Promising Young Women | Sons of Anarchy Fanfiction | Jax Teller x OC

Chapter Twenty: Once Upon a Dream

Thursday, 12:11 pm

Grace shifted anxiously against the seat of her chair and flashed Damon Pope a quick smile. For some reason, he'd insisted on actually ordering a drink and now he'd just forced her hand and "suggested" they also order lunch since they were here - all on him, of course. And while she wasn't particularly interested in sitting at this table any longer than physically necessary, she still had a part to play in all this and still needed Pope to think nothing was out of place in his world.

So she'd smile and play nice and let him buy her lunch, or whatever.

The half hour Uber ride she'd taken to get to Belotti's - a kind of swanky Italian restaurant on the moderately nice side of town, if a thing like that actually existed in Oakland - had been cumbersome and mostly spent trying and failing to ignore the driver's massive body odor issue the entire ride.

Super fun times.

Needless to say, the sooner she could get another car again, the better. Especially if she was going to slowly but surely start taking on actual clients again.

But goddammit, did she want to get out of here. This was the last place she wanted to be right now - but she also couldn't ignore the very real possibility that turning Damon Pope down, especially right now, might raise some red flags she'd rather stayed low and in their place.

As if on cue, Pope flashed her a reassuring grin and reached into his suit jacket to pull out an envelope. Once he'd passed it to her from across the table, he nodded when she promptly tucked it away in her purse, without looking at the contents. He was good for it, and certainly hadn't shortchanged her, so the theatrics of checking the cash in front of him wasn't necessary.

"Thanks," she pressed a tight smile to her face. "I appreciate that."

Pope just spread his hands out with an easy shrug. "Like I told you yesterday, I want to maintain our professional relationship, and the last thing I want is for there to be anything unresolved or outstanding from this job I hired you for last week. You and I both know you were hot on the trail and would've pinned down my idiot daughter's location had it not been for some divine intervention."

Divine intervention indeed.

"Well," Grace allowed. "I'm just glad everything worked out and that it all had a happy ending."

He chuckled a little at that, adjusting the labels of his jacket as he glanced at his wristwatch. "I'm sure our definitions of happy ending are a little different when it comes to my daughter's unfortunate life choices as of late, but I do understand what you mean. And in the spirit of all's well that ends well, I've got a potential new client for you - and hopefully you won't mind that I've taken the liberty of inviting him to our little lunch pow wow here today."

Grace was right in the middle of bringing her wine glass up to her lips when her movements stilled. Everything around her got a little blurry, a little hazy and she promptly took a long swig of her chardonnay to mask her reaction as much as possible.

"I know you only work off referrals," Pope soldiered on, completely unaware and undeterred. "And he's a man that I owe a world of favors to, so the least I could do was introduce the two of you since he's got a difficult and rather sensitive situation he's dealing with right now," and before she had a chance to do anything but freeze right in her seat, he dipped a hand inside his jacket to pull out his phone and glanced at the screen, "Ah. He's just on his way inside right now. I apologize for not bringing you up to speed about this before our meeting, but as I said, his matter is rather sensitive and he wanted to be the one to explain, instead of take the chance that anything should get lost in translation here and - ah. There he is right now..."