Chapter 17

Stepping into the elevator at five minutes to nine Monday morning, Simon looked disgustingly crisp in his suit and tie. Nick’s one nod to their new office job was a black button-down shirt, but he still wore blue jeans.

“You look well-rested,” said Simon as Nick yawned. “Did you sleep alone last night?”

Nick shook his head. “I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep this week. I just wanted a quiet night.”

“Are you sure?” Simon stepped out of the elevator. “I could have sent one of the girls over for you - or both of them eventually. I don’t really need them all night.”

Nick glared at him. “I don’t need you sending girls to my room - or bringing them home for me honestly. Opportunity is not my problem right now.”

“Just a joke.” Simon held up his hands. “Things didn’t go well with Morrigan yesterday?”

“She’s suing me,” Nick ushered Simon into the conference room.

“Wow. It really didn’t go well then,” said Simon. “What did you do to her, Coyle?”

“Morrigan is Colleen Moreau, Lauren Moreau’s daughter. She was already suing me before yesterday. Her mother’s been suing on her behalf to try to get control of the trust my whole life. Now that Colleen’s an adult, she’s taken over the fight.”

Simon briefly lost the perpetual smirk that made some people want to punch him even before he opened his mouth. His face fell. “Seriously? Shit! I swear I had no idea...”

“I know you had no idea,” Nick reassured his friend. “It was a random meeting. She probably figured out who I was when you started talking about me. There aren’t a lot of people in my particular situation. I knew who she was as soon as I saw her. Ainsley showed me her picture and she’s hard to miss.”

“Still, shit. Sorry. I only brought her here because...” Simon frowned and ended with, “ ... I thought you’d like her.”

Nick didn’t miss the gap where Simon had almost said something else. He prompted, “And why did you think I’d like her?”

“I really shouldn’t say.” Simon fiddled with his cufflinks. “You’re not going to want to hear it.”

“Simon, if even you know you shouldn’t just blurt something out, it must be pretty terrible,” said Nick. “I really need to know now.”

Simon sighed. “She reminded me of Arwen, but even bigger. Ari knows I’m full of shit and doesn’t let me get out of line with her. Morrigan ... or Colleen I guess ... figured me out before I’d even really spoken to her. She threatened to kick me in the balls within in the first ten minutes.”

Nick smiled in spite of himself. “Did Arwen ever actually kick you in the balls? She threatened to for like a year.”

“No, she didn’t have to,” said Simon. “Whenever she threatened to, she always told me how I could avoid that particular fate. And I believed her absolutely. So, I stopped doing whatever had set her off.”

Nick sighed. “I’d probably be madder about this if I hadn’t had the same thought myself. I do seem to keep finding myself attracted to the tsundere girls.”

Simon nodded. “You know Arwen and Shelby really have a lot in common. Right?”

Nick shot him a look. “You ever want to get kicked in the balls without a warning, you should tell Arwen that.”

“Or Shelby. I’m not an idiot, Coyle. Some warnings are much clearer than words.” Simon looked at him. “I wasn’t sure there was enough data to draw a trend with you and women until you turned Jenny down yesterday. Thanks for that, by the way.”

Nick put his head in his hands. Every time he thought Simon was making some real progress in understanding personal relationships, his friend would inevitably remind him that any such progress would be slow indeed. “Simon, you are becoming a constant reminder of just how bad things can get if I don’t exercise good judgment with women.”

Simon smirked. “You know, Nick, when you say hurtful things like that to me, it really sets me back in my therapy.”

“I’ll pay - as long as it takes,” said Nick. “Maybe they should try electroshock.”

They spotted Ainsley as she came in the front door of the office. The receptionist, a young woman SSCS had sent over as a temp, greeted her, checked her ID, and offered her a key card. Ainsley was armored in full lawyer garb - a gray suit, cream-colored blouse, and her hair done up in a tight bun.

“What’s with the hard reset?” Simon asked. “This is going to put us way off schedule for midriff.”

“Ainsley saw me talking to Colleen after she advised me not to. She blew her top for like an hour afterwards. Then, I reminded her who worked for who running whose trust and told her I wanted a fully revised litigation strategy by morning. The team’s probably been up all night working on it,” said Nick.

“Damn, you’re a tough boss,” said Simon.

Because he was talking to Simon instead of one of his other friends, Nick was able to say. “I am the world’s easiest boss, provided everyone remembers I am the boss. I’m the one who ultimately has to decide what to do with my money and the one who’s going to be responsible if we do more harm than good. I’ll take all the advice people want to give me. Just don’t try to tell me I can’t do something once I’ve decided to do it.”

He let that sink in for a minute before adding. “How much of the trust documents have you been able to review so far?”

“About five percent,” said Simon. “It’s slow going and the language of the original charter is nineteenth century legalese. I already have about a hundred questions to ask Miss Davenport about terms I don’t entirely understand. You know words aren’t my strength.”

“No, but among the people I trust, you’re the most intellectually equipped to deal with lawyers. I need someone who’s absolutely on my side with this,” said Nick. “Once we finish the general meeting, go over your list with Ainsley.”

“It could take a while and you say she’s probably been up all night,” Simon reminded him. “Should I let her go get some sleep and come back when she’s fresh?”

Simon suggesting mercy gave Nick pause, but he shook his head. “What do you think?”

“I think I should tie her to a folding chair in the basement and interrogate her under a naked lightbulb,” said Simon. “But that’s why I’m not your moral compass.”

“Your office will be sufficient,” said Nick. “If she asks for a break, fine. Otherwise, don’t keep her past six tonight.”

“You’re the boss,” said Simon.

Ainsley came in and shook hands with each of them, her whole manner subdued. She’d done an excellent job with her makeup, but Nick could tell she was tired now that he knew to look for signs. A big part of him felt terrible for putting her through the last night, but a smarter part knew she’d been right yesterday afternoon. Nick’s desire to make pretty girls like him would get him in a lot of trouble if he didn’t learn to control his instincts. Her reward for pointing that out was that he would be starting with her.

“Miss Davenport, what’s our new litigation strategy?” he asked.

“We don’t have one yet.” Ainsley met his eyes. “There’s a lot to go over with regards to settlements and quit-claims. Some of it come from the original charter. Some comes from the 1931 and 1969 revisions. Some of the clauses are contradictory, some are clearly unenforceable, and many of them are arguable.”

“All right,” Nick said evenly. He could be a dick about the work not being done, but he had no doubt it hadn’t been from lack of trying. “When will we have a new strategy?”

“The primary litigators are still trying to agree on a basic alignment.” Ainsley visibly fought down a yawn. “There’s some uncertainty as to the meaning of the instructions you gave me. They’ve given me a list of questions to ask you that should speed the process.”

“Let me see the list,” Nick said.

Ainsley pulled out her laptop. “It’s in a Word document. Maybe I could just read it to you.”

“E-mail it to me.” Nick rose. “I’ll get my laptop.”

He wasn’t sure why he thought one skirmish with Ainsley would make his legal team fall in line. They were still lawyers and for all her pleasant appearance and unusual conversational style, Nick had reason to believe she might be the worst of the lot. His litigation team would stall and obfuscate and prevaricate, doing everything in their power to keep him from making his own decisions and charge him for the privilege.

If he had to work with lawyers, Nick liked working with Ainsley, but he didn’t like working with Black and Stringer. Maybe every law firm would be the same, but maybe one that hadn’t had a hundred fifty years to start thinking of the Grayson-Stone Trust as its piggy bank would be better. Nick dreaded the idea of working with more lawyers, but he should at least talk to some and let them try to convince him they would be different.

By the time he got back to the conference room, Ainsley’s question list was in his e-mail. Unfortunately, Max had decided they should all be working in Linux and it took several iterations to get the Word document open. Nick did finally manage it, but it didn’t help his mood any.

The list was eight pages long. He scrolled through it. “Miss Davenport, there are roughly five times as many questions in this list than there were words in my instructions.”

“Some of them are redundant,” said Ainsley. “We don’t have to answer all of them.”

“I shouldn’t have to answer any of them.” Of its own accord, Nick’s voice had risen in volume. He forced it back down and started to scroll through the questions. “My instructions were that I want to see a litigation strategy that seeks a fair split of the trust’s assets between me and Miss Moreau. You spent an hour helping me craft those instructions so that they would be clear and concise.” He gestured at his computer screen after seeing the same question restated four times with slightly different wording. “How many different ways are there to ask what the word ‘fair’ means?”

“A lot more than you see there. You paid a room full of lawyers to argue that question until one in the morning. These are the questions that were still unresolved at the end of it.” Ainsley’s pose remained subdued and non-challenging even as her words suggested she still had some fight left in her.

Nick sighed and sat back, rubbing his face with his hands. “I thought you and I covered what we meant by fair yesterday.”

“We did. I communicated your instructions verbatim and, when the litigators asked what we expected them to ask, I believe that I fully and correctly conveyed the meaning of those instructions to them as per our lengthy conversation on the subject. They argued anyway.” Ainsley closed her eyes and rubbed her eyelid wearily. “You need to talk to them, Nick.”

Nick scowled. “I thought your job was to make sure I didn’t have to talk to them. I talk to you and you talk to them. That’s the arrangement.”

Ainsley sighed. “That’s the arrangement. It didn’t work this time. I spent six hours explaining to a room full of much more senior lawyers exactly what you told me to explain to them and they didn’t accept it. They didn’t listen to me. They think a better lawyer would have convinced you not to be an idiot with your money. And they think a junior associate can’t be right when she’s in a room full of older, more expensive lawyers. Eventually, I just shut up and wrote down the questions they kept asking so I could bring them back to you and you wouldn’t have to talk to them. But, if we go that way, this isn’t going to end today. It’ll be back and forth until they crack or you crack or I break and they send you somebody new to start the whole process all over again. The litigators are a bunch of stubborn old men and they’re used to getting their way.”

Nick groaned. “Why do I feel like I need to bring a team of lawyers with me to go talk to my own goddamned lawyers?”

No one spoke for a long, tense while. Ainsley said, “May I offer some advice?”

Nick almost snapped at her, but Simon said, “Nick’s always happy to hear advice.”

Nick sighed and gestured. “What’s your advice, counselor?”

“Yesterday, I overstepped my boundaries and you laid into me for it,” said Ainsley. Her fatigue was finally clear in her voice. “You were right. But, you were also going against a long tradition of lawyers doing what they feel is in their client’s best interest even when their client disagrees. It wasn’t enough to just tell me what you wanted. You had to lay into me or we’d still be in your office arguing about it. You have every right to disperse the trust’s assets as you choose - give them to Colleen Moreau or the Red Cross or pile them up and light them on fire - but the litigators won’t understand that until you go in there and rip into them like you ripped into me. To them, you’re just a punk kid and a carbon copy of Colin Grayson-Stone. Colin never touched the trust. He let Black and Stringer run it for him and just spent some of the income it generated.”

Nick’s anger had receded to the point where he just felt tired. He said quietly, “I can’t think of anything I want to do less than sit and talk to a room full of lawyers. But, yelling at a room full of lawyers ... that I can do.”

Everyone relaxed a little. Nick gestured. “Tell the litigators I’ll be in tomorrow some time in the afternoon and that I expect to have a full team meeting when I get there.”

Ainsley nodded. “Do you have a specific time in mind? It would be easier for everyone.”

“I know it would,” said Nick. He held the moment, silent until it was clear he had no more to say on the subject. “Let’s take a fifteen minute break and reconvene. I still want to go over the details of Miss Moreau’s case against me before ten.”

“I saw a coffee cart downstairs,” said Ainsley. “Is it all right if I’m a couple of minutes late getting back?”

Nick rose. “I could use a cup too, counsellor. How do you take yours?”

Ainsley had gotten a little rumpled and less pristine that she’d arrived. She straightened her clothes with a tug.”Black with sugar. The biggest one they have, please.”

“Nick is not happy with you,” said Simon as soon as the man in charge had left them alone.

“You noticed that. Did you?” Ainsley had seriously misjudged Nick Coyle - not as badly as the idiots she worked for, but, she’d assumed she understood him well enough to take her time winning him over to her perspective on things. Most critically, she’d assumed that whatever Nick said, once he had wealth he would do whatever he needed in order to hang onto it. To Ainsley, that was close to an absolute rule of human behavior.

“It was pretty hard to miss. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him that unhappy with someone before,” said Simon. “Do you think if I asked nicely, he’d let me come watch him rip your coworkers new assholes?”

Beyond having misjudged Nick, Ainsley was exhausted. She’d been awake for the last twenty-six hours and couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten a solid eight hours of sleep or taken a day off. Being on-site for Nick, meetings at the office, and a commute that was supposed to take two hours each way if you drove the speed limit took fourteen hours if everyone was on the ball and there were no surprises. That rarely happened. If nothing else, she was very junior on her team at the firm and any scheduling conflict meant she had to wait for the other lawyer to be free.

She had peers who prided themselves on claims they thrived on three or four hours of sleep a night. Ainsley knew her performance degraded under such circumstances. Today, she needed to be as smart, clever, and charming as she’d ever been if she was going to salvage anything from the relationship she’d built with Nick. She was none of those things today. The best she could hope for was to be competent enough to keep her place, maybe cut out a little early, leave her car in the garage, head home, and get enough sleep to be Miss Andretti by tomorrow morning.

“What are you doing in this meeting, Simon?” she asked. “What’s your role here?”

“Nick is starting to think you two might not be on the same team,” said Simon. “He wants me to familiarize myself with the trust’s governance documents so he can get a second opinion on anything you tell him.”

Ainsley wanted to weep with frustration. If Simon’s interpretation were correct, she wasn’t just back to square one with Nick. Everything she’d done since showing up at his hotel room door in jeans and a Yale Law sweatshirt had been wasted.

How had she miscalculated so badly? After the shock of seeing Nick standing around playing pool with Colleen Moreau, she’d expected a spirited discussion in Nick’s office followed by a postmortem on the conversation with Colleen and a damage control meeting with the litigation team. The discussion had quickly spiraled out of any sense of order and turned into two people trying not to shout at each other.

It would be easy to tell herself that she’d just been doing her job, trying to protect Nick’s assets and that Nick was an impossible client. But Nick was going to need lawyers for the rest of his life. Calling him “impossible” was just a way of saying she wasn’t good enough to be one of them. She needed to go back over what she and Nick had said yesterday and figure out where it had gone off the rails, but she had no capacity for analysis right now. She would have to table that for tomorrow.

In her fatigue, she’d glossed over part of what Simon had said. “You’re reviewing the governance documents? That will never work. You’re not a lawyer.” She yawned into the back of her hand. “Even we have specialists for different aspects.”

Simon shrugged. “Right now, Nick trusts about six people in the whole world. None of us are lawyers. Nick wants me to review the documents, I review the documents. He wants me to spend the whole day closeted with you learning how to read nineteenth-century legalese, there are worse fates. Even if he weren’t paying me a comically large salary, there’s not a lot I wouldn’t do for Nick if he asked.”

“I guess you two must be really good friends.” Ainsley hoped Simon didn’t literally mean the whole day. The language of the trust could put her to sleep on the best of days.

“I’m not Nick’s best friend, but he’s mine,” said Simon.

Before Ainsley could ask what that meant, Nick was back with the coffee. She sipped hers as soon as it was put in front of her, found that it wasn’t scalding, and drank about a third of the cup.

“So, tell me about Colleen’s lawsuit,” Nick said.

Ainsley went for her case, pulled out her notes and her reading glasses, and did a quick review before speaking. “Miss Moreau is suing for fifty percent control of the trust assets and the right to dissolve the trust itself. She’s using pretty much the same strategy Lauren used - a claim that Lauren was Colin’s common-law wife and that she had a verbal agreement with Colin that he would treat her children as his own no matter who the father was. She’s seeking to nullify the gender requirement based on...” She yawned. “Pardon. She’s seeking to nullify the gender requirement based on a list of precedents, some of which I recognize, a few of which are novel. We’ve seen judges put aside the gender requirements before. But the core argument hasn’t gotten any traction the half dozen times Lauren tried it.”

“Do you need a break, counsellor? You sound tired.” There was something that might be sympathy and concern in Nick’s voice, maybe a hint that there would be a consolation prize if Ainsley failed to prove she could do the job he asked of her.

She desperately wanted to say yes. Nick was offering the one thing she needed and wanted almost more than anything right now, but she knew the price and shook her head. “No. I’ll be fine once the coffee kicks in.How much detail do you want? Most of what I have here is pretty arcane.”

Nick made a hand gesture that seemed dismissive. “Has she given any indication she’d be willing to settle for less?”

Ainsley again glanced at her notes. “There’s a nominal offer to settle for one hundred million dollars.”

Nick looked up. “That’s a lot less than half. The trust generates that much in income every...”

“Eighty-eight days,” said Simon. “Rounded off, anyway. It’s like eighty-eight point three.”

“Unfortunately, you can’t accept...” Ainsley stopped herself and started again. “It’s strategically unwise to offer a settlement because of the imputation clause in the charter.”

“That’s the part that says any settlement is an admission of the validity of the claim. Right?” Simon asked.

Ainsley stared at him longer than she meant to before remembering to nod. How on Earth had Simon figured out that already? It was buried deep in the charter and the language was particularly cryptic.

Simon gave a little smirk. “There’s a ton of information about the trust on Lexis-Nexis. This guy Hemmick writes about it constantly. And he’s got a serious hard-on for the imputation clause.”

Ainsley nodded. “Hemmick wrote the textbook on trust law we used at Yale. He was at Black and Stringer back in the eighties and nineties. I’m pretty he sure did a lot of the litigation work for the trust at that time.”

“So, what’s this clause?” Nick asked.

“It says that any settlement of claims against the trust is an imputation of the validity of the claim and allows for judicial review of previous claims” said Ainsley.

Nick looked at her across the table for a while. Ainsley thought he was considering the implication of the imputation clause, but he said, “I didn’t quite follow that, counselor. Could you dumb it down for me?”

Ainsley thought back to what she’d just said and imagined hearing it with non-lawyer ears. “It means that, if we offer a settlement to Miss Moreau, we’re effectively acknowledging that her claim has merit.” She rubbed her temples. “Does that make sense? I’ve been listening to other lawyers talk for the last fourteen hours or so. The basic English skills start to go after a while.”

Nick looked pained and Ainsley felt a tight knot of fear in her gut telling her she’d said too much. Talking to Nick was always a delicate balancing act between trying to bond with him the way his friends did and still do her job. The bonding required a level of banter Ainsley hadn’t engaged in since she was an undergraduate and required an entirely different set of thought processes than practicing the law did.

“Ainsley, you should go home,” said Nick quietly.

That gave her a little shot of adrenaline. “That’s not necessary. Let’s just get through this.”

Nick shook his head. “You’re dead on your feet, Ainsley.”

“I don’t need to be on my feet, Nick. I need to be in this chair,” she insisted.

“You don’t,” said Nick firmly. “We can do this later, after you’ve gotten some sleep.”

“If I go home, I won’t be back until tomorrow. I live in Connecticut.”

“Then we’ll do it tomorrow, Miss Davenport.” There was a hint of steel in his voice that Ainsley now recognized as a warning not to keep pushing.

But, she had to try one more time. “Let me stay for the general meeting. Then, I’ll head home.”

Nick sighed. “Ainsley, your dedication is always admirable, but it’s skirting a border with pathological right now. You need to sleep.”

She surrendered. She’d lost. She needed to call the firm and tell them to send someone else for the general meeting. The only reason they hadn’t replaced her here was because Nick hadn’t allowed her to. There were at least a dozen other lawyers slavering to be where she was right now. Once she let one in, she’d probably be back in the office filing briefs for patent trolls by morning. She gathered her things into her case. “I’m going to take the train today so I don’t fall asleep behind the wheel. You can call me if you need me.”

“Why don’t you crash here instead?” offered Nick. “I’ve got plenty of space.”

Ainsley considered the offer. She really wanted to be back in the little house she was paying too much for and almost never got to see, but it was so far away. “If I crash here, I could take a nap and still get something done this afternoon.” She looked at Simon. “We could start going over your questions then.”

Simon smirked, but a smirk was pretty much Simon’s resting face. “I’ll send you a Word doc.”

“Come on. I’ll get you something you can sleep in.” Nick rose from his chair. “Do you think it would be creepy if I just laid in a stock of sleeping sweats in women’s sizes for overnight guests?” He looked at Ainsley and then Simon. “Never mind. Moral compass question. Wrong room.”

As they headed to the elevator, Nick laid a hand on the back of Ainsley’s arm. When she looked down at it, Nick pulled it away. “Sorry, counselor. I wasn’t getting fresh. You just looked a little unsteady on your feet.”

“I know you weren’t getting fresh.” Ainsley sighed and pressed the button for the fourth floor. It’s just ... I want to be your lawyer, Nick - not one of your wounded doves.”

Nick didn’t say anything and Ainsley thought she’d probably said too much again. But, with the possibility of sleep looming, her brain was shutting down. It wasn’t until they were in the residential wing that he spoke again. “I don’t think I like that characterization of my new friends, Ainsley.”

She lowered her head. “I didn’t mean it like that, Nick. It’s great that you like to take care of people. I don’t need you to take care of me.”

“I’m just giving you a place to crash after I worked you half to death. It’s not taking care of someone if you break their legs and then offer them a pair of crutches.” Nick led her through his apartment. Ainsley followed automatically and realized they were in his bedroom. She perched awkwardly on the end of the bed as he dug into his chest of drawers and came out with a set of sweats.

She accepted them from him. “Nick, can I ask you something kind of personal?”

“Go ahead,” said Nick.

Ainsley considered the sweatshirt, toying with the zipper that held it closed. “Why were you so angry yesterday? Not at the end of our meeting. I get that. But, it seemed like you started out angry. If you still want me as your lawyer, I’d like to know if I did something so I can avoid doing it again.”

Nick smirked. “Not to get sidetracked, but of course I still want you, Andretti. Even when I want to shake some sense into you, you’re still my favorite lawyer.”

Ainsley was mortified to feel tears of relief on her cheeks, but at least Nick was kind enough to pretend not to notice them. “I guess that’s a pretty low bar.”

He nodded. “Maybe you should get some sleep before we discuss the answer to your question.”

“Didn’t anybody ever teach you sleep is for the weak, Coyle?” she challenged.

“Somebody probably tried, but I dozed off,” said Nick. “I think I have an apartment free, but I’ve lost track of who’s where. I have a guest room slash office here if you don’t mind the close quarters.”

“Here, there, wherever. You’re the boss.” Ainsley yawned, then remembered where she was. “All right. Maybe not here.”

Nick gave her an odd look before walking her around to the guest room. “Promise me you’re not going to be in here working on your phone, please.”

Ainsley nodded. “Tell Simon he can come get me to talk about the ... thing in a couple of hours, please.”

“Not a chance,” said Nick. “Get some rest, Ainsley. You’re no good to me if you’re exhausted.”

She didn’t protest. She was almost too tired to get out of her suit and into the hoodie, but she knew she’d have to take up the mantle of Ainsley Davenport, Nick Coyle’s Favorite Lawyer once she woke up and she couldn’t do that in a wrinkled suit.

Each day, Emily found fresh, new ways her sprained ankle limited her. She couldn’t walk on it without crutches obviously. It forced her to work out differently. If she’d been home in Coney Island, she wouldn’t be able to use the big tub that she loved so much. Dennis was very careful with it during sex, but she she was already starting to wish he didn’t have to be.

Today’s limitation was loitering. It was impossible to loiter on crutches. Or at least, it was impossible to look like you were just standing around when someone happened to walk by. On crutches, all standing was deliberate.

She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want to be obvious about waiting for Nick. They spoke several times a day most days. Just today, she didn’t want to look like she was lobbying for special favors.

She settled for sitting on the couch closest to and facing the apartment wing. From that vantage point, she could see a little way down the hall to Nick’s apartment, but had her back to most of the lounge. So, she didn’t notice Arwen approaching until she felt the couch shift with the other woman’s weight.

“If you were stuck on a deserted island with Lev and you knew you wouldn’t see another man for years, would you have sex with him?”

“Lev? Sure,” said Emily automatically. “When does the boat leave?”

Arwen’s eyes narrowed and, for a moment, Emily thought she’d said something wrong. But then the other girl laughed, seemingly in spite of herself. Then, she laughed again and it was an easier sound. “Ok. Thanks.”

Emily had no idea what the question was all about, but she’d been starting to think Arwen didn’t like her. Arwen always seemed to be kind of cool around her. She decided to play along. “All right. Same question. You and Dennis.”