by Amy Faye
Autumn's always been a beautiful woman, with hair that makes you think of leaves in the fall. A woman with a fitting name, without a doubt. She was only a girl, when I knew her, and even then, anyone with eyes could see that she was going to blossom into a lovely woman.
It's easy to say that someone's going to be pretty; it's different to see it happen. To be looking at someone you knew when she was too tall for her body, when she looked somewhere in between a woman and a little girl, too tall to be cute like a child and too rail-thin, too shapeless, to be really womanish.
Ten years is a long time.
"You want to take a break?"
She looks up from the papers. Her eyes are focused, but she looks tired. As well she should. It's not physical work, but digging through legal texts, searching for precedents, is a bitch and a half.
There's way too much to actually print properly. The stuff that exists is enough to fill a library; if you printed the text in nice, readable columns with text that's not so small you have to squint, then it would fill two libraries.
She's been digging, though, and she hasn't been complaining. Hasn't been slacking. I'm beginning to think that maybe Len, somehow, managed to pick one who was both attractive enough to worry about, and smart enough to be useful. The old dog can pick 'em, though, that's for sure.
Her face twists up a little. She looks as if she's uncertain whether it's a test. Is he trying to see if she's slacking? Well, he's not.
"Well I'm going to the break room. You're welcome to stay if you're on a roll."
I push myself up in dramatic fashion. She pushes herself back an instant later and starts to join me.
"Thanks. I was going a little cross-eyed."
She knows how to talk, that's sure as well. Maybe there's something to it, maybe there isn't. Knowing who her mother is, there's no doubt she would have picked up on her mom's ability to say whatever needs to be said.
She's like a natural-born con artist, that woman. Manipulator. Not everything is a heritable trait or something. People can change. They can change from their parents, hell, they can change from who they were as young kids.
Miss 'Logan'—she was Autumn Greyson when I knew her. Something had stopped her taking on my father's name, but apparently somewhere between here and there she'd run into someone she felt differently about.
I kept a smile on my face in spite of everything. He hadn't become a lawyer in order to get into acting, but the courtroom called to him, and getting good at the courtroom stuff meant, on some level, accepting that it's an act.
You have to look like you're confident, look sympathetic. It doesn't matter that you are confident, on the inside, if you look like you were out until two in the morning last night.
It doesn't matter if you are sympathetic if you let triumph touch your face, and you smile at a woman covered in chemical burns. Let your client smile. You look sad, horrified, when something bad's being talked about. You look cool, confident, without looking cocky.
And with Autumn Logan, my natural instincts are pulling him a thousand different ways.
She's an attractive woman, now. 'Kid sister' once means that she should be off his radar. And she should be. It doesn't change how he's looking at her.
I guess my memories of her are good enough. She never did wrong by me, anyways. But it's impossible to look at her and not see her mother, and I'm not going to forgive her. There's been plenty of time to do it. Hell, I think Dad has.
He'd take her back in a heartbeat. He's forgotten how it was. I haven't.
Liar is too good a word for her. There's not going to be a chance to bring any of that frustration to bear, though. If I tried to get involve in her life, enough to let her feel even one tenth of the anger that she's made me feel since I met her seventeen years ago, I'd just get caught up in the whirlwind that she's constantly got turning around her.
But Autumn…
I take a breath, pour out a cup. I check that my smile's still on. It is.
"Cream or sugar?"
"Yes, please."
I grab the sugar dish and move it across the counter, and reach into the fridge for cream.
"Right here, don't feel bad about using it."
"No," she agrees.
"How are you liking your first day? Everything you expected?"
"You've got a nicer conference room than last time I did this."
"Yeah?"
"Half the lights were on the fritz, and it was flickering on the books, and I mean… you've seen those things. Practically took an hour to read a single statute."
"Yeah. I made sure to use the nice one, since I was going to be there, rather than just some lowly interns." I wink. She smiles.
"Oh, well. Thanks, then."
"Tomorrow, though—tomorrow it's off to the dungeon!"
"I'll be sure to bring my lit magnifying glass, then."
"Oh, no you don't. You'll be reading only in braille, as well. Hope you've learned to read braille."
"A little."
"And I'm forgetting the electric shocks. I should warn you about that, as well. You're not pregnant, or wearing a pacemaker, right? So it should be fine."
Her lips looks so sweet when they part, enough to drive any man wild. Enough to drive me wild. It occurs to me, not for the first time, that whether or not I could have her, I could at least tease her.
If she's anything like her mother, who knows—maybe she'll respond to it. I have to hold the smile on as I think it. If she realizes how I feel about her, that I know who she is, then it's all over.
So I'd better keep the charade going.
Chapter Five
I should have been asleep by now. I've been making a point of not checking the clock on the wall for the past hour now. It would reflect badly on me, make it look like I wanted to leave.
And I'm not going to leave until Eric does.
There was a time when he could leave me behind. There was a time when I was a little girl and I could be pushed away just by trying hard, and seeing if I would try as hard as he would.
But that was a long time ago. I'm not going to be left behind again. I'm not going to let him think of me as someone who he can just outrun, someone he can push away simply by virtue of my own weakness.
I never let anyone think of me that way when I was in high school, never ever at university, and I'm not going to start now. I'm not going to stop until I make partner, and then—good fucking luck telling anyone I didn't work hard enough. I'm a full partner.
Eric's fingers find the bridge of his nose. It was a gesture I'd seen before, but only on men who wore glasses. They'd push them up and rub their nose. Did he wear glasses?
I didn't remember him wearing any when I was a little girl. The face that I saw, the photos I looked at, he never wore anything like that. And he hadn't worn them at all the two times I'd seen him.
"You should go home," he says, for the third time.
"I'm fine," I tell him, not looking up from my papers.
"Suit yourself." He doesn't move from his chair.
I'm not sure if it's pride, or if it's some personal stake I have in it. I'm definitely not sure if I'm only doing this because he's the one sitting at the head of the table.
If it were someone else, would I have left by now? There was more work to be done, but there always would be. We weren't behind yet. We still had plenty of time, and if I didn't slack, we wouldn't get behind.
But here I was, putting in hours that, objectively, didn't need to be put in. And it was all because I couldn't let my older step-brother, the first boy I'd ever had a big crush on, see me as anything less than a hard worker and a talented lawyer.
Or, at least, a future talented lawyer. First try at the bar is in July, and as much as they tell me that I'm capable and smart and all that stuff, I've still got the paperwork on my bedside table at home, taking up space with the timely filing date approaching.
I shouldn't let myself get distracted. I focus my eyes down. I can't just sit around and waste time. Nob
ody's going to be impressed by that.
I don't know how much time passed, but the sound of a book closing wakes me up from the trance of reading across narrow lines of text. I look up.
My brother pushes himself back from the table and stands up.
"Come on, Miss Logan. We'll pick this up in the morning."
"Are you sure? I can—"
"I'm not going to walk in here in the morning and find you passed out and drooling in my books."
"I don't drool," I answer, but he's got a doubtful smile and the humor is infectious.
"Come on. You haven't eaten anything. We'll go find something."
"Oh, I couldn't—"
"You can, and you will."
I stand up, reaching over to stack books and straighten them and I'm making plans in my head for how I'm going to carry them over to the shelves when his arm wraps around my shoulder and he moves me bodily toward the door.
The sudden closeness makes my breath catch in my chest. If I'd seen it coming, maybe I could have hidden it, but I didn't. I can smell something on him, a cologne too faint to detect from across the table. He smells faintly of spruce and oranges, clean and manly all at the same time.
For an instant, I let myself lean into him, my natural desire getting the better of my self-control. And then I get control of myself again. I shouldn't allow myself to get close to him at all, but I definitely shouldn't allow myself to get close to him on my first day.
He certainly didn't mean anything by it. I have to repeat that to myself. He didn't mean anything at all by it. It's just the girlhood crush coming back to bite me, making me see things that aren't there, imagine things that aren't happening.
I want him because I've always wanted him, and now that he's close, I'm letting myself imagine something that isn't going to happen.
But God, is it easy to imagine, and God do I want to be right. I straighten myself pull gently free of his guiding arm around my shoulder. He lets it go without making any big deal about it. There's a good chance he didn't mean anything by it at all, and I would do well to remember that.
"I should go get some sleep."
"You should, Autumn. But you should eat something, first. Where are we going? I'm buying."
"I can't let you—"
"Are you telling me that I can't buy a beautiful woman dinner?"
A shiver runs down my spine when he calls me beautiful. A voice in the back of my mind tells me that he doesn't mean anything by it, and that if he did mean something by it, I shouldn't be flattered.
But I am. Eric—my Eric, who I have dreamt about just about every night for years—just said, about me…
I don't know how well I hide that I'm flattered, because I shouldn't be flattered at all. But I am.
"I don't know what's open at this hour."
He looks at the clock, and he sees exactly what I see. At eleven, most places are going to be closed.
"I see what you mean. Burger, maybe? I know a little place that's open twenty-four hours. You'll want to learn where a few are. It'll come up more than you think."
"If you're buying," I answer, shrugging. I try to keep my expression light to let him know I'm joking. He doesn't have the expression of a man who's joking around, though.
He's got the same look that took my breath away when I first walked into his office. A look that says that he's got something on his mind that, if he knew I was his sister, he wouldn't be thinking.
Which is exactly why I'm not going to tell him.
Because if I tell him, he'll stop, and I have no interest in that.
Chapter Six
I don't know what she was expecting, but Autumn's face when she realized she was coming along for the plane ride down to Phoenix was priceless. The way that she tried to hide her excitement and her surprise. She wants so desperately to be seen as someone who's serious that it works against her. She forgets to act like a normal human being.
Which in a sense, makes her perfect for me. I'm sitting here faking it with her, and she's trying so hard to fake everything, too. A perfect match.
She's close enough that I can smell her shampoo, sweet and fruity and pleasant. She's got a suit on, which was a mistake, but she wants to be taken seriously more than she wants to be comfortable on the plane. That's her right, whether I think it's wise or not.
She goes into the scanner and then goes through, and I'm up next. I can't stand this shit, but part of the job is accepting that you have to deal with airport security, so I deal with it.
Then we're through and I pull my belt back around my pants, slip my things back into my pockets and walk off with my shoes in my hands to find somewhere else to put them back on.
I can't take my eyes off her as she tries to slip her shoes back onto her feet. It starts as an innocent interest, but there's something oddly feminine about the way she does it, modest and uncertain and very probably the nerves from having the opportunity to go on this trip are getting to her, as well.
"You got everything?"
"I think so," she says. She doesn't sound any more sure than she looks, her hands moving across pockets and tapping pockets on her bag.
"Well, when you're sure."
She straightens, her lips pressing together into a thin line that plumps back out into the luscious lips that would draw any man's interest all by themselves.
"I guess I've got everything."
"Then come on. We've got a little time before they start boarding."
Airports are strange. Large, open spaces, but somehow it seems like no matter where you go, you're almost going to run into someone, because they happened to walk the same way.
I feel the fabric of her suit under my fingers as I brush into her stepping out of the way of a man driving a cart down the middle of the aisle. He waves apologetically as he goes by, but I'm not going to be nearly as upset as he seems to think I am.
She feels good under my hands. Every bit like a woman, soft and comfortable and it's going to get to me if I'm not careful but frankly I don't give a God damn.
"Sorry about that," I say. I'm not sorry it happened, but I'm sorry if she's upset about it. The flustered expression tells me that she's not.
"You're fine."
"I'll buy you the first cup. By way of apology."
"No, you don't have to—"
"I thought you'd learned your lesson," I say, my voice only halfway to teasing.
"Maybe I need to be taught again. I've always been a teacher's pet, you know."
"Oh yeah?"
She sees the look in my eyes and raises her eyebrows. "Not like that."
"Hey, you said it, not me."
"You know what I meant."
I step up to the counter of the nearest coffee joint. A kid behind the counter smiles at us from where he's standing, pouring someone else's coffee from a big industrial-looking machine. He's got big holes in his ears and looks exactly like the sort of guy I imagine to work in a coffee shop.
"You do a lot of flying," I ask off-hand. I'm guessing not.
"No," she says. "I drove up here from Tallahassee."
"Long drive."
"You're telling me."
"Nervous about planes, or…?"
"I mean, I don't love them."
"There's nothing to be nervous about, you know. Safest way to travel."
"But at least I feel like, you know, something goes wrong in a car, I can control it."
I smile. "That's where you're mistaken. You're not in control in a car. Not in control anywhere." The guy with the big holes in his ears comes over and stands behind the cash register with a faint grin and a look that says that he's listening for our order. "Two coffees. Cream and sugar."
"Oh, uh. Cream and sugar are on the table over there."
"Great. Thanks. Two coffees."
The kid nods and starts tapping the screen on the register, and numbers start showing on the price display.
"What was I talking about?"
"You were saying that I can't control
anything."
"Well, can you?"
A shade of a frown appears on her face, but she tries to hide it. She doesn't succeed.
"No, you're right. I—you're right."
I almost feel bad for her. Then the coffee's here and we're walking away, and the moment's gone. Everyone's got a story, and she's no different. I'm no different, and in our case, the stories touched for a while.
I got burned, not by her, but that doesn't change the association.
"You nervous?"
She finishes pouring her third sugar packet in. "No," she says, but she's lying and she knows I know.
"Don't be. It's going to be fine."
"I know it will be. Which is why I'm not nervous."
"Sure," I tell her.
It's easy for her to lie to me. Natural as can be. After all, she's learned from the best. She's always been a good student, always been a teacher's pet. But her mother must not have been a good teacher.
Because I can see it in her face when she lies to me. But I let it go anyways.
"Come on, let's go find the terminal," I say after a minute, after she's taken a sip of coffee and her face doesn't twist up in disgust.
I let her go a little ahead, watching her strut, the way her hips move side to side. And, for an instant, I allow myself to imagine a little tryst in the airplane bathroom.
Then I snap myself out of it and follow along after her. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I repeat it to myself again. She's off limits. She's your sister, man.
Only, another voice responds… she's not. Not any more. And if she's not going to bring it up, he sure as hell isn't.
Chapter Seven
Three days of learning the Lawyer's trade in Phoenix was an education that I would never have gotten in school. Nobody ever would. You're not going to sit down a bunch of twenty-year-olds and tell them 'If you want to make money at this, half or more of your job is reassuring clients who know nothing about the law.'
And that was what what the last three days had been. They wanted to go over the paperwork, go over evidence, go over every little thing.
Of course, it meant nothing to them. The words might as well have been in Swahili. So then you have to explain it to them in layman's terms. Everything short of swaddling them up in a blanket and giving them a pacifier.