The Cost of Happiness: A Contemporary Romance Read Online Free PDF

your name and what you’re working on for this team.”
    He made notes as people mentioned specific cases. Finally it rolled around to the woman nearest to him on the right.
    “Meghan Mattson,” she said. “Paralegal.” She paused.
    Dan looked at her. He felt his eyebrows rising in surprise. She—
    Her expression was carefully neutral. “I work on all cases. Currently I’m handling the interrogatories for the insulin case, discovery requests in Dixon, trial prep in Garver, and medical records in the pacemakers case.”
    “But you’re the moot court champ,” he blurted out when she finished. “You can’t be a paralegal.”
    The room froze. Meghan Mattson’s cheeks bloomed a delicate color and her eyes turned to ice. She didn’t break eye contact.
    “I am a paralegal. Specifically, I’m your paralegal. I handle all the Complex Litigation cases.”
    Dan wanted to argue with her. He wasn’t mistaken. It might have been three or four months, but he remembered her. In fact, he’d been looking forward to seeing her again. He’d expected to meet her at some mixer for the summer associates, or maybe an afternoon outing to see the Phillies.
    Then he recalled Ted Dorchay’s comments about Meghan being groomed to apply for a Supreme Court clerkship. To go from Franklin Law’s hope for a Supreme Court connection…to Complex Lit’s paralegal? What the hell happened?
    Her level look never wavered. Something about her face communicated how little she wanted him to pursue this. He should reassure her or apologize but that would only make it worse.
    All right.
    Dan looked down at his pad, a tiny smile masking his anger and confusion. “Well, Franklin Law’s loss is my gain, that’s for sure.” He lifted his head. “Okay, who wants to tell me where we are on the insulin case?”
    At the end of the meeting, Dan finished scribbling his notes and got up to leave. When Meghan tried to slip past him, he held out his hand in a gentle gesture to stop her. “Hold on. I have some questions about the Sullivan case.”
    Vicky hovered on Dan’s left. “I can answer those.”
    He gave her his biggest grin. “Oh, your time’s so much better spent preparing your trial memos. Meghan will be able to deal with my ignorance.” His eyes tracked Vicky as she left the room. When he was confident she’d left he turned back to Meghan.
    She looked the same as she had in the spring, at the moot court competition, but also different. Her hair had been up then. Now it was down, pulled back off her face and falling behind her shoulders. It was curly—or did women consider that wavy?—and shiny, its warm brown tones glinting under the conference room’s lights.
    The big difference was her eyes. She’d been happy when she’d won the moot court argument, but it hadn’t been the happiness born of triumph, it had been the joy of arguing with a judge. She was made to be a litigator.
    Now, she looked equally unhappy as a paralegal.
    “Mr. Howard?” She shifted her weight to the other foot and glanced at the door.
    “Call me Dan.” He pulled himself back to the situation. He checked over his shoulder. Someone could want the conference room any minute now. “Let’s walk. Where’s your office?” He signaled that she should precede him.
    “On thirty-nine. Right around the corner from yours, I believe.”
    They started walking toward the stairwell. “That’s convenient. Are all the Complex Lit people on the same floor?”
    “No. Just me. You’re in Georgia’s office, right?”
    “Mm-hmm.”
    Meghan nodded. “They put me in the empty paralegal office closest to her.”
    At the base of the stairs, they turned left and headed for Dan’s office. Halfway there, Meghan turned left again, heading away from the lawyers’ offices, which all had windows, and into a short hallway that led to the supply room for their floor. She opened a door on the right and showed him her office. White, tidy, windowless, and devoid of anything to tell