Read Online Collar Robber by Hillary Bell Locke - Free Book Online Page B

because I’d grown up in Pittsburgh, where he lived. Mostly it was a way of patting me on the head and telling me what a good girl I was. We’d hit it off.
    Then C&B made the mistake bailing out of representation on an indie film that Sean was trying to get financed. The firm had bailed because a senior partner was afraid that an activist group would lower C&B’s favorability rating if it associated itself even obliquely with a film that the group wouldn’t like—and it for sure wouldn’t have liked this one.
    â€œGutless.” That was what Sean called it when he took me to lunch afterward. He’d spoken the word in a cold, disgusted tone and with a sad shake of his head.
    â€œNot exactly a profile in courage,” I’d said tactfully (for me).
    â€œLet’s get down to the short strokes.” He’d actually blushed a little as he’d realized that the expression was a tad off-color. “How often do you think about blowing off the big-firm racket and opening up your own shop back in Pittsburgh?”
    â€œThree times a week.”
    â€œHave you run the numbers?”
    â€œIn a half-assed kind of way.” I did not blush at that unladylike adjective. “I could sublet office space from a lawyer I worked with while I was on hold with C&B. I could live cheap in my dad’s house ’til I got on my feet. I have something like a hundred-thousand saved. That should be enough to buy a photocopier and a computer and see me through until I find out whether I can really build a practice or not.”
    â€œNo.” He’d shaken his head firmly. “Don’t support your practice or yourself with your own savings. Put that money in a bank that will give you a line of credit for your practice. Always use other people’s money.”
    â€œGood advice.”
    â€œAnd don’t buy any office equipment. Lease. If something appreciates over time, buy it. If it depreciates, lease it.”
    â€œI’m convinced.”
    â€œLook, you’re smart as hell, and somewhere along the way you got slapped around a little by life—which is good. You’re not experienced enough for me to pay you to negotiate with regulators or restructure financings. But you’ve got guts. If you decide to make that jump, I can throw twenty thousand a year in business at you. Not scintillating stuff. Evictions, collections, enforcing noncompetes. But it’ll help pay the rent.”
    So now, here I was. In my thirteenth month of solo practice, doing it on nerve and bluff. And if you ignore the de facto rent subsidy from dad and my stepmom, actually breaking even. But Sean and Willy between them accounted for about a third of my billings, which is way too much for two clients. For the foreseeable future, Sean had to keep thinking that I had guts.
    My desk phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I ignored it. Abbey didn’t.
    â€œThat’s the number of the Vodaphone Sean uses as his mobile when he’s overseas.”
    Sure enough. In a couple of seconds I had him on speaker.
    â€œHow’s the jet-lag, big guy?” Abbey asked.
    â€œRunning on pure adrenaline, and praying that the eurocrats aren’t planning on one of their famous late-night suppers with schnapps in between courses of raw sausage. How are things going over there?”
    â€œI can’t say the cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river, but we’re getting there.” Abbey winked at me.
    â€œReally? What’s happened?”
    â€œWell, technically, nothing. Yet. But Cindy has just taken me through Entrapment for Dummies. When Tally calls I’ll be ready.”
    â€œ If he calls.”
    â€œOh, he’ll call, all right. Tally has never seen an angle he could resist playing.”
    â€œThat reminds me,” Sean said. “Cindy, there’s something I have to tell you so you can yell at me.”
    â€œNamely?”
    â€œWilly