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“You really do owe me big-time, Jen,” he murmured under his breath as he craned his neck to make out the faded addresses that graced the fronts of less than half the stores and buildings he passed.
It was hard to imagine, the way the streets were now, that this area had ever been new. The buildings looked as if they had been standing, enduring the less-than-clement Portland weather, for the last century or so.
Here and there Jordan saw half-hearted attempts at renovations, seemingly doomed before they were begun. Cheap paint was slapped onto surfaces to make them look newer than they were and to hide the multitude of flaws.
Oh well, he wasn’t here for the view or a tour, he was here for Jenny.
Jenny, the pure of heart, he thought with a smile.
He supposed his sister was right when she insisted that this was their duty. Growing up, they had both always had so much, had never wanted for anything. The best education, the best of everything, really. It only seemed right to try to pay some of it back.
This, Jordan decided, would fill his pro bono quota for the next year.
Maybe longer, he amended, slowing his car down even more as he realized that he was looking at the storefront office where he’d agreed to spend the next three weeks, shepherding the lost and the confused through the maze known as their legal system.
The sign in the window, which Jenny told him had once displayed the wares of an independent clothing store, brightly proclaimed: Advocate Aid, Inc., in bold black letters on gleaming white poster board. It only made the surrounding area appear that much more dingy and forlorn.
To Jenny’s credit—at least, he assumed as much—the display window was dust-free and clean, unlike the displays belonging to the businesses on either side of the legal aid office. To the right, ironically enough, he thought, was a pawn shop. The window was crammed with all sorts of things that had once been precious to someone, and that were now being sold in an effort to keep body and soul together. From the amount of dust that had accumulated, Jordan guessed that the items had last seen anything remotely close to a good cleaning somewhere during the Eisenhower era.
To the left of the office was a smaller store front which displayed an anemic blue light. The fixture was fashioned to proclaim that a seer of the future was domiciled just beyond the threshold. For a nominal fee, the secrets of the future could be shared.
Jordan paused, his sports car idling. He shook his head in disbelief. His sister had graduated near the top of her class. She could have had an office next to his at Morrison and Treherne.
“What the hell are you doing here, Jenny?” he wondered out loud.
And what was he doing here? he wondered silently. For that matter, where the hell was he going to park his car? More to the point, was it going to be there when it came time for him to leave? Cars like his were targets in seedy neighborhoods like this. A good team could strip it in no time flat.
Maybe he should have rented an inexpensive car for the next three weeks. Too late now, he thought with a sigh.
A sign indicating that there was parking behind the row of stores had him circling the block, looking for an opening. He missed it the first time around. When he discovered it on his second pass, he found his driving skills challenged. The alleyway that led to the lot was narrow, even for his sports car. He held his breath the entire time.
When he finally reached the lot, Jordan saw that there were several cars already there. Or maybe they’d just been abandoned, he amended, seeing the condition of the vehicle closest to him. It had at least twenty years on it and the years had not been kind.
Getting out, holding a container of cappuccino in one hand, Jordan engaged the security alarm in his car with his other, wondering if the gesture was a futile one. He had a feeling that anyone here probably knew how to disarm such an alarm in a matter of seconds, silencing it before it had a chance to go off.
Here goes nothing, Jordan thought, walking back out onto the street.
He passed a man rolling back the rusted iron security gates that protected the pawn shop from any break-ins. Short, squat, with arms that looked as if bench-pressing an elephant would have presented no hardship to him, the man wore his hair cropped so close to his head it appeared to be almost shaved.
Pausing as he secured the gates, the pawn-shop owner looked at Jordan and then nodded at the display window. “See anything you like?”
Jordan didn’t bother looking, although he did return the man’s smile. No sense in antagonizing someone whose biceps rivaled the circumference of truck tires. “Not at the moment.”
The pawn-shop owner continued staring at him. “Nice threads,” he commented. “I could get you a good price for them.”
Probably not anywhere in the neighborhood of what he’d actually paid for the Armani suit, Jordan thought. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You work there?” the man asked as Jordan put his hand on the doorknob.
“Temporarily.”
The man nodded knowingly. “That’s what they all say.”
Jordan didn’t bother to answer.
The door to Advocate Aid, Inc., was unlocked when he tried it. The second he entered, he knew that he had overdressed. The closet of his penthouse apartment was teeming with expensive suits, suits he regarded as part of his trade because his father had impressed on him at an early age that people judged by appearances and the Halls had always been judged well. Wearing a suit was second nature to him—when he wasn’t wearing the latest actress or model or drop-dead gorgeous debutante.
But designer suits were definitely out of place in here, he thought, closing the door behind him.
Walking in, he looked around slowly. His first impression didn’t improve. The area seemed almost claustrophobically small. His old bedroom in the family estate was bigger than this place that Jenny said had five people working in it when they were running at full capacity.
He didn’t understand how anyone could get anything accomplished here. It looked like an illustration for chaos. Every inch of the place was filled with books and papers, scattered and bound. Three of the desks had computers, all of which appeared to be on their way to a museum. The desks beneath them looked battle-worn.
Over in the corner there were ancient bookcases that appeared to be leaning forward, bowing beneath the weight of legal books and, he could only assume from this distance, dust.
It was enough to send someone of his orderly nature out into the street, gasping for air.
Jordan glanced at his watch. Jenny had told him to get here by nine. It was eight-thirty. He was early because that was his nature. He hated to be kept waiting and felt that keeping anyone else waiting was rude. But early or not, he hadn’t expected to be the first one here. He looked around again, but there was no one else in the office. Not unless they were hiding beneath the stacks of paper on the floor.
But the door was unlocked, he recalled.
Maybe they had decided to close down after all and someone had just forgotten to lock the doors. Not that there looked as if there was anything to steal here, he thought, looking around again.
A noise coming from the rear of the room caught his attention. It sounded like a door slamming. Maybe there was more to the office than he’d noticed. He was about to make his way to the back when he found himself almost colliding with a petite—she couldn’t have been more than five foot one—young woman with auburn hair and incredibly lively green eyes.
Her arms were full of files which she immediately transferred into his.
The woman didn’t bother with an introduction.
“Call Mr. Abernathy about tomorrow’s hearing. You have a ten o’clock appointment with Joan Reynolds. Mr. Wyatt wants to know why no one has returned his calls. He’s on line two and he’s not getting off until he talks to a lawyer.” About to take off again, she skidded to a halt in order to add, “Oh, and the temp called in sick again and Harry is stuck in traffic and says he’ll get here when he gets here.”
Only quick reflexes had Jordan saving himself from an unscheduled close-to-scalding cappuccino bath. He managed to switch hands just before this Energizer Bunny on steroids with the rapid-fire mouth dumped the files on him.
Still shell-shocked, he stared at her now. “Harry?” he repeated. His voice sounded hoarse to his ears.
The woman was frowning. And her eyes were passing over him as if she was judging him—and finding him wanting. “Harry Reed. The other lawyer who works here.”
Finished, she turned on her heel, giving every indication that she was about to disappear into the abyss from whence she had emerged.
“Hold it!” Jordan called after her.
Ordinarily, when he took that tone with the law clerks who were interning at Morrison and Treherne, they froze. If they looked up at him at all, it was with meek expressions on their faces. Whoever this whirling dervish was, she only paused in her flight, glancing at him over her shoulder. There was a look of barely suppressed annoyance on her face.
“Yes?”
“Just who the hell are you?” he demanded sternly. He wasn’t accustomed to being ordered around, fluffed off or ignored and she had done all three in the space of less than a minute.
“I’m Sarajane.” She said the name as if that was supposed to mean something to him. When he made no response, she added her last name impatiently. “Sarajane Gerrity.”
The frown on what seemed like an otherwise pretty face deepened. Exasperated, Sarajane turned completely around and crossed back to him. “You are Jenny Logan’s brother, aren’t you? Jordan Hall?”
That was a new one on him. He couldn’t remember himself ever having been referred to that way. If anything, Jenny was regarded as “Jordan Hall’s sister.” He was the one who had garnered fame and attention in the family, not Jenny. To have it stripped away so cavalierly was a completely new experience for him. Apparently, in this small corner of the universe, his sister had come into her own.
Way to go, Jen.
“Yes, I am,” he answered.
Sarajane nodded, as if she approved and he had given the right answer to her question. But the slight frown remained. “She said you’d be coming in today to try to help out.”
He noticed that she’d said try. As if she didn’t expect him to accomplish anything. Obviously the woman didn’t get out much. Or maybe she just didn’t read the local section of the newspaper. The cases he handled appeared in print with a fair amount of regularity. There was talk of making him a partner at the firm the next time around.
“She didn’t tell me about you,” Jordan countered. Jenny had called him again late last night, to tell him about the office manager or office secretary. He hadn’t paid that much attention really. She might have even said the woman’s name, he wasn’t sure. Besides, office managers weren’t people he ordinarily interacted with unless they forgot to order something he needed.
A buzzer sounded behind him. Jordan turned around just as the front door opened. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the woman with the disapproving expression suddenly transform, as if a magic wand had been waved over her. The frown vanished, replaced by a warm, welcoming smile. She looked positively sympathetic.
And positively beautiful, he realized.
Devoid of her frown, Sarajane Gerrity’s features softened. She looked almost radiant. Despite his best efforts not to, he found that his attention was immediately engaged.
Sarajane sailed by him as if he was nothing more than one of the desks or chairs in the place. Her attention seemed to be completely focused on the couple who had just walked in. He looked at the couple now. They appeared to be in their later fifties, possibly early sixties and life had not been kind to either of them.
He caught himself wondering what had brought them here and what had put that close-to-panic look on the woman’s face.
“Please, have a seat,” Sarajane was saying. She gestured toward two chairs in front of the desk closest to the front door. The desk had an incredible amount of papers piled on it. As she coaxed the couple to sit, Sarajane scooped away one of the piles of paper, depositing it onto the adjacent desk. “I was just about to make some coffee. Can I get either of you a cup?” Sarajane asked.
“No, no coffee.” The woman had an accent he couldn’t readily place. He watched her open her purse and take out a much-creased packet of papers. “Just help,” the woman entreated simply. “We got this in the mail—” she began, holding up the papers.
But Sarajane stayed the woman’s hand before she could launch into her tale. She nodded her head toward Jordan. “Mr. Hall over there will be right with you.” Retracing her steps back to him, Sarajane took possession of the files again, digging them out of his arms. “These will be waiting for you on the table,” she promised. She placed them next to the pile she’d just shifted from the first desk.
It was clear that the walk-ins took precedence over all the other instructions she’d fired at him.
“What about Mr. Wyatt?” he wanted to know. The light on the phone on what she indicated was his desk was blinking almost hypnotically.
Even as he posed the question, another line lit up and began to ring. Followed immediately by another. He had the feeling that this was business as usual in this place.
He looked at Sarajane expectantly and barely heard the sigh that escaped her lips. She tossed her head ever so slightly as her eyes met his. “I’ll take care of him for now.”
He couldn’t remember ever hearing more confidence infused into a sentence.
More lines began to ring until every light in the single row was lit. The buzzer went off again as two more people came in.
The man nodded in Jordan’s direction and made himself at home on one of the chairs along one wall. The woman, apparently less familiar with her surroundings than the man, took a seat as well, perching awkwardly on the edge of the folding chair, looking as if she intended to take flight at the slightest provocation. Upon closer scrutiny, Jordan saw that she looked as if she’d been crying.
In the background, Jordan could discern what sounded like the arthritic rumblings of a battle-worn coffeemaker going through its paces, the water grumbling as it was being heated.
This was a far cry from the plush corporate offices where he usually spoke to clients, Jordan thought as he took a seat at the desk opposite the couple that had come in first.
The second he put his full weight on it, the chair began to wobble beneath him. Caught off guard, Jordan grabbed either side of the desk to steady himself and keep from ignobly sinking to the black-and-white-checkered floor.
“Oh, and your chair has a loose wheel,” Sarajane called out without even turning in his direction. She was busy taking down the names of the two people who had just entered. “I’d be careful how I sat down on it if I were you.”
Maybe the woman was better suited to the fortune-teller’s shop next door, Jordan thought as he nodded at the distraught couple.
He put on his most confident smile, the one he wore for the paying clients. He’d been told it put them at their ease. “How can I help you?”
Those were his last words for the next twenty minutes.
Chapter Three
Sarajane was prejudiced against good-looking men.
She had firsthand experience with the nature of the beast. Her opinion was built on a very firm foundation. Fresh out of college, ready to take on the world, she’d lost her heart to a good-looking man with a golden tongue: Rocco Santori, an incredibly good-looking man who was as shallow as a puddle on the pavement.
Lonely, needing love, needing to feel that soothing rush that came from being committed to just one man, she’d actually thought that Rocco was the man she could spend the rest of her life with. In addition to his looks, he was bright, intelligent and intent on making something of himself. She’d poured her heart into the relationship—and he had poured words. Lovely, beautiful words that had turned out to be empty, holding only air and precious little else.
She’d left him when she’d discovered that he was sleeping not only with her, but with two other women as well. Each of them had his promise of exclusivity to wrap their dreams around. It turned out that he was seeking to further his own career by using the women he slept with to his best advantage, to feed his ego, to make him feel invincible.
She couldn’t get away fast enough. After that, she was wary, but her heart being what it was, she fell in love with someone almost a year later. Again, she was hopeful. Again she gave away her heart. Because Andrew Hopkins seemed different.
Seemed, but wasn’t.
Like Rocco, Andrew belonged to the DDG Club, the Drop Dead Gorgeous Club. She came to the conclusion that all men who qualified for that club never bothered developing their personalities, or, more importantly, their scruples, feeling that their looks absolved them of ever having to trouble themselves with a sense of decency or morality.
In her experience, good-looking men didn’t have to try as hard or do as much and they were still forgiven, still worshipped. All because of their looks. If they had the body to go along with that, almost any woman they encountered was lost.
Almost.
She now belonged to that small but exclusive group that could see right through the men of the DDG Club. Men like Jordan Hall, she thought, covertly observing him throughout the morning. Clinically speaking, Jordan was even better looking than either Rocco or Andrew had been. But it didn’t matter. She’d had her shots. She was immune to handsome faces and biceps that rippled and butts that quarters could be bounced off. She’d take a homely, honest man any day.
If she were taking men, which she wasn’t.
Mentally, she’d decided to retreat from the male-female battlefield for the present. Given that she was only twenty-five, she figured she had time to get back in the game—if she ever wanted to. And right now, that was doubtful.
Sarajane frowned thoughtfully to herself as yet another call came in and she picked up the receiver. She had fully expected Jenny Logan’s high-profile brother to fade, to give up. It hadn’t taken a stretch of her imagination to envision him backing away from his desk and heading for the door an hour after his arrival.
Especially after the Trans had arrived. Twelve people, all talking at once, a few lapsing into Vietnamese when they grew excited. One of them—the mother, she had discovered after joining the fray to try to untangle what was going on—had been the victim of identity theft, which, according to what the woman’s oldest daughter had figured out, had begun over nine months ago. Mrs. Tran was being brought to court on all kinds of non-payment charges. There were bounced checks and staggering outstanding credit-card balances for items Mrs. Tran knew nothing about.
Trying to unscramble this information and make sense of what was going on would have tried the patience of a veteran, someone accustomed to dealing with ongoing chaos on a daily basis. Someone like Jenny. To someone like Jordan, who probably had never broken a sweat in his life or been made to struggle with any task, she just assumed, the matter would outdistance his ability to cope by several leagues.
Sarajane was amazed to discover that he did indeed have coping skills. More than that, he had an actual presence and could make himself heard above the noise, above the raised voices all competing for center stage with their version of the situation. As she watched, somewhat in awe, the way one did when confronted with a fish that actually possessed legs and could walk on land, Jordan called for order several times, refusing to continue until he finally succeeded in getting it.
The Tran family abruptly stopped talking and sat in respectful silence, waiting for Jordan to frame his questions. When he did and they began answering in unison, their voices blending in an eager cacophony of half words and sounds, Jordan called for order again.
Careful not to lean back in his chair, Jordan pushed it slightly back from the desk and scrutinized the gathering.
“Look, people, we’re not going to get anywhere if you all keep competing with each other. Now appoint a spokesperson and just have that person talk. And if you hear that he or she is getting it wrong,” he added, “raise your hand.”
“Like in school?” the youngest Tran, a girl with the very Americanized name of Tiffany, asked.
Jordan nodded, a hint of a smile reaching his lips. Tiffany, Sarajane observed, instantly brightened, like a flower absorbing its first rays of the summer sun. “Like in school. Now, talk amongst yourselves and decide who is going to give me the particulars—and don’t forget to consult with your mom.” He nodded at the woman who was at the center of all this. A woman who, it was quickly established, spoke almost no English.
“She’s not my mother, she’s my aunt,” Tiffany corrected him.
Jordan inclined his head, accepting the correction. “Whoever she is, it’s her story to get out.” A better idea came to him. Opening the middle drawer, he silently made a wish for paper. The lined yellow legal pad he discovered in the center of the drawer almost made him feel giddy. He took it out and handed it to the girl, who looked at him quizzically.
He tapped the pad and looked first at Tiffany, then at some of the other members of the family who were standing at his desk. Only the older woman and her husband were sitting. “Be sure not to leave anything out,” he instructed.
He’d intended to get up and get himself a cup of coffee. He’d long since finished the contents of the container he’d brought with him. But instead, just as he was about to stand up, the phone on his desk rang. And rang.
Exasperated, he bit off a few choice words, saying them silently instead, and picked up the receiver. He did his best to ignore the Tran family who were huddled together on the other side of his desk, conferring and dictating to Tiffany.
“Jordan Hall.”
There was silence on the other end. And then a female voice asked almost timidly, “Is this Advocate Aid, Inc.?”
Unfortunately, it is, he thought. “Yes, what can I do for you?”
The woman on the other end quickly launched into a tearful tale about not being able to locate her son whom the police had come and arrested several hours ago. When she’d called first one precinct, then another, no one would tell her where her son was being detained. Jordan made notes as fast as he could.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tiffany had finished writing. She pushed forward the yellow pad and looked at him expectantly. He acknowledged her with a quick nod.
“I’ll have to call you back, Mrs. Rodriguez,” he said into the receiver. The words on the other end flowed more rapidly and freely. “Yes, yes, I promise. Ten minutes. Twenty, tops.”
He became aware of Sarajane’s presence at his elbow even as he was hanging up the receiver. Was she bringing him yet another person to deal with? He wasn’t sure he could handle that right now. His cool was dangerously close to a meltdown. “What?” he bit off, looking at her sharply.
Sarajane didn’t say a word. Instead, she silently placed a mug filled with coffee on the desk beside his elbow and withdrew.
Jordan knew he’d sounded like some curt jerk. He usually hung on to his temper a great deal better than that.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” he called after her, momentarily forgetting that they were far from alone. Sarajane didn’t stop walking or even turn around. But she did raise her hand over her head and made a little waving gesture, as if to brush away his words from the air.
For the time being, given the source, he took it as a supreme compliment.
The action continued nonstop. They were joined by Harry, who finally showed up sometime before eleven, and a woman named Rachel Sands, who was on loan from somewhere for the week. Both were lawyers. But Jordan quickly learned that Sarajane ran the show. It was Sarajane who directed the almost constant influx of human traffic, organizing them, getting them to fill out a minimum of forms and seeming to prioritize their cases and degree of need.