Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) (6 page)

If only Joe hadn’t looked so good that morning in his charcoal gray
suit.  If only he didn’t look so much better than she remembered.  If only the
young woman hadn’t been so
adoring
. . .

Sarah shook it off.  That was just one deposition, and it wouldn’t
happen again.  Didn’t have to—she’d made her point.  She wasn’t there to make
friends, least of all with Burke.

“Where you going?” Chapman asked when they reached the other side.

Sarah pointed to the salad place.

Chapman made a face.  “See you later then.”

Sarah was just sitting down to a massive bowl of greens and tofu when a
familiar body entered the restaurant.  She almost felt him before she saw him.

She cursed under her breath.

There was no use pretending she hadn’t seen him when it was clear he
was looking for her.

But he took his time about it, first standing in line, consulting the
menu behind the counter, then ordering a southwestern chicken salad.

“Sarah.”  He didn’t even ask, just sat down.  He pushed the plastic
fork out of its wrapper and took a few bites of his lunch.

Sarah continued chewing her own salad, which was now completely
tasteless on her tongue.

“Shall we start again?” he asked.

A wave of cold sluiced over her skin.  She narrowed her eyes.  “What do
you mean?”

“I don’t know about you,” he said, taking another bite, “but I’m not up
for five months of that.  I’m too old.”

“Yeah, you’re ancient,” she said.  “Buck up, Burke.  Take some
vitamins.”

“
Sarah
.”

The way he said it, she couldn’t help looking at him.  “What.”

He raised his eyebrows in a way that was so familiar to her, she could
have predicted the exact lines that formed on his forehead as a result.  She
knew every inch of that face.  She’d held it in her hands, gazed into it, pressed
her own soft cheek against it, lusted after it, kissed it, adored it—

“We’re already in purgatory,” he said.  “Let’s not make it worse.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, wishing she could come up with a
snappier line.

“You think I like this?” Joe asked.  “You think this gig is a reward of
some kind for a job well done?”

Sarah hadn’t considered that.  She’d been so focused on what the job
meant to her, she hadn’t wondered how Joe might feel about it.  Or why he might
be there.

“So what happened?” she asked.

“What, are we going to talk about our hopes and feelings now, Henley?”  He
threw her own line back at her, but with a shade of humor in his voice, obviously
trying to make his point that they should treat each other better.

She softened ever so slightly.  “So why are you stuck with this job?  Did
you make an enemy?”

“A few,” Joe said.  “I won’t bore you with the details.”  He spread his
arms and looked around the tiny restaurant.  “And now here we are, both of us
hitting the big time.”

“Who’d have thought it, Number Eight?” Sarah asked, trying to make up
for digging it in earlier.

“Me, sure,” he said.  “But you, Number Seven?  What’s the world coming
to?”

“That judge was not looking at my chest.”

“He definitely was,” Joe said, spearing a chunk of chicken and popping
it into his mouth.  “Couldn’t blame him—we all were.”

Seven

It was actually worse this way, Sarah thought.  She gazed across the
table to where Joe sat with his afternoon client, a woman in her fifties who
seemed just as worshipful as the young woman had been that morning, and all
Sarah could think was that she got it—she completely understood.

She’d felt that way herself at one time.

Not at first—at first she thought he was a cocky, overconfident, over-privileged
frat boy type who was too good looking for his own good.  The fact that he
turned out to be a serious student who had never stepped foot into a frat house—let
alone participated in any of that kind of drunken, idiotic college boy behavior
Sarah resented so much because it meant they could afford to blow off school
while she’d worked for years to afford every single credit—meant that Joe had at
least a shot at her not hating him.  In those days, that was something.

She came to law school with a chip on her shoulder.  She knew that. 
She had a lot to prove to herself and everyone around her, and she spent night
and day proving it.

Which was why she’d joined Moot Court in both her second and third
years.  It was an extra-credit class for students who wanted to learn appellate
lawyer skills and compete in mock appellate arguments around the country.

Some students signed up just for the extra credits, some to pad their
résumés, but Sarah was in it for the fight.  She wanted to show everyone how
fast she was on her feet, how articulate, how unbeatable in an open-court
battle.

And it didn’t hurt that the major law firms she hoped would notice her
had partners who served as Moot Court advisors and who often sat in on their practices
to act as judges.

It was how she’d gotten her summer internship in her second year, and
how she ended up working for the same firm once she graduated.  Because she had
a quick, smart mouth, and a quick, smart brain to back it up.

That was where the Number Seven and Number Eight came in:  at their
final national competition, in the fall of their third year, Sarah and Joe
competed on opposite sides of the same case.  And while neither of their teams
won, Sarah and Joe had been awarded individual honors for their own performances. 
Sarah won spot number seven, Joe the slot behind her.

She never once rubbed that in when they were still dating.  In fact,
Joe liked to tease her about it in a way that made her think he was actually
proud of her.

But they weren’t dating the morning they competed in that small, chilly
town in southern Illinois—not yet, anyway.  Their relationship didn’t begin for
a few more hours.

And it lasted only a month and a half after that.

Too short, Sarah mourned at the time.

But once she understood what kind of man he really was, she realized
she had gotten in too deep, too fast, and for far too long.  She should have
kept things the way they were in the beginning, with just some harmless
flirting and a curiosity about what he might really be like if she got to know
him.

Well, she got to know him, all right.

Sarah let Chapman drone on in his regular way.  She didn’t bother
objecting as he fleshed out the plaintiff’s entire childhood scholastic career
from grade school on.  She didn’t complain when Chapman asked follow-up
questions about the woman’s waitressing jobs twenty years ago, or about when
she and her husband divorced, or about what college her son now attended.

Instead, Sarah wrote sarcastic notes to herself throughout the entire
testimony.

That’s a great question—I’m stealing that.  Oh, did
she really work at Target two years ago?  That’s fascinating, Paul.  I wish I
were as good a lawyer as you are.  I could be a partner and drive a fancy car
and fly first class—oh, wait, you were in the back of the bus last night,
weren’t you?  What happened, Paul?  Are you in purgatory, too?

Sarah wondered what the story was there—not about Chapman, who cared
about him?—but about Joe.  If he really was being punished by making him be the
road lawyer for this case, what was his standing at his firm?  And what had it
been before he made whatever enemies he did?  What exactly had gone down?

“Sarah?” Joe asked, checking his watch.  “Do you have a lot of
questions, or should we keep going without a break?  I know we all have to
drive back to the airport—”

“I’ll be fast,” Sarah said, holding back the sigh that almost
accompanied the statement.  It was only day two, and already she was bored out
of her mind with the actual work.  The idea of making life hard for Burke had
added some fun to it at the beginning, but Sarah was already realizing that
what he said at lunch was right:  five months of this was going to be brutal.

Maybe Burke was right—they were too old.  Even though she still had a
few more months before she’d turn thirty.  This past year of hers could have
aged anyone.

It was one of the reasons she insisted on taking such good care of
herself.  Once she knew how good she could feel with proper food and sleep and exercise,
she wanted to stay that way.  She’d seen colleagues give in to the pressures of
the job and walk around perpetually sleep-deprived, on the brink of some
illness, their eyes always red and raw as they tried to pump themselves up with
yet another cup of coffee.  Or harder stimulants, in some people’s cases.

Until a year ago, Sarah had been one of those people constantly
fighting off or giving in to a cold.  It didn’t help her image to always be
sniffling into a tissue—she already looked delicate enough.  But ever since her
trainer Angie had pushed her to make the necessary changes, Sarah started
feeling too well to ever give it up.

“Hello, Ms. Jordan,” she said, introducing herself to Joe’s client. 
“Thank you for coming in today.  I just have a few questions.”  She asked her
eight best ones, then the deposition was over.

The traffic that time of day from Pasadena back to Los Angeles was
going to be horrendous.  But her flight—and, she assumed, the others’—was less
than three hours away, so she knew she had better get to it.

Her new best friend Paul Chapman took it upon himself to walk with her to
the parking garage near the hotel.  Sarah remembered where she’d parked, but
pretended she didn’t.

“You go ahead,” she told Chapman.  “I’ll see you later.”

He lumbered off toward an enormous black SUV that looked almost new.

Sarah forced back the bitterness in her mouth.

Then she saw Joe, walking at the opposite side of her row, clicking the
remote for his shiny silver Audi and throwing his luggage and briefcase in the
back.

He must have slept in his own bed the night before, too, Sarah
thought.  The driver who met him at the airport had taken him home, then Joe drove
to the deposition that morning just like she did.

She wondered where he lived.  Someplace expensive, no doubt, from the
look of his car.  He always had more money than she did.  His parents were a
lot better off than hers.

Joe looked up just then and saw her watching him.  Sarah quickly
pretended to search for her keys.  Lunch with him had been all right, but she
wasn’t in the mood for any more interaction.  Especially since now she needed
him to drive away before he saw the twenty-year-old Saturn she was about to
climb into.

She moved against the concrete wall of the garage and waited for him to
swing past her.  When he did, he gave her a nod of acknowledgment.

It wasn’t fair, Sarah thought, none of it was fair.

But she knew she could tell herself that as much as she wanted, and it
wouldn’t change a thing.  Better to swallow whatever last little bit of pride
she still had, and be grateful she had a car at all.  Be grateful she had
work.  Be grateful Mickey had recommended her for the job.

Although she couldn’t help wondering now if the fact that Burke was on
the other side of it might have been the reason why Mickey had suggested her in
the first place.  Did he think that would make Sarah more effective, more
aggressive?

Or was it just one more move in the long-running game the three of them
had been playing since that night in Illinois?

Eight

Mickey Hughes had sought her out.

He made no attempt to hide why.

“I want you on my team.  You’re beautiful and you smell good, and you
know we’ll kick their asses.  Which one do you want to go to?”

The Moot Court meeting had only just ended, and Sarah was looking over
the list of national competitions taking place that fall.  There were ones all
over the country, each focusing on different areas of the law.  The one that
caught her eye was a patient confidentiality issue in a health law case.  The
competition would take place at Southern Illinois University School of Law at the
beginning of November.

“That’s the one I’m doing,” she said, pointing to the description.

Mickey gave it a quick read.  “Fine.  Great.  Whatever.  Let’s go grab
a beer.”

Sarah glanced around the room at the other potential partners she might
have asked to work with her.  She knew Mickey from their first year Torts
class, and had been in Trial Prep with him their second year, so she had seen
enough to know he wasn’t stupid.  Maybe not the best choice out of everyone in
the room, but not an awful one, either.

“You sure you’re up for it?” Sarah asked him.  “I’m not just doing this
for the credit—I’m doing it to win.”

Mickey flashed her a smile.  “Counting on it, Henley.  Why do you think
I picked you?”

While Mickey bought their beers, Sarah looked over the paperwork she
picked up at the meeting.  It included a longer description of what the case
was about.