Driftwood Cottage by Sherryl Woods

first time his wife had gotten wind of it and been publicly humiliated.
    “I don’t know what she expected,” the director said, sounding genuinely bewildered. “She stays at home with the kids. What am I supposed to do? Look, just offer her the house, support money for the kids and some kind of monthly alimony. Make it all go away.”
    He handed Connor a piece of paper with some suggested figures. Connor glanced at them and shook his head. Even by his usually conservative standards, these would never fly. Not when this man made millions.
    “Look, I’ll do what I can, but it may not be so easy to make this go away. You’ve been married a long time, and this isn’t the first time you’ve strayed. Her lawyer could rip you apart. If she gets a sympathetic judge, you’ll wind up paying three or four times this amount.”
    The director leveled a look at him that probably intimidated every actor on his set. “Don’t let that happen,” he said quietly. “Understand?”
    Connor nodded. All he could do was offer his bestadvice. In the end, it was his client’s decision. “I’ll be back in touch as soon as I’ve spoken to your wife’s lawyer.”
    “Tell that little weasel I have plenty of dirt of my own I can throw at her,” Wilder told him. “If he wants to get tough, I’ll be tougher, and I’ll walk away with the house and the kids. She’ll wind up with nothing. She was barely one step out of the gutter when I met her, and I can see that she winds up back there.”
    Connor felt his blood turn cold at the man’s vicious words. For all of his go-for-the-jugular tactics, he still clung to at least some sense of respect for women. Sadly, though, he had dealt with enough men who thought their own behavior should be exempt from scrutiny to recognize a man willing to play hardball. Usually he liked having the kind of leverage necessary to make the other side squirm. Maybe because of last night’s conversation with Heather, today he was the one squirming. The whole thing suddenly seemed so darn sleazy and cruel.
    Ironically, it wasn’t Heather’s face he saw in his head, but Gram’s. He heard her reminding him over and over that Megan deserved his respect, even when he was angriest at what she’d done to the family. Gram would be appalled by Clint Wilder, a man willing to publicly sully his wife’s reputation out of greed.
    In the end, though, Connor knew he would win for the director in court, because that’s what he did. But for the first time, at the end of the day, he didn’t feel entirely good about it.
    When the firm’s senior partner, Grayson Hudson, walked into his office and asked about the case later, Connor shrugged. “It’ll get a lot of publicity,” he said, as if that were all that mattered.
    “Just make sure the firm looks good,” Grayson told him. “You’re very good at what you do, Connor. That’s why I used you myself when Cynthia and I split up. But your tendency to go for broke can stir up sympathy for the other side. You make sure that man’s wife isn’t going to come through this looking like Mother Teresa, you hear?”
    Connor thought about Wilder’s veiled references to his wife’s past. “Doubtful, sir,” he said confidently.
    “Just do your homework, that’s all I’m saying.”
    “Not to worry. I always do.”
    After all, Connor reflected, wasn’t he the one who was known in his family for having very little faith in the human race? He left next to nothing to chance. Even though he had Clint Wilder’s word that his wife had skeletons in her closet, he’d put a private detective to work checking her background within five minutes of the man walking out of his office. He wasn’t about to enter a mediation room or a courtroom without knowing everything there was to know about the other side.
    Using the dirt, though? That was another matter and one he had no idea how he would handle.
     
    Though he was immersed in work, Connor still wasn’t able to keep Heather