Just What the Truth Is (2 page)

“Ben Forman, right?” Micah asked as he walked toward me with his hand outstretched. I couldn’t move a muscle. “We met last month when I came in to interview with all the partners, but I think Randy Desai monopolized that particular meeting, so we didn’t get to talk much. I’ve been meaning to come say hello and introduce myself more properly, but between transitioning my files over here, getting to know the new computer system, and preparing for a trial set to start in a couple of months, I’ve been swamped. So it’s taken me a little longer than I’d hoped to make the rounds.”

I heard his words. I even understood them. But I still couldn’t figure out how to make my mouth work so that I could respond. Micah was bowlegged. I hadn’t noticed that before, probably because he had been sitting or standing still every time I had seen him, but now I was fixated on the way he walked. Damn, was that ever hot.

I sighed internally. It had gotten to the point where I was finding the way a man walked attractive. I needed help.

Thankfully, my internal struggle snapped me out of my Micah-induced stupor, and I managed to take his hand and shake it without falling over or drooling. I had graduated Order of the Coif, summa cum laude from a top-ten law school, and I was giving myself an internal pat on the back for accomplishing basic bodily function control. Just great.

“Hi, Micah. Nice to see you again. So you’re settling in okay?”

Three sentences, and I got them all out without stammering. Well, not too badly, anyway. I was pretty sure Micah hadn’t noticed.

The microwave beeped.

I smiled.

Micah raised one eyebrow, and the side of his mouth tilted up in stomach-flipping grin. “I’m going to need to ask for my hand back so I can get that popcorn out of the microwave.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Sorry.”

I let go of his hand and walked over the fridge, keeping my face inside it under the guise of searching for a soda, but I was actually just waiting for the blush to subside. Had I held onto his hand too long? I didn’t think so, but then everything seemed to be sort of hazy and moving in slow motion.

“Can I get you a soda, Micah?”

There. That sounded just fine. Even voice, not shaking, complete sentence. Yeah, I know you’re impressed.

“That’d be great. Thanks.”

I got the drinks out of the fridge and turned back toward Micah, feeling a bit more in control of my body and my emotions. He was sitting at the table, munching on popcorn and making some notes on the document he was reading. It would have been rude not to sit down and talk to him for a little while. He was new to the firm and one of my partners now. I should make an effort to get to know him.

I didn’t know why I felt the need to justify my behavior to myself. There was nothing unusual about taking a break at work with another lawyer. Of course, there was definitely something unusual about the way I reacted to Micah Trains. Okay, fine, maybe I
did
know the reason for the internal justifications.

“So tell me about yourself, Ben. I know you’re in the transactional group, that you recently made partner, and that blue’s your favorite color, but that’s about it.”

My jaw dropped. “How do you know my favorite color?”

“Because I’ve seen you around the office and I noticed that about 70 percent of your shirts are some shade of blue or a close variation, like blue checkers or stripes.”

“You’re remarkably observant,” I said.

He shrugged. “I can be when it matters.”

He pushed the popcorn bag toward me. Then he opened his soda, tilted his head back, stretching his long neck, and took a few gulps. I watched his throat work as he swallowed down his beverage.

I wanted him. There was no denying it. My entire body was tight and thrumming with need.

Why couldn’t I have that feeling with a woman? I dreaded the nights when I couldn’t come up with a decent excuse and I had to go to bed with whatever woman I was dating at the time. I was getting older and it was getting more and more difficult for me to be able to fake an interest, and I was sick of trying.

Maybe I needed to take a break from dating for a little while. Nobody would think anything of it if I was single for a few months. That’s not a red flag or anything. Lots of guys go for months at a time without a girlfriend.

A piece of popcorn hit my forehead and startled me.

“Earth to Ben.” Micah was grinning like a loon.

“Did you just throw popcorn at me?” I tried not to laugh.

The move was so incongruous with Micah Trains’s cutthroat litigator reputation. The man was supposed to be type A, a brilliant strategist, and vicious in the court room. And here he was fooling around like a teenager.

“Hey, I had to do something to get your attention.”

Oh, he had my attention. That wasn’t an issue. The problem was just how much of my attention was fixated on the man. Emphasis on the “man” part of that sentence.

Chapter Two

“
A
LRIGHT
, you’ve got my attention and an A for creativity. What can I do for you, Micah?”

A single eyebrow went up again, and this time when Micah’s lips curved upward, I could have sworn he was leering more than smiling. I shook off the thought. That was impossible.

Micah Trains was one of the top litigators in Emile City. That wasn’t just my personal opinion. He had actually been listed as one of the top fifty litigators in a survey of all state bar members two years running. Considering the fact that he wasn’t even forty years old yet, that was quite an achievement. Anyway, the point is that a guy like that couldn’t be gay, so there was no way he would leer at me.

“I assume you’re not trying to meet a deadline, since business hours are over until Monday morning. Is that right, or do you have some pain in the ass client expecting you to get something done by Saturday morning?” he asked.

I laughed. “I have a lot of pain in the ass clients, but none of them have any pressing deadlines right now.”

Micah smiled broadly. He got up from the table and tossed the popcorn bag across the room and into the trash can. Clark and I used to play games like that in high school, and I smiled at the memory. “Two points. Well done.” I said.

“Two points? No fuckin’ way. That was a three-point shot. Come on, let’s go.”

I laughed in spite of myself. Hotshot lawyer with a potty mouth. Of course, I found that attractive too. Maybe he could pick his nose or something equally disgusting so I could kick the unwelcome attraction plaguing me. I was following him out of the kitchen before I realized it.

“Wait. Where’re we going?”

He just kept walking down the hallway toward his office. It was on the opposite side of the floor from mine. I knew because it had been a stretch for me to keep coming up with excuses to walk by and look at him out of the corner of my eye at least once—okay, fine, three times—a day since he started.

“We’re going to dinner. I’m starving and popcorn won’t do. Since you don’t have a deadline, I figure you can join me.”

We had gotten to his office, and he slid into his chair and shut down his computer. Then he picked up his wallet and cell phone and stuffed them into his pocket.

“Do you need to log off?” he asked me.

I didn’t remember agreeing to have dinner with him, but I supposed it made sense. We were both working late, it was Friday night…. No, actually, it didn’t make sense. I had never spontaneously made weekend dinner plans with one of my partners. Well, most of them had families waiting for them at home or plans with friends.

I was pretty sure Micah Trains was single. I didn’t know anything about his personal life, but he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and there weren’t any wedding or kid photos in his office. As successful as he was, I figured he was one of those guys who was married to his career. He probably had an ex-wife or two who’d vouch for that.

“Yeah. Give me a minute and I’ll meet you at the elevator bank,” I said.

I turned around and started walking out of Micah’s office and heard his footsteps behind me. I looked over my shoulder. He was right there with his suit jacket and tie draped over his arm.

“I’ll walk with you. Give me a chance to see how the other half lives. I’ve never been to the transactional side of the floor.”

“It’s nothing exciting,” I told him as we walked through the quiet, dark hallways. “Just a mirror image of the litigation side. We tend to have less shouting during the day, but that’s about it as far as differences go.”

And I should know exactly what was and wasn’t different between the litigation and transactional wings, considering my bordering-on-stalking routine visits to his side of the floor, which had not coincidentally started on the day he joined the firm.

When we got to my office, Micah immediately started looking at the pictures on my credenza. I only had a few: one of my parents all dressed up for a charity event a few years prior, one of the four of us—me, my parents, and my brother—from when I was a kid. And a fairly recent picture that Clark had snapped of me and Noah.

The picture’s nothing special. We’re just sitting on the couch in his living room wearing jeans and T-shirts. But there were a lot of years when I didn’t think I would ever have even that level of relationship with my brother, so I cherished it. Even more so because Clark had not only taken the picture, but he had printed it, framed it, and given it to me. I had made a lot of mistakes over the years when it came to Clark, so that picture felt like forgiveness to me.

“Hey, I know this guy. Noah, right? Noah Forman.” Micah paused for a heartbeat, and I saw his eyes flicker as the light bulb went on. “You’re Noah Forman’s brother?”

I was surprised that Micah knew Noah. They weren’t the same age—Noah was twenty-seven, which made him about a decade younger than Micah. And they weren’t in the same line of work—Noah owned a kickboxing gym.

“Yeah, I am. How do you know Noah?”

“We have a mutual friend, so I end up running into Noah and his partner, Clark, every so often. They’re great guys. Even though your brother can be a little, ehm, intense about Clark.”

I laughed at that diplomatic description of Noah’s possessive streak when it came to Clark.

“Yeah, he can be pretty intense. But Clark doesn’t seem to mind, so….” I shrugged and let the thought trail off. There had been a time when just thinking of my brother and Clark together would have made me angry. I had wanted to save Noah from what I was sure would be a hollow life. I thought if he got away from Clark, he would meet a nice girl, settle down, and be happy. That’s how it’s supposed to work, right? Well, as it turned out, Noah was settled and very happy already. With Clark. I, on the other hand, had met lots of nice girls, and I was neither settled nor happy.

I had finished shutting down my computer, so I started walking out of my office. I was in front of Micah, which turned out to be a good thing, because it stopped him from seeing me almost swallow my tongue when I heard his next sentence.

“Gay brothers, huh? Have you ever looked into the odds on that? I’d bet it’s pretty unusual.”

I wanted to deny it. I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t like Noah. I wanted to say that I was straight. But I was so busy concentrating on walking and breathing that I couldn’t manage to say a word, and then he moved on from the conversation, so the moment passed, and it was too late to correct him.

“How do you feel about Indian? Bombay Palace is pretty good, and it’s down the street, so we can walk. I feel like over the past week or so it’s finally gotten warm enough that I can go outside even after the sun’s gone down.”

“Oh, uh, sure. Sounds good.”

My head was swimming. Why did Micah think I was gay?

“So did you grow up here in Emile City?” Micah asked as if the world weren’t crashing down around us. Actually, the mundane normalness of the question calmed me down a little. At least enough to make conversation.

“Yes, I did, in EC North. I still live there, actually.”

It helped that we were walking and talking, because I didn’t have to look at his face and see what he really thought of me. His voice was perfectly even, like it didn’t bother him at all to be walking to dinner with a gay guy. No, not a gay guy, a guy he thought was gay but actually wasn’t. Yeah, right.

Anyway, Micah Trains hadn’t accidentally tripped into his reputation as a top-notch attorney. He probably had a knack for hiding his real opinions and making people feel comfortable talking. Of course, I wasn’t a hostile witness, so there was no reason for him to try to get me to open up. “That’s quite a commute every day,” he said.

I shrugged. “Just under an hour. It’s not terrible. I’ve thought about getting a place closer to the office, but my parents like having me out there.”

There wasn’t really anything else to say about it. I owned a pretty basic one-bedroom condo in a nothing-to-write-home-about complex. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either, and I could get to my parents’ house in less than ten minutes, which was useful because my mother liked having me over for dinner often. Too often, really, but I always went when she asked. I felt like I had to go often enough to count as two sons worth of visits, because Noah refused to grace them with his presence.