Well, this sure was embarrassing! But all right. She didn’t want to get in line with all his other conquests anyway, so it wouldn’t be so bad if he thought she was a little loopy.
‘Too hot?’ He seemed confused, and his beautifully shaped eyebrows rose quizzically. Lauren gave him the gravest nod she could muster and stared at the tips of her boots. The bottoms of her pants were almost completely dry again. A little bug was crawling across the joint from a black floor tile to a white one. She kept an eye out for the crack in the ground that was going to open and hopefully swallow her whole, to spare her the embarrassment. But there was no crack. She had to go through with it. ‘Yeah, hot,’ she explained as matter-of-factly as possible.
‘I’m only asking because . . . because I just burned myself on the coffee . . . and . . . and if that were generally the case, I . . . I would tell the . . . the waitress. I mean, I wouldn’t want . . . anyone to get hurt or anything.’
Phew! That was quite a struggle but, hey, not too bad. Quite satisfied with herself, Lauren now straightened up and turned to an older couple sitting at the opposite table.
‘What about your coffee? Hot? Not too hot?’
* * *
‘Oh God, how embarrassing!’ Lauren giggled and snuggled deeper into Tim’s arms.
Even though the fire was still burning, the nightly cold had started rising from the earth.
‘That wasn’t embarrassing at all, it was . . . entertaining,’ Tim retorted with a grin.
Rachel, who was sitting on the opposite side of the bonfire, laughing and shaking her head, inched a little closer.
‘Why has nobody ever told me this in all these years? If I had known, I would have blown my appointment with good old Mr Mathison and stayed to watch the show!’
‘Oh, come on, it wasn’t that bad. I thought you were cute back then at the diner. But I really only took notice of you later – at the law firm,’ Tim recounted.
‘So you don’t think I’m cute anymore?’
Tim kissed the back of Lauren’s neck and lovingly rubbed her arms to keep her warm.
‘Of course I do. And all I can wish for today is that we get the time to laugh about so many more things to come.’
Mountains of Files
Lauren was humming along to the song she had heard earlier on the radio when she was driving to the law firm with her dad. She couldn’t remember the song title, but the melody had been stuck in her head all day. And she didn’t even particularly like it.
Gingerly, she climbed the wobbly step stool and fished the next handful of binders from up high on the shelf, all the while deriding herself for picking such a short skirt that morning. She had decided to show the world that her diet was working – as motivation to herself, in a way. But this stepladder would be far easier to navigate wearing a pair of jeans. Back to back on the shelves sat the legal files of clients, the court records, the case files, and the statements of claim. Everything older than ten years had to be destroyed on a regular basis, and this was her job during term break. She pulled out five binders all at once, heaving them onto the big desk in a corner of the sparsely lit basement. The computer screen in front of her flickered in the faint light of the fluorescent tube, and with dusty fingers she typed each binder’s record number into the system. Every page, every sheet of paper she fed into the document shredder had to be meticulously recorded.
After she had finished that task and checked each number one final time, she grabbed the binders and made her way to the fourth-floor copy room where the only shredder stood. Years ago Lauren had suggested they purchase an additional document shredder for the basement archive, just so she wouldn’t have to haul every single binder from the basement all the way up several flights of stairs. But her request had been denied. The risk of accidentally destroying a legal file would be too great, she was told. Right! Lauren could see it before her now: one of the paralegals would pull an extremely important binder from the shelf, would then trip, tumble from the ladder, switch on the shredder in mid-air, and somehow the binder would then disappear in-between the heavy-duty rotating blades. Yes, this sounded extremely likely and probably happened all the time in companies around the world. Which was why she was now trying to balance the stack of binders on her arms, bending backward so that the files rested against her chest, neck, and chin rather than falling to the floor. If one binder slipped, the others would tumble along with it.
After the first couple of steps she noticed that a strand of her hair had caught in a paper clip. She strained her neck to pull it free, but failed. And so with each step she took she was pulling on her hair, so she quickly switched gears to get rid of her load sooner. Using her elbow, she pressed the well-worn elevator button and leaned against the wall until a soft hum announced the elevator’s arrival. The doors opened quietly, and she was welcomed by soft music and a pleasantly warm light. As if that made hauling around these dust-covered binders worthwhile!
Carefully, she maneuvered them into the elevator and stuck out her tongue to her stressed-out reflection in the mirror. Only then did she notice that the button for the second floor was lit. ‘Just my luck!’ she thought, rolling her eyes in irritation. She was throwing her back out lifting stupid binders, and now the elevator would probably stop on every single floor. Her arms were shaking under the weight, and she tried again to pull free her hair. When the doors opened, the stack of files jiggled dangerously.
‘Dammit!’ she muttered, pressing her chin over the top binder and looking over at the man who had entered the elevator and was pressing the button for the third floor. Just her luck. She snorted quietly, but he must have heard her because he turned around. Lauren froze when his ice-blue eyes met hers. His eyebrows shot up in surprise. He ran his hand through his hair.
‘Hi,’ he said with a huge grin, eyeing her stack of binders. ‘Those wouldn’t be evidence and lawsuit documents regarding the hot coffee at the diner? I sure hope not, because I quite liked going to that place.’
‘What?’ Lauren’s head sprung up. The strand of hair pulled at the paper clip, came loose, and fell over her eyes. She tried blowing it out of her face, but it didn’t work. Her blue-eyed Prince Charming smiled and helped her tug the curl behind her ear.
‘Better?’
‘What?’ Lauren’s skin tingled where he had touched her, and the feeling of it chased away any sensible thought. She felt like a parrot repeating herself, but found it impossible to follow his words. What coffee? What lawsuit? And better than what? Patiently, as if explaining something to a child, he leaned in her direction.
‘Who’s representing you?’ And, after a glance at her confused face, he added, ‘Who’s your attorney? Who are you looking for? Maybe I can help . . .’
‘Help? Me?’ Lauren tried to make sense of what the handsome stranger was saying. ‘Who the hell are you?’ she asked, wheezing under the weight of her binders.
‘I’m sorry, my bad. Tim Parker: trial lawyer. And you are . . . ?’
He held his hand out to her, but quickly withdrew it again when he realized that she was unable to move hers. Helpfully, he offered to relieve her of most of the binders.
‘You work here?’ Lauren asked in surprise, tucking the last remaining binder under her arm and smoothing down her sweater, revealing a little more cleavage. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around here before.’
Now it was the lawyer’s turn to act surprised. The elevator doors opened but no one got in and he didn’t get out.
‘What do you mean? What do you do around here?’
‘That was your floor,’ Lauren reminded him as the doors closed quietly.
‘Yeah. No. I mean, yes – it was, but,’ he motioned toward the binders, ‘where do those need to go?’
‘One