Sweetest Kisses: A Single Kiss Part 4

"Which he is, he definitely is, and if he thinks he's a fit influence to have the exclusive raising of my son-"

"Now, we talked about that." Trent patted her hand and rose. "He's the boy's father, and he loves his son, and we're not out to ruin his relations.h.i.+p with Dubbie."

"He'll do that all on his own, if he hasn't already," Mrs. Loomis muttered, getting to her feet as well. Trent held her chair, then held her coat for her, and the whole time, the woman chattered on.

Hannah wanted to sprint for the door, but Mrs. Loomis would not be hurried, and neither, it seemed, would Trent Knightley.

"Mrs. Loomis, I'll call you as soon as we have the transcripts," Trent said as they reached the sidewalk. "It may take a few weeks, but that will give us all time to recover from depositions."

"Recover, yes, well. I'll wait to hear from you, Mr. Knightley. Ms. Stark, you have a nice day, and maybe I'll see you at the fabric store."

Maybe not.

She bustled off, muttering about that man, the poor boy, the shortcomings of the American legal system today, and a preholiday sale on velvet.

"Not one word," Trent said, turning Hannah by the arm to head in the opposite direction. "Let's savor the quiet."

Hannah Stark was not a people person, which Trent considered a strength in a family law pract.i.tioner. He, however, was a people person, and it made his job at once harder and easier.

"Do you think she's cycling up?" Hannah asked.

"Beg pardon?" He would have been happy to saunter along in the crisp air, Hannah at his side, but after three hours of watching him and Elvin go at it, Hannah was ent.i.tled to ask questions.

"Do you think Mrs. Loomis was starting a manic episode?"

Well, c.r.a.p. Trent stopped walking and eyed Hannah balefully. "Why do you say that?"

"The pressured speech, the hyperbolic thinking, the lack of continuity in her conversation, the perhaps grandiose idea that she's the only competent parent Dubbie will ever have?"

Hannah was cataloging the behaviors that had caused Trent to figuratively toss his client from the room. He treated himself to a few more muttered curses-no seven-year-old lurked in the hedges to be the Cussing Police-and then flipped open his briefcase on the hood of a parked car.

"Here." He pa.s.sed Hannah the first folder of the Loomis file. "You have your cell phone with you?"

"In my purse," she said as they resumed their progress up the uneven sidewalk.

"Somewhere in that file is her primary care doctor's information. She insisted we have it in case Gregory wanted to depose the man or call him as a witness."

"You want me to call him?"

"Either that, or you back my Beemer out of the alley it's parked in."

She considered it. He could see that by the way she frowned and knit her brow, the way her full lips pursed. This was not a woman who dodged a challenge-any challenge.

"Heaven forfend your Beemer should come to harm on my watch. What am I supposed to say to this doctor?"

"Exactly what you said to me, what you observed."

"What's the real reason I'm the one calling?" She stepped back while Trent unlocked and opened the car door for her. It was a courtesy he enjoyed performing, and to h.e.l.l with those tricky little keyless entry systems that were contributing to the death of chivalry.

He slid into his side of the car.

"If I call, and Mrs. Loomis goes on some spectacular spree this afternoon," he said, "I could be put in the position of having to testify against my client, which would really make me look bad and force Mrs. Loomis to find another lawyer. That's an unneeded expense and a delay for her."

He also simply did not want to have to tattle on his client.

a.s.sistant counsel leafed through the file. "And a misery for you. You honestly want to win this case for her."

"Why shouldn't I? She's saddled with a mental illness, that kid means the world to her, and if she loses him, she might very well lose her grip entirely."

"It isn't a six-year-old's job to be the guardian of his mother's mental health, or her sobriety, or her moral fitness."

Hannah made that p.r.o.nouncement, fastened her seat belt, then buried her nose-a good, determined nose-back in the file.

"I expect that sort of hara.s.sment from my brothers," Trent said two blocks later. "Mrs. Loomis is decent people, and I will tell you the rest of it over lunch."

He fell silent as Hannah dialed on her cell. He resented mightily that unlike with his brothers, he couldn't s.h.i.+ft the argument with Hannah to some tussling on the rug until the third brother declared the match over and a draw.

Of course, his brothers didn't smell half so good, and they probably would not have zeroed in on the client's symptoms, either.

"Doctor Simmons, please."

Trent was tempted to tell Hannah what to say, what not to say. He shut up and drove instead-talking on a hand held while driving was against the law, after all.

"h.e.l.lo, Dr. Simmons, my name is Hannah Stark. I'm an attorney with the firm of Hartman and Whitney. One of our clients is your patient, Mrs. Sandra Loomis. I do not expect you to verify you're treating her, but I want to report some behaviors I observed this morning."

She recited what she'd seen, her voice neither hurried nor confiding. The doc was listening, apparently finding a dispa.s.sionate accounting more credible than any drama.

"I understand confidentiality, of course. No, she wasn't talking about traveling anywhere in particular, and yes, Dubbie should be in school all day. Thank you. Of course." She gave him the office number, repeated her name, and closed her phone.

"You handled that well." Better than Trent could have.

"With an untreated bipolar disorder in the neighborhood, everybody's sense of drama usually goes up," Hannah said. "The mental health folks get numb to it, though they call it having boundaries."

As Hannah sounded numb.

"You've been around somebody with this diagnosis?"

She looked out the window so he couldn't a.s.sess what she was hiding.

"Roommate," she said. "A long time ago, but the disease doesn't change. She'd get to feeling a little better, either because the meds were working or because they weren't, and then she'd think she didn't need them, and the wild rumpus would begin again."

Wild rumpus was a term from a children's cla.s.sic. Coming from Hannah it might have been funny, except her tone was flat, weary, and clearly signaled a need for a change in topic.

"I'm exercising my prerogative as your boss and taking you out to lunch."

She swung her gaze to his, her expression unflatteringly disgruntled.

"You must practice making your imperial decrees into questions," she said. "It's really a very useful skill."

Trent's daughter had told him more or less the same thing, not two days ago.

Lunch was a good idea, just not lunch with the boss. Hannah was hungry as a penguin in springtime, and Trent would no doubt want to chitchat, socialize, and otherwise invade her privacy.

He helped her off with her coat, when she'd been dressing and undressing herself since the age of three.

He held her chair.

He offered to order for her.

No matter that coming from him, these old-fas.h.i.+oned courtesies were oddly appealing, Hannah was determined to set the man straight.

"This isn't a date. Why would you order for me? Even if it were a date, how would you feel if I offered to order for you?"

"If you knew the menu better than I did, if you were particularly enthusiastic about one of the entrees, would you order for me?" His question was both genuinely curious and challenging.

"I'm not sure. I haven't been in a position... That is, n.o.body has ever... I don't date." Or make small talk, or practice family law.

Oops. He was smiling again, that warm, flirty, I-know-what-you're-thinking smile. "You were about to say n.o.body has offered."

"A sit-down meal hasn't been included in the offers," she admitted. "Not on any of the three outings I can honestly call dates, though farm-team baseball games and paintball compet.i.tions probably don't give a guy a chance to show off his manners."

Trent pretended to study his menu. Hannah suspected he wanted to laugh-out loud, at length, while she endured a pang of protectiveness toward her younger, lonelier self.

"You must have been a very serious student," he observed.

Safer territory. "Phi Beta Kappa, Mensa, the usual." Motherhood, motherhood, and motherhood had also played role. "n.o.body will invest in my future but me, hence the focus."

"Then why did you go in-state undergrad? You probably had the credentials to go anywhere."

This too was a legacy from foster care, the gentle probing that never ended, and often became outright rudeness. Who are your parents? Where are you from? Why did you switch schools? Why do you wear the same clothes all the time? Did your mother teach you to sew?

Except from Trent, Hannah sensed she was safe from the worst questions. She had only to tell him to mind his own business, and he would, at least temporarily.

"Scholars.h.i.+ps were more plentiful in-state." That was the truth-a truth. Their salads arrived, artful little concoctions appropriate to a place with linen tablecloths and leather-bound menus.

A nice place, when Trent could have swung past some drive-through. Nice-again. He used his fork to move purple circles of onion to his bread plate.

"Why not send it back?" Hannah asked. "You ordered it without onions. I heard you."

"Probably a new sous-chef. You want them?"

"No, thank you." She'd chosen her salad for its lack of onions.

Trent gestured with his fork. "How is it?"

"Interesting. Crunchy, not as sweet as I was afraid it would be."

Hannah could see him making a list: does not share onions, thinks paintball qualifies as a date, doesn't get out much.

"Ask me a question, Hannah Stark."

Was that trail ride a serious date? "About?"

"About the depositions, about my last date, about my salad. I'll answer honestly, but not too honestly."

Are you married? He could be-he was nice enough. "Why did you go stag at this morning's depositions? You said you were almost done, and Mrs. Loomis might have resented being excused."

He arranged his discarded onions in the shape of the interlocking Olympic circles, something Grace might do. "Did you resent being asked to leave?"

"By the third cup of tea and umpteenth picture of the prodigy, yes. I signed up to practice law, not provide hospice care to dying marriages."

"You're articulate, Hannah Stark, and you have my thanks for taking your cues graciously this morning. Had you said you wanted to stay, Mrs. Loomis could have found her own way back to her car."

"But you wanted boys only."

"I did. Most people gravitate toward lawyers with whom they get along. Sometimes, the cream puff will hire a shark, but for the most part, when that happens, the client is a wolf in cream-puff clothing, and that costume comes off in litigation. A wolf doesn't hire a cream puff, though, or if he does, he quickly fires him or her, gets his entire retainer back no matter how hard the attorney has worked, and moves on to more aggressive counsel."

Trent's observations jived with Hannah's experience, though she'd never connected the dots.

"You're not a cream puff or a wolf." Though he seemed capable of impersonating either. "Your theory suggests if Elvin Gregory is an old-fas.h.i.+oned chauvinist, then his client has the same tendencies?"

"Got it in one." He set his empty salad plate aside. "As it turns out, I was right. When the missus left, mister began to unload on me. 'You see what I have to put up with?' and so forth."

As missus had unloaded on Hannah. "Is that ethical? To encourage confidences that way?"

"His lawyer was sitting right beside him the whole time, and the very best material came at the end of the morning."

"Best material?" Whatever it was, the best material would signal misery for someone. Such were the pleasures of family law.

"I asked how Mrs. Loomis was as a disciplinarian, and Dad waxed eloquent about sparing the belt and spoiling the child. Said all he had to do was ask Dubbie to hand Dad his belt, and Dubbie would straighten right up."

In her heart, Hannah hadn't ducked fast enough. This was why she loathed family law-her emotional reflexes were just too d.a.m.n slow, the synapses exhausted from too many years in foster care.

"Trent, that boy is six years old."

"He would have been five when he last lived with his father."

"You're pleased with this?"

"I'm pleased Dad will learn some parenting skills in a hurry if he doesn't want to be visiting his kid in the blue room at the Department of Social Services."

Hannah knew the blue rooms, with their tired toys, sagging vinyl sofas, easily disinfected surfaces, and-most common characteristic of all-their one-way mirrors. Anybody's kid could end up there with a single phone call, though most people lived in blissful ignorance of this aspect of the state's power.

She gave up on her salad despite the many benefits of fiber and phytonutrients.