Drew chuckled. “Girl after my own heart.” Then he typed it in and was gone again.

By the time noon rolled around, my stomach was growling since I woke up late and hadn’t eaten any breakfast. But I couldn’t leave the office and chance missing the furniture delivery company again. When I heard Drew take a break from talking on the phone, I ventured to the file room.

“Do you usually order lunch? I’m afraid to go out and miss the delivery.”

“Sometimes. What are you in the mood for?”

I shrugged. “I don’t care. I’m not picky.”

“How about Indian food? Curry House is a few blocks away and delivers quick.”

I scrunched up my nose.

“You don’t like Indian food?”

“Not really.”

“Okay. How about Chinese?”

“Too much MSG.”

“Sushi?”

“I’m allergic to fish.”

“Mexican?”

“Too heavy for lunch.”

“You do understand what the phrase I’m not picky means, right?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Of course. You’re just picking weird stuff.”

“What would you like to eat, Emerie?”

“Pizza?”

He nodded. “Pizza it is. See? I’m not picky.”

After we finished lunch, Drew took his phone from the charger. Then he reached for mine. “Can I look at your pictures?”

“My phone pictures? Why?”

“Best way to get to know someone is to look at their cell phone pictures when they least expect it.”

“I’m not even sure what I have on there.”

“That’s the point. If you have a chance to clean up your pictures, I won’t be seeing the real you. I’ll be seeing what you want me to see.”

I tried to remember if there was anything embarrassing or incriminating on the phone as Drew slid it from my side of the table to his with a smirk on his face. At the last second, I covered his hand with mine, stopping him.

“Wait. I want to look at yours if you’re going to look at mine. And you better have some embarrassing things on there, because I’m pretty sure I do.”

“By all means. I don’t embarrass easily.” Drew slid his phone across the folding table.

I watched as he keyed in the password and began to swipe through my photos. After a moment he paused, and his eyebrows rose. “This one tells me a lot about you.”

I reached for the phone, but he pulled it back too fast. “What? What photo is it?”

Drew turned the phone so the screen faced me. Oh, God. How embarrassing. It was a close-up of me last week while I was working. I’d had a full day of telephone therapy sessions, and my speakerphone had decided to stop working bright and early on that Monday morning. I didn’t have time to run out and get a new office phone, and by early afternoon I was frustrated with not being able to multitask because one hand had to hold the phone to my ear. So I’d gotten creative. I’d taken two large, orange rubber bands and put them around the phone and my head—effectively banding the phone in place so I didn’t have to hold it anymore. One of the rubber bands ran across my forehead, slightly above my eyebrows and pushed my brow down, giving me an odd, scrunched face. The other rubber band wrapped around my chin, causing the skin to pucker into a very crooked chin dimple that I didn’t normally have.

“My speaker phone died, and I had a lot of telephone calls that day. I needed to be able to use my hands.”

He chuckled. “Inventive. There hasn’t been a good iPhone update since Steve Jobs died. You might want to look into selling them your new technology.”

I crumpled up my napkin and threw it at his face. “Shut up.”

He swiped a few more times and then stopped. This time, I couldn’t make out what he was thinking.

“What? What did you stall on?”

He stared at the photo for a long moment and swallowed before again turning it to face me. It was a full-length photo taken the night I went to a wedding with Baldwin. It was, without a doubt, the best I’d ever looked in a photo. I’d had my hair and makeup professionally done, and the dress I wore fit me like a glove. It was simple—black and sleeveless with a daring, low-cut V that showed off my cleavage and curves. The dress was more risqué than I would normally wear, and I’d been feeling confident and pretty. Although that lasted only about fifteen minutes after Baldwin took that photo, right up until I answered the door to his apartment and realized he was bringing a date to the wedding we’d both been invited to. And that date wasn’t me.

Remembering the sadness I’d felt that night, I said, “Wedding.”

Drew nodded and stared at the photo again before looking back up to me. “You look gorgeous. Sexy as hell.”

I felt the blush creep up my face. I hated having fair skin for this exact reason. “Thank you.”

He swiped a few more times and turned the cell back to me. “Boyfriend?”

That one had been taken a few minutes after Baldwin told me how beautiful I looked and took that full-length photo of me. His arm was wrapped around my waist, and I was smiling and gazing at him as he took the selfie. His date had rung the doorbell right after that shot. The rest of the night was all forced smiles.

“No.”

“Ex-boyfriend?”

“No.”

He looked down again and back up at me. “There’s a story here, isn’t there?”

“How do you know?”

“Your face. The way you’re looking at him.”

It’s pretty sad that a virtual stranger was able to see my feelings after ten seconds of looking at a photo of us, yet Baldwin never was. I could have lied, but for some reason I didn’t.

“We met in undergrad school. He was the TA for my psychology class while working on his doctorate. He’s one of my closest friends. I actually live in the apartment next to him.”

“It didn’t work out?”

“We never tried. He doesn’t feel the same way about me.”

Drew looked like he was going to say more, but just nodded and resumed his picture snooping. By the time he was done, he really had learned a lot about me. He’d seen photos of my two little sisters, including some selfies we’d taken with the dog before I moved to New York. He knew about my feelings for Baldwin, and he was aware of how creative I could be in my need to multitask.

When he slid the phone back to me on the table, I asked, “So…you said checking out each other’s photos would tell us a lot about the other person. What did my photos tell you about me?”

“Family oriented, brokenhearted, and a little bit of a nutjob.”

I wanted to be offended at that last part, but it was hard when he was completely on point. Although I wasn’t going to admit he was right. Instead, I reached for his cell.

“Password?”

He smirked. “Suck.”

“Get out of here. You just changed yours.”

He shook his head. “Nope. It’s one of my favorite words for a multitude of reasons. You suck is grumbled under my breath at people at least once a day. And, of course, who doesn’t love a good suck?”

“You’re a perv.”

“Says the woman whose password is fuck.”

“I made my password fuck because I could never remember what my password was, and every time I entered the wrong one, I would grumble fuck. Baldwin suggested I just make it fuck the last time I was locked out of my own phone.”

“Baldwin?”

Our eyes caught. “The guy in the photo.”

Drew nodded.

For some reason, talking about Baldwin to Drew made me feel uncomfortable, so I changed the subject. Typing suck into his iPhone, I said, “Let’s see what I learn about you, counselor.”

Drew clasped his hands behind his head and sat back in his chair, watching me. “Have at it.”

I found the photos icon and opened it. Seeing nothing, I went to the camera app and opened it. Nothing was there either.

“You have no photos? I thought this was an exercise to learn about each other.”

“It was.”

“And what exactly did I just learn about you with a camera full of nothing?”

“You learned I don’t play fair.”