Page 13 of First Date: Divorce (Wyoming Marriage Association #1)

K.D. woke with a question so insistent that she pulled on a robe and went downstairs in search of the answer. She couldn’t believe they hadn’t covered this. Talk about a gap.

“Eric?” she called.

“He’s out running,” came Pauline’s voice from the office.

K.D. knew from his questionnaire that Eric ran. So did she.

Missing her run these past few days was starting to make her edgy or she’d never have this weird twinge that he’d gone for a run while she stayed here. Couldn’t be anything else, because she ran alone.

“Need something, K.D.?” Pauline added.

She went into the office. “You’re here early.”

“Got behind on my work with prepping you two. Will get even farther behind with the wedding tomorrow.”

K.D.’s heart stuttered before she told it to stop being silly. She wasn’t really getting married.

“Our prep’s what I wanted to ask Eric about — what kind of law he’s practiced.”

“Sit down,” Pauline ordered.

“Just a quick answer and I’ll leave you alone to—”

“Sit down.”

K.D. sat on one of the visitor’s chairs.

“That’s not what you should be asking first,” Pauline said. “But I’ll go ahead and tell you how Eric met Hilary anyhow.”

“I didn’t ask— I don’t want to—”

Unimpeded by K.D.’s objections, Pauline kept talking.

“He’d tell you they happened to get into the same elevator and struck up a conversation.

The truth is, she spotted him at the courthouse and went after him.

Found out everything she could about him and had that meeting totally planned out, then waited for the perfect time for the supposed coincidence of them happening to get in the same elevator.

“He was ripe for the picking by one like her.” She directed a fierce glare at K.D. “And not because he’s stupid or na?ve or weak or anything else you might be thinking.”

“I didn’t think—”

“You better not. Because it’s nothing of the kind.

It’s sort of a blindness with him. But only partial blindness, like someone who can’t see out of the corners of their eyes or don’t pick up on colors.

Because there’s no denying he’s onto the tricks of criminals and other lawyers and even crooked cops.

It’s that he comes from a family where the people who love each other say so and tell each other the truth.

My Chuck and I were like that, too, and I saw it in Eric first time I walked in for that job interview.

“Also saw that when someone gets in under his guard and he accepts them, he doesn’t bother with defenses or skepticism anymore. It’s all-out loyalty, which can make him blind like I said. Sometimes it turns out okay. Like with Cully and Grif.”

“And you.”

K.D. would have regretted the impulsive words — since when did she speak impulsively? — but she saw how much they pleased the woman and that couldn’t hurt, extrapolating from Cully Grainger saying not to get on Pauline’s bad side.

“And me,” Pauline agreed with would-be no-nonsense dismissal of the fact. “But not Hilary. If he’d met her in other circumstances … But her mode of attack slid right past his defenses and into his Achilles’ heel. Once he accepted her, it was the Trojan Horse all over again.”

K.D. blinked at the references, but made no comment.

“And I wasn’t stupid enough to try to tell him otherwise. I’d have been out if I had, which was exactly what Hilary wanted. Oh, I see your surprise. But, yes, she tried to maneuver me out from the start. Not stupid, that one. She sensed I saw right through her and didn’t like that one bit.

“From that first elevator ride, she perpetuated the classic ruse of making him think things were his idea that were hers. Maneuvered him into marriage, into that penthouse he hated, into a job at the soul-sucking corporation. But she couldn’t get rid of me.

Got to be sort of enjoyable, watching her fail at that.

“First, she said she felt uncomfortable around me, because she thought I didn’t approve of her — going all doe-eyed and vulnerable so he’d want to protect her anyway she said to.

Except Eric’s logic saved him. He said, Pauline’s never said a single word against you.

Even told her I suggested he send her orchids for her birthday, which she’d been over the moon about because they cost the earth.

I see your surprise, K.D., that I’d suggest them when I never liked her, but better I thought of a present for her than he did.

That would have tied him closer to her. She sure didn’t care, as long as it cost a lot.

“Later on, she told Eric I didn’t present the right image for his corporate job.

He laughed. … Only toward the end when she brought it up again did he get a little angry and say if clients thought that way, he didn’t want them as clients.

I still say that’s the moment she knew she didn’t have as firm a hold on him as she’d thought.

That’s when she went after a partner in the firm.

“See, Eric thinks the divorce was all her idea, that she dumped him for a guy who’d already made it according to the things Hilary values.

What he doesn’t realize — still — is he started pulling out of that relationship first. She was just clever and sneaky enough to make him think that was her idea — one thing she hadn’t maneuvered him into. ”

Pauline huffed out a breath.

That left the opening K.D. had waited for.

“Eric left corporate law to come here, but practices general law here?” Certainly not much call for corporate law in Bardville, Wyoming.

“What do you two talk about if you haven’t covered this?”

“We quiz each other on your questionnaire.”

Pauline clicked her tongue, but didn’t pursue that line of criticism. “I suppose you do need to know this, too, though Hilary’s damage is more important. Anyway, more twists than that in his career.

“He started in criminal law — prosecutor’s office.

Great at it, too. But then he opened his own practice.

That’s when he hired me. No experience, either.

He said he went with his instincts. I say he hired me because he could see how much I needed the job.

Money, sure, but also my husband had just died and I needed to get out of the house, see something more than memories that wouldn’t ever get added to. ”

Pauline’s thoughts seemed to drift to those memories for a moment. Then she twitched her shoulders.

“But that’s neither here nor there.”

K.D. had untangled enough accounts of bar fights to look for inconsistencies. “If Eric didn’t hire you until after he left the prosecutor’s office, how do you know he was good at the job.”

Pauline scowled at her for a beat, then huh’d out a breath. “You think like him in some ways.” Hard to tell if that was a compliment or not. “I know he was great at it because I talked to people. And I can read. Saw his record. Looked up write-ups about his cases.”

“What did he tell you about why he quit?”

“Not much. But I don’t need to be told everything.

Got to know folks at the courthouse — never hurts to be friendly with them — and read between the lines of what they said and what they didn’t say.

Then, at a retirement party for one of those folks, got talking with a woman who worked for the prosecutor’s office.

Eric was assigned a case the prosecutor wanted won real bad for political points.

He could have won — easy — but Eric dug into it.

He and an investigator found evidence against somebody else for that crime.

And turned it over to the defense, the way they’re supposed to.

“Prosecutor went ballistic and said he still expected Eric to win the case, despite that. Eric said he wouldn’t try it, not with knowing the other guy most likely did it and being sure the first guy didn’t.

Prosecutor said he’d fire him. Eric said no need, because he quit.

Then the prosecutor tried to get him to unquit, said he’d assign the case to somebody else.

That didn’t cut it with Eric. He stayed quit and opened his own little office — and I do mean little — and worked free on that case.

That’s how he met Cully and Grif. They knew the first guy accused from the military.

Though there’s something hush-hush about the whole deal not even I know about. ”

Pauline seemed prouder of Eric’s involvement in something hush-hush than frustrated that she didn’t know about it.

“This was when he hired me. First day, the prosecutor came in — guy I’d seen on the TV news, read quotes from all over.

” She sniffed. “Not nearly as impressive in person.

Especially when he tried throwing his weight around about seeing Eric right that minute, after I said he was in a meeting.

Messaged Eric who was in the outer office.

After a while, Cully and Grif went out another door, and the prosecutor went in.

“After that conversation , no way Eric was going back.” Her satisfaction faded.

“Met Hilary that day, too. She’d come back from a solo vacation to Paris.

In a high snit over him quitting the prosecutor’s office.

Making noises about calling off the wedding.

Saying how could he make a move like that without consulting her.

He said he couldn’t tell anyone — including her — details, but he’d acted on principle so he was sure she supported him. Hah!

“And said he’d tried to reach her about setting up the new office, but hadn’t heard back.

Then she starts in about how he knows how shattered she gets from jet lag and he couldn’t blame her for what she couldn’t help.

Turned it all around, putting him in the wrong.

Watched her use that tactic over and over as she maneuvered him into doing what she wanted. ”

“But you described their meeting on the elevator,” K.D. said. “Now you’re saying you didn’t meet her until they were engaged?”