Christmas Pet

Perhaps if I had a boyfriend, I wouldn’t be this horny, but I didn’t have time for relationships. My career was my sole focus.

I might not have time for a relationship, but I did have time to get lost in my fantasies. In all of them, James would screw me into oblivion. A girl could dream, right?

He pulled out the chair at the head of the table, sat, and poured over documents, stopping for a few seconds here and there to take a sip of coffee and a bite of a cookie.

Unsure of what to do, I sat at the other end of the table and waited for the other associates to arrive.

Every now and then, his brow furrowed, and his lips moved while he read, but other than that, his face gave nothing away.

By eight, the rest of the associates had trickled in, and once everyone had sat down, James stood and cleared his throat.

“Everyone, I’d like you to welcome Pearl to our team. She’s baked some Christmas cookies for us. They’re delicious.” I would die. James said my cookies were delicious. There were a few sniggers and some murmured words of thanks.

Susan Murphy, an associate who’d graduated from Cornell a few years before me, rolled her eyes. “Pollyanna strikes again. I’ll pass.”

Smith Jones, a six-year associate, reached into the box and grabbed a handful. “More for me.”

Ryan Butler, a new hire who’d been poached from a rival firm, snagged two.

While I hadn’t worked on any cases with anyone sitting around the table, we were all aware of one another. And each of us knew that in the New Year, a senior associate position was up for grabs — one that would set the appointee on the road to partner. The competition and the backbiting would make The Hunger Games seem tame. I wasn’t ready to become a senior associate, but I was more than ready to move on from being a junior.

James looked directly at me. “Pearl, we’re representing Erin Chastain in her divorce from Daniel Chastain. My hope is to avoid court, but we may not have a choice. Mr. Chastain has disappeared with his pregnant mistress. We haven’t made anything public because the last thing we need is a media circus. We’ve filed the petition. It’s only a matter of time before it becomes common knowledge.”

I inhaled a sharp breath. “They’re divorcing? No way! But they seem so much in love. Weren’t they on the red carpet last month for his new movie? She looked to die for in her blue, sparkly dress.”

Susan groaned. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Enough,” James barked. “They’re not ‘so much in love.’ Erin is stopping by my office in two hours. Where are we? Anyone got any leads on who his mistress is and where they’re hiding? We can’t prove adultery without evidence.”

Silence filled the room. James’s eyes drifted around the four of us.

“No one found out anything?” He slammed his hands against the table. “Come on, people, we can’t move forward until we find Daniel and the mistress. So far, we have nothing only Erin’s accusations and a blurry photo.”

I cleared my throat. “What’s the mistress’s name?”

“Jane Doe.” He picked up a photo and passed it my way.

My eyes widened. “She looks like Sophia Landers except with blonde hair.”

“Who’s Sophia Landers?” Smith asked while biting into his fifth cookie.

“She grew up on my block. We went to St. Francis together, but she was always shy and introverted and had long black hair, not blonde.” I shrugged. “Maybe they just look alike.” I glanced from the photo to James.

“Do you think you can find out where she is so we can cross her off the list?” he asked. “We’re running out of options.”

“Sure. Her grandmother is coming to my mom’s cookie exchange on Friday night. Our whole block does it every year. It’s tons of fun. If you think my cookies are delicious, you need to taste my mom’s. They melt in your mouth.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus, save me from this.” Susan looked like she wanted to hit me over the head with a shovel. “You make it sound like your life is a crappy Hallmark movie. Next, you’ll be telling us about the childhood sweetheart you fell back in love with after he showed you the magic of Christmas with his dick.”

I ignored Susan’s bitterness. “What do you need me to find out?”

“Everything you can. Erin said Daniel met his mistress at a strip club while filming in Vegas.”

I shook my head. “Definitely not the right person. Sophia’s grandmother would drag her to church and dunk her in holy water before shipping her off to a nunnery if she even set foot inside a strip club.”

“We still need to take her out of the equation.”

“I’ll see what I can find out.”

****

By Friday, exhaustion left me teetering. James demanded more from me than any other person I’d ever worked with. If he said jump, we all asked how high. If it wasn’t for my mom’s cookie exchange tonight, I would have stayed home, crawled under the blankets, and watched Christmas movies all weekend.