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I crossed my arms over my chest in an effort to remain still. Ezra might not want to tell me much about myself, but I knew that he wasn’t a lawyer because he just thought it was a great job. I’d only worked with him for one day, but I knew that he was good at what he did.
“Are you cross-examining me?” I asked. I tried to keep my tone light, but it was a challenge.
Ezra leaned back in his chair, relaxing his posture. “Have you done something illegal?” he asked in a slightly teasing tone.
He was luring me into a false sense of security. I’d watched my father do it often when I was permitted to be in the room while he conducted business. In hindsight, I realize that that was something he was always doing.
I pushed thoughts of my father out of my head. There was a time and place to lament about my messed-up childhood, and now, wasn’t it.
“I’m from Michigan,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. It was the most nondescript place I could think of at the moment, and it was one that I had absolutely no ties to. I’d never even flown over Michigan before.
“Michigan.” Ezra repeated it back to me. “Interesting.”
Something about the way he spoke made me think that he didn’t believe me, and I knew that I needed to change the subject quickly. “Are you from the city?” I already knew the answer. Ezra Wright’s family was old, New York money. It was one of the reasons that he was constantly featured on the gossip mags.
“I am.” He didn’t give much more information, which I found annoying. He was sitting here grilling me about my personal life, but he didn’t want to open up about his own. “Any brothers or sisters?”
He shook his head. “You?”
I shook mine. “I’d always wanted one growing up, but my mother didn’t want any more children, and then, she passed.”
A frown appeared on Ezra’s face, and I already knew what was coming. “It’s okay,” I interjected. “We weren’t close.”
My mother barely tolerated me when she’d been alive. I used to pretend that she was dead since she didn’t spend time with me anyway.
“My mother is difficult as well,” Ezra said. It was the first thing that he had said to me that wasn’t something that I could find out on the internet. “She’s always cared more about her image than anything else.”
I said nothing, but I clenched my pen hard in my hand. The way that he spoke made me think about my own parents. My issues weren’t really with my mother. My problems went way further than her.
“Luckily, for me, I was able to lean on my father. He was a lot more grounded than my mother. Gave me a good sense of self.”
I smiled softly. All the tension left Ezra’s body when he talked about his father. It was sweet to see, even if it made me slightly envious. Talking about my father made every single inch of my body tense up with fear, and my stomach flipped as though I’d had a bad piece of fish.
“Are you close with your father?” Ezra asked. It was an innocent enough question for a normal person, but I felt a cold sweat starting to break out over my skin as I thought about my father.
“We don’t talk much.” It was the best answer I could give. I didn’t think that I could talk about my father without having a full-on breakdown. We’d been close once, so close. My father had been my hero. I’d thought that he was the best type of man there was, but he wasn’t.
I felt Ezra’s warm hand on my own. “I’m sorry,” he told me. His blue eyes were soft as he spoke to me, and I knew that he meant it.
I pulled my own hand back and into my lap. I wasn’t much for touching. Even the lightest touch made me cringe as I was reminded of the fact that the only man who’d ever touched me in that way tried to murder me in the snow.
“We should get back to work,” I said, turning my attention to the folders in my lap. This conversation had taken a turn into a place that I couldn’t easily control. For months after the shooting, I’d barely slept or functioned. Julia had been a godsend. If I hadn’t had her, I wouldn’t have survived it. After months, I’d been able to suppress all of my emotions, at least enough to function.
But Ezra didn’t seem capable of taking a hint. “Why are you working here?”
“What?” I asked, taken aback by the question. It wasn’t one that I expected. But I really hadn’t expected any of this.
Ezra shrugged. He was trying to appear casual, but I knew that he was fishing for information. I simply wondered why. Ezra Wright was recently named the most eligible bachelor in the entire city, and yet, instead of being out hooking up with other women, he was working late and grilling me.
“I’m just curious why a girl like you would want to work as a glorified secretary.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, highly offended. My entire life, I’d been boxed into one stereotype or another. I’d assumed I’d left that behind, but it appears that wasn’t the case.
Ezra gestured to the notebooks that had piled up in the chair next to me. “You are clearly smart.”
“Because I can take notes?”
He chuckled. I liked the sound of it. “I’ve had three secretaries in the last six months, and though I haven’t run them off as Maggie likes to think, they never helped me.”
