My Cowboy: Reckless Hearts: A Cowboy to Love, #1

Chapter 1

THERE WAS A CHIP IN the mirror I didn’t remember seeing there before.

Sure, it might seem like a small detail to some, but I had been in this bathroom and stared at this mirror many, many times before. Never had I seen the distinctive diamond-shaped dent halfway up toward the ceiling.

It was probably a disgruntled heiress, or a tantrum-y CEO—throwing their glass of gin and tonic against the wall in disgust. Disgust at themselves for self-banishing to the bathroom, and disgust at the bevy of incompetent imbeciles surrounding them who drove them to it.

This was that kind of restaurant. The kind specifically designed to impress. The place where people went to rub elbows with visiting congressmen, or celebrities, or maybe even the mayor. Standing tall on a coveted plot of real estate bordering Central Park and Prada, it was a place to see and be seen. Made to be daunting. Meant to intimidate.

Which was exactly why my law firm met with our clients here.

At a glance, it may have seemed a little counter-intuitive. Why would we endeavor to intimidate the very people who were counting on us to protect them? Why would we not be striving to gain their trust? Standing like legal shields between them and their enemies?

Well, as fate would have it, working at one of the most prestigious law firms in all of Manhattan turned out to be exactly as sleazy as one might suspect.

As it was explained to me on my first day on the job, our clients were nothing more than walking pocketbooks. Financial sheep to be herded and expertly steered into exactly such a position that those pocketbooks would open, and we would reap the greatest possible rewards. I remembered the moment well—crowded in the back of an already-crowded conference room for the associate/partner welcome brunch. As a fresh-faced girl right out of Harvard Law School, the concept of padded billing and exorbitant sums was not foreign to me. I had just been under the impression that it would be our evil opponents who would be paying out, not our own clients.

Yes, with the ethics section of the New York City bar exam still ringing loudly in my ears, I actually had the audacity to challenge the concept on moral grounds. So I did it in that first firm meeting six months ago—and to a senior partner of all people.

After quickly looking up the word ‘morals’ in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary of law, the other lawyers came up puzzled but settled back in their chairs for the supreme enjoyment of watching said partner slowly tear me to pieces upon the conference room table. Like a sacrificial virgin who had wandered too close to the fire—my fledgling career was to be snuffed out right in front of their eyes. Laid to waste by one of their most feared juggernauts—and all before lunch!

But as it turned out, none of those things happened.

The juggernaut—a man named Matt Briggs—didn’t say a single word against me. He simply pulled out the chair on his left side and motioned for me to sit. To be honest, I half expected a letter opener to sever my jugular, but eight years of failed gymnastic lessons weren’t for nothing. I sank down with a false confidence and grace that was unlikely as it was impressive. For the rest of the meeting, people spoke to me. Not at me. Not like the rest of the rookie associates, lined up like they were waiting for a firing squad against the wall. When asked for my opinion, I freely gave it—blushing with naivety all the while—but I gave it all the same.

Matt Briggs was intrigued. He saw me as a challenge, rather than as another yes-man sycophant jumping to bring him coffee at his beck and call. Oh—don’t get me wrong. Over the last six months, I delivered my fair share of coffee. But I was allowed to work on actual cases as well. A rising star in my class, I was given genuine responsibilities—the chance to make crucial, case-altering decisions and the opportunity to meet the people we were supposedly helping.

An unlikely rise to fame? Absolutely. A promising start? Most definitely.

But it has to be said, in the subsequent six months from my initial ‘cricket on your shoulder’ conscience speech...I never mentioned legal morality again.

It was ironic, in a way. Ironic that defending our supposed obligation to social ethics was the way I got my foot in the door. Ironic that those adolescent ideals were what brought me to the senior partners’ attention. For the longest time, people would call me Cricket. As in, Jiminy Cricket—the portable conscience riding around on Pinocchio’s shoulder. Some people still used it as a calling card—although by this point, they probably just thought it was my name.

It was ironic, because moniker or not, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Briggs taught me the game, and I learned to play it well. I had always been an over-achiever. Always dissatisfied with being anything other than first place. When the initial eighteen associates the firm hired were paired off against each other in a winner-takes-the-only-available-slot death match, my competitive adrenaline kicked in.

Rules blurred, lines were crossed, and no matter what was asked of me, I found that I had fewer and fewer qualms about doing it.

It helped that I was good at it. Subtle manipulations, delicate subterfuge...it was exactly the sort of tightrope walk that I’d been born for. Sweet-talking my way into a fifty thousand bump in firm profits became second nature. Promising one thing, and then delivering something almost the same but slightly different ran like blood through my veins. It was a dance, a highly corrupt yet highly acceptable dance, where the stakes were high enough that if you were to fall, there wasn’t a safety net in the world big enough to catch you.

Yes—having a natural talent helped.

It also helped that most of our clients were total scum. Fraudulent CEO’s. Trust fund babies who were expecting to get twenty hours of community service after drunkenly running someone over in their hundred thousand dollar Porsche.

No—I didn’t feel bad about sheep-herding those sorts of people. I had absolutely no hesitations whatsoever in carefully maneuvering them so that while they might end up getting what they wanted, it was really our sneaky little law firm that came out on top.

All the firms did it. All the partners did it. Hell—by this point—all the clients expected it.

It was the price they paid to be rich. And it was the price we paid to get rich.

Except...every now and then came along a client who was different.

Mr. and Mrs. Vance Morgan were an eighty-year-old couple from New Haven who had recently come into a rather tragic, yet opportunistic financial situation when Mr. Morgan’s fishing boat was struck by a corporate cargo container with a faulty navigation system. The boat went down in less than a minute and Vance was lucky to escape with his life. They were an adorable pair—the kind that looked like everyone’s grandparents and acted like distant cousins of Mr. and Mrs. Clause—but the thing my firm cared about, was that the proposed settlement was huge and the Morgans had come to us looking for help.

It was why I had put on my finest clothes this New York City evening and made the age-old trek down to this damned restaurant for a meeting. It was why I had ordered a bottle of the most expensive champagne and put it on the firm’s tab—just to impress.

It was also why I wasn’t looking at the new diamond shaped dent on the bathroom mirror, I was looking at the girl standing behind it. And although she looked like me, and moved like me...there wasn’t much there that I found familiar.

How did I get here?

This isn’t me.

Just get it together, Mia, I growled at my reflection, leaning closer to get a better look.

I had already painstakingly checked the rest of the stalls. I was alone in here. It was safe to do a little pep-talk. Lord knows, I was not the first person to try.

You have them exactly where you want them, just make the pitch.

My mission tonight was simple and clear.

The Morgans wanted to make monthly payments, carefully manage their finances and pay things off at a steady pace as they came along. That was all well and good, of course, the firm would still make a bundle—the only problem was, the corporation that owned the shipping container was ready to settle now. That meant this thing could be over and done with before the boys upstairs got to sink their teeth into a sizable piece of the pie.

Which meant...that I was here to ‘skillfully convince’ the Morgans that they would be better off agreeing to a contingency payment plan. Meaning that when they got their settlement, instead of making monthly payments, my firm would get a percentage of the final profits rather than being what they would call ‘short-changed’ just for doing their jobs.

In a settlement as big as this—coaxing the Morgans toward contingency meant the difference between bringing in one million and twelve million dollars.

That’s right—a twelve million dollar haul. It would by far be my biggest, and not only would it guarantee me a sizable raise myself, it would put me first in line of all the associates being considered for an eventual partnership.

Yes, the Morgans were my golden ticket. The chance to get my foot in the door of the life I always wanted. Big city house. Big city career. Big city reputation to go along with it.

Open this one door, and you opened them all. And as fate would have it, it all came down to the Morgans and this gorgeous, insufferable dinner.

By every legal standard, it couldn’t have been going better.

They had walked up to the table with that wide-eyed look of wonder that everyone from a smaller town had when they came to the big city. The table clothes had been pressed into angles sharp enough to cut your finger, and the sparkling silverware was plated in gold. And there I was, sitting right in the middle of it. Texting on my cellphone in designer couture as if this sort of thing happened all the time. Trust me guys—I’ve got this. That was the general idea.

The first thing I’d done was throw into sharp question the fact that they might get any settlement at all. These things were never certain, I had said sagely, sinking my fork into a plate of key-lime pie. Of course, the settlement was certain, we’d gotten the phone call that very morning—but why share that piece of information with the Morgans? When we could use it to bolster our own hand?

Then I’d simply sat back, sipped my champagne, and waited.

It took most people about five minutes to lose their cool. Three, when they were staring back at the four dinner forks framing the antique china. Nerves began to fray, plans began to decay. Introduce the slightest bit of doubt, and three minutes tops, things started to unravel.

Like clockwork, the old couple panicked themselves into a tailspin. What would they do if the money didn’t come through? How would they pay for Vance’s medical bills? Or get a new boat in time for the sea bass season? How would they help send Tommy off to Dartmouth in the fall? Or Megan? She’d always wanted to learn the cello, and—

Ms. Harper?

They’d looked at me with wide, trusting eyes; paralyzed with the kind of fearful respect that made community elders refer to a girl of twenty-four as Ms. instead of Miss.

Do you really think this is what we should do?

That was the part where I was supposed to say yes. When I was supposed to literally take them by their wrinkled hands, look them deep in