Miles Slade looks every bit the successful lawyer, but his swanky office and designer suits hide some desperate truths. A flailing law practice. Massive debt. A dying sister in need of expensive care. Miles is willing to do just about anything—to cross any line—to raise the cash he urgently needs.
Then he meets Nicole Paxton, a woman with her own secrets. She ignites a passion in Miles so intense, he’s ready to give up his secret life. But before he’s able to do so, both he and Nicole become entangled in a new web of deception—one that involves murder.
Read an Excerpt Below!
Chapter 1
Miles
Standing outside his sister’s hospital room, blinking back tears, Miles struggled to maintain his composure.
“Are you absolutely sure there’s nothing else you can do?” he asked, a slight tremor in his voice.
The young doctor briefly averted his eyes before responding. “I’m sorry. At this point, all we can do is make her comfortable.”
A seasoned lawyer of twelve years, Miles was used to slapping on a game face when the situation required it. But in this moment, the ache in his heart was so profound nothing could mask his pain.
Wiping his damp palms on his slacks, he stared down the drab hospital hallway. There wasn’t a single picture on the walls. Just because it was a county hospital didn’t mean it had to look like one. Whoever designed this place had obviously given no thought to the fact that soul-shattering news would be delivered within its confines.
“She’s only thirty-nine years old,” Miles said, returning his focus to the doctor. “I don’t understand.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Miles recognized how ridiculous he sounded. Death didn’t discriminate based on age.
“As we’ve discussed,” the doctor continued, “your sister’s liver has suffered extensive damage. I know you say she’s not a drinker, but she has late-stage cirrhosis. Her bodily functions are slowly shutting down.”
Miles’ fingers reflexively balled into fists.
The doctor’s casual I know you say comment enraged him. He didn’t know how Myra developed cirrhosis of the liver, but he knew for damn sure it wasn’t from drinking. Both of their parents were raging alcoholics, and for that reason, he and Myra never touched the stuff. It pissed him off that the doctor was basically calling his sister and him a liar.
A young woman Miles hadn’t noticed standing nearby stepped forward and extended her hand. “I’m Sofia Morales, one of the hospital’s social workers. I left you a voicemail message about discussing end-of-life options for your sister.”
Miles shifted his body weight from one foot to the other and fought the urge to reach out for the wall to steady himself.
Three weeks of life support and an induced coma didn’t justify such dire action. Miles had heard stories about people miraculously waking up from a coma after ten, even twenty years. Why were they rushing it?
“As I said in my message, we need to discuss a plan for transitioning your sister to hospice care.”
After listening to her voicemail, Miles had actually Googled “hospice care” because he wasn’t exactly sure what it was.
Hospice care is comfort care without curative intent.
The patient no longer has curative options.
Despite all the evidence staring him in the face, Miles had yet to accept the reality that he was going to lose his big sister. His protector. Their unbreakable bond was the natural byproduct of surviving the challenges of seven foster homes together. More than a few times, Myra had stepped up and taken a beating intended for him. Myra had often gone hungry but made sure his belly was full. On those long car rides to each strange new home, Myra had hugged him so tight he could hardly breathe. The only reason he’d made it through law school was because Myra refused to let him give up.
“I’m very familiar with most of the hospice facilities in the area,” Sofia said, her voice filled with kindness.
Images of a large, dimly lit room with rows of beds holding frail, dying bodies flashed in his mind. Miles would be damned if Myra was going to spend her final days in a place like that.
“If my sister has to go into a hospice facility,” he said, his game face back on, “I want her in the best place possible. Money is no object.”
That was a lie. Money wasn’t just an object, it was a giant-sized boulder in the middle of the road. Myra didn’t have the means to pay for a top-notch hospice facility and neither did he. His sister spent years working as a billing clerk for a family-run construction company and lived paycheck to paycheck. He had tried to get her into one of the city’s better hospitals, but it didn’t accept Obamacare insurance.
Based solely on the image he presented to the world, no one would guess Miles had money problems. His financial struggles were skillfully masked by his meticulously crafted lawyer persona. His moderately expensive suits were purchased at a discount in the garment district. He drove a Benz, but it was ten years old and needed a new transmission. Yes, he had a glitzy office on Wilshire Boulevard, but only because he was splitting the rent with four other struggling lawyers.
No one—not even Myra—knew his law practice had been flailing almost from the day he hung out his shingle. So far that year, he’d only settled three car accident cases. His cut from the settlements was barely enough to cover the minimum payments on the eight credit cards he juggled to pay the rent and utilities on Myra’s house, as well as his own bills.
The alarm on his cell phone chirped, reminding him that he had a meeting with a client in thirty minutes. He’d have to hustle to make it back to his office in time.
“Do you have a few minutes to chat with me?” the social worker pressed.
“I’ll call you,” Miles said, as he abruptly walked back into Myra’s hospital room.
He bent down to kiss her on the forehead. “Don’t worry, sis. I got you.”
As he race-walked toward the elevators, Miles had no idea how he was going to earn enough money to make sure his sister’s final days were spent in a dignified place.
But he was determined to do exactly that.
Chapter 2
Nicole
From her elevated perch on the dais, Nicole’s gaze methodically crisscrossed the opulent ballroom, examining the sea of guests. Though she hadn’t spotted the woman yet, she was positive her husband was sleeping with somebody in this room.
Her eyes honed in on a woman standing near the door. Her tight-fitting dress with its brazen display of cleavage was completely inappropriate for a professional setting. But no, it wasn’t her. Too tall, too thin and not quite young enough. Nicole knew Ike Paxton’s desires as well as she knew her own.
Loud applause interrupted Nicole’s personal reconnaissance. Seconds ago, Ike had been sitting next to her. Now the handsome attorney was stalking toward the podium, grinning and waving like a winning politician on election night. As he basked in the applause, Nicole longed for some handclapping too. She had hosted his fabulous dinner parties. She had shopped for his tailored suits. She had put her career on the back burner so he could excel at his.
Ike graciously thanked the National Bar Association for naming him Attorney of the Year, then launched into a speech Nicole had listened to the night before. Ike was almost finished when he threw in a line she hadn’t heard during his rehearsal.
“I couldn’t have accomplished any of this without the love and support of my lovely wife, Nicole. Sweetie, could you stand?”
Nicole stood and smiled demurely. More than a few women in the audience probably envied her life, or the life they thought she lived. A good-looking, wealthy husband. A multi-million-dollar home. Extravagant vacations. A country club membership, plus more leisure time than she needed or even wanted. But her picture-perfect existence was a total sham. And Nicole was just as guilty of perpetrating the fraud as Ike.
As she smiled out at the audience, Nicole noticed the frown stretched across her stepdaughter’s face. Ashley was not happy that her father had neglected to acknowledge her.
Ike’s twenty-three-year-old daughter was yet another kink in the armor of their marriage.
Ashley’s mother resented Nicole for marrying the man who had refused to marry her. So she actively encouraged her then eight-year-old daughter to loathe her new stepmother. Over time, Nicole still managed to develop a loving bond with Ashley, but everything changed after Ashley’s mother died of pancreatic cancer four years ago. Seemingly overnight, it was as if Ashley had decided to pay homage to her dead mother by despising Nicole.
Whenever Nicole tried to talk to Ike about Ashley’s escalating hostility toward her, he made excuses for his daughter’s behavior.
“Give her a break,” he’d say. “She’s still grieving her mother’s death. She’ll come around.”
Nicole couldn’t help wondering how different her life would have been had she married a man who valued the sanctity of his wedding vows more than money. She might not wield a black American Express card, but she’d possess something a lot more valuable—happiness.
Too bad she hadn’t listened to her own mother, who’d disliked her future son-in-law from the instant they’d met.
“A man that arrogant and self-centered could never love a woman as much as he loved himself,” she had warned.
What her mother viewed as arrogance, Nicole saw as confidence. She brushed aside her mother’s concerns, certain that she would have a long, happy marriage with Ike.
Nicole never told her mother about Ike’s first affair, which surfaced only eighteen months into their marriage. Nor did she divulge the ones that followed, which Ike vehemently denied. Despite her husband’s repeated infidelities, Nicole still clung to the hope that one day she would have that fairy tale marriage she’d always dreamed of. A life framed behind a white picket fence with two brilliant, adorable children.
But like the illusive perfect marriage, the children never materialized either. Even after three miscarriages, Nicole refused to give up hope. But a fourth pregnancy never happened. Her body, it seemed, had betrayed her as much as the man she loved. Once Nicole finally accepted her reality and began to seriously consider adoption, Ike flat out refused.
“I don’t want to raise anybody else’s kid. We have each other. That’s enough.”
Now, at forty-three, with fifteen years of marriage under her belt, Nicole was fed up with her husband’s cycles of betrayal, her well of forgiveness as barren as her uterus. Ike would never change.
Nicole had made up her mind. It was time to end this charade. She was going to file for divorce.
The only decision to make was when to pull the trigger.
Chapter 3
Miles
Miles barely made it back in time to welcome his anxious client into his office.
“So did we get a trial date yet?” Mrs. Kemp asked, even before she was seated.
The skinny, fortyish, elementary school teacher had actually wept when Miles agreed to take her case, having been turned away by three other attorneys.
“Yes, but there’s been a new development.” Miles silently inhaled. “The company wants to settle.”
Mrs. Kemp folded her arms and rested them on her non-existent bosom as she listened to his spiel. Miles had been certain the six-figure settlement would make her eyes sparkle. To his surprise, her lips twisted with skepticism.
“You said we were going to trial. And if we do, I’m sure the jury will give us a lot more than—”
“Our trial date’s almost a year away,” he interrupted. “And I guarantee you the company will request an extension just for the hell of it. So, in reality, it could be another eighteen months, probably longer, before you get to tell your story to a jury.”
People assumed filing a lawsuit was about exacting justice. It wasn’t. It was about money. When Mrs. Kemp walked into his office to tell him about the long-haul trucker who fell asleep at the wheel, crossed the median and killed her husband, he didn’t say to himself, I have to get her justice. No. He immediately estimated how much the company might settle her case for and calculated his one-third cut.
Unbeknownst to his clients, Miles had only tried five cases, all of which he’d lost. Although he promoted himself as a business litigator, car accidents and slip and falls were his bread and butter. What Mrs. Kemp didn’t understand was that a below-average, solo practitioner like Miles didn’t want to go anywhere near a jury. He wanted that bird in the hand called a settlement.
And given his sister’s dire situation, Miles needed to get his hands on that bird as soon as possible.
“Just because it’s going to take a long time shouldn’t be a reason for me to accept peanuts,” Mrs. Kemp grumbled. “I lost my husband. My daughter doesn’t have a father.” Miles shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Forgive me, but half a million dollars isn’t peanuts.”
“More than a third of that goes to you,” she said with a pout. “I saw a news story about a woman who got five million dollars when a Walmart truck driver killed her husband.”
Miles sighed inwardly.
This client, like most, insisted on ignoring the negatives of her case. Her husband’s blood-alcohol level was a smidgen over the legal limit. He’d also been living with his girlfriend at the time of the accident. The jury wouldn’t like him for that and could very well punish Mrs. Kemp, not her dead husband, for his infidelity. And something Miles had not and would never point out to her or any other client, his opposing counsel was better and smarter than he’d ever be.
Bird in the hand.
“How about this?” Miles rocked back in his chair. “What if I reduce my contingency fee from one-third to ten percent?”
Fifty thousand dollars would go a long way toward getting Myra into a good hospice facility. And it was also significantly more than zero, his likely cut if he took the case to trial.
Mrs. Kemp squinted with suspicion. “You’d do that?”
“I know how much you need the money.” He locked eyes with her, determined to project sincerity, not his raw desperation.
For a long stretch, the room was heavy with silence.
Please say yes.
Miles grimaced. “If you really want to go to trial, fine.” He snatched the receiver of his desk phone and started pecking random numbers. “I’ll call the company’s attorney right now and reject the offer.”
“Hold on a minute.” Mrs. Kemp held up both palms. “Can I think about it and let you know in a couple of days?”
The instant she walked out of his office, Miles’ glum mood deepened. Even if Mrs. Kemp accepted the settlement, it could be weeks before the company cut the check. He didn’t have that kind of time.
He scrolled through the calendar on his cell phone. Maybe there was some case, some client he’d missed. He almost laughed. Except for a golf date with his buddy Carlo, his calendar was empty for this week as well as the next two. He tossed his cell phone onto his desk and massaged his tired eyes with his thumb and index finger.
Suddenly, Miles sprang forward in his chair. Carlo!
He actually did have another option. One that could put cash in his hands in days, not weeks. Technically, the conduct he’d be engaging in was illegal, but it wasn’t nearly as risky as robbing a bank.
Grabbing his cell phone, he called Carlo, who answered on the second ring.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Miles said. “I want in.”