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Oh, I liked Amanda all right. Brian had no idea how much I liked Amanda. It had been so long since we'd seen each other—almost a decade. I wondered if she would even remember me. That was the kind of question I couldn’t ask. That was the kind of question I needed to keep to myself.

  And, that was beside the point.

  What did it matter if I liked Amanda? Brian and I were partners. And partners made decisions together. So, that’s what I told Brian. And that’s what finally made him leave my office, mumbling “whatever, man,” under his breath in an almost inaudible voice that only those acutely trained at the school of Brian Fisher passive-aggression, could have heard.

  Amanda Fisher, the only woman I had ever had true feelings for, was back and I only had a few hours to figure out how to act like I didn’t give a fuck.

  Four

  Amanda

  I had dozens of papers to fill out before they would let me drop off Aaron at school. Why I couldn’t have done them online before the move was beyond my understanding. It’s like the office workers were determined to make me late for work.

  And, of course, they succeeded.

  So, I was late on my first day at Dawson and Fisher, prompting Denise, the department head on the third floor who talked like she was chewing her face, to say, “We are professionals here, and we don’t punch a time clock. There is an expectation of punctuality if you hope to get anywhere beyond this floor.”

  I made a mental note never to be late again, and then another note to stay away from the department head at all costs. When I did eventually rise above Denise in the firm—as I inevitably would—I didn’t want her to think it was because my last name was Fisher. It would be because I was a badass lawyer who would leave her in my dust just like I had with every jerk at law school who thought they were better than me.

  I smiled and nodded politely at Denise, and then continued to do so for the next few hours as she oriented me to the office, and the projects on which I would be working. It was mostly tax law stuff that was simple enough for even Aaron to succeed, but I imagined they started everyone out on the simple work to see what they could handle. Still, by the time lunch rolled around, my brain was so fried from listening to Denise’s mind-numbing voice that even my brother was a welcome distraction.

  “You ready to go?” he asked. I could feel the eyes of nearly everyone else on the floor turn to look at me. They were probably wondering why one of the managing partners was on the floor to pick me up for lunch. I had to stop myself from letting out a loud exasperated sigh. Brian always thought he knew what was best for me, but his presence certainly wasn’t going to do me any favors with my coworkers.

  “I think so,” I said to him, grabbing my purse and following him toward the elevator.

  It was awkward being around Brian again. We had barely spoken since I had decided to follow in his footsteps and go to law school a few years back. He was pissed that I went against his advice, and told me I was throwing my life away. Part of me thought he might have been right, but I was too stubborn to do anything else.

  The only saving grace that existed in our relationship, and really the only reason that we were able to talk at all, was my son, Aaron. It was because of Aaron that Brian eventually decided that it was a good idea that I move out here. Without Aaron’s father in the picture, Brian decided that he was going to take a greater role in rearing my son and providing that male presence that he needed. Although I had my doubts as to how much I wanted Brian influencing my son, I had to admit that I liked the idea of my son getting to know his uncle better.

  But there was no Aaron now and as such, this made for an awkward elevator ride. I wondered if lunch was going to be this awkward too. Would we just sit there in silence, each of us waiting for the other to make up the distance of four long years? This is what I was thinking about when the elevator doors opened.

  Matt Dawson. Fuck.

  I wasn’t an idiot. I knew when I asked Brian to help me to get a job at Dawson and Fisher that I’d run into him eventually. I had weighed the risks though, and determined that I needed the job badly enough to tolerate Matt Dawson’s presence in my life. But I wasn’t prepared for it to happen on my first day. And he was clearly waiting on us, which could mean only one thing:

  Matt was joining us for lunch.

  With this revelation, my heart pounded within my chest and my head clouded with both thoughts of outrage and lust. I never wanted to see him again, but as I gazed at his tall and confident form, I knew that my sexual attraction toward him was going to be a problem.

  If I thought it was going to be awkward with just Brian and me, I had severely underestimated my brother’s ability to put me in an awkward situation.

  Of course, there was no way that Brian could know that seeing Matt was difficult for me. Matt and I had gone to great lengths to ensure that Brian would never find out about the two of us. At best, it would completely end the friendship between the two men, and likely cause the law firm to implode at this point. At worst—and there was a part of me that completely believed that Brian was capable of something like this—Matt would be dead.

  No matter how I felt about the man, death was too grave of a punishment for what he had done. After all, he gave me my son.

  I hadn’t seen him for nearly a decade, but my body still responded to him on sight like it had for no man since. He was tall, seemingly taller than I remembered, and filled out his designer suit nicely. I definitely hadn’t forgotten those eyes—those bright blue eyes that I had thought about nearly every day since I’d last seen him. Even now, they looked at me as if they were seeing me for the first time, appreciative of what they saw. His ability to make me feel beautiful with one look had not faded over the years. When I looked at him, I forgot that I needed to hate him for the sake of my son.

  “Amanda,” he greeted and beamed at me, as if we were merely old friends who had never seen one another naked. The smile on his face glowed brightly, and I could detect those same familiar faint dimples in his cheeks, accentuating his square jaw.

  The first time I saw him I had been only 19, and I thought he looked like Superman. His chiseled abs and runner’s legs had never betrayed that belief. As I admired him now, I wondered if he still looked as good under that suit as he did then.

  “Matt Dawson,” I said in my most professional voice, extending a formal hand for him to shake. “It’s been a while.” As he briefly examined my extended hand, I thought I saw a hint of disappointment cross his face, but even if I had, he recovered quickly, and accepted my greeting. My body became electric at his touch, with waves of warmth spreading through me like wildfire. It was all I could do to shove the vivid fantasies that threatened to crush my cool façade to the back of my head where they could do no harm. When the handshake ended, I shivered; the room seemed colder at the loss of his touch.

  “Is DelOrio’s okay with the both of you?” When Brian spoke again, it snapped me out of my reverie. I had all but forgotten that he was standing there, and the sound of his voice made me immediately self-conscious. Had our handshake lingered too long? Did my brother notice? I searched his face discretely, but found nothing there; somehow, he was blissfully oblivious to the tension between Matt and me. For that, I was grateful. I nodded my reply to him and watched Matt do the same almost simultaneously. I didn’t know how we were going to make it through lunch.

  Five

  Matt

  The truth was, I fucking hated DelOrios. I had told Brian this on many occasions. Their food tasted like cardboard, and the service sucked. I had no idea how they managed to stay in business. But the sight of Amanda had temporarily rendered me mute, and all I could do was go along with Brian’s suggestion. He probably wished I’d be struck dumb more often, though he would not be pleased if he learned why.

  Amanda was wearing a tight skirt that fell just past her knees and hugged her curves in all the right places. I had managed to stay behind her for most of the two-block trek to the restaurant, and she had given me a show—
twitching her ass while she walked just to drive me wild. It was subtle enough that it could have been unconscious, but I knew better. Somehow, that ass looked even tighter and rounder than I’d remembered it—and I remembered it well, considering how many times it had made an appearance in my dreams and fantasies since the last time I saw it in person.

  I couldn’t tell you one thing that was discussed at the restaurant. Our shitty food took an inordinately long time to arrive, but I barely even noticed that. I just watched her. Her smile, her laugh, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear and looked down bashfully every time she caught me looking at her—all of it was more beautiful than anything I had seen in a very long time.

  And it was all very off limits.

  It wasn’t until Brian announced that he had to use the restroom that I felt aware of my surroundings again. This was my chance. I had maybe one minute to say something brilliant to win her over and all I could think of was, “Why didn’t you tell me you were moving to town?”

  I cringed even as I heard the words come out of my mouth. They were not what I meant to say, obviously, but it was a question that had been rolling around in my head since Brian had told me that she was going to be working at the firm.

  She was taken aback by the question. “Tell you how?” she demanded. “We haven’t spoken in years.” The tone of her voice only served to make me feel like more of an idiot than I already did. Of course, she had no way to contact me, other than through her brother, and we both knew that was a dead end. Her face softened, and she added, “It’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you too,” I responded instinctively. The words spilled out of my mouth before I had a chance to catch them. I had fully intended to act like I didn’t give a damn that Amanda was here, and now here I was acting like a fawning fool. Oh, well. “Can I take you out?” I asked her.

  This question was about as dangerous as any that I could have asked, and from the way that Amanda’s eyes widened, a casual observer might have thought that I asked her to rob a bank with me. Still, she was poised to respond, her lips parted, and I held my breath waiting for her answer.

  But then her brother returned to the table, and her response never came.

  Instead, she turned to Brian.

  “Hey, so I was wondering if the two of you would be willing to show me around town this weekend?” she asked, sounding younger and more innocent when she spoke to her brother than she had just moments earlier.

  Brian seemed distracted and disinterested in showing his baby sister a good time. Something had clearly happened between the two of them over the past several years, though I wasn’t sure yet what it was. “I can’t. I have to work,” he said dismissively. Then he added the three little words that nearly made my heart leap out of my chest. “But Matt can.” He looked at me, as if he was asking me to water his plants while he was out of town, or some equally minimal task, rather than taking his very hot sister out on the town. All I could do was nod, confused, and I could see a smile threatening at the corners of Amanda’s mouth. She had somehow known exactly how he would respond, I was sure of it. I was impressed. Her manipulative talents were clearly being wasted on the third floor at Dawson and Fisher.

  “Yeah,” I managed to grunt finally, “I don’t really have much else going on.”

  That was a lie. The truth was, I had a date planned for Saturday night with a chick from my gym, but I would cancel it if I needed to. For a chance to be with Amanda, I would do almost anything.

  Then, Brian said something else that simultaneously sounded like a foreign language to me, and made me reconsider everything I thought I knew about the world.

  “Do you want me to see if my assistant Chelsea can babysit? You know I would myself, but obviously, I’m busy.”

  When I heard the words, I swear, for a second I thought that he meant to have his assistant babysit the two of us on our night out, and I nearly laughed. In fact, I may have actually laughed a little. But when I saw the frozen, embarrassed look on Amanda’s face, my brain registered what was really happening.

  Amanda was a mom.

  Six

  Amanda

  I froze, unsure of how to respond when Brian brought Aaron up so casually in conversation. Of course, I was going to tell Matt that I was a mother. Eventually. But it was a sensitive subject for a million reasons that Brian could never know, and so he did the job for me. At least we got it out of the way.

  I didn’t know Brian’s assistant Chelsea, but I was going to need to find a decent babysitter in town eventually, so it may as well be someone that Brian already knew and trusted. I agreed that he should ask her, and told him I’d be grateful for the help.

  The entire time, Matt simply sat there staring out the window, with thoughts written on his face that I couldn’t quite read. I had dated a few men back in Chicago, though, so I had experienced this sort of reaction before. It’s hard, I suppose, for a man to hold two diametrically opposed thoughts of you in his mind at once. On one hand, he’s picturing all of the dirty things he’d like to do to you—because that’s just how men think. Then you tell them you have a kid, and they are forced to picture you doing motherly things. Suddenly, your breasts are no longer toys for a man to play with, but food for a child. I got it. I didn’t like it, but I got it. But with Matt, there was another dimension to this. That other unspoken thought that was now planting itself in the back of his mind.

  After a long silence, the first question he asked gave him all of the answers he needed.

  “How old is your kid?”

  I looked at him square in the eye. This was not a conversation to be had in front of my brother, but this shitty Italian restaurant was as good as any place for him to find out. We’d just have to let the subtext do all of the work.

  “He’s eight,” I said to him, managing not to avert my gaze. “His name is Aaron.”

  I could see the wheels turn in Matt’s mind. He was doing the same kind of math that I had done years ago, several months after I had returned home to Chicago from my summer-long visit to New York. When you get pregnant at eighteen, people like to talk about your “options,” but I was already in love with the little person growing inside of me, and I had been so head over feet for his father, that I only saw one option: to raise Aaron the best I possibly could. It wasn’t until after Aaron was born that I realized keeping Aaron from his father was for the best.

  I saw the moment that Matt realized the truth. His expression changed from thoughtful to cold. He glowered at me with more anger in his eyes than I ever thought could exist there. It was the same expression that Aaron gave me whenever I told him that he couldn’t have a third cookie from the jar—petulant and pissed. But it was broken by my brother, who matched it with his own brand of anger.

  “I swear,” he growled, “if I ever get my hands on the guy who knocked up my baby sister and then couldn’t even be man enough to stick around, he’s fucking dead.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I know,” I said to him, “you’ve said that before. But I’m okay. I swear.”

  I tried to be dismissive of his anger, but truthfully, there was something in Brian’s voice that made me believe every word he said. It was a little terrifying. Again, I couldn’t help but be surprised at how involved Brian had started to become in my son’s life. He seemed to really care for the kid, far more than he ever had for me when I was growing up. I guessed it to be because he had a son of his own now. Maybe he had changed?

  I wasn’t the only one who’d heard the very real anger in Brian either. Matt forced a more neutral expression on his face, and stared out the window uncomfortably, not knowing what to say next. In fact, none of us knew what to say. We sat that way for a long time, waiting for our food to arrive. When it did, I ate quickly, suddenly very eager to get back to the office and bury my head in my work.

  Seven

  Matt

  Somehow, my feet managed to carry me back to the office after lunch. I didn’t eat much, but I vaguely rememb
er the waitress giving me a box to put the remainder of my food in, and I must have walked that box back to the office, because it was still there when I was starving several hours later. It was sometime between reviewing the Roth deposition, and reorganizing the files of the Magnusson case, that I found myself eating a reheated calzone while staring out my large office window at the city below.

  Brian poked his head in to say he was leaving for the night, and I nodded.

  “Everything okay, man?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “I’m going to take care of this mess with Valerie, I swear.”

  I grunted my response, and took another bite. It was typical of Brian to think that if something was amiss, it had something to do with him. Ordinarily, he would have been right. But this time, his affair was literally the farthest thing from my mind. Brian could go stick his dick in every woman in Manhattan for all I cared. He probably already had. None of it mattered.

  Amanda was a mom.

  And there was an excellent likelihood that I was a father.

  The thoughts that had been swirling around in my mind since lunch were plentiful. I had never really thought about kids. I mean, they were cute when they were someone else’s problem, but the kind of life that I had chosen to lead wasn’t exactly one that children would fit neatly into. I was regularly at the office until well after most reasonable people were in bed, and I’d had so many women in my bed in the last year that I couldn’t even remember their names—on more than one occasion, I called a woman the wrong name and caused her to walk out of my condo in a fit of screaming and slamming doors. Certainly, I was not fit to be a father, and Amanda knew it.

  At the same time, however, if there ever was going to be a woman that I could see myself having a child with, it would be Amanda. I had never seen her with her son, but I had to imagine that she was an incredible mother. She was easily one of the most intelligent and ambitious people I had ever met—and that was almost a decade ago. Though she was shy as a young adult, she showed undiluted potential. Now she was an associate at one of the most prestigious law firms in New York City, far from a shy and blubbering young lady, and showed no signs of slowing down. Somehow, she had managed to make it this far while raising a child on her own.