M.J. Rodgers - Beauty Vs. The Beast

Kay took a deep breath and let it out, shaking her head. “Terrific. A shifty lawyer and now a judge in search of the story line for a bestseller. I was feeling pretty good about this case before I came in here this morning.”

“You’ll handle it,” Adam said in his quiet, matter-of-fact way. There was something about the solidness of her senior partner’s infrequent but well-timed assurances that always filled Kay with confidence. She found some new starch for her spine as she sent him a small smile.

“Just watch out for Croghan,” Marc cautioned.

“I’ll try to deflect any legal darts he throws my way.”

“Be careful he doesn’t do to you what he did to my friend and wait until your back is turned before throwing them.”

Kay nodded, a small frown forming between her eyebrows as an unbidden and unsavory image flashed into her mind. She could clearly see her back outlined with several circles of chalk marks, the bull’s-eye right between her shoulder blades.

* * *

“I’M NOT RELOCATING with you, Dr. Steele,” Tim Haley said in a voice cracking with nervous defiance. “I’m going to stay with Dr. Payton.”

Surprised, Damian turned toward his receptionist. Tim Haley stood behind his desk, his bespectacled eyes downcast, his freckles suddenly darker against his naturally pale skin, his tall, thin frame visibly quivering like that of a newborn colt.

Damian rested the box of patient files he had just carried out of his office on the edge of the receptionist’s desk and faced him. This was very atypical behavior for the shy, willing young man, who always strove so diligently to please. Very atypical.

“Tim, we’ve been together almost six years. I thought we were a good team. What’s wrong?”

Tim’s eyes rose briefly to Damian’s. The effort to maintain his confrontational pose had set even his normally neat shock of copper hair to shivering on his scalp.

“You know what’s wrong,” he said, his voice cracking anew.

Damian hadn’t known, but he was beginning to get a glimmer. “Tim, it’s not what you think. What you overheard—”

Tim’s eyes dropped to his desk as he quickly interrupted. “Dr. Payton told me everything. So, it’s no use, you see.”

Yes, Damian could see. Nothing he could say now would matter to the man. Only thing he could do was to try to leave on as friendly a note as Tim would allow. He extended his hand.

“I’m going to miss you, Tim. Best of luck in everything.”

Tim stared at Damian’s extended hand, biting his thin lips, quivering again with the conflict of his emotions. As the seconds ticked by and Tim didn’t take the proffered hand, Damian realized that Tim would not be able to engage in even this one, last, small gesture of friendship. It would have required that the receptionist leap across the professional and personal chasm that he had so recently and painstakingly dug between them.

Damian dropped his hand and exhaled an internal sigh as he picked up his last box of patient files. He consoled himself with the fact that it could be worse. This last day in his office could have spelled far more serious confrontational disasters.

As he turned to leave, he saw that he had clearly started to count his blessings too soon. Dr. Priscilla Payton stood in the doorway.

He stiffened as he stepped aside to let her pass. “Dr. Payton,” he said in as formally polite a tone as he could muster.

Priscilla Payton’s dark cap of short, straight, black hair seemed to rise on her head as though electrically charged. She stared at Damian with pupils so dark and enlarged, they looked like aimed bullets.

“Oh, right, it’s Dr. Payton now.”

Damian took a slow, deep breath. “I don’t mean to make this difficult for either of us. I thought you weren’t going to be in this morning. If I had known you’d be here, I would have cleaned out my office another time.”

Her eyes flashed as she spat out the word. “Coward!”

This was not a conversation Damian had any intention of prolonging. “I have to take these files to my car, and I’m due for an important appointment. So, if you’ll excuse me—”

“I won’t excuse you,” Priscilla Payton barked. She not only didn’t move from her position in the doorway, she spread her feet to block it further so Damian couldn’t get past.

“You want to know why I’m here this morning?” she said. “I’m here because I have an appointment with Bette Boson.”

Damian didn’t like the sound of this. “Ms. Boson is my patient. How can you have an appointment with her?”

“Because she’s not your patient anymore. She was waiting in reception that day when we had our little discussion, remember? She heard it all, every word. You think she’ll ever trust you again after what you did to me? You think she’ll ever even want to see you again?”

Damian remembered how Bette had nearly run out of the reception area that dreadful day. Maybe he really shouldn’t be surprised that she had decided not to continue therapy with him. Particularly since Priscilla had obviously talked to Bette before he could, just as she had talked to Tim Haley.

No use pointing out the total lack of ethics such behavior displayed. Priscilla was, obviously, in no mood to hear it.

“I want her videotapes, Damian.”

“Fine,” he answered. “I’ll pack them up and drop them off here on my way to the lake on Sunday.”

“Her videotapes aren’t still in your office?”

“I already moved all the videotapes to my home office. Now, if you’ll stop blocking the doorway, I’ll be on my way.”

Priscilla didn’t budge. Her hands set on her hips. “I saw Mrs. Nye on the news last night. I hope her attorney creams you in court.”

Damian was getting very weary of this vindictive trip Priscilla was on. Very weary. “I expected you to be a little more professional about our differences, Dr. Payton.”

“ Me a little more professional? Ha! Look who’s talking.”

Enough was enough. Damian’s tone descended into an icy hush of warning. “This isn’t getting either of us anywhere, Doctor. Move aside.”

Her voice rose, even more belligerent and taunting. “What’s the matter? Can’t face a fight, Damian?”

Damian’s jaw clenched. “You know better. If you don’t stop blocking the doorway, Dr. Payton, I will physically move you out of the way. You make the choice. You have ten seconds.”

Damian watched Priscilla’s expression change from one of dare to one of growing disquiet as she read the intent in his eyes. He was not bluffing and she knew it. She scooted nervously out of the way.

“You always resort to violence, don’t you, Damian? Don’t you?”

Damian didn’t waste his time with a retort, nor a backward glance in her direction. He charged through the cleared pathway. He took the hallway in massive strides, shouldered his way through the outer doorway to the parking lot and made a beeline for his forest-green ‘61 Jaguar coupe, keeping cool in its private parking space beneath the shade of a thickly branched giant madrona tree.

This office complex had been his professional home since he had been lucky enough to find it tucked into a residential section along Lake Union seven years before. It wouldn’t be easy to find another that fit his needs so well.

Still, he was going to have to try.

Maybe it was good that this change was being foisted on him. Maybe he’d become too complacent. Maybe he needed a little shaking up.

Well, need it or not, he was certainly getting it. And to think it was only a year ago that he’d refused to be featured in the Seattle Times supplement as a prime example of the ruggedly individual and intellectual Pacific Northwest bachelor.