Although, if he lived in New York, they were bound to run into each other again, weren’t they? Lauren would likely invite him to parties or whatever. So if they dated for a bit and broke up, they’d still have to see each other. That wasn’t ideal. Or maybe that job really would keep him in his office and that wouldn’t be an issue.
She took a sip of her drink and hoped that this would be the end of all of it. Good thing she hadn’t deleted those apps off her phone after all.
* * *
If Josh was reading the brief correctly, his client was indeed guilty of fraud.
Bobby Giardino owned a small chain of shops that sold doors and windows. They’d been airing commercials about some new shatterproof material that they demonstrated by having one of Giardino’s sons whack a window with a big rubber mallet. A woman was suing after a bad storm shattered one of her windows made of this material. Her lawyer had put together an impressive series of documents that showed Giardino’s claims about the windows being shatterproof were bunk, and that the window shown in the commercial had a pane made of a different, more expensive material. If this case ever saw the inside of a courtroom, Giardino would lose for sure.
But Josh had to somehow prove Giardino was not at fault for that window shattering.
Not all of his clients were the good guys.
Josh had once wanted to be a prosecutor who would put people like this out of business or in jail. He’d lucked into an internship at DCL between his second and third year of law school and had liked the job so much, he’d reconsidered his career path. Working with Provost on litigation would give him courtroom experience, after all, and he could prevent the good guys from going to jail or being subjected to frivolous lawsuits. And although a few of Provost’s clients were innocent of wrongdoing, Josh was quickly learning that very few lawsuits were actually frivolous.
An image of Paige came unbidden into his mind. They’d talked some that night about taking the well-paying job to pay down debt and get one’s feet wet before pursuing one’s passion, and Josh still had decades of his career before him. He did not need to spend the rest of his life defending the unscrupulous Bobby Giardinos of the world.
He guessed whatever had happened with Paige was over. That was a shame, because she’d been so great, but on the other hand, it was closing in on eight at night on a Monday and here he still was in the office.
His phone rang and he grabbed it without looking at the caller ID, so he was a little surprised when the caller turned out to be Lauren.
“Oh, hey,” he said. “Was not expecting you.”
“I tried your cell first, but since you didn’t answer I figured you’d be at work.”
Josh’s cell phone was sitting on the corner of his desk. He picked it up and found that the battery had died while he’d been focused on something else. Then he got nervous, because calling the office line seemed like a lot of work to get ahold of him. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine. I just wanted to get in touch with you before the week got too crazy and I forgot.”
“Oh. Okay. You could have texted.”
“And you would have ignored it like you ignore all my texts unless I ask you a direct question.”
“I don’t ignore them. I’m just…busy, and not everything seems to require an answer. I mean, I got that article you sent me about the best takeout restaurants in Midtown. I didn’t think you needed a response. I did try the falafel place from the article today, though. It was pretty tasty.”
She let out the long-suffering sigh of the older sister. “How was the feral cat event?”
And there was Paige in his head again. Best not to mention that, though. “Educational. A little scary. That Mitch guy is intense.”
Lauren laughed. “Yeah, I know. Any of the cats bite you?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“A little.”
“No such luck. The group trapped a few cats, a couple of which had already been tagged. But I actually had a good time.”
“Did you run into my friend Paige? She was there that night, too. She mentioned you’d met.”
Oof. Had he run into her? She’d vanished while he’d been in the shower the morning after, which he supposed he deserved. He’d been a little aloof when she’d started flipping out about him being related to Lauren. He didn’t really see the problem. He supposed it might get awkward if they started dating and something went awry, but it was just one night of very good sex, not a marriage proposal.
“Uh, yeah. I met her. She seems great.”
“She is.”
Then Josh remembered something from the night he’d had dinner with Lauren and Caleb. “Wait, is Paige the one with questionable taste in men who you had to rescue from a bad date the other night?”
“Yeah, that’s her. She has every other part of her life together, but her love life is a hot mess. I guess we can’t all be perfect.”
