Advice of Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 1) by Debra Trueman Page A

Landra
tapped me on the shoulder. She took my hand and placed the bolt in it, then
folded my fingers closed.
    “Wanna screw?”  she asked, with a big smile on her face.
    “More than anything,” I told her.
    Landra laughed.  “I’ve got to get out of here before I lose my
job,” she said.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    “See ya tomorrow,” I said, still laughing.
    I was keenly aware of the neighbors watching me watch her cross
the street.  She got in her car and backed into the street, and pulled up
beside me with her window down.
    “Bye, Sam.”
    “Goodbye, Landra.”
    I spent the rest of the afternoon being lazy.  The truth was, I
was having a hard time getting Landra out of my mind.  I kept replaying the
mailbox kiss in my head, and I could just imagine how it must have looked to
the neighbors.  Not that I cared one way or the other what they thought.  If
I’d witnessed something like that, I would have laughed my ass off.  They were
all way too polite to do that.
    I had just come in from sitting by my pool when my doorbell
rang and I opened the door to find Maddie, Oliver and the baby on my front
porch.
    “Can I talk to you for a minute?” Maddie asked.  She was still
in her work clothes.
    The baby was remarkably clean, so I invited them inside.  “Can
I get you something to drink?”
    She and Oliver spoke at the same time.  “No, we’re fine,”
Maddie said.
    “I’m so thirsty,” Oliver said dramatically.  “I’m 150 miles
thirsty.”
    “Wow.  Then we better get you something to drink,” I told him. 
“You want a beer?”
    Oliver laughed.  “Kids don’t drink beer.  May I have some milk
please?”
    I find that a kid’s manners say a lot about his parents, and
the more time I spent with Oliver, the higher Maddie rose on my parent-rating
scale. I poured him a glass of milk and handed it to him and he drank it down
on the spot, then set his glass down by the sink.
    “I’m really hungry too,” Oliver said, but this time Maddie
protested.
    “It’s okay,” I told her.  I looked at Oliver, “What are you
hungry for?”
    He seemed to be thinking really hard about it.  “What do you
have?” he finally asked.
    I walked him to my pantry but he was too short to see what was
up there, so I picked him up to let him have a look.  He draped his arm around
my neck while he took his time and scoped everything out, then he pointed to
the Oreos.
    “Can I have some of those?”
    “Grab em,” I told him.
    He took the package and clutched them to his chest, then he
cupped his little hand over my ear, and why he whispered I don’t know, but he
said, “When I was little I had these crunched up on my birthday cake.”
    I carried him to the back room and set him down at the table. 
He took four or five cookies out of the package and stacked them on the table,
then he took the top one, pulled it apart, and scraped off the middle with his
front teeth.  He handed me the outside part when he was finished.  “We can
share these.  You can have this part.”
    “You licked all over it!”
    “No I didn’t.  I did it with my teeth.”
    As much as I liked the kid, I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. 
“Let’s give it to your mom.”
    “Gee, thanks,” Maddie said.  She had let the baby down and he
was crawling all over my back room.  I turned on the TV for Oliver, and Maddie
and I took a seat on the couch on the other side of the room.
    “What’s up?” I asked her.
    Her eyes filled with tears.  “I don’t think I can handle
working there any more, but I can’t afford to quit.”
    “Damn it, Maddie.  You can’t cry every time something happens. 
Now take a deep breath and stop crying.”
    She took a couple of deep breaths, and when her bottom lip
finally quit quivering, I continued.  “Did something happen after you got back
from lunch today?”
    “No.”
    “Then what brought this on?”
    “It’s just the whole thing.  The comment about my husband’s