Free Courting Trouble by Maggie Marr

Jo to Emma. “I found the best family-law attorney in Colorado,” Sylvia said. “He won’t take the case.”
    Tulsa pulled her head back as if she’d been smacked. “You’re kidding?”
    “I’m not,” Sylvia said.
    “Did you tell him who it’s for? How much I’ll pay? What I do?” With each question her voice rose in tone and jabbed with increased intensity.
    “I tried every trick,” Sylvia said. “Even offered him double his hourly rate.”
    Tulsa swallowed and took a deep breath. Double this guy’s hourly rate would be a ton of dough, but it didn’t matter. She’d pay any amount to save Ash.
    “And he said no?”
    Sylvia nodded.
    “Any reason why?”
    Sylvia took a deep breath, tilted her head to the side, and then glanced at her hands. “His case load is full.”
    She was covering. Sylvia was leaving something out. There wasn’t any attorney that would refuse double their hourly rate simply because their case load was crammed.
    “What’s the real reason?” Tulsa asked.
    Sylvia glanced at the computer screen. “The real reason?”
    Tulsa nodded. Two thousand miles away in the conference room of McGrath, Phillips, & Lopez, all three of her colleagues exchanged a look. A look that seemed to say we know, but damn, we sure don’t want to have to tell you. Sylvia squinted her eyes and rubbed her hand across the iPad in front of her. Finally, after what seemed like a forever pause, she said, “He doesn’t want to work for you.”
    Tulsa clasped her hands together and tilted her head. “What? Why? Because I’m a woman? That’s a little sexist, isn’t it?”
    “I don’t think—” Emma started.
    “It’s not because you’re a woman,” Sylvia said, finishing Emma’s thought. “The other partner at his firm is a woman. He just—”
    “Then what is it?” Tulsa interrupted. Frustration tightened her belly into a knot. “What could it possibly be that would prevent an attorney from taking double his rate on a case tha—”
    “Tulsa, your reputation precedes you,” Sylvia interrupted quickly, her words like bullets, each one landing a hit in Tulsa’s chest.
    “What exactly does that mean?”
    “It means,” said Jo, leaning toward the computer in LA, “he knows you’re a ballbuster.”
    Ballbuster? Tulsa crossed her arms over her chest and looked toward the ceiling. What an ugly word. “I am not a ballbuster .” How could anyone associate such a hideous word with her? She refocused her gaze at the computer screen and all three women stared at her, slack-jawed.
    “You’re kidding, right?” Jo asked.
    “Oh sweetie,” Emma said, her brows furrowed and her eyes channeling a puppy-like look. “You didn’t know?”
    “Come on! Because I have expectations? Because I believe opposing counsel needs to be as dedicated as I—”
    “You mean obsessive,” Sylvia said.
    “Myopic,” Emma chimed in.
    “Anal retentive,” Jo added.
    “And don’t forget inflexible.” Emma finished off the adjectives.
    All three of her colleagues nodded in agreement with each other as if they’d discussed this list of Tulsa’s attributes before this morning meeting. She was stunned. Absolutely, irrevocably stunned.
    “So that’s what I am? An obsessive, anal-retentive, myopic, inflexible ballbuster?”
    “Oh we don’t think so, sweetie,” Emma said with the gentlest of smiles on her lips, a smile reserved for jilted lovers or ugly friends. “But that’s what everyone else says.”
    “All the way to Colorado? These… these… assessments about me have made their way all the way to Denver?”
    “He has a national practice,” Sylvia said.
    “Plus he’s repped a couple of celebs out of Aspen,” Jo added.
    “Do I know him?” Tulsa asked. She could, on occasion, be particularly demanding with opposing counsel. But that was her job. She was meant to get the very best deal for her clients.
    “No,” Sylvia said.
    “But he knows you,” Emma said.
    “One of his current clients was on the