|
BACK TO SPOTLIGHT
STUART WHITMORE
He listened intently to
her rejection, and dryly replied, “Would you then consider
letting me represent you in some legal action? That way, I
can tell myself that ethics, not lack of reciprocity of
feelings, prohibit our getting involved.” Meredith was
still trying to decipher that sentence when she belatedly
heard the wry humor in it, and her answering smile had
been filled with gratitude and affect. “I will! I’ll steal
a bottle of aspirin from a drugstore tomorrow morning, and
you can bail me out of jail.”
Stuart had grinned at
her, and stood up, but his goodbye was warm and endearing.
Handing her his business card, he said, “Plead the fifth
until I get there.”
The following morning,
Meredith had coerced Mark Braden into calling a friend of
his – a lieutenant at a local precinct, who had then
called Stuart and told him that Meredith had been busted
for shoplifting in a drugstore. Suspecting a prank, Stuart
had hung up, called back, and discovered there was a
Lieutenant Reicher, and that Meredith was supposedly in
custody.
Perched on a step
outside the police station, Meredith watched Stuart’s
Mercedes sedan screech to a stop in the towaway zone in
front. Not until she saw him leap out of the car, leaving
it with the motor running, did she realize how much he
really cared for her.
“Stuart!” she called
when he ran up the steps right past her. He paused and
spun around, and instantly realized that he was a victim
of a joke. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I only meant to
show you how far I was willing to go to preserve a
friendship that means very much to me.”
The anger drained from
his expression, he drew a long steadying breath, then he
grinned. “I left the two opposing parties of a bitter
divorce alone in our conference room, waiting for the
other attorney. By now they’ve either killed each other
or, worse, reconciled, and in o doing cheated me out of my
very exorbitant fee.”
**********
“Mr.
Whitmore is on line one, Meredith”
Meredith
drew a steadying breath and picked up the phone. “Stuart,
thank you for calling me back so quickly.”
“I was
on my way to a deposition when I heard my secretary take
your call,” he replied, his tone businesslike but polite.
“I have
a small legal problem,” she explained. “Actually, it isn’t
a small problem. It’s rather large. No, enormous.”
“I’m
listening,” he said when she hesitated.
“Do you
want me to tell you what it is now? On the phone, when
you’re in a hurry to leave?”
“Not
necessarily. You could give me a hint though – to whet my
legal appetite.”
She
heard it then – the dry veiled humor in his voice – and
she breathed a sigh of relief. “To put it briefly, I need
advice about – about my divorce.”
“In that
case,” he gravely and immediately replied, “my advise is
to marry Parker first. We can get a better settlement that
way.
“This
isn’t a joke like the last time, Stuart,” she warned, but
there was something about him that inspired so much
confidence that she smile a little. “I’m in the most
amazing legal mess you’ve ever encountered. I need to get
out of it right away.”
“I
normally like to drag things out – it builds up the fees,”
he drolly replied. “However, for an old friend, I suppose
I could sacrifice avarice for compassion just one. Are you
free for dinner tonight?”
“You’re
an angel!”
“Really?
Yesterday the opposing counsel told the judge I was a
manipulative son of a bitch.”
“You are
not!” Meredith protested loyally.
He
laughed softly. “Yes, my beauty, I am.”
Far from
being judgmental, or appalled by her behavior as an
eighteen-year-old, Stuart listened to her entire tale
without a sign of emotion – not even surprise when she
told him the identity of the father of her baby. In fact,
so disconcerting was his bland expression and unwavering
silence, that when Meredith finished her recitation, she
said hesitantly, “Stuart, have I made everything clear?”
“Perfectly clear,” he said, and as if to prove that, he
added, “you’ve just finished telling me that your father
is now willing to use his influence to get Farrell’s
zoning request approved with the same disregard for the
illegality of influence peddling that he displayed when he
had Senator Davies block it? Right?”
“I – I
thinking so,” she replied, uneasy about his smoothly
worded condemnation of her father’s actions.
“Pearson
and Levinson represent Farrell?
“Yes.”
“That’s
it, then,” he declared, signaling the waiter for the
check. “I’ll call Bill Pearson in the morning and tell him
that his client is unjustly putting my favorite client to
a lot of endless mental anguish.”
“Then
what?”
“Then I
will ask him to have his client sign some nice papers,
which I will draw up and send over to him.”
Meredith
smiled with a mixture of hope and uncertainty. “Is that
all there is to it?”
“Could
be.
BACK TO SPOTLIGHT
|
