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And what she’d tell him.
With the way he talked and how smooth he was, he was bound to ask her a lot of questions that she might not want to answer.
Roni went about finishing up her work. She should have left an hour ago. She got out at four, so two hours ago.
But she hated going home alone.
When she lived with her parents, she didn’t feel as alone, even if she was upstairs by herself.
With Eli gone, their small apartment felt huge and lonely.
It reminded her that she had no life outside of her son and she was sick of hearing about it from others too.
She dragged it out for twenty minutes and then told herself to just go up and see Trent.
Maybe she could turn the conversation around to him anyway. As he’d said, he wanted to celebrate so it’d be nice to be around someone with good news.
She locked the door to her office after she hit the lights. She was going to bring her bag to her car but decided not to. There was no reason she couldn’t carry it upstairs with her.
When she opened the door to his office, he was sitting in the reception area.
“I thought you’d be in your office,” she said.
“Nope. I was waiting for you. And the food. It should be here any minute.”
“They are fast,” she said.
“And you dragged it out till the last minute too. Having second thoughts?”
She sighed, not surprised he would have figured that out. “No. Just confusing ones.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll buy that. We know I like to talk so I’ll start. Then you can decide how comfortable you are sharing things.”
“Thanks for that,” she said. “Why don’t you start with why you are celebrating? A big win?”
“Yes,” he said. “Come have a seat. We can wait for the food to get here and when it does, then we can move to the conference room while I lock the door.”
She set her bag and purse down on one of the chairs and sat in another facing Trent. He was still in his suit, but he’d ditched his jacket and his tie, the top few buttons on his light green shirt with white stripes were undone. His tie had been darker green and it looked good with his gray pinstriped suit that she couldn’t help but admire earlier.
His eyes...she was pretty sure they were hazel because they almost matched the color of his shirt, but she swore they were blue the other day.
“My experience with lawyers is just large hourly bills,” she said honestly.
“I figured as much,” he said. “And maybe that is why you are withdrawn with me.”
“I’m not sure I’d use the word withdrawn. More like guarded. It’s not your profession maybe as much as men in general. Or men with a tad bit of your profession mixed it.” She held her fingers up like she was pinching the air. “My attorney practices in family law. I’m assuming you don’t do that?”
“I do everything,” he said. “Bigger firms have people that specialize in one area or a few areas, but me, I can’t be choosey.”
“Or you’re good at everything,” she said.
“There is that too. I haven’t been practicing long and the firm I was at before here, they were putting people in all wheelhouses to see where they thrived. You could say I didn’t fall short anywhere, but I spent a lot of time doing personal injury. Not always what I wanted, but I got my start there and learned a ton.”
“Really?” she asked. “I figured that is where the money was at.”
“It is. And that is where this big win came from. But there are wins and then there are losses. I can’t disclose personal information on my win. But I can tell you that it was a malpractice lawsuit settled out of court. The doctor admitted to the error. It was a mistake. My clients didn’t want to go to court, but the hospital offered them some crazy low settlement first and that turned my clients off. They just came to me to see their options. In the end, they got what I asked for, even though I expected them to negotiate. It was still fair and less than they’d have to pay if it went to court and they knew it. The bigger win for me was that there were clauses in there that doctors get more time off between shifts. The same with staffing. No patient should go through this again. No doctor should either. They work hard and have years of training that a mistake like this should have never happened and wouldn’t have if it wasn’t the situation they were in.”
“Wow. Can you take a deep breath now that you got that all out?” It sounded like Eli when he was rattling it all off.
