Emily stiffened. “As if.”
As a matter of fact, she did blame Kip for the fact that she’d overslept and missed her ride in to the city. But not because they’d had such a hot time. Au contraire!
Kip was just the latest terrible fix-up in her never-ending series of them. Her father the senior partner, her mother the judge, her older brothers, all four of whom were lawyers—they all insisted on matching her up with eligible but insufferable young attorneys. It didn’t matter that the men bored her silly and sent her running back to the bathtub and a book about sexy spies and hard-boiled private eyes. Her well-meaning family members kept roping her into these horrible dates, no matter how much she protested.
Was it her fault the lawyers they set her up with were as limp as old noodles, while the men in the books were exciting, dark, dangerous and very, very stimulating? They saved the free world, they uncovered conspiracies, they fought off bad guys in dark alleys. They grabbed life in both hands and didn’t let go.
Whereas Kip Enfield…“Gag me,” she said out loud. He was the worst, the absolute worst. He wasn’t just stultifyingly dull—no, he was pompous, irritable, and el cheapo to boot. Dinner with Kip had stretched out endlessly while he droned on about the wine and the beef and his fine palate. After all that torture, he’d made a big point of tipping only two percent because he didn’t like the service. Exactly two percent—which took him about half an hour to figure out. Emily had to run back at the last minute on a pretext, unable to stand the idea of leaving such a pathetic tip.
So by the time Kip pulled his Beemer up the circular driveway of the Chaplins’ suburban home, she was more than ready to dump him. Except that he insisted on coming into the house—dying to sip the senior partner’s brandy out of the senior partner’s snifter, no doubt—and she couldn’t get rid of him no matter how many hints she dropped. Hours later, after several attempts to kiss her, paw her and cajole her into a little horizontal bingo, Kip finally consented to leave. She’d practically wept with relief.
After that fiasco, she could hardly help it if she’d slept for a full nine hours, just as a defense mechanism. At least her dreams were entertaining, unlike Kip Enfield.
“I’m never dating another lawyer as long as I live,” Emily declared. “In fact, I may never date anyone. I’ve got that last-straw feeling.”
But first things first. Pulling off her sunglasses, she focused on a point over Alissa’s shoulder and lowered her voice. “Is that Daddy, rounding the corner to your office, Alissa? Uh-oh. And you’re here in the hall, chatting with me. That can’t look good.”
It was a complete and total lie, but Alissa was out of there so fast she barely left a vapor trail.
With a small smile of satisfaction, Emily turned on her heel and ducked inside her own office, safely closing the door behind her. Trying to work up some enthusiasm for the day ahead, she took off her jacket and neatly hung it up, parked herself behind the desk, and then stared at the mountain of paperwork for five minutes. Ugh.
Finally she cracked open the Bentley file on the top of the stack. As the minutes dragged by, she fiddled with a pen, chewing on the end, staring into space, scribbling notes here and there about the tax implications of one small subsection of a client’s proposed reorganization plan. It was so dull she almost nodded off right there at Part B(11), subparagraph 3(a)(iv).
“Okay, maybe I should listen to my voice mail,” she decided. Maybe someone fun might have called. But who did she know who was remotely fun?
Maybe a distant relative, or even better, an old boyfriend, who desperately needed her to fly to Istanbul or Zanzibar tonight. Yeah, right. All the Chaplins, even the distant ones, were so boring they made the Bentley file seem exciting by comparison. As for old boyfriends…well, she had one or two, but the only thing they’d be calling for was help on their taxes.
Okay, so maybe Sukie Sommersby, her goofy sorority sister from college, might call out of the blue. Sukie was always getting into trouble. The last time Emily had heard from her, Sukie had just woken up with a new husband in a Vegas hotel and needed info on quickie divorces.
“Why don’t I ever wake up with new husbands in Las Vegas?” Emily asked out loud. Hoping to hear something, anything exciting or different, she pressed the button for her voice mail.
Bad idea. There were three messages from Kip to tell her again how much he’d enjoyed last night, two from her oldest brother Rick—the doofus who’d set her up with Kip—wanting to know how it went, and one from her mother, the bankruptcy court judge, who had a new clerk she thought might be a good match for her daughter—not to mention at least one annoying message from each of her three other brothers, all of whom offered unwanted advice on her career, her car or her love life.
She felt like screaming. And that was before she heard the voice mail from her father, who had apparently called every ten minutes between eight-thirty and ten, demanding to know when the hell she was going to put in an appearance and reminding her that being a Chaplin did not bring her any special privileges at Chaplin, Chaplin & Chaplin.
“Sukie Sommersby would never stand for this!”
Without pausing to think about it, Emily stood up and grabbed her purse and briefcase, heading for the door in a blur. She called to the secretary, “I’m taking my laptop and one of the Bentley files out of the office, and I won’t be back for a while. I’ve got my cell phone in case anyone needs me.”
As if anyone would need her for anything truly important. She was a tax lawyer, for goodness’ sake. Her life was occupied with subparagraphs of footnotes to the tax code. It was as boring as boring could be.
As she hit the street, turning her face into the bright light of the Chicago summer, Emily’s mood only grew gloomier. What was the problem? Sure, the stale routine of her normal life was getting her down, but she was out of the office, wasn’t she? And the good thing about getting to work so late was that it was almost time for lunch.
“Café Allegro,” she murmured. Maybe that would make her feel better. After all, didn’t she eat lunch at Café Allegro every day? And didn’t she order the same tall glass of iced tea with a sprig of mint and the same low-fat grilled-chicken salad? Day in, day out.
It was calming, familiar and serene. Just what she needed. Right?
But her feet seemed to get sticky and slow as she wound her way down Ontario Street. She made it right up to the cool brass door of Café Allegro. But when it was time to walk in, Emily found herself paralyzed, stuck, unable to take even one more step forward. It was as if the weight of her same old routine had suddenly settled on her shoulders like a five-hundred-pound gorilla.
She pulled her hand away from the door. She wheeled. And she took off down Ontario Street as if the odious Kip Enfield himself were stalking her. She didn’t stop until she hit a dark, vaguely grimy coffee shop, a place that smelled of fried onions and greasy hamburgers. The Rainbow Rest-O-Rant.
Not what anyone would expect from Emily Chaplin—which was exactly why she was going in.
Clutching her briefcase, Emily veered into the dingy restaurant. It was mostly empty, so she had no trouble finding a booth. Scooting in, she decided this place was definitely nothing like Café Allegro. The two eating establishments were less than a block, but a whole world, apart.
She grabbed some paper napkins out of the dispenser on the table, wiping them quickly over the bench seat and the top of the table. It wasn’t the grime that bothered her, though. For some reason, she found herself pondering who had carved all those initials and messages into the wood, wondering how much Marco really loved Missy, and whether Tootie and BoBo were really Friends 4-Ever.
Her reverie was broken abruptly when a rather hard looking waitress wearing a name tag that said “Jozette” slapped down a plastic menu in front of her. The woman didn’t bother to smile, just raised a painted-on eyebrow as she poured coffee into one of the cups on the table. “You know whatcha want?”
“Uh, no. Not exactly.