Peggy Nicholson - Kelton's Rules

“How much is ‘a little work’?” her mother demanded, as usual going straight to the bottom line. “And how much will this cost?”

“Oh, possibly a week’s worth.” Or more, if Whitey could only work weekends. And how long would it take him to scrounge the parts? “I’ve found—my neighbor found—an excellent mechanic, whose prices are very reasonable.” She hoped and prayed. Though Whitey moved about as swiftly as his Pekinese. If he cost half as much as a garage mechanic, but took three times as long to…

No. Surely Jack wouldn’t have recommended him if he couldn’t—

“What’s he do?”

“The mechanic? He’s a cowhand, I believe, at a ranch north of—”

“Your neighbor. The nice man who drove you into town. What does he do for a living? And please don’t tell me he’s a cowboy, because if he is, I understand that cowboys never settle down.”

“He’s a lawyer, Mom, not that it matters in the least.”

“O-oh… Lawyers are very good. They always make a living. The worse times get, the better they seem to do.”

Abby sighed softly. Her late father had been a portrait painter, a really wonderful artist, whose hobby was painting houses, as he’d always put it with a wink and a grin. They’d had enough money, but not a penny more, while he was able to work.

After he’d fallen three stories off a ladder and was no longer able to pursue his “hobby,” times had gotten much harder. But he’d stayed happy to the end, painting his portraits of their friends and neighbors and even getting the odd paying commission. He’d have been so proud to know that, seventeen years later, his work was starting to receive critical acclaim.

To Abby’s mother, who’d sold all but one of his portraits years ago, this was the final drop of frustration in a bitter cup.

“Is he a trial lawyer? Or perhaps corporate. They do extremely well.”

“He’s in family law, Mom. Small-town stuff, I imagine, but—listen to me—it doesn’t matter. I’m not shopping for a lawyer, a tailor or an Indian chief. Really, I’m not. I’ve only been divorced since March.”

“It’s never too early to plan.”

Abby bet she could hit the bus’s side mirror from here, if she threw the phone. She took a deep breath instead. “Mom, please try to understand. I’m not in the market for a man.

“And if I was, the last man on earth I’d choose—the very last—would be a lawyer. I’ve had it up to here with lawyers.”

She was only beginning to realize what a poor choice she’d made in a divorce lawyer. When she’d first hired him, Mr. Bizzle had seemed kindly and wise and avuncular. He’d agreed with her completely that two people who’d once loved each other shouldn’t try to snatch and maim when they parted. That the high road was always the best road.

Meanwhile, Steve had found a lawyer who was considered to be the best divorce specialist in northern New Jersey—a smiling, hard-eyed man who could smell a wounded wallet a mile away. Who thought the high road was for losers and fools. Who knew how to turn caring into weakness, selfishness to strength.

Under his cynical tutelage, the Lake family assets had melted away like dirty snow in springtime.

Abby had protested that only months before they’d seemed to be doing quite well, that between Steve’s income and her teaching salary, they’d amassed a reasonable cushion of stocks and savings. Where had that all gone? she’d wondered. Mr. Bizzle had patted her hand and sworn he’d get to the bottom of the mystery—well, he’d hire a couple of two-hundred-dollar-per-hour accountants to get to the bottom of the mystery—and then he’d squeezed her shoulders, walking her out of his office, and asked her for a date!

By the time the whole miserable process was finished, Steve’s lawyer had done magnificently for himself. And quite handsomely for Steve and his new family. Mr. Bizzle’s fee had taken a hefty slice of what remained, which seemed to console him for Abby’s inexplicable coolness to his advances.

So Abby had walked away from twelve years of marriage with twenty-thousand dollars that must be carefully hoarded for the coming year.

And a lifetime loathing of lawyers.

“You feel that way now, dear, but later on I’m sure you’ll—”

“Not now.” Abby shook her head emphatically. “And not later. I’ve learned my lesson.” About lawyers. About men in general. “You build your entire world around a man…” The way you did yourself, Mom, and look what it got you.

“You make him the almighty center of your world, and then one day he up and goes? Then you have nothing left.” Nothing, nothing. She was hollowed out—an empty echo where her heart used to be.

And when she gathered the strength to fill that hollow again, it would be with something other than the love of a man. Something more trustworthy and enduring. Something she could always count on—herself, happily and capably living a life she’d shaped to her own design. Meanwhile… Abby swallowed and found that the ragged lump she’d carried in her throat all this past winter had returned. Dadblast it, Mom! as Whitey would have put it.

“You have Skyler,” her mother pointed out.

Who blames me for leaving his dad! Abby’s eyes blurred; she tipped her head back and focused desperately on the blue patches beyond the leafy green. “Yes, Mom, I have Sky. And come to think of it, he must be starving by now. Why don’t I call you back in a day or two?”

JACK WAS SHARING a late in-house lunch with his friend Alec Fielding, a defense attorney who rented an office suite down the hall, in a three-story building in Durango. They ate together once a week or so, when whoever had lost their latest bet paid up with Reuben sandwiches and barbecue potato chips from the deli down the street.

This week Jack in his wisdom had bet that Lena Koo, the assistant district attorney, would not press criminal charges against Councilman Ferulli’s son, an impetuous youth who’d been injudicious enough to drink two six-packs of Coors, then sic his pet macaw Geronimo on an unfortunate girlfriend.

Instead, true to Jack’s prediction, assault charges had been dropped in favor of an agreement that young Ferulli take a course in rage management—and that he pay all plastic surgery fees for the young lady’s new and greatly improved nose.

“Food of the gods,” Jack proclaimed, more by way of self-congratulation than thanks as he waved his last half sandwich at his friend. Leaning forward over the ostrich-skin boots that he’d propped on his desk, he grabbed another chip.

“I really wanted that case,” Alec mourned, his own custom-booted feet resting on the coffee table in the conversation area at the other end of Jack’s office.

“Winning cases for councilmen’s sons is always good,” Jack allowed. “Political capital in the bank.”

Alec snorted. “That junior thug? I always looked on the bird as my client. I had three credible witnesses ready to testify that he’d been regularly and unduly provoked by the plaintiff.”

“And if you could’ve put the parrot on the stand…” They grinned at each other. “Polly wants to whack her?”

Alec toasted him with his can of root beer. “Self-defense all the way.” He reached for his chip bag. “So what’s new on the home front? The enchanting Kat robbed any banks this week? Shot any cowboys yet?”

A confirmed bachelor himself, Alec found tales of Kat’s escapades endlessly entertaining. He’d gone along this spring when they’d been invited to a branding party at Suntop Ranch. Kat had been horrified—outraged—when she realized they were actually “burning” the calves.

When her protests had been ignored, she’d offered to brand several of the highly amused cowhands to show ’em how it felt. At last Jack had given up and hustled her home and she hadn’t eaten meat since that day. Which was a problem, since her father had an extremely limited repertoire of meals to cook—and none of them featured tofu or soy milk.

“She scorched her eyebrows last night. But the real news is, I have a new neighbor.” Jack found himself describing the bus rescue. That led to a long and involved discussion of transmissions, then the best junkyards for used parts in southwestern Colorado.

Finally, as Alec stuffed his trash in a deli bag and rose to go, he asked casually, “So what’s she like?”

“Who?” Jack said, instantly on the defensive.

Alec smirked. “That good?”

“Oh, her. Um, nothing special.” Small, with dangerous curves and a mouth that quivered when she was upset. Warm velvety skin. “Lots of frizzy, mousy blond hair.” Almost but not quite the color of cornsilk, and it was rumpled and ripply, rather than frizzy, but why tell Fielding that?

“Hot?” Alec insisted.

Jack gave an irritated shrug. “Wouldn’t matter if she was. I’ve got my rules.”

“Yeah?” Alec folded his arms. “What are they this week?”

“This week and forever. Kelton’s Rules of Survival.” Jack held up one admonishing finger. “Rule One. Never marry.”

“Honored in the breach!” Alec jeered.

“And Rule Two,” Jack continued, ignoring him. “If you’re stupid enough to ignore Rule One, then never, NEVER marry a newly divorced woman. She’s in the midst of the Divorce Crazies. She hasn’t got a clue what she wants, but she’ll be flying off in all four directions at once, looking for it. And no doubt she hates men—temporarily, which’ll be just long enough to make your life hell.

“Or she hates men permanently—which means you’ll spend the rest of your miserable marriage atoning for her last husband’s sins.”

“But if she’s hotter than hot?” Alec teased, pausing in the doorway.

Jack flipped up his hands. “Then have a fling. Have a hot, short, sexy affair with her if you must. Be her Transition Man between her last cad and her next husband. Teach her how to smile again—then run for your life! But NEVER get serious about the newly divorced.”

Alec flashed that coming-in-for-the-kill grin he usually saved for hostile witnesses. “Who’s talking about marriage, old buddy? I was asking if the lady was bedworthy.” Seizing his exit line, he turned and walked.

Leaving Jack standing, mouth ajar, hands frozen in midair.

AROUND FOUR that afternoon the phone rang and Jack glanced up from a client’s divorce petition, which he’d been reviewing. The second button on his phone began to blink, meaning the caller was on hold.

A slender hand with lime-green fingernails curled around the edge of his door and cracked it open to reveal Emma Castillo, his quasi-legal, as Jack thought of her. She was wearing a tiny turquoise stud in her nose today, to match her blue-green jumpsuit and that one blue streak in her raven hair. “Are you in?”

“Depends on who’s calling.” He was about ready to wrap it up for the day. The whole point of working for oneself was the hours. Jack had slaved six years in a big-city law firm, struggling to make partner, before he’d seen the light and opted for a saner, less lucrative lifestyle in ski country.

“A woman with a sort of scratchy, stop-and-start voice. Um, Annie Leek? Locke?” Emma could be hopelessly preoccupied, when she was writing songs on the sly instead of filing.

“Abby Lake.” Jack grabbed for the phone, nodded his thanks to Emma, then turned halfway around in his swivel chair. “Kelton, here.”

“Oh…I was hoping you’d still be in,” Abby murmured, sounding not all that happy to find him.

He smiled in spite of himself. She did have a voice that scratched pleasantly along a man’s nerve endings—low and a bit breathy, as if she’d been nudged awake in the moonlight. Had just rolled over on her pillow and opened those big green drowsy eyes. “Hello, Abby. How’d you find my number?”