Danielle Steel: Lightning

“I want to do this again.”

“You're not serious.” He looked stunned, but pleased. He had been thinking exactly the same thing. He would have loved a son, but another little girl would be fine too. Their little girl was so perfect and so beautiful. He kept touching her tiny toes, and Alex kept kissing her tiny fingers. They were completely enamored with their daughter.

It remained a passion with them once they got home, and Annabelle flourished in the unbridled adoration of her parents. Sam came home early as often as he could. And Alex went back to the office, with regret, when Annabelle was three months old. She tried to continue nursing her even after that, but it became impossible with the pressures of her schedule. What she did instead was come home for lunch as often as she could, and she made a promise to herself to leave promptly at five, whenever she wasn't in trial, and work at home at night after Annabelle went to bed. And on Fridays, she left at one o'clock, come hell or high water. It was a system that worked for them, and she was religious about coming home promptly whenever possible. And in exchange for their love and efforts, and their incessant appreciation of her, Annabelle adored her Mommy and Daddy. She was the light of their lives, and they were all that mattered to her. Carmen took care of her in the daytime, but Sam and Alex took care of her themselves the moment they got home from work, and Annabelle lived for that moment. She would squeal with excitement and delight whenever she saw them.

Carmen liked working for them. She was crazy about Annabelle, and they were nice people. She bragged a lot about Alex and Sam, about how important they were, and how hard they worked, and how successful. Sam was in the financial columns a lot. He had made a big splash early on, and had continued to make news frequently with record-making deals for important clients. And Alex had been on television more than once, with exceptionally newsworthy or landmark cases. Carmen loved that.

And there was no question in Alex's and Sam's minds that Annabelle was not only beautiful, but absolutely brilliant. She walked promptly at ten and a half months, spoke clearly shortly after that, and spoke in sentences long before it was expected.

“She's going to be a lawyer,” Alex always teased Sam, but neither of them could deny how incredibly she resembled her mother. She looked just like Alex, and even her mannerisms looked like a miniature version of her mother's.

In fact, the only disappointment to them was that their efforts to get pregnant again had been surprisingly unfruitful. They started when Annabelle was six months old, and had tried for a year after that. Alex was forty by then, and decided to go to a specialist to see if anything was wrong. But she and Sam had both checked out, and there was no problem with either of them. The doctor had just explained that, at her age, conception often took longer. At forty-one, they had put her on Serophene, a form of progesterone, to “improve” her ovulations, and for the past year and a half she had taken the drug that seemed to add more stress to her life than she already had. They were making love on schedule, using a kit to tell them exactly when her LH surge was, and when the optimum time was for conception. Alex had to add her urine to a series of chemicals, and when they turned blue, it was time for Sam to rush home from die office. They laughingly called it “blue day,” but there was no doubt that the pressure it put on them didn't make things any easier in lives that were already filled with stress and tension provided by their clients, and in Alex's case, her opponents.

It was not an easy time for them, but it was something they both agreed they wanted very badly. And it seemed funny to both of them that after so many years of emphatically not wanting children, they were now willing to go to any lengths to pursue having them. They had even talked about her taking Pergonal shots, which was a more extreme solution than the Serophene pills, with other side effects. And they also considered in vitro fertilization. They hadn't ruled out either of the more elaborate treatments. But at forty-two, she still felt she had a chance for conception without such heroic measures, particularly with the hormones she was currently taking. That in itself was already a big commitment, because taking them was anything but easy for her. She was one of those people who reacted severely to medication. But she felt it was worth it, because she and Sam both wanted another baby so badly. Annabelle had taught them many things, mainly how sweet life could be with the bond of a child between them, and how much they had missed in their years of childlessness. They both had impressive careers to show for it, but now she felt that they had missed something far more important.

Annabelle was three and a half years old by then, and Alex's and Sam's hearts melted every time they saw her. Her hair was a halo of coppery curls, her eyes were huge and green, just like her mother's, and her face was dusted with a thin veil of what Alex called “fairy dust,” which were her freckles.

There was a huge photograph of her, holding a shovel on the beach the summer before, in Quogue, as Alex sat at her desk and glanced up at it, with a quick grin. She glanced at her watch again. The deposition she'd sat in on had cost her the better part of her morning, and she had less than an hour now to go over some papers before she met with a new client.

She glanced up as Brock Stevens came in. He was one of the young associates in the firm, and he worked exclusively for her and one other attorney, doing research, and legwork, preparing cases for trial for her. He'd only been with Bartlett and Paskin for two years, but she was impressed with him, and his handling of her cases.

“Hi, Alex …got a sec? I know you've had a busy morning.”

“That's okay. Come on in.” She smiled up at him. At thirty-two, he still looked like a boy to her, he had sandy blond good looks, and looked like everyone's kid brother. He had gone to a state law school in Illinois, and she knew he came from a simple family with very little money. But he had worked his way through school, and he burned with a real fire for the law. It was a feeling that had always governed her life too, and she had a lot of admiration for him.

He strode across the room, and sat down across her desk from her, with a serious look, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his tie askew, which also made him look younger. “How was the depo?”

“Pretty good. I think Matt got lucky. His principal defendant let his slip show, and I think Matt may have gotten just what he wanted. He's wearing them down anyway, but it's still going to take forever. That case would drive me crazy.”

“Me too, but it's interesting making history with it. They're setting a lot of precedents. I like that.” He was so young and alive and filled with dreams, sometimes she thought he was naive, personally, but he was also an extraordinarily fine lawyer.

“So whatcha got? Anything new on the Schultz case?”

“Yup.” He smiled happily at her. “We hit pay dirt. The plaintiffs been cheating on his taxes for the past two years. He's not going to look great to the jury. That's why they've been resisting giving us his records.”

“Nice. Very nice.” Alex smiled at him. “How'd you find out?” They had had to file a separate motion to get the financial records, and they had finally come in that morning.

“It's pretty easy to figure out what he did. I'll show you later. I think this might open us up for a settlement, if you can get Mr. Schultz to settle.”

“I doubt it,” she said thoughtfully. Jack Schultz owned a small company that had been sued twice, unfairly, by previous employees. It was the latest game to win fat settlements from employers who didn't want to be hassled. But settling had created precedents for him, and now he was being sued by another previous employee, who had been skimming money from the company and taking illegal kickbacks, but was trying to sue Jack Schultz for discrimination. And this time Schultz did not want to settle. He wanted to develop a reputation for fighting and winning.