Travis's Appeal. Marie Ferrarella

asked, pointing to the writing beside the number “10.” “It looks like you dipped a chicken in ink and had it walk across your page.” She looked at him again. “Didn’t your parents teach you how to write?”

      “They had more important things to teach me,” he told her lightly. “Like how to fire an insubordinate secretary.”

      With a haughty little noise, she informed him, “I can’t be fired.”

      His sense of humor was valiantly trying to claw its way back among the living. He was game. “And why’s that?”

      He fully expected her to say something about having tenure, since she had worked here longer than anyone could remember. But then, since this was Bea, he realized he should have known better. Conventional arguments were not for her.

      “Slaves have to be sold,” she informed him with a smart toss of her head. “And their name’s O’Reilly.” Bea paused to tap the calendar, as if that could somehow transform his handwriting into legible letters. “Shawn and Shana,” she added.

      “Married couple?” he guessed absently. The borders of family law were wide, taking in a myriad of subjects. There were twelve attorneys in the firm, each with a specialty although their work did encompass many fields within the heading.

      A short laugh escaped like a burst of air. “Not hardly,” she cackled before becoming serious again. “Not unless the old man’s into cradle robbing.” She considered her own observation and commented on it. “‘Course, a man with money these days thinks he could buy himself anything he wants.”

      “How about a secretary who doesn’t give her own narrative to everything?” Travis suggested with a touch of wistfulness.

      “Too boring.” A wave of the hand accompanied her dismissive shake of the head. Her eyes swept over his desk just before she crossed to the doorway again. “By the way, those’ll burn a hole in your stomach,” she told him with a disapproving frown, referring to the bottle of extra-strength aspirin on his desk. “If you went home at a decent hour, like everyone else around here, maybe you wouldn’t get those damn headaches of yours.”

      Bea knew everything that was going on in the office. She was better than a private investigator. He returned the bottle to the side drawer.

      “I had no idea you cared, Bea.”

      Bea paused in the doorway to smile at him over her shoulder. “Always said you were clueless,” she murmured before crossing the threshold. And then she stopped, turning around again. “By the way…”

      The phrase hung in midair like one half of the old popular “shave and a haircut, two bits” refrain tapped out with knuckles hitting a hard surface. He gave in after less than a minute.

      “What?” Travis prompted.

      “Hang on to your socks.”

      He blinked. “What?” he demanded.

      Rather than elaborate, Bea merely smiled at him. Her eyes danced with delight over her enigma. “You’ll understand,” she promised.

      With that, she left the room.

      In her wake, half a beat later, Travis’s latest clients entered. His ten o’clock appointment, Shawn O’Reilly and Shana O’Reilly.

      And Bea was right. Travis could feel his socks suddenly slipping down his ankles. Curling. Along with the hairs along his neck.

      Shawn O’Reilly looked like a modern, slightly wornout and pale version of a department store Santa Claus. But it was the young woman beside him, Shana, that Travis instinctively knew Bea had issued her warning about. Shana O’Reilly looked like something Santa Claus might have left beneath the Christmas tree of a deserving male if the latter had been exceptionally good, not just for the year, but for the sum total of his entire life.

       Chapter 2

      Travis stopped breathing.

      To his recollection—and he was blessed with a mind that forgot absolutely nothing—Travis had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life. She was tall—about five-seven—slender, with the face of an angel and long, straight blond hair that brought to mind the phrase “spun gold.” Her eyes were crystal-blue, and she moved like whispered poetry as she crossed the room.

      Belatedly, Travis remembered that he was endowed with a rather pleasant, articulate voice and that remaining silently frozen in place like a plaster statue in an abandoned corner of a museum did not go a long way in inspiring confidence in clients.

      Mentally shaking off his trance, Travis rose to his feet. Rounding his desk, he paid for the quick action with another breath-snatching salvo of sharp pain firing across his temples.

      Travis silently congratulated himself for not wincing. It would have made for a terrible first impression. People didn’t expect their potential lawyer to wince when he first met them. At the very least, it would have conjured up a myriad of questions over his abilities.

      “Hello.” Putting on his widest smile, Travis extended his hand to the heavyset man. “I’m Travis Marlowe.”

      “Shawn O’Reilly,” the man responded genially, then nodded his head toward the ray of sunshine on his right. “And this is Shana. O’Reilly,” he added the surname as if it was an afterthought, then followed it up with, “My daughter.” He actually beamed as he made the announcement.

      Not that the man probably hadn’t been a decent-looking sort in his youth, a hundred pounds and several chins ago, but this was definitely a case of the apple falling miles away from the tree. He and his brothers looked like a composite of their late mother and their father, while his sister, Kelsey, looked like a miniature version of Kate. Travis was fairly certain that Shana O’Reilly had to take after her mother because, other than the bright, cheerful, electric blue eyes, not a thing about her even remotely brought Shawn O’Reilly to mind.

      “Hello,” Shana said, extending her hand to him.

      She had a voice like a low blues melody, sinfully seductive.

      No surprise there. It took Travis a second to take her hand and shake it. Holding her hand, he experienced an almost overwhelming reluctance to release it again.

      What the hell was going on with him, he silently upbraided himself. He was too young to be going through a second adolescence and too old to be going through his first one.

      They were right, he concluded, those people who said that you weren’t at your best without a full night’s sleep. He was obviously not operating with all four engines burning.

      Out of the corner of his eye, Travis saw Shana’s father glancing toward one of the two chairs positioned in front of his desk. Shawn O’Reilly looked like a man trying to decide whether the chair would accommodate his girth without mishap or groaning, or the sofa would be a wiser course to follow.

      Travis nodded toward the sofa. “You might find the sofa a bit more comfortable, Mr. O’Reilly,” he suggested. “I know I do.”

      His words brought out an even wider smile from Shana. His breath went missing for a full thirty seconds. It was like standing beside an early morning sunrise.

      Travis glanced down at her left hand. No ring.

      Sunshine permeated his inner core.

      Pleased at the suggestion, Shawn turned around and sat down on the sofa. Soft tan leather sighed all around the man’s considerable form. Shana took a seat beside him, shifted slightly and crossed her legs, her white skirt hugging her thighs. Travis forced himself to look away. He wouldn’t be able to form a coherent thought for several minutes if he didn’t.

      Grabbing one of the two chairs that stood facing his desk, he swung it around and sat down opposite his potential clients. A small, glass-topped coffee table took up the space between them.

      “Can I get you anything?” Travis asked amiably, looking