Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Rachel, Out of Office, by Christina Hovland
More Romance Breaking all the Rules
The Rebound Surprise
The Things We Leave Unfinished
Confessions in B-Flat
Follow Me Darkly
Aphrodite in Bloom: An Erotic Romance Collection
A Lot Like Love
The Sweetheart Deal
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Tracy Deebs-Elkenaney and Cassandra Corcoran. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or
transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding
subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Preview of Rachel, Out of Office copyright © 2021 by Christina Hovland
Entangled Publishing, LLC
10940 S Parker Road
Suite 327
Parker, CO 80134
rights@entangledpublishing.com
Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Edited by Liz Pelletier
Cover illustration and design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes
Interior design by Toni Kerr
ISBN 978-1-68281-569-4
Ebook ISBN 978-1-68281-591-5
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition March 2021
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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To Emily, Shellee, and Sherry
I wouldn’t have made it through my dark period without you.
—TW
For everyone out there who woke up one day, unsure of how you got there, don’t worry. We’ve all been there.
What’s important is where you go now.
—AF
“Never be so polite, you forget your power.”
—“marjorie,” Taylor Swift
Chapter One
How is my day going? Well, I’m thirty-five years old and hiding from my parents in the bathroom at the swanky offices of Lagget, Lagget, & Lagget, Attorneys at Law. So super, obviously.
Sure, it’s a classy bathroom, with the wood stall doors that run all the way from the floor to the ceiling and the continual scent of jasmine in the air, but eventually Mom or Dad will find me. And shake their heads before insisting I go out there.
I sigh and flush the unused toilet. So many metaphors for my own life come to mind as I watch the water spin around and around before going down the drain, but I’m not feeling especially witty today. Mainly because the out there I have to face is the stuffy office of Thaddeus P. Lagget IV—where my aunt Maggie’s will is about to be read.
I pull the heavy stall door open and start to pat myself on the back for at least leaving the cubicle. No, I should probably reserve congratulations for after I work up the courage to leave the bathroom entirely.
I sigh again. Ballsy, loud, and always in charge of her destiny, Maggie O’Malley would have never holed up in a fancy bathroom when there was business to be done. She would have blazed in there, rolled her eyes at the snarky comment my dad would inevitably say about the pink tips at the ends of her bone-white hair, and enjoyed the roller coaster of whatever came next.
Then she would have laughed, a great booming sound that could be heard halfway across Penn Station and probably out in the parking lot. It’s been four weeks since she passed, and I still wake up every day missing that woman. But she wouldn’t want me to dwell. In fact, she’d be angry if she knew I wasted one moment regretting anything about her life—or her death.
And that’s the rub, isn’t it? Aunt Maggie lived a life without regrets. And me? Well, I regret most everything.
As I walk up to the granite bathroom counter, I go on autopilot and gather the crumpled towel someone left discarded on the counter and use it to wipe up the small puddle of water around the sink before tossing it into the nearby trash bin. Just typical me, cleaning up other people’s messes because it’s so much easier than dealing with my own.
And what a mess I made.
I’m out of work—note to self, spending the last decade working as the office manager for your soon-to-be-ex-husband’s law firm was not the brightest idea.
My bank account needs CPR because not only have I always worked for pennies so more money could be funneled back into building the practice (worst decision ever), I also spent what meager savings I have on a cheap sublet in Hell’s Kitchen (yes, irony’s a bitch) as I tried to hunt for a new job. Of course, when your ex is your only job reference, well, like I said, worst decision ever…
I finally gave up the ghost and slunk back to Jersey last week. And to my parents.
Now I’m living in my childhood bedroom—because the upscale condo on the Upper East Side where I spent the entirety of my doomed marriage is listed as belonging to my ex’s law firm and apparently not a marital asset. Oh wait, no, that was my worst decision ever.
My shoulders sink as I stare at my reflection and wonder for the hundredth time how I let this happen. Aunt Maggie would have never ended up in this position.
If she’d found any one of her three husbands going down on his paralegal, she would have pulled some kind of dramatic, awe-inspiring act of vengeance that would probably have involved the bottle of hot honey she always seemed to have in her giant purse and fire ants she would have willed into existence simply from the power of her fury.
Me? I shut the door quietly and waited until I got home to cry. Turns out more than three decades of lectures on the proper way for a Martin woman to behave was too much to overcome.
It doesn’t matter. At this point in my life, I am who I am. Of course, I’m not sure exactly who that person is anymore.
“Mallory.” Dad’s voice comes through the closed bathroom door, as low and loud as a foghorn and just as abrupt. “Stop being self-indulgent and get out here. Thad has a tee time.”
Golf. One of the three sacred activities of Edward Christopher Martin, Esquire—really, that’s the way he’s introduced himself to others for my entire life, full name and “Esquire.” The only thing I could do that would lower myself further in his estimation after I told him about the upcoming divorce was to make a fellow attorney late for his golf game.
Exhaling a shaky breath, I turn on the gold-plated faucet as if I’m just a hand wash away from being ready to come out. Then I take another thirty seconds to prep for saying goodbye to Aunt Maggie, because that’s what this really is.
After the reading of the will, everything will be put back in its place, and any discussion of my great-aunt will be shushed with the admonishment not to make things uncomfortable for others. That isn’t just the Martin golden rule; it’s the one rule that can’t be broken—at least not by me.
Especially never by me, which is why my pending divorce and return home is such a shameful thing. I’m making things uncomfortable.
Unable to put it off any longer, I open the bathroom door and walk out. Dad is standing across the hall in a black suit, not a strand of his iron-gray hair out of place and with the permanently disappointed downturn to his lips on full display. Maybe it would have been different if I had a brother or sister, but as the lone child, I’m the sole person responsible for Dad’s many expectations and Mom’s many requirements.
“About time, Mallory,” he says, then turns and walks into Thad’s office.
A right turn and three steps will get me out onto the street and away from here. I can already feel the sunshine on my face and the summer breeze in my hair. Donello’s Ice Cream is barely a walk away—my aunt’s favorite place because they always gave her extra cherries on her rocky road double scoop.
Aunt Maggie would have made that right turn.
Me? I go left and follow my dad into Thad’s office.
Yeah, I’m disappointed in myself, too.
Chapter Two
“That can’t be right.” The words come out of my mouth like a squeak as I look from my mom to my dad, trying to force Thad’s words to make sense.
Sure, individually, I know the meaning of each word Thad just said, but when he put them together in one sentence, it was like when I tried to recall enough of my high school Spanish to understand telenovelas without subtitles. There was drama—but with a toothbrush at a library.
Mom sits still, her face as shocked blank as mine probably is. Mind spinning, I pick up the teacup and saucer resting on the side table between our chairs and hand it to her. She looks down at it, confused for a second, and then gives me a small, grateful smile before taking a fortifying sip from the delicate flower-covered china.
Dad remains silent for once, but there’s an all-too-familiar pinched look around his mouth.
Thad clears his throat and pulls my attention back to him.
“I assure you, Margaret left you the house in Huckleberry Hills,” Thad says again, handing over an envelope with my name written on the outside. “The property is valued at just over $850,000 with a remaining mortgage of $413,000. Of course, there are currently a substantial number of violations against the homeowners’ association bylaws, and you’ll need to pay the inheritance tax on the property within six months, which totals roughly $127,500. But the house is most assuredly yours, Mallory.”
Again, words making sense on their own but just a jumble of gobbledygook when strung together. I take the envelope, and the sight of Aunt Maggie’s handwriting, with its flowing curlicue flourishes, makes my chest tighten.
“There’s nothing stopping her from selling it?” Dad asks, the sucked-on-a-lemon expression lessening with each word.
Thad shakes his head. “Not at all. In fact, it’s a great way to satisfy the inheritance-tax burden.”
“Well then, that settles that.” Dad stands up and turns to look straight at me. “You can sell it and, even after paying the taxes, you’ll have plenty left to get yourself back on track. Great, Thad, we appreciate your time.”
I clasp the envelope tighter in my hands, wrinkling the perfect, smooth pink surface before realizing what I’m doing and loosening my grip. But I don’t move. I stay right there in my seat as the flicker of something that feels a lot like defiance warms my belly.
Maybe it’s the power of Aunt Maggie’s words in my hand, but for one of the very few times in my life, I don’t want to do what it takes to make sure everyone else around me is comfortable.
Maybe it’s because of our last conversation, the one where I visited her in the active-living facility and told her, and no one else, about how Karl had changed the locks on the condo and left my packed suitcases with
the doorman. I was no longer needed. Dismissed.
I thought she’d be disappointed in me, but I should have known better. Aunt Maggie just shrugged and said another door would open, just wait and see. Well, and that Karl is a dinglebutt who never deserved me.
Leave it to Aunt Maggie to mean a literal door—and then give me the keys to it. Am I really going to discard her gift for something better, like I was discarded?
Mom must sense a rare intransigence in me because, instead of getting up and going to my father’s side, she sets her tea down and looks at me. “Imagine how a personal makeover will have Karl thinking about you again and the idea of what you bring to the marriage beyond a financial boost.”
“If only I had a prized dairy cow blue ribbon to go along with it.” The words come out before I can think better of them.
By the power of Aunt Maggie’s ghost or something.
Okay, fine, I’m not exactly dressing to impress lately. Sure, if someone doesn’t know me, they might think that I work at a yoga studio for the potato-chip and true-crime-podcast addicted. I showered. I remembered to put on deodorant and to brush my teeth. I used the time hiding in the bathroom to fix my ponytail that went all wonky. But that’s the full extent of my give-a-shit-about-appearances efforts.
“Mallory,” Dad says in that tone he uses on me anytime I even consider stepping out of his very narrow lines of what’s considered proper. “I do not appreciate your sarcasm.” He looks over at the other man. “I apologize, Thad.”
I eat the words bubbling up inside me, the ones that Aunt Maggie would have let fly without a second thought—old habits, old dogs, and all that.
Thad shoots me an indulgent smile. “No worries. These readings can often be trying.” He nods at the paper in my hands. “Your aunt’s will is clear; you must read the letter first before deciding to do anything with the house. So you go ahead and do that while I buzz Grace to come in and take notes for the realtor we use in these situations. I believe there’s been some interest in that area by a local developer looking to take out the older homes in these grand neighborhoods and building new.”
Dad and Thad go into their usual back-and-forth while my mom stares out the window, her hands clasped in her lap and her legs crossed at the ankles.
Alone in a room full of people, I open the envelope and pull out the single sheet of paper. The forceful, broad strokes of Aunt Maggie’s handwriting make me smile despite it all.