My Babies and Me by Tara Taylor Quinn

you to work in a second.”
    Brady ran a local detention home for troubled youths. “I’ll think about it,” Seth said. Maybe he would—if he was unlucky enough to remember this conversation in the morning. “You okay to drive?” he asked his friend.
    â€œYep. Only had two,” Brady reported, patting Seth on the back as he headed out. “Marge was baking cookies when I left. They should be done just about now.”
    â€œTell her I said hi.” Seth ordered another beer. He’d had more than two. But he wasn’t ready to stop yet.

    â€œYou could always come tell her yourself,” Brady offered. “Those cookies’ll be mighty good.”
    â€œSome other time,” Seth said, shaking his head. He’d been shying away from family situations these past few months. They just seemed to make him cantankerous.
    â€œSure,” Brady called over his shoulder as he made for the door. “I hear ya.”
    Brady sounded kind of offended. Seth was sorry about that. And he had a feeling he was going to remember every damn word of their conversation in the morning. He was sorry about that, too.
    Â 
    â€œJILL, GET ME Joe Burniker on the line.”
    Though she suspected her assistant was trying to escape, at least for lunch, Susan continued to push. Both of them. She’d been doing little else in the week since she’d seen Michael.
    She jotted notes while she waited for her phone to buzz back, Jill’s mission accomplished, and picked up on the first ring when it did.
    â€œJoe? Susan Kennedy.”
    â€œSusan, how the hell are you?”
    She said something noncommittal, then asked about his wife. She told him she was sorry when he explained that they’d split about six months ago. They commiserated only long enough for her to figure out that Joe, every bit the playboy he’d always been, was really quite relieved by his personal situation. And then she got down to business.
    â€œI need a favor, Joe.” She picked up the McArthur file. The boy was from Tennessee. And so, coincidentally, was Joe.

    â€œI certainly owe you one after saving my butt in the Crone case last year.”
    She’d given him a little piece of research she’d unearthed in a similar case the year before. It had been no big deal. But she was calling in the favor, anyway.
    â€œI have a case I need you to take, no guarantee you’ll ever get paid.”
    â€œI’m sure there’s a good reason you aren’t doing it yourself.”
    â€œI am.”
    â€œAnd you need my help?”
    â€œI’ll be opposing you.”
    Joe laughed. “I don’t know whether to be insulted or flattered.”
    â€œWhy’s that?” Susan sat back, starting to relax. Joe always made her feel better.
    â€œEither you’re asking because you want to ensure a win and think I’m a guaranteed loss, or because you’re bored, want a good challenge, and I’m it.”
    Laughing, she tossed the McArthur file back on her desk. “Wrong on both counts. Actually—” sobering, Susan leaned forward. “I’m pretty sure I can win, just not sure I want to.”
    â€œCuriouser and curiouser.”
    â€œI need to know that if I do win, I should have, Joe. And in order to do that, I need the best attorney I can find to fight the other side.”
    Which all sounded great, except that Joe didn’t have a hope in hell unless he unearthed the one vital piece of information that Susan ethically, as Halliday’s attorney, couldn’t give him. She was gambling
on the fact that Joe was no less thorough than he’d been in college.
    â€œWhat are we fighting for?” he asked, suddenly as serious as she.
    â€œA boy’s life.”
    Â 
    â€œHow IS SHE?”
    â€œYou know you could always call her yourself and find out.”
    â€œYeah.”
    It had been three weeks since Michael’s weekend with Susan. Three