I swallowed a bite of croissant and held up my coffee mug. “Morning. This was you?”
She set the basket on the floor just outside the steps leading to the basement and came to stand across the kitchen island from me.
“Actually, no. This was there when I came up in the morning. You must have had good night, huh?” Ana pushed a hand into her bushy curls and winked, causing me to blush furiously.
“Ah, not exactly,” I stuttered, suddenly unable to meet her eyes.
“Skylar, relax, I’m joking. I know you were in the guest room. Those are your sheets, yes?” She tossed her head at the laundry, and I relaxed.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “Yes.” I swallowed the last of my croissant and washed it down with the orange juice, which was clearly fresh-squeezed. “Damn, that’s good. Does he usually get up this early?”
Ana nodded. “Yes, he is usually gone by six or so most days. I think that’s when he meets with his trainer. Sometimes he comes back around eight or nine for a bit to change.” She checked her watch. “If you want to stay another half an hour, you might catch him.”
“Ah, no, I should get going,” I replied. “I can’t believe he doesn’t have a live-in trainer along with his personal chef? How gauche!”
Ana laughed, flapping a delicate hand at me. “You’re bad. He’s nice, actually. As long as I keep things clean, he doesn’t give me problems. Only a few quirks.”
I leaned in curiously. “Quirks? Like what?”
She rolled her eyes and tapped a fingernail on the counter. “Nothing crazy, really. Like, the fireplace always has to be lit if he’s here at night, even in the middle of summer. Or, he always has me put a spare toothbrush in his bathroom next to his, even though it’s never used. And there is a fridge that I have to keep stocked with five different types of cheap beer, but he never touches the stuff.” She shrugged. “Quirks.”
I frowned. “Other than the fireplace thing, those just sound like preparations for company. Does he have people over a lot?”
“Not the kind who drink bad beer. And not the kind who share his bathroom.” She shrugged again, tipping her head to the side in thought. “Honestly…I think he just gets kind of lonely in this big house. Maybe it is these things make him feel like he has someone here with him.”
I pondered that thought for a moment while she turned to put away some dishtowels and I finished the remainder of my juice.
“Not a coffee drinker?” Ana asked, gesturing toward the other cup still full of the dark black liquid.
I slid off my stool. “No, not really. I like tea better.”
“How do you take it?” she asked. “You know, just in case I have to bring it out again.”
I felt suddenly embarrassed at the idea of Ana serving me tea, serving me anything like that I could just get myself. I hoped Sterling paid her well. For her part, she didn’t seem the slightest bit ashamed by her question, just stared at me expectantly.
“Ah, strong and sweet, with milk and a lot of honey,” I said. “My favorite is Irish Breakfast. But I doubt you’ll ever have to use that information.”
Ana shrugged again. “You never know,” she teased in a sing-song voice. “Okay, I have to get to this laundry. You can let yourself out the front?”
I nodded as I slipped my arms into my coat. “No problem.”
“Okay. Tchau, Skylar!” She picked up the basket and sashayed down the stairs. It was no wonder Eric liked her—the girl managed to make carrying laundry look sexy.
A few minutes later I could hear the telltale noises of a washer echoing from below. That was my cue. After rinsing my dishes quickly in the sink, I left quickly and quietly after leaving a short note of thanks on the island, right next to the three other croissants I hadn’t touched.
~
I walked into my apartment just after nine to find my roommate, Jane, sitting cross-legged on our sofa as she thumbed through a textbook and marked occasional pages with sticky notes. She was surrounded by a well-worn copy of rules of criminal procedure, textbooks, yellow legal pads filled with her scrawl, and at least three empty coffee cups. She and I had been roommates since starting law school. Even though a lot of law students moved off campus or into the coveted single housing as they gained seniority, we had opted to continue rooming together on campus.
Jane was one of the only real girlfriends I’d ever had, since I didn’t come out of my shell in high school and missed out on most college social events by living at home. With the utter ruthlessness that predetermined a successful career as a criminal prosecutor, she was my opposite in a lot of ways: outgoing where I was more withdrawn, raised in rural Illinois whereas I was a city girl through and through, extremely messy while I tended more toward order, a social butterfly compared to my hermit-like tendencies. But in other ways we had a great deal in common, including a direct streak that often veered more toward abrasive as well as a passion for honesty. She was loyal to a fault, and always had my back.
“Well, well, well,” she taunted me, slipping her cat-eyed reading glasses on top of her messy, black bob so she could give me the once-over. Half-Korean, Jane had thick, wavy black hair that was gloriously untamable and tended to riot around her face in the mornings until she tamed it with a lot of product. She wrinkled her button-shaped nose, which boasted a shining stud in one nostril. Her dark brown eyes twinkled. “And where did we spend the night last night, hmm, Miss Lady? Did you finally give into Steve the Goon’s advances?”
With a snort, I set my messenger bag on the small, round table that served double duty as a dining and study area, and began the process of pulling off my winter layers. I hung my parka, scarf, and hat on the small coat rack next to door and tossing my mittens into the basket below it. I slipped off my shoes and examined them briefly. Despite walking to and from the subway in the salty, slushy streets, the conditioning balm that Sterling had applied the night before had done its job and kept them free of any salt stains.
“God, no,” I finally answered Jane’s questions, walking into the kitchenette on the other side of the table. “Not with that Muppet. Never in a million, billion years. But you’d be proud of me—I did dance with someone I met at a bar. And then spent the night with someone else.”
Jane set her book down on the couch with a thump and came to join me in the kitchenette while I rummaged around for a cup of tea, eager to warm my hands on a hot mug. She parked herself at the bar that split the small space from the rest of the small apartment, and stared at me resolutely.
“Dish,” she ordered, pointing a black-polished fingernail on the countertop. “Now.”
“The bar guy was lame. Kissed like a cold lizard. Investment douche, you know the type.” I quickly imitated the jerky motions of Trevor the banker’s tongue, which made Jane break into a loud peel of laughter.
“Oh, you poor girl!” she exclaimed. “You got tongue-fucked at Manny’s.”
“So I left early,” I continued as I finished pulling out the other requirements for my tea. “But I couldn’t find a cab in the snow, so I went to wait for a car with Eric and his…well, I guess you could say she’s his lady friend. We had a few drinks the three of us at her place, and the T wasn’t running, and I couldn’t find a cab, so I ended up having to stay there.”
“Ew, as a third wheel with Eric, the walking boner?” Jane scrunched her face up like a pug, a trademark expression that always made me laugh. “Doesn’t he have, like, four strains of VD?”
She and Eric had a notably love-hate relationship that stemmed from the one-night stand they’d had after orientation our first year. When it came to sexual exploits, they were in many ways each other’s doppelgängers. As a result, it was a constant argument between the two of them just what had happened that night and who had left whom. I had heard at least seven different renderings from each person.
“Ah, not exactly,” I said as I placed the now full kettle of water on the stove and turned it on. Jane moved back to the couch and waited patiently as I continu
ed about my routine. She knew better than to push me to reveal stuff—I’d usually come around if she waited long enough. I studiously avoided her suspicious gaze, however, and it wasn’t until I had poured us both mugs full of tea, doctored them up with milk and honey, and found a seat on the sofa next to her that I finally continued. She was patient, but she was also tenacious.
I relayed the rest of the story, from my mistake of wandering into the house above Ana’s apartment, to seeing Sterling with the group of people, to being chased through the snow, the intimate shoe-polishing, and his eventual invitation to stay at his house.
“Wow, Sky,” Jane finally said at the end of my tale. “I think he might be in love with you, girl.”
I smirked. “Doubtful. He wasn’t even there this morning when I woke up. I found Ana downstairs cleaning, and she gave me a cup of coffee and a croissant and sent me on my way. It was…awkward, to say the least.”
Jane, however, wouldn’t be deterred.
“No way,” she said. “Rich guy like that? If he was really feeling altruistic, he would have just put you up at a hotel. I know there’s plenty around the park. People like that don’t usually just invite strangers into their home.” She took a deep sip of her own tea and shook her head. “Definitely into you.”
I scratched my chin, considering. “I don’t know, Jane. I think maybe he’s just lonely. I mean, the place is huge. I only saw a few rooms in it, but there it’s at least six stories, maybe more. All for one person.”
“Didn’t he walk in with friends?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know who they were. I didn’t ask. They were laughing, but I got the feeling they were just colleagues or something from his office. He said they were done for the night when I came back to the house with him. There was this one chick who looked complete daggers at me, but he didn’t seem to notice.”
“Ah, so she wants him,” Jane concluded with satisfaction. “Is he hot?”
I shut my eyes for a moment, recalling the chiseled lines of Sterling’s face, the ridiculously bright blue eyes, the dark blond hair that was just a little too long, and the way his five o’clock shadow had lit up in the firelight.
“Wow,” Jane said, pulling me out of my momentary stupor. “That good, huh?”
I pulled my phone out of my skirt pocket and Googled him. Sure enough, several picture popped up, mostly from the firm, but a few from Boston society pages. The other interns must have already done this—they were always twittering about getting a look at him. He was a benefactor of several organizations, I saw, including the Boston Symphony. I selected one of him in a tuxedo and held it out to Jane.
“Ooh,” she cooed at the photo. “Yeah, he’s a fuckin’ sundae, girl. You should get on that pronto. How old is he?”
I looked back at my phone. “Google says thirty-seven. Huh. For some reason I thought he was older.”
“Does Google tell you anything else about Daddy Warbucks?”
“Jesus Christ, Jane, don’t call him that. He’s already got eleven years on me.” I skimmed through his Wikipedia page, which stated his age and birthplace (also Boston) but revealed little else beyond his profession. For some reason I felt uncomfortable researching Sterling on the Internet; it felt too close to spying.
“Doesn’t look like it. Too bad.” I set the phone down on the coffee table and turned back to her. “Anyway, I don’t think it really matters. It would probably be a disappointment anyway.”
“Oh, come on, Sky, that’s just pessimistic.”
I avoided Jane’s look of pity by focusing on my cup of tea. This was a familiar conversation, and I wasn’t in the mood to get into it. Jane was always trying to get me involved with various men. Unlike me, she was one of those girls who seemed to have life-altering orgasms if a guy sneezed next to her, which was whenever she brought her flavor of the month back to the apartment. I had lived with Jane long enough to get somewhat used to her screams of ecstasy. She never understood why I generally found most of my own sexual encounters less than satisfying.
It wasn’t that sex couldn’t be fun, especially in the first few frantic encounters, when it was new and everyone got caught up in the will-we-or-won’t-we of foreplay. But it hadn’t escaped me that most men seemed to think my clitoris was about an inch from where they thought it was and that it deserved the same approximate touch as a light switch. When I did give in to the deed, I just ended up zoning out as the guy worked toward his own climax, operating under the assumption that the friction he created alone stimulated me as much as he it did. If he was particularly demanding of my orgasm, I’d be forced to fake it. But most of my partners also didn’t really care whether I got off or not, or at least thought it was my responsibility to make it happen if I did. After a while, it got easier and more fulfilling to get my kicks at home, where I didn’t have to dress up and could make myself brunch the next morning anyway.
“How long has it even been?” Jane asked.
“Oh my god, Jane, don’t start.”
“No, seriously, hasn’t it been, like, seven years or something like that?”
I rolled my eyes. “You are such a drama queen. It’s only been six months.”
Jane raised one eyebrow.
“Okay, eight,” I admitted.
The brow only rose a bit more.
“Okay, fine, ten!” I relented as I threw a pillow at her, which she caught neatly and tucked behind her head.
“That’s all I’m saying,” she said with a satisfied smirk.
“Whatever,” I pronounced after I drained my cup. “I doubt I’ll ever see him again. I’m done at the firm at the end of the week, and then the semester begins. Which reminds me, I have a giant stack of depositions to get through before Monday.”
I stood up and brought my mug back to the kitchen, where I put the kettle on for another boil. While the water heated up, I went back to my bedroom to change out of MY work clothes and into a pair of old jeans and one of my dad’s old sweaters. Outside it had started to snow yet again. It was a good day to curl up on the couch with a hot drink and a good book. Or in my case, a bunch of court documents.
When I reemerged, Jane had already poured more tea for both of us and was sitting back on the sofa with her book.
“When you get to a good stopping point, we should probably head over to the bookstore and get our textbooks for next term,” she said. “It’s supposed to snow like this the rest of the day, and my professors have already sent out reading assignments.”
That meant mine had too. A full week before classes even started.
“Damn. No rest for the weary,” I said, settling next to her with my messenger bag and grabbing one of the depositions I still had to summarize. “I won’t have time to shop this week anyway, and I think I’m going to go down to New York next weekend before the term starts.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Jane said absently.
“I should probably get a thank you card too. You know, for Mr. Sterling.”
Jane looked up from her book and tipped her reading glasses down her nose so she could peer over them at me.
“I know how you could thank him,” she taunted. “Bring it up to his office, drop it on the floor and be all like, ‘Oh! Mr. Sterling, I’m sorry, let me get that for you! Oh my goodness, is that my ass I just backed into your hands? I’m soooo sorry!’”
She laughed as I kicked at her half-heartedly.
“That would be sexual harassment, Jane,” I informed her, even though I knew she was fully aware of the implications and impossibility of such an action. “Pretty sure it’s not office-appropriate.”
“Oh, whatever, you prude,” she joked, turning back to her book. “You know you want to. ‘What’s that, Mr. Sterling? My blouse just happened to fall open? Oh, no! I didn’t mean to shove my rack in your face!’”
“Jane!” The thing was, it was a little too easy to imagine myself into that fantasy, if a little less cartoonish. Laid across the big desk I imagined Sterling had. Him ripping off my sh
irt, buttons flying. I already knew what his big hands felt like on my feet…maybe they would drive a bit higher up… Mentally I shook that thought right out of my mind and bent to my work. The quicker I could get fantasies of Sterling out of my head, the better.
~
Typical of the weekend before classes began, the COOP was bustling with undergrads and grad students shoving their way around the tall stacks of books. With class lists in hand and plastic baskets over our wrists, Jane and I made our way to the law section and started loading up on the textbooks assigned by our instructors.
“Fucking vultures,” Jane mumbled under her breath as she heaved a copy of Constitutional Law into her basket. “Did you see how much this cost? Two hundred motherfucking dollars!”
I shook my head and chuckled as I thumped an equally expensive family law textbook into my basket. We went through this exact routine at the beginning of every semester.
“Jane,” I said. “If you don’t want to pay Coop prices, why don’t you just buy them online?”
Like always, I was rewarded with a major eye roll in response.
“Oh, they’d like that, wouldn’t they?” she grumbled. “It’s the secret test of HLS, how they separate the shitty students from the good ones, you know. Only give us a week to order textbooks so that the ones who are willing to pony up retail prices can get ahead by reading early. Natural selection by way of student budgetary restrictions, the opportunistic bastards. Ooh! A used copy!” She snagged another book, this one well worn, and turned to me a wide parody of a smile. “Look, Ma, I saved ten bucks on a two-hundred-dollar textbook!” With an immediate frown, she dropped the book on top of the other in her cart.
“At least they only assign one or two books,” I said as a meager attempt to comfort. “It’s not like we have to spend two thousand dollars on textbooks or anything.”
“Yeah, but you forgot to factor in the readers.” A male baritone interrupted our exchange from behind me, startling both Jane and me. We glanced around to find one of our classmates, Jared Rounsaville, standing behind us as he perused the books we were complaining about it.
Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1) Page 4
