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“I run into people at this very corner a few mornings a week,” I say, with an awkward laugh that is also not like me at all. “See you tomorrow?” Wind blows my long brown hair into my face, and to my horror, among other, more intimate physical reactions, he brushes it from my face.
“I’m out of town tomorrow,” he says, his full, arrogant, sexy lips curving while his blue eyes spark with amusement. “How about tonight?”
“No,” I say, because it’s the right answer. For me. For my mother. For now.
“Then when?” he presses.
“Another morning,” I say, stepping back from him, freeing myself of his touch, when I really don’t want to be free at all, but my life doesn’t allow a distraction like this man could easily become. “I really have to go,” I add firmly, grabbing my bag and side-stepping him and then darting away, in between two people, and then to the center of what feels like a huddle of bodies.
I look over my shoulder and just like that, my stranger is gone. It’s for the best, and yet, I have the gnawing sense of regret, like I want a do over that I shouldn’t want at all. It’s not time for hot men, with blue eyes and hard bodies. Correction, intelligent, blue eyes. They were intelligent, and brains make beauty sexy, but that’s irrelevant. I will not be meeting him on that corner again. It’s done. I can’t go back even if I wanted to.
Chapter two
Lori
Iend my day job in the center of a file room of a law office that is established and respected, but unlike Cat’s husband, the partners here don’t want to grow. Therefore, they don’t need someone like me to be more than I am at present: a clerk. For now, that works for me. I don’t want to be at a firm that might represent my future when I can’t give all that I have to give to become a success. I simply can’t work eighty-hour weeks for a limited income to pay my dues right now. At least I’m learning with every case I research here and with Cat. I’m staying fresh. I’m staying ready to be on game when I return to Stanford. Or finish at NYU or whatever I have to do to just get that degree.
With the offices already dimmed, I store my garment bag in a closet at the back of the file room on my way out. I just don’t have it in me to carry it to Cat’s and then on the subway home tonight because while Cat lives near my workplace, my mother and I cannot afford a place anywhere near this neighborhood. I exit the building that is on the opposite side of the courthouse from Cat and Reese’s building, and start walking, dialing my mother as I do. She answers on the second ring.
“How are you?” I ask.
“Stop worrying about me,” she chides. “I’m feeling good.”
“It’s only your first week back to work,” I say. “I hate they put you back on night shift.”
“I’m just glad to be back,” she says. “It’s time for you to get back to you.”
“Not yet,” I tell her. “I’m working late.”
“You work early, and you work late,” she says. “We need to talk about you, daughter. We’re going to the next time I can actually get us in the same house.”
First Cat, and now my mother, I think. “I love you,” I say. “Let’s leave it at that for now, okay?”
“I love you, too,” she whispers. “So much, honey. I gotta go.”
She hangs up and I slide my phone into my oversized Coach handbag that serves as both briefcase and purse; a gift from my father when I started Stanford. It’s not a Louis Vuitton, he’d said. But it’s a start. You’ll have to buy the Louis with all the lawyer money you’ll make. He’d been a contractor, who’d worked us up to middle class New York City with a healthy college fund that made my partial ride to Stanford enough to get me in. Only we weren’t as well off as I’d thought. He’d died of a stroke six months before my mother’s stroke, which she is thankfully recovering from, and even with his life insurance, it left us nearly bankrupt. I start replaying those days in my head, and it’s not a good place for me. Not a good place at all. I’m strong, but every once in a while, like now, it’s quicksand, and I don’t even realize I’ve finished my walk until I’m standing in front of Cat and Reese’s building.
Inhaling, I mentally step out of that pit of hell. My father is gone. I can’t change that. My mother is healing. Another six months and I’ll get back to school, even if it’s not Stanford, and at least get a diploma. I run my hands over my black skirt, and ensure all is in order, tugging on my jacket for extra measure. Then I do what I do. I step out of one world and force myself into another. I open the door and enter the lobby, glancing at the time on my phone that tells me that I’m on time.
I cut right toward the bar and enter the dimly lit, rather cozy spot, that is usually a madhouse of attorneys and courthouse personnel, which is why Cat and I have never once visited together. At the present eight o’clock hour, however, it’s calm, only a cluster of random people scattered around the circular bar in cozy leather seats. Cat stands up from a corner table and motions me toward her. She’s dressed in a red suit dress, when a day at home for her usually means jeans.
I weave through tables, and I have no idea why, but I have butterflies. It’s Cat. This is my job. She’s my friend. Unless…she wanted to talk about my future and now she’s firing me. I almost laugh at myself. That’s insane. She’s not firing me. Where did that idea come from? And she certainly wouldn’t dress up to fire me or do it in public.
“Why are you all dressed up?” I ask, settling at the table with her.
“Because fifteen minutes ago, Reese called. He’s at dinner with the CEO of Mellatag and wants me to join him.”
“As in the CEO of the biggest tech company on the planet?”
“Yes. The same CEO that Reese represented when he was accused of murdering the CFO, when it turned out it was the CFO’s wife. He apparently finally decided he wants to write his story. He wants me to co-write it with him, but he’s headed out of the country and wants to see me now.”
“Oh. Well yay and this,” I say, gesturing between us, “can wait.”
“Except I have something to tell you and I couldn’t wait.”
“You’re firing me.”
She laughs. “What? No. Are you crazy? Why would I fire you? God. I wish I had time to find out why your head is in the place it’s obviously in right now. But instead, let me give you something better to think about.”
