Exposed by Jessica Love Read Free Book Online

happened to be my beloved husband.
    At the very same instant, in the very same voice, Mark and I said, “Oh, shit.”
    That meeting was much shorter than the hour and half that was scheduled. After the reason for our outburst was explained, most of the five minutes it did take involved Daddy Williams threatening me and my license to practice law, swearing at Mark and threatening his license, and, at one point threatening Tony and Max Moore for their failure to find out about this “obvious and egregious conflict of interest.”
    We learned, and so did anyone within offices thirty feet outside the door, that Daddy Williams had supported the campaigns of a number of state and US senators and the governor. We were told about the limits of our own imagination to contemplate the consequences of our “clearly unethical and deceitful behavior.”
    Finally, Tony got him and Linda out of the room. The club owner was dismissed by Max Moore with the words, “We’ll get back to you,” then we all sat. Finally, Max Moore started to chuckle. Mark started to smile.
    I didn’t get the joke, and thought I was in deep shit.
    Tony laughed and said to Max Moore, “Doesn’t he know that you put the governor in office?”
    Moore chuckled and smiled. “But I used his money to do it.”
    “What are we going to do?” I asked.
    “We’ll smooth it over,” said Max Moore, easily. “There won’t be any repercussions. Right, Tony?” Tony nodded, shrugging at the same time to indicate it was no big deal.
    Max Moore yanked Mark off that case before we got to the elevator, then invited Tony for a drink at Sullivan’s downstairs. Tony said he would talk to me in a half hour and asked that I wait in our offices for him.
    “Max uses Sullivan’s like an office. I think he does as much business there or at The Edgewater Hotel as he does in the office,” said Mark on our way to the front door.
    I gave him a quick kiss and walked back to my office in a Seattle rain that had come on suddenly to soak the day, and waited.
    I was still a little too wound up to concentrate on work, so I read through a copy of Source of the Sound , the local alternative newspaper. There was a story about the local homeless population that clustered around Pike Place Market.
    Someone was feeding them.
    Local businessmen were outraged, since by feeding them, “you just draw more ants to the picnic,” said one, off the record of course. Politicians were outraged, because feeding the poor without going through proper channels, meeting certain standards, “put the poor in danger.” Gnawing hunger is not as dangerous, I suppose.
    The Sound wanted to blame someone, or congratulate them, or maybe most importantly, be the publication to identify them, but no one knew where the food was coming from or who was paying for it. The mystery just added fodder for outrage.
    When Tony got to the office an hour later, he made me assure him a half dozen times that I had not known a thing about my husband representing the opposing side. He complained only once about the lost fees and withdrew the firm from the case, both the lawsuit and Linda Williams defense.
    “I don’t have anybody else who could do it. They’d never trust me. Probably a good thing, too,” he muttered as he walked away to make the phone call.
    They all did what they said they would do. It was smoothed over with Daddy Williams, though he left the firm, and we all moved on without any real repercussions.
    Except for a few. But those few would change my life forever.

Part II
    Work continued along much as it had been. My little team was as busy as ever. Tony and I talked about expanding the operation a few times, but he kept saying I was the one who made it work, and he didn’t want to spread me too thin. He was generous about it too.
    One day he told me he was taking me to lunch.
    “Tony, I can’t. I’ve got to keep after a case that’s going to trial on Monday. Lily is going to bring lunch back to the