All it took for me to accept defeat was the sight of her on that bed on the yacht and the way she refused to take any shit from Amber.
I want her. Not for revenge or to prove something or even for the satisfaction of a challenging conquest.
I just fucking want her.
So here I am.
Well, the only way to give her the evidence she needs is for her to actually get to know me. So, after tossing down a mouthful of water from my bottle, I say, “My Psych 100 professor liked to have us play this game he called Association. He’d give us a word, and we were supposed to tell him the first thing that came to our minds. He had this theory that it gave him more meaningful answers than tell-us-something-about-yourself-type questions.”
She chews and swallows before saying, “I’m not playing any games with you.”
“I’ll make it easy to start,” I go on, grinning at her. “The word is…Hammerness.”
She shakes her head, her expression turning mulish.
“Come on,” I cajole. “You’re dying to say something. I can tell.”
Her eyes shift with indecision. Finally, she sighs. “I just don’t get how you can stand him. I already know that this is a starter firm for me, because at some point I’m going to be so done with working for him.”
“Guess there are enough benefits that I’m willing to put up with him.” I shrug, watching her take another bite of her stir-fried food. “There’s a reason his firm was at the top of my list—and probably was on yours, too. Or you wouldn’t have moved all the way down here? It’s because he’s one of the best attorneys in the state. Stevens and Hammerness looks great on your resume.”
While she finishes chewing what’s in her mouth, she wipes her hands on a napkin. “I just feel like he’s the kind of person who would cheat at solitaire.”
A surprised chuckle escapes me. “He totally would,” I agree. “He’s also rude to waiters, and he doesn't tip.”
As that draws an immediate groan of disgust from her, I clarify, “I mean, he does, but it’s always such a tiny, pathetic amount. The guy probably makes seven figures a year or close to it, and he’s the stingiest motherf—”
While her eyebrows go up, I stop myself short, nonplussed at realizing I’m talking to her like she’s one of my buddies. Which is weird and unexpected—and not at all how I usually interact with a woman when my main goal is to get her naked.
As easy as it would be to continue sharing gossip about the old bastard, though, I realize the stories don't exactly reflect well on me. She’d definitely judge me for the crap I put up with—like the strip clubs and drunken binges and even how I basically ended up playing his nanny on a “work trip” to Vegas that was a shit-fest of hookers and coke, ending with the old man crashing his rented Ferrari into a light pole and me having to bail him out of jail after he got arrested for a DUI.
No, she definitely doesn't need to know any of that.
So instead I just say, “Your turn.”
“I’m not playing,” she repeats. So obstinate.
“All right. Your next word is…the law.” Spearing some veggies with my plastic fork, I watch her expectantly.
“That’s two words.”
“Pedantic is one word. You want that one instead?”
And there it is: a smile. It’s a tiny one, a slight dimpling at the corners of her lips, but it’s unmistakable. It even reaches her eyes, putting a hint of sparkle in them.
I’ve cracked the surface. This is absolutely a moment. Maybe even a threshold being crossed. I should feel smug, even triumphant, but instead there’s only that sense of struggling to catch my breath. For a few moments, I turn my attention to my meal so that she doesn’t notice how much she just threw me off-kilter. With only a smile.
“My parents love to tell the story of how I always said I was going to be ‘an attorney, like Mommy,’ and I never grew out of it,” she says, leaning back in her chair and lifting her bottle to her mouth, taking a drink—looking almost relaxed now. “What about you?”
“Twelfth grade Government class,” I answer without needing to think about it. “My teacher, Mrs. Mulloy, was so passionate about the criminal justice system, and she was the first person to mention Blackstone’s formulation to me.”
“‘It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer,’” Paige quotes immediately, because of course she knows it.
I give a nod. “That really resonated with me, made me realize that I didn’t just want to be a lawyer. I knew I wanted to specialize in criminal law.”
She stares at me as if I just sprouted another limb or spoke in tongues or something.
“Okay,” I say. “You have a look on your face.”
“You're an idealist.” She sounds kind of bewildered.
“That's probably interpreting the term a little too loosely.” My neck feels warmer than it did a moment ago. Hopefully she’ll let it go at that.
She doesn’t. Squinting, she asks, “How many pro bono cases do you take on?”
“Hammer wants us working at least one at all times.” I’m being deliberately evasive, because the real answer is too many. Hence I’m at work at eight p.m. on New Year’s Eve.
“Right,” she says impatiently. “But how many do you actually do?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“How much I've got time for?” I’m not sure why her questions are making me itchy, since I started all of this to show her I’m not the hollow, overly cocky man slut she thinks I am.
Now I’m feeling peevish and contrary about it, though. Like I shouldn’t have to make a list of my good qualities to prove I’m not a narcissistic asshole, because she had no real cause to assume that about me in the first place.
“And do you have time for anything besides eat, sleep, and work?” Her voice has softened and so has the look she’s giving me.
Yup. Now we’ve definitely crossed that threshold.
And it kind of pisses me off.
“Got time enough to go out on New Year’s Eve,” I remind her, but she dismisses that with a roll of her eyes. Which…fair enough. Probably neither of us is in a position to cast stones when it comes to ambition and work obsession.
Finishing off the last bites of my food, I say, “You’re still not going to give me a word, are you?”
“Nope.” Her lips quiver, and she widens her eyes as if daring me to make her cooperate.
“Okay.” Since she’s clearly more comfortable now, it’s time to turn up the heat. “Boyfriends.”
She hesitates, blinking owlishly. Then, with a shrug in her voice as if it’s a simple fact and she’s cool with it, she says, “I’ve had very few of them.”
“Because they’re all intimidated by you.” Just like on the yacht, it’s a statement, not a question. Because I still have no doubt I hit that nail right on. And not just because I’ve overheard male coworkers—associates and partners—compliment her physical attributes behind her back but saying they’d never “try to hit that,” using words like “cold” and “bitch” and “not worth it.”
I always keep my mouth shut, recognizing their bluster for what it is: cowardice. They look at her and see a woman who’s smarter, more driven, and more resilient than them, and they can’t handle it. She threatens their masculinity, makes them feel less than.
She doesn’t scare me, though. That is still the honest truth. She makes me feel…invigorated. Intrigued. Magnetized.
“No,” she protests, and I’m pretty sure the pink tinge to her cheeks wasn’t there a second ago. “I just tend to attract a certain type of man.”
“What type?” I ask, and as she just watches me with raised eyebrows, her discussion with Wang returns to me, and I let my breath hiss out. “Right.”
Stewing in my resentment, I regard her narrowly and ask, “Tell me about one of those very few guys then.”
“Well,” she says, pursing her lips, “my first boyfriend was Troy O’Neill. Tenth grade. We
were together for a month or so, and I had the biggest crush on him, so I guess I just ignored all the stupid stuff that came out of his mouth.”
“Like what?”
“Like saying you need a passport to go to New Mexico and that a girl in our class whose birthday was February twenty-ninth was technically only four years old.” While I snicker quietly, she shakes her head and continues, “But when he said there was no way I’d get pregnant if we had sex and I was on top—because, you know, gravity—I couldn’t take it anymore. I told him he was wrong, and I explained why.”
Oh, Jesus. I open my mouth to respond, but not a sound comes out. Of course my mind goes there. I can see her so clearly, on top of me, with no clothes on and all that creamy skin bared to me. Buried inside her while her tits sway as she rocks against me.
And now my dick is hard. Shit.
Swallowing hard, trying to work saliva back into my suddenly dry mouth, I force out a slightly hoarse, “I’m guessing he didn't take that well.”
“He was furious,” she agrees. “And he told me no guy wants to be with a girl who thinks she's smarter than him.”
I laugh with disbelief.
“So I said I didn't think I was smarter than him. I knew I was.”
Of course she did. I let out a breath. “And you've been terrifying the male half of the population ever since.”
Instead of responding with the humor I was fishing for, she bites her lip and looks somber, taking a while before she goes on. “I just refuse to change who I am to make other people feel better about themselves. See, even though I managed a good comeback to Troy, what he said…I still took it to heart. I thought, what if he's right? I started to feel like everyone saw me as a stuck-up know-it-all and that my hard work and my achievements were something I needed to apologize for.”
Sounding embarrassed, she finishes with, “I was insecure about myself for a long time.”
Wow. How’s that for crossing the threshold? It dawns on me that while I have no problems handling her antagonism, I was not actually prepared for this kind of heartfelt confession, and it leaves me dumbfounded—for a few seconds.
Then I place my elbows on the table, leaning toward her, lowering my voice to an intimate rumble. “Here’s the thing. He was wrong. Smart women are sexy as hell.”
She swallows visibly, a pink tinge infusing her cheeks. As if to cover it up, she starts packing up the food containers, stuffing them back into the plastic bag.
“I’ll prove it to you,” I say, helping out with the cleaning but doing it slowly. “Tell me something I don't know.”
“It costs the Mint almost twice as much to make pennies and nickels as they’re worth,” she replies glibly, clearly playing along just for the hell of it. “Taxpayers lose about one hundred million dollars a year on it.”
“Is that true?” I ask after a stunned pause. “Why would you walk around knowing that?”
She shrugs. “I like statistics and facts.”
Of course she does. I fall back in my chair, rubbing my palm over my mouth. How fucking fascinating is she? Face and body of a lingerie model, the mind of a serious nerd, and utterly comfortable with who she is.
I want inside all of her—her body, her mind, her life. My limbs grow heavy with it, my lungs constricting.
“Well, you proved my point,” I say roughly. “Although sexy doesn’t even begin to describe you, Paige.”
This is when she would shut me down if she truly weren’t affected by me like I am her. But she doesn't.
“I have a word for you,” she says instead, quickly, sounding almost desperate. “Parents.”
It's like ice poured into my gut, and I go still, sitting there blinking at her. She's creating a diversion. Does she know what a good one it is, or was it dumb luck?
Well, I'm the one who started this game, and I'm not wimping out now. Even though this is something I've never shared with a woman before.
“When I was eight, my mom left and never came back,” I tell her quietly. “So my dad pretty much raised me by himself.”
Her eyes go wide. “You never saw her again?” When I shake my head in response, a crease appears between her brows. “How do you know she left on purpose and that nothing…happened to her?”
“She was cheating.” I take a breath and grab my pen again, just for something to hold on to. “Pop found out, they had a big fight, and she left that night. The next day after we got home, we found that a lot of her stuff was gone. A nosy old neighbor who was retired and had nothing better to do than peep out through her curtains all day told my dad she’d seen my mom put her suitcases in some guy’s car and drive off with him.”
I’m swallowing against a sudden painful tightness in my throat, blinking away the pressure behind my eyes. Shit. I thought I’d left this kind of reaction in the past. Guess I know why I’ve always kept this to myself.
“Wow,” she breathes out. “I’m sorry. That must’ve been really hard. For both of you.”
“Yeah, well,” I respond lightly, “my dad handled it like a champ. He became a single dad overnight, and he picked up that ball and never dropped it.”
There's more to this story, bursting to come out. I don't have to say anything else. I know that. But for some reason, I want to. “It’s the most important thing to me,” I confess. “Being as good of a person as he is. Not letting him down. Making him proud.”
Pressing her lips tight, she nods, understanding. There’s sympathy in her countenance, too, I guess, though I definitely wasn't looking for that. And something else… Marveling? Like she's made a discovery? It's almost as if she was looking at an image that was flat and shapeless, and now suddenly it's turned three-dimensional.
With a small shake of her head, she eyes the multitude of storage boxes still untouched. “We should get back to work.”
I assent silently, plucking out another folder, and even though there is of course the slight chance I might find that memo where we’re looking right now, I’m having a harder time with my lie by omission now than before. Guess that’s life on the other side of the threshold. Nevertheless, I’m not ready to speak up. Not yet.
Time slows to a crawl, and I start imagining myself at Nick’s party. Beer in hand, surrounded by tipsy and flirty women, catching up with friends I’ve known since high school. Sounds a hell of a lot more fun than sorting through a file dump.
Until you factor in Paige Waters.
Pretty sure I don’t want to find out how much torture I’d go through just to be in her presence.
Finally, looking up at the clock on the wall by the door and seeing it’s past eleven thirty, I lose patience. “It's almost midnight,” I tell her. “We should go up on the roof and watch the fireworks.”
She shakes her head, only glancing up for a second. “I need to find that document.”
Fine, then. Time to pull the ace out of my sleeve. Getting to my feet, I step over to the stacks of storage boxes that are arranged in order by date. After doing some quick math, I lift aside a couple of boxes, pick up the one I’m looking for, and carry it over to the table.
Aware that she’s now watching me with a frown, I pluck off the lid and start riffling through the folders, skimming and scanning, pulling out the ones that look promising, then shoving them back in and moving on to the next when it turns out to be a miss. A couple of minutes of that…and then, jackpot. A memo from Ron Jacobson to Andrea Harris. Talking about screwing their employees out of overtime pay.
Wordlessly, I hand it over to her, arching an eyebrow.
She opens the folder. Reads the first page, her frown deepening. Then she turns the second and third and fourth pages, her mouth falling agape. “How did you—”
Knowing this is when I pay for my selfish need for an excuse to spend time with her, I avoid her eyes as I put the lid on the box and take it back to the other ones. Keeping myself busy. Like that’s gonna make her less pissed.
“Are you serious?” she bursts out.
Wincing sl
ightly, I turn back to her and shove my hands in my pants pockets. “Those assholes over at Sanford and Lopez like to bury whatever you're looking for somewhere in the middle. That way, even if you start with the newest or the oldest files, it’ll take a while to find it.”
“We’ve been sitting here for almost four hours.” She pins me with an incredulous look. “And the whole time, you knew where to look?”
Refusing to apologize when I’m not even a little bit sorry, I just shrug.
“You're unbelievable,” she says, slowly shaking her head.
“You said you didn't want my help,” I point out. “I mean, I could’ve just left earlier, and then you’d be sitting here until the morning. So… The roof? Fireworks?”
As she continues staring at me in disbelief, I flash her what is intended to be a disarming smile.
After staring daggers at me for another few seconds, she finally huffs and says, “Fine.”
We pack up quickly, her tucking the folder with the memo into her briefcase and tugging on her black winter coat while I put my suit jacket back on.
The door to the short flight of stairs that’ll take us up to the roof is only a few feet down the hall, and I push it open for her, holding her gaze as she steps through. As we ascend in silence, I make sure to stay a step ahead so that I’ll be the first to reach the door that leads outside. This time when I walk through and support the door, inching back and making room for her, she stops in the middle of the doorway.
Her breath comes out in a rush, and she sounds exasperated as she says, “If you have a problem with me opening my own doors, McKinley, then I'm definitely not what you're looking for.”
“Nah.” I shift closer, crowding her personal space. “I have you figured out already, remember? All day long, it's just you against the world. So at the end of the day, you want a guy who’ll open doors for you.”
She seems to try to give me a look like she thinks I’m full of shit, but in the depths of her eyes there’s a glint of something, a hint of…surprise? Uncertainty? Whatever it is, it warms me, pulls the corners of my mouth up into a smirk.
Mend (Waters Book 2) Page 11