Risk Assessment Read online

  Risk Assessment

  A Cabrini Law Novel

  Parker St. John

  Copyright © 2019 by Parker St. John

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover Art: L.C. Chase www.lcchase.com

  Contents

  Dear Reader

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  About Parker St. John

  Also by Parker St. John

  Dear Reader

  Thank you for reading!

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  Or contact me at: [email protected]

  I’d love to hear from you!

  - Parker

  1

  Elliot

  “I think it’s the radiator… or maybe the alternator…”

  “Are you sure it’s not the flux capacitor?” Elliot Smith wasn’t known as a man of sharp tongue, but he was wet, hungry, and exasperated. The white knight who had pulled to the side of the highway to look under his hood had even less of a clue than Elliot, which was saying something.

  The man had his long hair screwed up in a tangled bun and wore toe socks in the frigid Portland rain, but Elliot wasn’t one to judge books by their covers, so he’d allowed the man to take a peek under the hood of his used Prius. Unfortunately, that had led to nothing more than a protracted period of thoughtful noises and gingerly tapping at various engine parts. The man seemed to feel it was his civic duty to wait it out on the side of the road with him.

  Elliot might have appreciated it more if it hadn’t kept him standing in the rain rather than waiting for the tow truck in his dry vehicle. Still, he dug deep and attempted to scrape together a bit of gratitude. Mostly he just felt discouraged.

  He wondered where exactly he’d gone wrong in life.

  When he’d broken with the Smith family tradition of churning out public school teachers for the state of Kentucky, he’d known it would be an uphill battle. But he’d been eager to make a name for himself, so he’d relocated halfway across the country to attend law school.

  It had all been worth it, or so he’d thought. For fifteen years, life had been good, though looking back at it now he realized he’d been sleepwalking through most of it. It felt as if he’d woken from a coma only to discover almost two decades of his life gone and nothing to show for it.

  He was a hard worker, and he’d been damned good at his job as a corporate attorney, so he’d lived a comfortable life full of designer suits, expensive vacations, and trendy restaurants. He was the poster boy for a successful metropolitan gay man, with an endless parade of accolades to perk him up whenever he began to feel like something was missing. From the outside looking in, life had been perfect.

  It was beyond him exactly how he’d ended up dressed in a rumpled Bargain City suit, standing in the rain with his piece of shit used Prius and Dudley Do-Right.

  “You might have a loose hose,” the man mused, stroking his scraggly beard.

  Elliot braced his arms on the hood of his car and hung his head in defeat. Through his rain splattered windows, a pile of coffee-stained files mocked him from the passenger seat. Each file represented a person who needed his help.

  If that boy who’d left Kentucky all those years ago had envisioned this future — single, friendless, and earning peanuts at a nonprofit legal aid clinic — he’d have probably stayed at home and become a school teacher.

  Unfortunately, Elliot had to go and pull a Jerry Maguire. It had all started on the eve of his fortieth birthday. Elliot had been in bed with the flu and had canceled the huge birthday bash his administrative team had planned. His phone was distressingly silent, apart from a hesitant voicemail from his mother. His longtime boyfriend had been out celebrating his recent promotion to junior partner by sleeping his way through every eligible gay man at their country club.

  They had offered Elliot the same promotion, but he’d turned it down when it meant representing one of the sleaziest real estate defrauders in the state of Oregon. Greg had accused Elliot of thinking less of him for taking the case. Elliot wasn’t sure, but perhaps he had. Perhaps that had been the beginning of the end. It turned out that he hadn’t entirely forfeited his conscience upon passing the bar exam, and it had chosen that night to come raging to the forefront of his feverish mind.

  He’d no longer recognized himself. His life was like a used up jack-o'-lantern, decorative from the outside, but hollow and devoid of light.

  That night, he’d ended up sitting alone at the counter in the state-of-the-art kitchen he never found time to cook in. He’d played his mother’s voicemail on repeat, longing for the way her kitchen had always been full of sunshine and the smell of fresh-baked bread.

  He hadn’t seen her in years. He’d taken Greg with him on his last trip, and it had been the worst Thanksgiving of his life. Greg had spent the entire holiday sneering at what he termed the ‘rustic charm’ of Elliot’s hometown, while Elliot’s two brothers had looked physically ill or fled the room whenever they displayed physical affection for each other. He’d gotten in a fistfight with his older brother, for the first time since they were children. He’d left Kentucky with a fat lip and battered spirit, and he hadn’t been back since.

  Looking back on his life, it had been a long, slow tumble off the corporate ladder. He’d finally made impact that night, on the lonely eve of what was supposed to be a milestone birthday. He’d turned in his notice the next day. He might have broken his pride and a lot of relationships on the way down, but he didn’t regret it, even when he’d been forced to trade in his Lexus for the heap of junk currently steaming in rush hour traffic.

  Rain dripped down his neck. He shivered. “You know, I’m just going to wait in the car where it’s dry,” he informed his good Samaritan. “The tow truck should be here soon.”

  “I had an old Plymouth Colt that used to act up like this,” the man announced, ignoring him completely. He reached into the engine and jiggled a wire that looked firmly attached. “I’ll get her started for you in a snap.”

  Elliot’s stomach growled. At least, he’d thought it was his stomach. It turned out to be the snarl of a motorcycle pulling out of traffic and parking in the emergency lane ahead of them. He squinted through the downpour as the rider dismounted and yanked off his helmet.

  Elliot instantly recognized the man. Not him personally, of course. But he knew the type. The stranger was every steel jawed model who had ever smoldered off the pages of a men’s magazine. He was the rebel cop in every cable television program. He was the star quarterback, all grown up. The dark scruff covering his jaw looked artful and sexy instead of haggard like Elliot’s always did.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he groaned. “I’m being rescued by an underwear mode
l.”

  “Come again?” his helper called from under the hood.

  Elliot sneezed.

  “Car trouble?” the stranger asked as he approached. It wasn’t his crisis, obviously, but Elliot thought he had no right to speak with such molasses laziness, as if they weren’t drenched and cold and choking on exhaust.

  Despite the beating his ego had taken since downsizing his life, Elliot still had his share of masculine pride. He wasn’t above pretending he knew what he was doing, and he was tempted, especially in the face of the man’s confident swagger. But what was the point? “I don’t know my ass from my elbow here,” he blurted.

  The man grinned, and a dimple popped in his left cheek that sucked every last bit of air right out of Elliot’s lungs.

  “Can I take a look?” he asked, stepping up beside the hipster helper, who reluctantly made room for him.

  “Be my guest.” Elliot stepped out of the way, forcing himself not to snuffle like a creep when he caught a whiff of faded aftershave.

  The man’s scent made his mouth water. When was the last time one of Elliot’s dates had ended up in bed? Too long, right? That must be the reason Elliot’s gaze locked on the blue jeans hugging the stranger’s ass when he leaned in. He redirected his eyes before he popped an erection right there.

  “Did you check the alternator?” the man asked. The hipster threw a victorious glance in Elliot’s direction, but it quickly morphed to crestfallen when the stranger added, “Nah, nevermind. Dumb idea with all this steam.”

  “Well.” The hipster tugged at his sleeves and checked his nails for grease stains. “It looks like you’ve got it handled. I need to feed my dog. Stay cool, my man. Or, you know, stay dry.”

  He chuckled at his own joke as he walked to his own banged up convertible. Both Elliot and the stranger watched him merge back into traffic, throwing them a peace sign through his open passenger window as he passed.

  “You’re better off not taking advice from anyone who drives a car like that.” The stranger sounded amused.

  “Why not?”

  “He drives a fucking Sebring.” His tone made it all sound self-explanatory. “Did you know they were once considered the worst car in the world?”

  “Worse than the Yugo?” Elliot teased, enjoying the man’s disgusted expression.

  “We don’t say that word.”

  Elliot was forced to laugh, even as cold and miserable as he was. He chafed his arms, but the warmth was minimal through the cheap fabric of his suit. “So what’s the verdict? The thingamobby? Maybe the jigamawizzer? It’s been acting up for weeks.”

  The stranger chuckled, and the sexy sound made Elliot bite his tongue.

  While it was true he’d had little more than a coffee date since Greg left him a year ago, he wasn’t ordinarily the thirsty type. In fact, his lack of enthusiasm in the sack had been chief on the list of Greg’s reasons for cheating. Elliot figured it was for the best that he didn’t have the insanely high sex drive of many men on the dating scene, because he wasn’t exactly a great catch. Perhaps he had been once, when he’d had moderate wealth and success to sweeten the pot. But he was relying solely on his own merits these days, and his milkshake did not bring all the boys to the yard.

  He was tall, healthy, and intelligent, but he was also a middle-income, middle-aged man who wasn’t particularly witty or charming. Whatever silver tongue he managed in the courtroom turned to lead in front of an attractive man. He’d discovered that he didn’t amount to much as a gay fish swimming in a sea of twinks and bodybuilders.

  “You’ve got a leak,” the man announced. “Your coolant is crazy low.”

  He wrapped one large hand around Elliot’s bicep and pulled him in front of the engine, pointing to a white plastic reservoir. Elliot could make out an inch of murky fluid collected at the bottom.

  “Oh,” he said faintly, but he was thinking more about the heat soaking through his damp suit where the man touched him. Without a doubt, those were the bluest eyes he had ever seen.

  The man looked bemused. “You really don’t have a clue, do you? Didn’t you see it overheating?”

  Elliot thought of his stack of tattered files and the way his empty stomach was rubbing against his ribcage. He hadn’t been paying the least bit of attention to the dashboard gauges until the car began coughing up smoke. His cheeks flushed, but he managed to set his embarrassment aside and shake his head.

  The man shrugged a set of shoulders wide enough for the NFL and said, “I forget not everyone grew up around cars like I did.”

  “I grew up riding my bike to the library,” Elliot returned with a tiny smile.

  “Yeah?” Elliot was astonished to detect a hint of interest beneath the longest lashes mankind had ever known. “Book smarts look good on some people.”

  That might be true, but Elliot had never been one of them. He thought back to Greg’s endless complaints about pretty much everything Elliot did, from the way he drank martinis to the way he sucked cock. Then he remembered his last date, a handsome dentist in his mid-thirties, who had looked so interested when he’d picked Elliot up in the produce section of Whole Foods, but who’d ended their date with a brisk handshake and a clap on the back.

  Still, there was no accounting for taste. This gut-meltingly attractive man might, in fact, have a thing for hollow-eyed public servants. Elliot was an opportunist. He would grab any chance that presented itself.

  He felt ridiculous as he leaned in close, with a five o’clock shadow and rain dribbling down his face, but the man didn’t move away. Elliot offered his best smile and whispered confidingly, “You should see me when the smarts come off.”

  That was definitely interest gleaming in the man’s blue jean eyes. His smile was crooked, and one of his front incisors was chipped, but that somehow added a rakish charm to his expression. He thrust out a hand. “I’m Lucas Kelly.”

  Elliot clasped his warm, calloused palm. For the first time in a long while, he felt a thrum of true excitement low in his belly. “Elliot Smith.”

  2

  Lucas

  To think, Lucas almost hadn’t stopped.

  It would have been easy to bypass the shiny hipster machine overheating on the side of the 205, especially considering the two men wringing their hands beside it.

  Lucas didn’t consider himself a sexist, but he didn’t feel compelled to stop for a man the way he automatically would for a woman. It wasn’t that a woman couldn’t handle her own shit. But his dad had been old-school, and he’d raised Lucas to believe in chivalry. He wasn’t about to discount anything that man had taught him about being a decent human being. Well, not anymore.

  It was raining like God’s own tears, but even if the men looked as if they didn’t know a radiator from a ratchet, they were the type who had enough money to keep roadside assistance on speed dial. Besides, Lucas was already running late.

  He wasn’t sure what had him pulling into the emergency lane at the last minute, except that he’d made himself a promise the day he was released from Snake River. He’d promised to start living a life that would make his father proud, to give a hand up where he could instead of only looking out for number one. It was the only promise he’d ever kept. But it had been three years now, and going a little extra distance for folks had more or less become second nature. So it was habit, and not the defeated slump of the businessman’s shoulders, that had him stopping to help.

  He was glad he did.

  Elliot Smith rang every single bell Lucas had. He was tall and rangy, with wide shoulders on a lean frame and big knobby hands. His dark hair was just beginning to go silver at the temples, making him look respectable even when it was plastered wetly to his forehead. His lashes were so thick that his eyes looked like they might be lined with pencil. Best of all, he looked rich and educated, which meant he was totally out of Lucas’s league. That made the chase all the more fun. The thrill of nailing some buttoned up WASP was almost worth the look of regret and embarrassment they gave him
the next morning.

  “Can I give you a ride?” he asked impulsively.

  Fuck! No, he couldn’t give him a damn ride. He was already late. Unless he wanted to bring Mr. Suit with him to meet Arnold. Ha! That would make a great impression. It would hurry the horrified regret stage right along. Maybe his new friend could hold the cup for his mandatory drug test. That would be a real romantic first date.

  Thankfully, he was saved from having to backtrack when a tow truck separated from the sluggish crawl of traffic. He tipped his head toward it with a genuine pang of regret. “Looks like you’re saved. I, uh, remembered somewhere I’ve got to be.”

  Elliot had opened his mouth to speak, but now he closed it, looking dismayed. It was a real shame, all right. That mouth of his, with that full lower lip…

  “Do you happen to know the closest garage?” Elliot asked.

  It was a gift, if he wanted to take it. Lucas scratched his chin and considered.

  “That would be A.J.’s,” the truck driver announced, spitting a wad of plug into a puddle as he unhooked his winch.

  Lucas bit back a grin. “Look, I really am running late,” he said, and he held out his hand so he might once more feel that smooth palm against his. “I’ll see you around.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.” Elliot shook his hand. He glanced uncomfortably over his shoulder at the potbellied tow operator in the red MAGA cap. Was he hoping for a number but too paranoid to ask in front of an audience? Tough shit for him, then. Let him sweat for a while.