Page 3 of Danny Hall Gets a Lawyer (Goose Run #1)

MILLER

M issy Thurston-Wallace wafted into the meeting room on a cloud of perfume so sweet and overpowering it could be classed as a felony assault.

She perched on the edge of her chair and crossed her ankles delicately before flashing me a blinding smile.

“Miller,” she cooed, “it’s so good to see you again. ”

The feeling was not mutual.

Missy Thurston-Wallace was my least favorite client, and that was even taking the local meth dealers into account.

At least they didn’t waggle their feet in my direction, trying to draw my attention to their anklets.

Of course, their anklets were supplied by the Virginia Department of Corrections and not Cartier.

“Good morning, Ms. Thurston-Wallace,” I said.

She laughed as though I’d said something funny and pressed a well-manicured hand to her ample chest. “Oh, call me Missy, Miller. Everyone does!”

I cleared my throat and opened the folder in front of me. “Ms. Thurston-Wallace.” And then I stopped, because it was the wrong folder. This wasn’t Missy Thurston-Wallace’s file. This was real estate paperwork for someone called Alfred Prentice.

That fucking intern, seriously.

Those names weren’t even alphabetically close.

“Excuse me one moment,” I said and stood up.

“Oh, I’ll be waiting right here!”

I forced a smile and left the meeting room.

Missy’s file wasn’t on the desk in my office and there was no sign of the intern, so I had to go and pull the file from the records room myself.

As I made my way back to the room, I stopped to brush dog hair off the front of my pants.

It was a never-ending battle, even though I didn’t own a dog.

My boss did, and he brought it into work regularly.

The thing shed enough hair that I could have built myself an entire new dog out of the tufts of fur that gathered in the corners.

“Work in a small office, they said. It’s an experience, they said,” I muttered under my breath.

To a certain extent, that was right. Hopewell was a small city and Fisher Law was a small firm, so we dealt with both civil and criminal cases.

In a big firm, you’d never work on contract law one day and a bail hearing the next.

I loved the variety of the work. I just hated the small-town drama that came with it.

We were a law firm, not the local diner, but a day didn’t go by that someone didn’t drop in just to “catch up.” Why the hell I needed to see pictures of Mrs. Alderson’s new grandbabies, I still hadn’t figured out.

But my boss assured me it was all part of the job, so I smiled and made the right noises and definitely didn’t tell her that they looked like little bald aliens.

I left that for the intern and he didn’t disappoint.

Still, Mrs. Alderson had only laughed and said, “Oh, aren’t you a hoot?”

A fucking nightmare, more like, I thought as I dug through the filing cabinets. I finally found Missy’s file under M, because of course I did. My boss had assured me that the intern was smart as a whip, but I had serious doubts. The guy turned up at the office in sneakers, for crying out loud.

I ducked back into the meeting room and took my seat, pretending not to notice that the top two buttons on Missy’s blouse were now undone. I opened the file and said, “So to refresh, we’re going for a no-fault divorce, correct?”

Missy cleared her throat and pulled an iPad out of her bag and slid it across the table with a manicured fingertip. “Actually, I have something to show you that might change that.”

“Oh?”

Missy nodded, eyes wide. She leaned forward and whispered, “ Infidelity .”

I felt a wave of sympathy for her. She might have been annoying, but nobody deserved to be cheated on. Missy tapped the screen, bringing up a video. As soon as it started playing, any sympathy I might have felt shriveled up and died like a neglected houseplant.

Somebody was cheating in that marriage, but it wasn’t Chad Thurston-Wallace, her soon-to-be ex-husband.

Okay, so for a second I’d been interested when I’d seen the young, hot Latino guy who wasn’t Chad stroll into frame in what looked like a generic hotel room.

Did Chad have a secret gay boyfriend? Given he was on the town council, he’d probably want to settle very quickly, and very generously, to keep this from getting out.

But no, it wasn’t Chad who followed the hot guy into the frame.

It was Missy, wearing a g-string and a pair of stripper heels.

I swallowed a groan and closed my eyes. I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“The infidelity part is just coming up,” Missy said helpfully.

“Okay,” I said, opening my eyes. That was a mistake because the video was still playing and the g-string had vanished.

I tapped the screen frantically, trying to pause the video.

Somehow I zoomed in instead and almost smashed the iPad when I flipped it over and slammed it on the table.

I could still hear the audio, though. The sounds of Missy moaning would haunt my dreams tonight.

“I don’t think this is helpful to your case. ”

“But it’s infidelity, right?” she asked me.

“Yes, but when someone brings proof of infidelity as a reason for divorce, it’s usually not their own.”

“Oh,” said Missy, blinking rapidly. From the iPad, she screamed, “Oh, papi!” which was more than I ever wanted to know about her.

I flipped the iPad over in one last attempt to shut it down, which again proved to be a mistake when I copped an eyeful of Missy bouncing up and down, riding her boyfriend like a mechanical bull. I slammed it face down on the table and shoved it away from me like it had the plague.

“But you said a fault divorce was quicker,” she said. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose again. “Does your husband know about this?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I don’t believe there should be any secrets in a marriage.”

I stifled a sigh. Chad Thurston-Wallace’s lawyer was going to die laughing next time he saw me. Right before he hung my client and me out to dry.

Missy leaned forward and smoothed a nonexistent curl behind her ear. “Of course, I’ll be single soon,” she said, “so I’ll be free to date.”

Nope. Nope nope nope.

“Well, your boyfriend will be pleased to hear that,” I said brightly, deliberately misunderstanding her.

She huffed out a breath, then shuffled her chair closer and fluttered her fake lashes. “I’m not seeing anyone.”

I had to hand it to her, she was determined. But she was barking up the wrong tree here. Heck, she was in the wrong neck of the woods completely. She just hadn’t realized it, and I wasn’t about to tell her.

“Ms. Thurston-Wallace?—”

“Missy.”

“Ms. Thurston-Wallace,” I said firmly, “thank you for the video. In light of this new information, I’ll arrange a meeting with your husband’s attorney and see if your husband is willing to budge on anything.

” He wouldn’t be, I was sure. I wished I could say I could hardly blame him, but they were honestly both awful people and this divorce had already been dragging out forever.

The only thing they agreed on was that they didn’t want to be married anymore.

“When I hear back, I’ll call you to arrange another meeting. ”

The sounds from the iPad finally came to a stop. I waited a few seconds to make sure there wasn’t some kind of last-minute post-credits scene, then reached over and retrieved it. I handed it back to her with the screen facing away from me.

“Are you sure you don’t need to watch the whole thing?” she asked. “For legal reasons?”

“Oh no, I’ve seen more than I ever needed to,” I said, picking up her file and clutching it tightly to my chest like a shield. “I’ll be in touch.”

Missy pouted but took the hint and stood as well. “You can call me anytime, sugar,” she said, fluttering her lashes again before she sashayed out of the meeting room.

Once she was gone, I dropped back into my chair and blew out a shaky breath, reminding myself that my whole career wasn’t going to be spent dealing with the Missy Thurston-Wallaces of the world.

I was going into contract law, just as soon as I had some more experience under my belt.

This job was only temporary, a way to cut my teeth and learn the ins and outs of legal work.

Then I’d get a job at a proper law firm in a big city— one where the interns knew how to dress and how to file things properly.

There was a knock at the door before it opened and Callahan, my boss, popped his head around the frame. “Saw Missy leaving,” he said. “That was quick. This mean the case is about wrapped up?”

I groaned. “I wish. She wants an at fault divorce because it’s quicker. She brought in evidence of infidelity.”

His eyebrows shot up and he opened the door far enough that he could lean against the frame. “Well, that’s bad news for Chad but great for us.”

“Not exactly. It wasn’t Chad who was cheating. It was a video of her and some guy.” I ran a hand through my hair. “I didn’t think my morning would include getting blindsided by a video of Missy in a thong—or worse, without a thong—but here we are.”

Callahan looked like he was fighting back the urge to laugh, and I appreciated that he was at least making the effort because it really wasn’t funny.

“It gets worse,” I said. “Her husband knows.”

My boss hissed between his teeth, all traces of humor disappearing. “Damn. She’s really gone and shot herself in the foot, huh?”

“Pretty much, but I don’t think she realizes that. I told her we’ll talk to her husband’s lawyers and get back to her.”

“Have fun with that.” He straightened up and shoved his hands in his pockets, leaving me to try and figure out if there was any way I could undo the damage done by Missy and her new evidence.