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She inhales and looks at me, her expression guarded. “Yes?”
“The ice cream hasn’t had time to thaw, and what you’re really thinking about right now is the fact that I’m here for three months.”
She sets the ice cream back down. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.”
“There’s a first. You usually snap right back.”
“I still don’t know what to say to that.”
“Well, then, just remember this. You can hate me in the morning just as easily if I have a rental house here or if I don’t.”
“Am Igoingto hate you, Nick?”
“No,Faith. You are not.”
She studies me for several beats, then says, “You owe me a story.”
“A story? I thought I owed you an orgasm.”
“I’m pretty sure you owe me three orgasms, but just one story.”
“What story are we talking about?” I ask, and it hits me then that she doesn’t blush when we’re talking sex, and yet, her art, her beauty… These things make her blush. She’s sterilized to sex, not so unlike myself. It’s physical. It’s not emotional.
“Your trial story,” she replies. “The one that made your opposing council on your new case your enemy. You said you had to throw out good evidence because he obtained it illegally, but you still won the case.”
“What interests you about that story?”
“Aside from the fact that I like stories where people beat the odds, how you handled that case seems to me to be a crossroads for you. You chose to go the hard road rather than the easy road, and still you’re a success.”
I narrow my eyes on her, certain this is a masked reference to herself, maybe even to her walking away from blackmail and murder.
“What kind of case was it?” she asks.
“Insider trading,” I say. “We were representing the CEO of a large tech company. I’ll spare you the dirty accusations against him, but he was set up by a competitor. I managed to find someone who not only testified to the setup but had documents and recordings to prove it. But I found her in the eleventh hour, let me tell you.”
“And you and your co-chair became eternal enemies.”
“Considering I went to the board afterward and reported him, yes.”
“After telling him you wouldn’t?”
“The devil is in the details, sweetheart. I didn’t lie to him. I never told him I wouldn’t go to the board. But he lied to me. He told me he’d destroy the illegally obtained evidence, but he kept it until the day of closing. And I already told you. I can’t stand a damn liar, and I damn sure wasn’t giving him another chance to burn me or the firm.”
“And you got him fired,” she assumes.
“That’s the insanity of this story. The board chose to reprimand him instead of fire him.”
She blanches. “After he broke the law?”
“Yes. After he broke the law. They also offered me partner, and at twenty-six, that would have made me the youngest in their history.”
“And you declined.”
“In two flat seconds. If they felt his behavior was appropriate, I damn sure wasn’t signing up for a bigger piece of that liability.”
