In this moving novel about the power of second chances, Jean Stone proves that it’s never too late to go after the one that got away. For every woman, there is a first love. And for Meg, Zoe, and Alissa, that love has never been forgotten. Now these three friends have made a pact. In the next six months, they vow to reconnect with the men who touched their lives so long ago.
Meg is blessed with success, yet lives a life without love, haunted by the only man she’s ever wanted, a man who’s still irresistible . . . and seemingly out of reach. Zoe is a once-prominent film star, desperate for a comeback and scared to discover what has become of her hometown sweetheart—the one person who means more to her than fame. Alissa, the darling of Atlanta society, seems to have it all. Then, in one shocking moment, she finds that her life is a sham and that she left the only man who ever really loved her. Now these women will risk everything—their families, their reputations, and their hearts—to take a chance on the alluring magic of first love. Includes a special message from the editor, as well as excerpts from these Loveswept titles: The Notorious Lady Anne, Along Came Trouble, and Strictly Business.
Release date:
March 11, 2013
Publisher:
Loveswept
Print pages:
400
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“On two counts of murder in the first degree, we find the defendant not guilty.”
Meg Cooper clutched the defense table, closed her eyes, and savored the rush. It sped through her veins and poured into her heart. Victory. Again.
Holly Davidson—the twenty-one-year-old daughter of a now dead shipping magnate—threw her silver-and-gold-sequined arms around Meg. The New York State Supreme Court, Manhattan Criminal Branch, room 33, erupted in cheers.
“We did it!” Holly shouted above the noise. “Son of a bitch, we did it!”
No, Meg wanted to reply, we didn’t do anything. I did it. I defended you, and now you are free.
“The jury is discharged with the state’s thanks,” the judge declared.
“Champagne at Neon City!” Holly squealed to the crowd of friends who had shoved their way toward the defense table. Through the chaos Holly’s heavily mascaraed eyes met Meg’s. “You’ll be there, won’t you, Meg?”
Meg slipped her yellow pad into her briefcase and snapped the lid shut. “I’m afraid not,” she answered. She’d done her job. Her only hope now was that she’d never lay eyes on Holly Davidson again.
She took her briefcase and pushed her way through the mass, dodging the flashing bulbs and television cameras and microphones thrust into her face, as she headed for the back of the courtroom.
Outside the room another bevy of reporters stood poised for the attack.
“Congratulations, counselor!” came the shouts.
“How does it feel to win again?”
“Do you think you’ll get a judgeship?”
Meg buttoned the jacket of her slender Armani suit and tucked a shock of her copper-colored hair behind one ear. The rush of victory was already fading, daunted, as always, by cold reality.
“No comment,” she said.
“Ms. Cooper. Please …”
Meg shook her head and ducked past the zealous ranks of the nation’s media. Such underpaid people with so much passion, she thought. So much passion, and so much power.
The group clung to her as she opened the outer door. More people crowded on the stairs. Gawkers. Supporters. Fans. Protestors. Clinging together in the posttrial side show she never got used to.
She hurried down the steps, shutting out the questions, knowing the media would punish her for her aloofness with tomorrow’s headlines, but not caring. For Meg Cooper had stopped letting the media push her around long ago.
The firm’s limo waited among a string of tinted-window stretches by the curb, but Meg waved off her driver. She felt like walking.
She heard a voice call out, “Here’s Holly!” The crowd surged en masse toward the victorious Holly Davidson, who had enough money and fame to get away with anything, even murder.
Meg quickly headed up Fifth Avenue, away from the clamor, toward her Upper East Side brownstone. She had done it. She had won. She had set a murderer free.
“No jury in its right mind will convict a twenty-one-year-old girl on a defense that her father sexually abused her,” had been the words of the firm’s senior partner, Avery Larson. “Not in this day and age.”
“She’s not a ‘girl,’ Avery,” Meg had protested. “She’s a shrewd, conniving brat who used her father’s money to finance her career, then killed him and her mother, too.”
“She claims her mother knew of the abuse.”
“Maybe she did, if it ever happened. But is that enough to justify murder?”
“Counselor …”
“Dammit, Avery, the girl killed her own parents!”
“So did the Menendez brothers,” Avery had said, then scowled. “Are you worried about your client, or are you afraid that you’ll lose?”
Meg stood rock still. She stared at Avery. He stared back. “I’m not going to lose,” she said.
He leaned back and put his feet on his desk. “Then make the government do its job, counselor.”
Meg hated the way Avery referred to the prosecutors as “the government,” as though they were the almighty threat to society, to justice.
“If they don’t do their job right,” he’d continued, “that’s not your fault. It’s their incompetence. I also don’t think I have to remind you that Holly Davidson has become a valued client.”
A valued client, Meg knew, meant a wealthy client. Now that Holly was acquitted, the girl would inherit over two billion dollars.
And the “government” had, once again, failed at its job, because Meg was smarter, Meg was better. And because Meg craved the rush—that elation that came from winning.
Case closed. Case dismissed.
Meg tilted her head up toward the warm spring sun, squinting her cinnamon-colored eyes, eyes that were well-trained to gaze squarely at juries as she said, “My client is telling the truth.” She would be thirty-nine years old this year, at the peak of an explosive career. No one would have guessed that Meg had set out—once upon a time—to become a champion of women’s rights. But the world was changing, values were twisting. Fame and flash were what brought clients to the firm. Huge retainers kept her partners smiling. So Meg had become the savior of the scandalous rich, the queen of courtroom glitz, the sought-after maker of the tabloid headlines she had spent so many years trying to avoid. Now, by winning the Holly Davidson case, nothing was out of her reach. Well, almost nothing.
It had been three weeks since her relationship with Roger Barrett had ended. “I don’t love you,” she had announced. “I can’t go on sleeping with you.” They’d been together four short months. Meg knew he loved her, but she couldn’t bring herself to love him, to love anyone. And she couldn’t pretend.
Meg stopped walking. Home was empty, except for Raggedy Man, her three-year-old Persian. Home was where nobody cared that she was brilliant and gorgeous and had just brought off the trial of the year. There was nothing at home for her. Nothing, and no one. No one but Raggedy Man.
She stared at the sidewalk, hesitated for less than a second, then turned and walked down East Fifty-fourth, in the direction of Park Avenue, toward the offices of Larson, Bascomb, Smith, Rheinhold, Paxton, and Cooper. Toward the next challenge, and the lure of the rush.
Meg’s office was not unlike the offices of many other top criminal-defense attorneys in the city: mahogany and leather, brass and books. But where her partners displayed smiling photos of their spouses and children and children’s children in neat golden frames atop their credenzas, Meg had chunky pots of tired philodendrons. Her view beyond the heavy green drapes, eight floors down to the avenue, was close enough to watch the endless parade of yellow cabs and anonymous faces flooding past, yet removed enough to feel sheltered from the grit of the street, the grime of the people.
She stood by the window, looking down. Holly Davidson was now free to walk Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue, or any other avenue in the world. Holly Davidson, who had used their live-in chef’s fillet knife to quietly slit the throats of her billionaire father and socialite mother while they slept. Meg knew that sexual abuse was becoming an all-too-popular defense in murder trials. It sickened her, mostly because it was so damned unfair for the ones who really suffered. In another few years, Meg thought, these defenses won’t hold up at all. The judges, the juries, would have heard the arguments one too many times. Then, worse than guilty people getting off, innocent people would go to jail. It was the system. It was the American way. And they—the defenders—would be forced to create new tactics, new angles, to beat the government.
She moved from the window, sat at her desk, and tried to focus on her work. Though she almost always won, Meg was often let down after a trial. It was, she reasoned, the downside of the high. The crash.
She folded her hands on her desk and studied her fingernails. They were perfectly trimmed and glossed. Neat, but colorless. Without personality, without passion. Neutral. Like her life. A long way from the glamorous, high-profile image alluded to by the press.
She balled her fingers into fists. There was only one solution to her depression. Meg needed another case. Another case to dig into, to get lost in. She needed another case, and she needed it now. Right now.
She sat up straight and pressed the button on her intercom. “Janine? Is Avery in?”
“Nope. But Danny Gordon just walked in. He’d like to see you.”
Danny Gordon was one of the investigators retained by the firm. He often worked alongside Meg on her most difficult cases: he had, in fact, worked on the Holly Davidson case. Danny was a few years older than Meg. He was slightly wild looking and slightly cocky. But unlike many of his counterparts, Danny was very bright and very tuned-in to his work. He was also, Meg knew, very gentle, vulnerable. They had almost slept together once, three years ago. But Meg had known what would happen. She would use him to curb her loneliness until he fell in love with her. Then she would leave him. So instead of being a lover, Danny became something Meg had never known: he became a friend.
“Send him in,” she said now.
He blew through the door as if he’d been shot from behind. “Counselor! My congratulations on seeing justice served once more!”
“Can it, Danny.” Though Danny knew the system—was part of the system—he always became a disgusted cynic whenever the guilty went free.
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