Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) by Elizabeth Ruston Read Free Book Online

continued chewing her own salad, which was now completely
tasteless on her tongue.
    “Shall we start again?” he asked.
    A wave of cold sluiced over her skin.  She narrowed her eyes.  “What do
you mean?”
    “I don’t know about you,” he said, taking another bite, “but I’m not up
for five months of that.  I’m too old.”
    “Yeah, you’re ancient,” she said.  “Buck up, Burke.  Take some
vitamins.”
    “ Sarah .”
    The way he said it, she couldn’t help looking at him.  “What.”
    He raised his eyebrows in a way that was so familiar to her, she could
have predicted the exact lines that formed on his forehead as a result.  She
knew every inch of that face.  She’d held it in her hands, gazed into it, pressed
her own soft cheek against it, lusted after it, kissed it, adored it—
    “We’re already in purgatory,” he said.  “Let’s not make it worse.”
    “What do you mean?” she asked, wishing she could come up with a
snappier line.
    “You think I like this?” Joe asked.  “You think this gig is a reward of
some kind for a job well done?”
    Sarah hadn’t considered that.  She’d been so focused on what the job
meant to her, she hadn’t wondered how Joe might feel about it.  Or why he might
be there.
    “So what happened?” she asked.
    “What, are we going to talk about our hopes and feelings now, Henley?”  He
threw her own line back at her, but with a shade of humor in his voice, obviously
trying to make his point that they should treat each other better.
    She softened ever so slightly.  “So why are you stuck with this job?  Did
you make an enemy?”
    “A few,” Joe said.  “I won’t bore you with the details.”  He spread his
arms and looked around the tiny restaurant.  “And now here we are, both of us
hitting the big time.”
    “Who’d have thought it, Number Eight?” Sarah asked, trying to make up
for digging it in earlier.
    “Me, sure,” he said.  “But you, Number Seven?  What’s the world coming
to?”
    “That judge was not looking at my chest.”
    “He definitely was,” Joe said, spearing a chunk of chicken and popping
it into his mouth.  “Couldn’t blame him—we all were.”

 
     
    Seven
    It was actually worse this way, Sarah thought.  She gazed across the
table to where Joe sat with his afternoon client, a woman in her fifties who
seemed just as worshipful as the young woman had been that morning, and all
Sarah could think was that she got it—she completely understood.
    She’d felt that way herself at one time.
    Not at first—at first she thought he was a cocky, overconfident, over-privileged
frat boy type who was too good looking for his own good.  The fact that he
turned out to be a serious student who had never stepped foot into a frat house—let
alone participated in any of that kind of drunken, idiotic college boy behavior
Sarah resented so much because it meant they could afford to blow off school
while she’d worked for years to afford every single credit—meant that Joe had at
least a shot at her not hating him.  In those days, that was something.
    She came to law school with a chip on her shoulder.  She knew that. 
She had a lot to prove to herself and everyone around her, and she spent night
and day proving it.
    Which was why she’d joined Moot Court in both her second and third
years.  It was an extra-credit class for students who wanted to learn appellate
lawyer skills and compete in mock appellate arguments around the country.
    Some students signed up just for the extra credits, some to pad their
résumés, but Sarah was in it for the fight.  She wanted to show everyone how
fast she was on her feet, how articulate, how unbeatable in an open-court
battle.
    And it didn’t hurt that the major law firms she hoped would notice her
had partners who served as Moot Court advisors and who often sat in on their practices
to act as judges.
    It was how she’d gotten her summer internship in her second year, and
how