Page 14 of Danny Hall Gets a Lawyer (Goose Run #1)

People sometimes thought Cash was stupid because he didn’t talk and he hated to make eye contact, but he was sharp as hell. And always straight to the fucking point. There was no point in trying to dodge the question either.

I stayed at Miller’s.

I watched the little dots appear and disappear. At first I thought he must be writing an essay, but then his message came through: it was a pair of wide eyes and an eggplant. My phone pinged again.

Pro boner.

Which, fuck him for assuming, and fuck him twice for being right.

Miller was watching me out of the corner of his eye as he drove. “Everything okay?”

I pulled a face. “Cash just wanted to know where I was. I guess he saw my truck in the Sunny Fields parking lot and got worried.”

“All you guys are pretty close, right?”

“Yeah.” I looked down at my phone, then back at Miller. “Is it okay that he knows I stayed at your place?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You’re my lawyer.”

“I’m Jane’s lawyer.”

“Okay, but is this thing—” I waved a hand between us. “Is it something that you want to keep on the down-low?”

His forehead creased. “Why would I? I’m out.”

“Okay,” I said. “Cool. Me too.”

I ignored the flicker of anxiety in my gut.

I should have been glad Miller didn’t care if people found out we were hooking up, so why wasn’t I?

Was it because I’d assumed I was something he should be hiding?

I’d never in my life given a shit about who I was or where I came from, but that was because most everyone I hung around with, let alone slept with, was no different from me.

But Miller was a fucking lawyer . And if he didn’t have a problem with it, then how come I did?

And why did I even care? It wasn’t like we were actually dating. Maybe there was no problem and I was running on too little sleep, too much caffeine, and the stress of wondering how the hell I was going to afford to get my truck towed if I couldn’t figure out how to fix it later.

Yeah, that was it probably.

Just lack of sleep because of the best sex of my life.

I flashed Miller a grin, settled back, and listened to Creedence ask me if I’d ever seen the rain.

Bobby was a hell of a weirdo, but he was a good-natured, neighborly one.

He stopped by at the end of my shift to give me a lift over to Sunny Fields in Brodnax and even managed to get my truck started again.

I drove home and would have parked in the driveway except Harlan was standing there like an old scarecrow, glaring at me like he’d been waiting for hours.

I parked in the street and climbed out of the truck. “Is there a problem, Mr. Whittaker?”

He glared at me, arms folded. “I’ll say there’s a problem. Which one of you boys has been blasting music all day? A man can’t even take a nap listening to that noise!”

I tilted my head and listened, but the house was silent. “I don’t think anyone’s been home all day,” I said. “We all have jobs.”

Our schedules were sometimes all over the place, but I knew Cash was at Sunny Fields today and Chase had been at Goose Run Gas. Which only left Wilder, and his schedule was the most regular during the week. And it was clear from the empty driveway that I was the first one home.

“Bah!”

I backed toward the house. “It wasn’t us. Maybe it was the Greers on the other side of you.”

I doubted that too and silently apologized to the Greers in case Harlan gave them shit.

But I highly doubted there’d been any noise at all.

Harlan was just being an asshole. First the state of the yard, then the tree, and now this.

Maybe he thought if he threw enough shit our way, some of it would stick.

I escaped inside before he could yell at me some more and wondered if that was the sort of thing I should mention to Miller or to the cops. Like, I didn’t want to start anything, but also, Harlan had already started something, right? Fucked if I knew.

I was so wired that before I even knew what I was doing, I’d cleaned half the fucking bathroom. I hoped the other guys didn’t notice because if I’d started it, that was as good as volunteering to do the whole thing.

I thought about Miller’s nice clean apartment, and I had to admit it had been a pleasant change not to stick to the floor when I’d walked across his kitchen. Maybe we could start cleaning up more and make the place nicer.

Not the front yard, though, because fuck Harlan and his judgment.

On impulse I pulled out my phone and texted Miller.

Does it affect the case if Harlan is accusing us of shit we didn’t do?

The reply came back almost immediately.

It depends.

Thanks. Super helpful. Can see why you went to law school.

My phone buzzed with an incoming call and I almost dropped it in surprise. Who called people? “Hey, Miller.”

“Hey. What’s happened?”

“I got home, and Harlan’s making up bullshit about us playing loud music all day when none of us have been home.”

“Okay,” Miller said. “What I want you to do is call the police and make sure they log the call. They might send someone out and they might not, but you should ask for a reference number either way. It’ll show a pattern of Harlan harassing you guys.”

That sounded like something I really didn’t want to do, and it was lucky Miller couldn’t see the face I was pulling.

“If he escalates or, hell, if he just continues with his bullshit, we can look into getting you a peace bond or even a restraining order that keeps him off your property.”

“Shit.”

“It’s nothing you need to worry about for now,” Miller assured me, and I got a sudden flashback to last night when he’d talked in that same calm, measured tone, asking me exactly how much I could take. “But it’s good to get all our ducks in a row in case we need them later.”

Was bossy lawyer kink a thing? Because if it was, I had it. I’d approach his bench any time.

Wait, that was a judge.

Still, I’d examine his briefs if he asked me. I actually lost a little pocket of time thinking about how fine Miller’s ass looked in those boxer briefs of his.

“Danny? Are you still there?”

I realized I’d been silent for too long. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I was trying to remember if he’s done anything else,” I lied, because admitting I was thinking of his ass didn’t seem appropriate right now.

“Start taking notes,” Miller said. “Especially of anything that could be interpreted as a threat.”

“I will.”

“And call me if you have any problems with the police or you have any questions,” he said and paused before adding, “or you know, if you just wanna talk or something.”

“Or something” meant hooking up again, right? At least, I hoped that was what he meant. But to make sure he knew I was up for a repeat of last night, I lowered my voice to something like a purr. “Don’t worry, handsome. You’ll be the first one I call for a little somethin’ somethin’.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath, and then he let out a soft laugh that told me that yeah, we were on the same page. I smiled to myself. Okay, phone calls were better than texts for some things.

“Are you free on the weekend?” Miller asked. “We could?—”

“Yes,” I said immediately.

“You don’t know what I was going to say,” he said, a hint of laughter in his voice.

“I can take a wild guess, and it ain’t discussing the Hoover Dam.”

He laughed again, and I was about to tease him some more, but the front door banged open and Chase and Wilder came in, talking and laughing. They set the grocery bags they’d been carrying on the kitchen counter and eyeballed me.

I sighed. “The guys are home. I gotta go.”

“Okay. I’ll text you. Don’t forget to lodge that complaint,” he said.

“I won’t. And thanks again.”

I ended the call and when I looked up, Chase was wearing a shit-eating grin that could only mean he’d been talking to Cash. I ignored him and started unloading the groceries, pretending to read the ingredients on the peanut butter jar.

It didn’t stop him. “So, you and the hot lawyer, huh?” he said, his grin widening. “ Bow-chicka-bow-wow. ”

I thought about playing dumb, but what was the point? Chase was going to give me shit about it anyway, so I might as well get it over with. “Yeah, me and the hot lawyer,” I said, plastering a grin on my face. “Jealous?”

I expected Chase to laugh, but he surprised me by saying, “Kinda? He is super hot.”

“I’m straight and I’d still tap that,” Wilder agreed. “Dude is smoking.”

“Wow. Way to point out that I’m punching above my weight,” I said, ignoring both Wilder’s crazily inaccurate definition of straightness and the way the words stung more than a little. I already knew Miller was out of my league, okay?

But then Chase surprised me. “I dunno. You’re pretty cute,” he said, “and you’ve got that whole country boy charm thing going for you. I can see why he’s into you.”

I threw a packet of rice Chase’s way and said, “Shut up. You’re making it weird.”

He caught the packet and tossed it from hand to hand. “Nah. You’re not my type.”

“Nobody’s your type,” Wilder said.

He wasn’t wrong. Chase hadn’t dated anyone the entire time he’d lived here.

Wilder dug around in the grocery bags and loaded up the fridge with string cheese and yogurt for when Grace came to visit. When he turned around, his brow was creased like it got when he’d thought too hard about something. “Isn’t it like, illegal to fuck your lawyer?”

“Oooh, good point,” Chase said. “Isn’t that a conflict of interest or something?”

I rolled my eyes. “He’s not my lawyer. He’s Grandma’s. So it’s fine. And anyway, we’re just fooling around. It ain’t serious.”

And it wasn’t. We were just hooking up, and even if I’d wanted it to go further—and I wasn’t saying I did—there was no way Miller would be interested in someone like me, except as a casual hookup.

So it was lucky we were on the same page, right?

Right.