Free Sleeping With the Help (Toyboy Lover) by Ava Rush Page B

the only person in the city sweating.
    “No, the trash is fine,” I said, handing them back to her.
    As she took them from me I hung up, cutting my assistant off mid sentence. And then I heard a thud in the hallway. When I rushed out I found Lupita lying on the floor, motionless.
     
    “Overruled! Now move on, Miss Nash!” The booming voice of Judge Rickards echoed through the courtroom, as he repeated the command for the third time to my insistent objection, his face red with anger, his icy blue eyes narrowed at me. I was beginning to think that was the only word in his vocabulary when it came to me. Talk about biased. He was still sore about me causing the jury to laugh at him in my cross examination the week before.
    I slumped in my chair and called him a dick-less asshole under my breath before laughing behind my hand at that imagery, then stopping when I realized how unprofessional I looked.
    He called a fifteen minute recess a few minutes later, which no one requested. Everyone knew he wanted to spend that time in his chamber throwing back his bottle of forty-year-old single malt whiskey, if the rumors were anything to go by. Thankful for the break I rushed out of the courtroom and found a quiet corner to make a call.
    “Hi. I'm calling to check on a patient. She came into A&E this morning. Name's Lupita, erm... Morales. No, Montez. Lupita Montez.”
    After a moment the nurse said, “Obviously we can't give out any medical information. But I can tell you that she's conscious.”
    “Is anyone with her? Family, friends?”
    “Her son and daughter are here.”
    After thanking the nurse, I hung up feeling like a complete shit, despising myself more than I did Judge Rickards. Lupita had been my maid for two years and I didn't even know she had children.
     
    Navigating my way through hospitals was right up there in difficulty with passing the bar. My directional skills were crap, and the signs were confusing.
    "You're really going to miss the partners meeting to go see your maid in the hospital? Why?" Jake had asked, once court was adjourned. He looked at me as if to say, "The Steel Woman doesn't do things like that. She doesn't care about anyone."
    So I gave him an answer that I knew he would have found satisfactory, and very like me. I said, with my most blas é shrug, "I really hate those meetings." He probably wouldn't have believed me if I'd been straight with him, telling him that I actually cared about Lupita. And it certainly wouldn't have done anything for my hardass image.
    Wandering through the disinfectant scented corridors, trying my hardest to ignore all the sick people around me, I turned onto a ward, crashing through the double doors, and immediately wished I hadn't. Several beds were lined up side by side, so close together I couldn't imagine how the staff had gotten the patients in. Crammed together like the hospital wanted to see how many patients it could squeeze in. And right at the end of the row lay a sheet-white Lupita, oxygen mask over her face.
    Around me nurses scurried back and forth, between beds, seeing to the sick and wounded. A couple nearly knocked me over as they rushed to their crying patients. It was my worst nightmare realized; I couldn't imagine how awful it was for them.
    “Lu,” I said when I reached her bed.
    She opened her eyes, removing the oxygen mask with a pale, shaky hand. “Miss Victoria, you didn't have to come.”
    “Have you been properly seen to?” I asked, gulping back my worry. She had always been a slim woman, but in the bed she looked thinner than I'd ever seen her. In fact, she'd been looking thinner for a while, now that I thought about it.
    “The nurses, they're very busy. I'm, I'm fine.”
    No, she wasn't. She was far from fine. Something fierce and angry came over me, welling inside me threatening to explode. I didn't know where it came from, but I knew what I wanted to do. It was as if the lawyer in me took over. I'd never protected anyone's human