Mercy(White Collared Part 1)(8)
Was she imagining the sparks between them? What was wrong with her to have such a strong attraction to both her boss and her client? Both men were completely off-limits. Besides, she was in love with Tom. Wasn’t she?
“There’s another reason you remind me of myself at your age. I was also eager to prove myself. You’re at your desk when I leave at night and you’re there when I arrive in the morning.” He said it as if it were a bad thing.
“And look where that hard work got you.”
“What it got me was a bleeding ulcer and a few days in the hospital. The thing about control is that it’s limited. We don’t choose to get sick and we certainly can’t choose not to vomit blood during finals.”
Her jaw dropped. “Did that really happen?”
“Yes. It was the fall semester of my third year, and I was in the same spot as you: an intern at Joseph and Long, only I worked for Miles Joseph. If you think I’m a taskmaster, you should try interning for him for a week. I lived off coffee and donuts. I didn’t get more than four or five hours of sleep a night, and I popped Tums like they were candy. Who had time to stop and worry about stomach pain and a little blood when my career was at stake? I was in the middle of my ethics exam when it happened. I didn’t even make it to the bathroom. Vomited blood all over the guy next to me and then passed out cold. Woke up in the hospital and all I cared about was I hadn’t finished my exam. They had to sedate me to keep me from leaving.”
Although she’d like to think she was different, she would’ve done the same. “Wouldn’t your professor allow you to take the exam?”
“Of course. Attorneys aren’t complete sadists,” he said with a straight face. Then he laughed. “Sorry, bad joke.” He continued, shrugging. “I wasn’t rational. Then Mr. Joseph paid me a visit in the hospital. I thought he’d fire me. Instead, he sat down in the chair next to my bed and told me a story about how he’d gotten so successful. All the typical bullshit about studying hard, kissing ass, and exploring as many opportunities as life presented. He wished me well and then got up and started walking out, but he stopped at the door. He turned around, raised one finger, and said, ‘In the end, you always have to watch out for yourself.’”
“That was nice of him.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “Then he fired me.”
He said it so casually, she didn’t believe him. “No, you’re lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
There had to be a moral to this story. “He fired you because you were working too hard, right?”
“No.” He dropped his hand from the headrest onto her shoulder and squeezed it. “He fired me because I couldn’t do my job while in the hospital, which meant I couldn’t get him the brief he needed, resulting in him having to explain to the judge why it wasn’t submitted on time. Let’s face it: the judges don’t give a shit what your excuse is. He got extra time, but I’d made him look bad. He had to fire me because he had to look out for himself first.”
Her shoulder tingled from the brief contact of his warm hand. “That’s cruel. You couldn’t help it. You were in the hospital.”
“If I had taken better care of myself, gotten more sleep, eaten healthy, listened to what my body was trying to tell me, I wouldn’t have ended up with a bleeding ulcer, and I wouldn’t have disappointed Mr. Joseph. He did me a favor when he fired me because I never made that kind of mistake again. I learned to take care of my own needs first.”
“It worked out for you. You ended up as senior partner, so Mr. Joseph and you must have stayed friendly.”
He huffed. “I don’t think anyone could call Mr. Joseph friendly. But we each had something to gain by working with the other, and so we’ve maintained an amicable relationship throughout the years.” Nick’s emphasis on the word amicable made her think it wasn’t amicable at all. “I don’t want you ending up like me. Learn from my mistakes. I don’t expect you to work more than ten hours a day, including meals, Monday through Friday, unless I specifically request it. And by meals, I don’t mean coffee and a bag of pretzels. After work, go home, relax, and get a good night’s sleep. Your weekends are yours, but don’t overdo the fun. You don’t want to drag yourself in on Monday too sluggish to give me your all.”
How long had it been since she’d gone to a movie with Tom or to the bar with friends? She couldn’t remember a weekend she hadn’t spent in the office.
“I don’t think I’m on my way to an ulcer, but I appreciate the advice. When I applied for the internship, I never expected to have the opportunity to learn so much. I thought I’d spend the year as your lemming.” She tried to pass it off as a joke, but she wasn’t kidding. Since her first term in law school, she’d learned everything she could about Nicholas Trenton. The phrase she heard over and over was “sadistic taskmaster.” In exchange for gaining the experience as his intern, you gave up life as you knew it. He owned you. Now she wondered if it was all a way to limit the competition for the position. Because if anything, Nick was proving to be the opposite.