Holding Her Breath (Indigo) (19 page)

“What is it, Whitney?”

Whitney slumped down in her chair with a sigh. “Nothing. You ready to order?”

Abbott nodded and signaled a bartender who happened to be standing nearby, a pretty woman who was probably a local college student. There was a lot of gel in her short dark hair, and a silver lip ring hung over the left corner of her lower lip.

“You guys ready?” The woman tapped her order pad against her open palm. Each of her fingernails was painted a different color.

“I’ll have a gin ’n’ tonic,” Abbott said.

“Vodka on the rocks, please. Double,” Whitney said, leaning back in her chair.

“That bad, huh?” Abbott murmured when the server walked away. “That’s what you always ordered in school when you thought you’d bombed an exam. Which you never really had, you Order of the Coif overachiever, you,” Abbott said. She smiled briefly. “It must be not so pretty for you to order that.”

Whitney gave a mirthless laugh and raked her hands over her face. “You have no idea.”

* * *

Thursday evening, Chace went over to Whitney’s as soon as she got home from work. He’d jumped on the metro as soon as she texted him that she was leaving the building for the day. He got there almost as soon as she did even though her office building was a closer metro ride to where she lived in Virginia than Chace’s apartment was.

“How was your day?” Chace asked, knowing the answer would be none too positive.

“Awful. They filed the complaint. That means we have a motion to dismiss coming up. Preparing an argument for this thing is going to be nearly impossible. We’ve been trying to come up with something for weeks, anticipating their arguments, and it’s just not going well.” She kicked her shoes off and gave a small grimace.

“You want me to order some food?” He kicked off his flip-flops and dropped them near the front door.

“You can get something. I nuked a frozen dinner and ate it at my desk a few hours ago,” Whitney said, stifling a yawn.

Chace nodded, looking around the apartment before settling his eyes once again on her. She looked like she could barely still stand on her feet. “I’m actually not that hungry.” He walked over to the doors leading out to the balcony. “I love this place. The lighting is fantastic. From what I remember, the few times I’ve been here during the day.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. You have all these huge windows. And those double glass doors leading out to your balcony? And it’s all west-facing and you have this amazing angle so that you don’t get too much glare at the time of day when you get your best light. It’s like a photographer built your building or something. And if that weren’t enough, you have this incredible view of the skyline from your balcony.”

“You really love this photography stuff, huh?”

“Yeah. I guess I kind of do,” Chace said, looking around her place again and feeling like he could create bigger and better things than he ever had. He didn’t dare tell her that. He had an idea her reaction to something like that wouldn’t be positive considering how wary she was of talking about anything involving relationships. Considering what he still had to tell her, he didn’t bother pushing the issue. No telling how she would go off when she heard that he was potentially a father.

“That’s good. It’s good to have something you’re really passionate about.”

“Yeah.” Chace was thinking that being near her was better than having all the cameras in the world. Since he couldn’t say that, he asked her a question instead. “Well, that’s the way you feel about what you do, right?” She sure devoted enough of her life to it. Devoting that much time to anything had to require a ton of passion.

She smiled wearily and shrugged out of her overcoat and suit jacket in one move. The sudden sight of her bare shoulders, exposed by her dark-colored, silk sleeveless top, drained every thought out of his head, along with all of the blood. He was glad he never wore his shirts tucked in and that he liked his jeans a little on the loose side. He didn’t think she’d approve of where all his blood had gone.

“You know why I wanted to become a lawyer?” she asked.

“Why?” He moved closer to her.

“I wanted to help people.” She laughed. “I wanted to be like Thurgood Marshall.”

“Well, isn’t that what you do? Advocate for your clients and all that?”

Whitney laughed bitterly and stretched out her calf muscles, complaining about her muscles feeling tight all over. Was she doing this on purpose? It wasn’t fair if she was. “I help the rich get richer. I don’t think that counts.”

“Are you happy?”

She looked up at him, stopping in mid-stretch, giving him a startled look. “What do you mean?”

“If you’re not happy, why do you give your life over to your job?” He stepped behind her and began kneading his fingers into the tight, tense muscles in her shoulders.

She started to move away from him, but he took the massage deeper, pushing his fingers harder against her muscles, and she stayed where she was. “Now you sound like Abbott. You two act like it’s so simple.”

“Because it is. It should be, anyway.”

Her head fell to one side. “You don’t understand. People like you never do. Life isn’t all happy and fun and doing what you want. Unless you want to be—”

“What?” He stopped pushing his fingers against her overworked muscles.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“What were you going to say?”

“It’s not important.” She shook her head and put her hand over his. His heart lurched a little bit. “Please. Don’t stop.”

“I’m not just playing around with a camera, you know.” He went back to massaging her shoulders, neck, and upper back. “I tried the corporate path. I graduated top of my class from Dartmouth. Even got a job with a huge investment management firm in Manhattan.”

“Really?” She rolled her head back and looked up at him.

He nodded.

“What happened?”

“It wasn’t for me. I hated it, so I quit.” He moved his hands lower on her back.

“Just like that?”

“Sure. I realized some things are more important than money and what people think of you based on what you drive and how nice your suit is. Things like going your own way instead of simply doing what people expect you to do.”

She let her head drop forward and he felt her muscles begin to tense under his fingers again. He moved his hands up to the gentle curve of her neck. He leaned in close so that his mouth hovered over her neck.

“You know what I was just thinking about?” The part he could tell her anyway.

“What?”

“Remember that Saturday I was actually able to steal you away from your legal pads and your BlackBerry for the day and I took you rock climbing? I couldn’t believe it was your first time. You were so good. We were out there for hours. You looked happy. Free.” He brushed her ear with his lips. “I liked it. A lot. You were so beautiful that day. I mean, you always are, but it really shone through that day.”

Whitney didn’t say anything to that.

That thought sparked another in his mind. “I’d love to shoot you sometime.”

“Huh?”

“You know, with my camera. In this apartment. Especially with your great lighting, if I could actually catch you here during the day.”

“Oh.”

He grazed his teeth over her earlobe. “Whit, would that be okay with you? I think you could be some of my best work. I don’t usually choose people as subjects, but you’re special. I know it.”

“You shot Kelly.”

He stepped away from her a little. “Those photos in my place back in River Run were just me fooling around with the camera. She happened to be around a lot, we dated for two years, so yeah. I happened to take a lot of pictures of her. She was never a serious subject of mine, though.”

“I just meant—”

“You don’t have to explain. Just stop bringing her up all the time. She seems to matter more to you than she does to me.”

She locked her hands together and looked down at them.

He scribbled his website address on the top of a page of newspaper, tore off the slip of paper, and handed it to her. “My work’s there if you want to see it.”

“You never told me about this before.” She looked down at paper he’d handed her and then up at him.

He shrugged. “It never came up.”

She pressed the slip of paper between her hands. “I don’t ask you a lot about how things are going for you, huh? I’m always whining about work. I’m so sorry. I—”

“Shh. It’s fine,” Chace said.

Whitney wrapped her arms around him. “You’re so good to me. Thank you.”

Chace moved his hands slowly across her back, savoring the moment of returning that hug. He wished it would never have to end. Even though he knew it couldn’t last forever.

“No problem.” He held her close. He breathed in the scent of her shampoo before settling his cheek against hers.

“Yes, you can shoot me. I’m so sorry. After this motion is done, I’ll make a point of being here during the day.” She locked her fingers behind his neck. “I tell you what, why don’t you take my spare key? You could come in and check the light out for yourself, maybe get some ideas or whatever it is you photographer types do.”

“Really?”

Whitney searched his face with her soft brown eyes for a moment before nodding. “I’ll be right back.”

He watched her walk to her bedroom. She came back a moment later with the key. When she placed it in his hand, he curled his fingers around hers. He looked into her eyes, and she looked away. He wanted to hold her close again, but he had the idea going for a second hug wouldn’t go over well. He was lucky he’d gotten the first one. And so freely. It made him think that maybe, hopefully, he was making some progress in getting her to open up to him.

“You want me to go?” he asked.

“No, but I do have a lot of work to do,” she said with a wistful sigh.

“What if I just sat here really quietly with my laptop and browsed through some photography blogs while you work?”

She gave him a huge smile. “I’d like that. A lot.”

“Good.”

She grinned. “Good.”

“Listen, I have to work tomorrow evening, and Saturday during the day, but how do you feel about dinner Saturday?” he said. He resisted the urge to run his fingers up and down her bare arms when she sat next to him on the couch.

She moved closer to him. “I have to work, but I should be able to get home by seven or so.”

That was a major improvement over her usual “I don’t know.” He said, “Rob and Delaney will probably want to come along. And maybe Erika will, too.” He didn’t mention A.J. as he still hadn’t met the man yet. It didn’t seem A.J. went much of anywhere with Erika.

“Yeah, I’ll ask my friend Abbott, too. I hadn’t realized how much I missed her until the other day.” She yawned. “You remember her? From New Year’s Eve.”

“Yeah. Abbott…isn’t that something to do with the priesthood or some monk type or something?”

Whitney grinned. “Yeah. You should meet her parents. They’re definitely two of a kind.”

No longer able to resist, he traced his fingers lightly over the skin of her shoulders until he raised goose bumps on them. He kissed the corner of her mouth.

“Um, work. I have a lot of work to do.” She pulled away from him. “I should really get to it. I’m gonna go get my laptop.” She rushed her words. She seemed to want to say something else, but she didn’t. Instead, she went across the room to grab her laptop.

Whitney was starting to resent giving Chace the key already. He’d only had it a little over a week—she’d given it to him the past Thursday and it was now Friday—and he’d been there almost every night when she got home from work. Only when he had to work did she have the place to herself anymore.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like having him there. That was the problem. She liked having him there too much. Even though he came over with his laptop ostensibly to work, sometimes bringing his pocket camera, as he called it, and his cables so he could upload pictures and sometimes just doing research online, they always did more talking than working.

She used to get twice the amount of work done at home before he’d started coming over all the time. Every time she thought of staying later at the office than her usual eight or nine, she wasn’t able to do it because she thought too much about how nice it would be to sit next to Chace on the couch while she worked. And she promised herself each time that she wouldn’t get distracted that night. Of course, that was always just a lie she told herself so that she would let herself slip home and spend time with him.

But that night she was going to have to tell Chace she needed her place to herself more. She’d screwed up big with Kim again. That morning at the motion hearing, she’d done everything right, but they’d still lost. Their argument was terrible. It was hard to make a good one when the plaintiff had such a strong case. Their client was still being too stubborn to talk about settling, though.

Kim had reamed her as soon as they’d gotten back to the office. It had taken a whole lot of discipline for Whitney not to shout back. She hadn’t been in the best of moods. She was going on only a few hours of sleep every night, staying up extra late to finish her work after Chace left at night.