That was the pattern.
Do good work, get more work.
Excel at something, and get rewarded with an evenheavier load.
Prove you can handle it, and they’ll see how much more you can handle before you break.
I was so tired.
I gathered my papers—the ones I’d need for the rest of my weekend that wasn’t a weekend because I’d be spending it in this office or in my apartment that might as well be an extension of this office—and headed back to my converted sunroom.
The building was quiet on Saturdays. There was no Ashley smacking gum at the front desk. There were no phones ringing. It was just me and the hum of the air conditioning.
I slumped back in my chair and stared at the ceiling.
“A weekend.” I almost laughed.
When was the last time I’d had one of those? One where I didn’t work? Where I did something for myself?
I couldn’t remember.
Hell, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept past eight a.m.
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose.
And immediately saw crystal blue eyes.
Electricblue, the kind that looked like they’d been pulled from an Irish sky, bright and sharp andimpossible to forget even though I’d only seen them twice.
Then I saw a tuft of auburn hair that caught the light and looked like fire.
The freckles scattered across a nose and cheeks and bare, rounded shoulders like someone had painted them there on purpose.
I let my mind wander, and my thoughts filled with the lilt of an accent that sounded like ice cream melting on my tongue—sweet and smooth and impossible not to crave.
His guinea pig. That’s what he’d called me.
Despite the exhaustion and the stack of work and the fact that I was sitting in my office on a Saturday morning instead of anywhere else, I smiled.
He had no reason to be nervous around anyone but had stood at my table and fidgeted with that towel and rambled about plantains like he didn’t know what else to say.
I’d chalked it up to opening night jitters, but maybe . . . just maybe . . . he’d been as affected by seeing me as I’d been by seeing him.
Or maybe I was reading too much into it.
I never did that with work, but when it came to my personal life, I could overthink with the best of them.
Maybe he was just being professional.
Maybe the lingering had been him waiting for feedback on the food and nothing more.
But he’d smiled when he recognized me.
That had to mean something.
Didn’t it?
The Patterson brief stared back at me. I had less than forty-eight hours to finish it, plus the Morrison deposition prep, plus the Kowalski mediation documents.
