**Edited by Adelina Clonts aka Seawriter****

“The Rented Husband”

2011 © All Rights Reserved

Chapter 2

            Olivia had been working nonstop all morning since Marcey had left her office.  She surfaced through a total of five files, contacted two important witnesses for interviewing and even managed setting up a hair appointment for the next day’s afternoon.  She had been busy to say the least.

            Olivia was rubbing at her temples in an effort to ward off an impending headache, when the sound of her cell phone started to go off in her purse.  Frowning, she looked down at the drawer and wondered who would be calling so late in the day.  Everyone knew to call her office just in case she was held up in court.

            Opening the drawer she carefully reached into her purse and pulled out the ringing phone.  Looking down at the number, her glowering demeanor deepened.  It was an unknown number.  Since she was physically in her office, she figured, ‘what the hell, It was probably a wrong number.’  Effortlessly, she answered the phone.

            “Hello?”

        She was greeted with a gasping silence.

                  “Hello?” she repeated, expressing a little irritation in her tone.

            Heavy breathing ensued on the other end.  Olivia was getting ready to hang up, assuming it was some jacked off kids playing around making prank calls, when a scratchy voice spoke.

            “Olivia, your time is running out” the voice said, and then the call was disconnected.  She was left lingering with nothing but a chilling silence.  Pulling the phone from her ear, she stared at it momentarily not able to fully comprehend what had just happened. 

            “What the hell was that supposed to mean?” she muttered to herself.  ‘My time is running out, running out for what?’ she wondered.  Whoever it was knew her name and that tidbit of information didn’t sit well with her either.  

            Sitting there at her desk, still slightly shaken, Olivia was startled when her office phone rang.  She stared at it dumbly at first, before shaking off the last bit of jitters and chiding herself for being so silly.  It had to have been some dumb prank, nothing more.  Probably one of her brother’s old college buddies again trying to tease her or something, anything to get Cane’s baby sister riled up. Exhaling slowly to regain composure, she reached for the receiver on her desk phone and brought it to her ear.

            “Olivia Murray,” she quipped.

            “Liv, how’s it going?” her always overly chipper sister blurted out.

            “Fine, Ashley.  How are you?” she answered back.  Ashley, thirty five years old, was the second oldest of the Murray siblings and was the first of them to get married.  She was head over heels in love with a very handsome Seth Wells, a former navy seal, now security expert.  No need to point out how happy their dad was with this particular match up, considering his navy seal background.  

            “I’m fine, thanks for asking,” she replied as she intently listened to the sound of children’s laughter in the background.  Ashley and Seth had a set of three year old twin girls and they were Olivia’s little bundles of sunshine.  She loved her nieces more than anything in the world. 

            “Hey, I was calling to see if you wanted to do lunch maybe today or tomorrow.  I wanted to talk with you about Caley’s wedding next week and some other details about the trip to Hawaii.”  

            Really meaning, that you wanted to try and hook me up with another one of your friends, Olivia thought to herself.  No thank you!  Been there and done that.  Her sister’s efforts were just about as fruitless as the rest of the families’.  The last blind date Ashly arranged, he chattered nonstop and not in a good way either.

            Olivia knew of polite dinner conversation and on many occasions actually enjoyed it herself, but Rex Goben took that concept to a whole other level.  He not only talked through the whole date, he monopolized the conversation by telling Olivia too much personal information about himself that she cared less to hear.  He went so far as to tell her about ‘Mr. Winkles.’  That did it!  That was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. In the middle of dinner, Olivia considered their conversation immediately over.  She didn’t even respond to him, she just stood up and walked away, never once looking back.  Any man who had the audacity to talk about his personal body parts on a first date, even going as far as naming them, was a no-go in her book.

            “I’m kind of busy today,” Olivia answered her while thinking about her plan and Brody O’Connor.  She could probably catch him on a lunch break and make her proposal to him then.  The sooner the better because if she didn’t come up with something fast, there would be no way to deter her sister and whatever cockamamie plan she was in the midst of cooking up.

            “Oh,” Ashley said sounding slightly disappointed over the phone. “Well, what about tomorrow?  I’ll even take you out to your favorite steak house, Ruth Chris.”  Wow, she must really feel strong about this one to want to butter Olivia up by taking her out to her favorite eatery. 

            “Fine,” Olivia told her, inwardly wincing.  “I’ll meet you there at noon?” she added, more as a question than a statement.

            “Sure, that sounds perfect,” Ashley replied excitedly, almost too excitedly for Olivia’s taste.  It seemed as though the more her family championed a particular guy as a potential hubby candidate, the worse the guy turned out to be.  Olivia loved her sister, she just wished that she would keep her nose out of Olivia’s business and let her live out her own life.  

            “Alright, see you then,” she said glancing over at the clock on her wall.

            “See you then,” Ashley affirmed and hung up the phone.

            Olivia hung up the receiver and sat back in her chair, dropping her head backwards against the head rest.  It was never going to stop.  Her family was determined to see her ‘tie the knot’.  Just knowing that fact, she was now more honed in on her plan that involved Brody O’Connor.  It was perfect, she thought to herself.  Now, all she had to do was convince the very egotistical Brody O’Connor just how perfect it really was.

                         **********

            Olivia walked up the steps of the court house in her sharply ironed black pant suit with lustrous black heels clopping in time against the pavement.  With each airing step she took, Olivia accomplished flaunting the look of a highly successful and confident attorney that she was.  Olivia had come here today on a mission; a mission that involved Brody O’Connor, and she was poised to complete her mission.

            “Good afternoon, Ms. Murray,” Judge Woodock said in passing.  He was an older gentleman that had tried several of her cases and always seemed to be fair.  He was always one of her favorite people to talk to when she needed a breather from the normal rigors of work.

            “Good afternoon, Judge,” she answered back with an award winning smile.  “How is Mrs. Woodock doing these days?” she asked.  Judge Woodock had stopped and smiled warmly back at her. 

            “She is doing well.  She has taken up bird watching now,” he told her, seemingly happy about that.  

            Every time that Olivia spoke with the Judge his wife had taken up a new hobby.  Last week it was knitting, the week before it was scrapbooking and who could forget the week before that: surfing.  The poor woman almost broke her neck and nearly gave the Judge a heart attack in the process. 

            “That’s good to hear,” Olivia replied back honestly. Bird watching was much safer than her surfing hobby.  "What about Patton?  How is she getting along these days?"
           "Fine, fine," he told her.  "She's doing an internship with Gordon MacVoy.  Her mother and I hope that she will follow in my footsteps."

           "I'm sure she will," Olivia assured him.  "She's a bright young lady and from what I've seen, she is a real go-getter."  The Judge laughed at her comment,  when she spotted the gorgeous looking Brody O’Connor stepping out of one of the court rooms.  Her mind shifted gears while she watched him shaking an older gentleman’s hand who was pleasantly smiling back at him.  The great Brody O’Connor must have won another case.

            “If you’ll please excuse me, Judge, the person I came to see just appeared,” she said to him not taking her eyes off of Brody.  The Judge chuckled when he saw who Olivia Murray was looking at. 

            “Brody O’Connor, huh?  It’s about time the two of you got together.”  Olivia turned around to look at the Judge with wide eyes.

            “Oh no,” she said too quickly.  “It’s not like that, I mean we’re not together like that or anything,” she stumbled out.  The Judge only gave her a knowing look.  He was catty like that at times and that was the one thing that drove Olivia crazy about the man. 

            “Run along Ms. Murray, I would hate to be the one to detain you”.

            Olivia started to protest once again.  She didn’t want the Judge to have the wrong impression but instead he turned and she was left watching his retreating back, feeling dumbstruck in the process.  What in God’s name would make him think that Brody and I would ever fit together? We are like fire and ice, peas and corn, oil and water.  That was just plain madness, she mused.  Turning back around to where she had last seen Brody O’Connor she cursed aloud an unladylike explicative remark.  He wasn’t there. 

            “Where could that man have run off to so quickly?” she muttered, while briskly making her way through the court house.  She really needed to speak with him.

            Olivia initiated her quest for Brody O’Conner by looking in all of the court rooms that were now seemingly empty due to lunch breaks.  Nothing. Not one sign of him.  She scurried by several of the Prosecutors’ offices in hopes he stopped by there to talk with someone, but no where was he found.  She raced up and down every hall in that courthouse and concluded that he had just vanished.  Somehow, Mr. O’Connor had managed to disappear right from under her nose.

            With only thirty minutes left of her lunch break,  Olivia started heading towards the deli,  just a few blocks down the street, to grab a salad before heading back to the office.  Brody would surely be heading back to the office sometime today and when he did, she would sit him down and give him her proposition.

            Feeling a little ragged from the first half of the day’s events, Olivia deliberately took  time walking down the street.  She was entranced with soaking up the sun’s warmth on her face and took pleasure, in drawing deep breaths of Springs fresh air into her lungs.  Spring is one of North Carolina’s best complimenting seasons, with its’ perfect seventy degree temperatures,  all blooming  flowers, and sweetly hidden array of birds singing their symphonic songs in nature’s beautifying scenery.  The outside atmosphere of harmony and pleasantry was simply contagious.  Olivia was still looking upward when she, not so gracefully, rammed into something hard, or rather someone with a body that felt like brick.

            After stumbling and losing her balance she started to apologize profusely, “I’m so sorry, I should have been watching where I was going but I was enjoying the sun and well, I’m sorry, there is no excuse, I should have been looking out…”

            A familiar laugh caught her by surprise.  Straightening herself and brushing clumsily at her pants, Olivia looked up and found herself gazing into the bluest eyes that she had ever laid her sights on, eyes so blue that she could see herself in them.  

            “You okay there?” a deep voice spoke;  when she realized that she was still staring into the face of Brody O’Connor.  He was still holding her elbow firmly to help steady her and they were so close that she could smell his aftershave; it was spicy and pretty damn appealing.

            Olivia shook her head and took a step back.  She needed some space in order to think.  There was just something about this man that threw her off her game and that was unusual for the always confident Olivia Murray.  It must be that she was tired and the stresses of dealing with the family that were too much for her, she gathered, because there was nothing, absolutely nothing that attracted her to the playboy known as Brody O’Conner.  That was why he was the perfect candidate for this idea of hers in the first place.

            Brody stood back and eyed the very astute Olivia Murray.  She was one creature that he had yet to figure out.  She was very beautiful with her darkened blonde hair that she kept pinned up in a tight bun on her head.  If she would just let it loose sometime,  he had no doubt she would turn many heads.   Then she had those eyes, those dark chocolate brown eyes that were always on guard.  Not only beautiful, but Olivia Murray was smart and quick on the draw.  Nothing went over her.  Oh, the things he would do just to know what made that woman tick.

            “I’m sorry” Olivia said again seemingly back on her game.

            “No problem,” Brody answered her with his head slightly tilted to the side.  Olivia was still standing there with her brow furrowed and it crossed his mind that maybe there was something else that she wanted.

            “Would you like to join me for lunch?” Olivia busted out quickly.  She was slightly taken back by the way she just blurted out the question and from the shocked look on Brody’s face, he was just as surprised.

            “Hm,” he said stroking his chin as if in thought. “The great Olivia Murray has just asked me out to lunch…”  He stopped stroking his chin and crossed his hands over his chest, offering her a smile that would make any other woman go weak in the knees.  “What do I owe this honor?” he finally asked after a long minute of silence.

            This was why Olivia didn’t associate with the likes of Brody O’Connor.  He could be a real ass when he wanted to.  All she asked was for him to join her for lunch, not for extra commentary from the peanut gallery.  

            She did her best to paste a forced smile on her face and mumbled out between gritted teeth, “I have a proposition for you”.

            Brody took in the steely features of Olivia’s face. He had riled her up and he liked the way that she was trying so hard not to show it.  Whatever she wanted must be good because on any other given day, he would be watching her back as she stalked away from him after the comments that he had made.

            “A proposition you say?” he calmly reiterated , keeping his eyes firmly locked on hers.  When she didn’t flinch, Brody casually shrugged his shoulders, “What the hell, I’m game for anything and this sounds like it could be interesting.  Lead the way, Counselor.”