PURSUING FAITH, SOMETHING I’VE BEEN doing since I first learned she existed but she just doesn’t know it, I follow her into the living room. I find her snuggled under a cream-colored blanket I saw on one of the chairs, her ice cream already by the fire. I join her and sit down with my back against the stool I’d had her sprawled over earlier, and set my pint next to hers by the fire.
She gives me a thoughtful look. “You know,” she says. “I’ll believe you’re staying when you take your shoes off.”
I chuckle. “Is that the way you know a man’s staying the night?”
“It seems like a good marker,” she says. “Not that I’ve had to make that determination any time in recent history.”
I’m not sorry at all, nor am I chuckling anymore. “Do you want me to stay, Faith?”
“Hard limit,” she says, her voice a bit raspy. “I get tonight.” And when I arch my brow at the less than conclusive answer, she adds, “Yes. I do.” Definitive. No shyness to her.
I don’t even try to hide the satisfaction in my stare. I reach down and unlace one of my shoes. She unlaces the other for me, tugging it off. I toss the other one. “How’s that?”
“Better,” she says, giving me a once over. “It somehow makes you less assuming and down to earth.”
“Assuming,” I say dryly. “That’s right up there with arrogant.”
“But arrogant works for you,” she says. “You said so.” Her brow furrows. “And how are you here when you have a big case next week?”
“I do my best prep work locked away from the rest of the world,” I say. “And I’ve got another situation here. I actually rented a house for three months.”
“Three months,” she repeats, and this time she looks away, reaching for her ice cream, but I lay down beside her on my side, resting on my elbow. “Faith.”
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 I going to hate you, Nick?”
“No, Faith. You are not.”
She studies me for several beats, and 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 crossing road 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 set-up, she had documents and recordings to prove it. But I found her in the hundredth 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-eight 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.”
“And he’s still with them?”
“They gave him my partnership spot, which tells you, they’re born of his same cloth.”
“So this case is personal to you,” she adds.
“No case is personal to me,” I say, my own words an unfriendly reminder of the fact that I’ve made her personal. “When you get personal,” I add, a warning to myself as I speak it, “you end up on the bottom with everyone else on top.”
“Yes,” she agrees, and when she says nothing more, again reaching for her ice cream, that one word becomes loaded.
“Yes?” I prod, as she removes the lid to her ice cream and jabs her spoon inside.
“Yes,” she says, offering nothing more but my pint of ice cream, which she shoves into my hand. “It’s ready.” And then before I can press further, she moves on, “Did you leave and open your firm, or did that come later?”
I pull the lid off my pint. “I left and opened my firm. Ten years ago next month.”
She hands me a spoon. “Why San Francisco, and not LA?”
“I can do everything I can do there in San Francisco, with fewer assholes and less traffic.”
“Yes,” she says. “There are.”
“You’re very agreeable,” I say. “That’s different for you.”
“You haven’t said anything outrageous for me to call you on in at least fifteen minutes. But I’m sure you can remedy that if you try really hard.”
“That’s more like it,” I say, watching as she scoops up ice cream and takes a bite.
“Hmmm,” she sighs. “I love this stuff.” She motions to me with her spoon. “Try yours. I’m dying to know if you like it.”
I reach over and take a bite of hers. “Yes. It’s delicious.”
She smiles and sticks her spoon in my ice cream before taking a bite and then says, “A spoon for a spoon.”
“Like trust for trust?” I ask.