Page 57 of Forged By Sacrifice

“Excuse me?”

“Georgie is a girl who works at a hair salon. Georgia is the lawyer everyone trusts.”

“To be fair, everyone trusted Georgie to do their hair perfectly. No one left my salon unhappy.”

“That is exactly what you’ll want them to say when they leave your law office as well.”

? ? ?

By the time I got home, I was still smiling. Both excited and nervous. Theresa—because she’d insisted I call her Theresa—had given me a file with multiple cases to look up, all related to immigrant children. I’d happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right case law opened up today. It felt like my first truly lucky break in a while, and I thought maybe the universe wasn’t playing with me as much as I’d thought.

When I entered the apartment, Mac was at the bar in the kitchen with a sandwich from the same deli down the street that I’d been frequenting since moving in. Congress was adjourned for the month of August, but Mac and Dani had been spending hours at the office anyway. I wasn’t sure if that was because Mac was avoiding me like I’d been avoiding him, or if they really just had that much work to do while Matherton was on vacation with his family. Dani had mentioned something about several bills they were trying to get their arms around so Matherton could push them forward once Congress was back after Labor Day.

I couldn’t avoid Mac now without being rude.

“Hey,” I said, putting the volume of books and folders down on the side table in the entry.

“Wow. You really are taking this pre-studying studying serious.”

I smiled. “Actually, I had a new professor take me under their wing today.”

He grimaced. “More of them hitting on you?”

I shook my head. “No. This one was a woman, and before you say it, I know she could have hit on me too, but she wasn’t interested in me for my looks, just my research skills.”

I grabbed a mineral water and my leftover noodles from the fridge, nuking the noodles and then joining him at the bar, my happiness spilling over into my smile.

“Research makes you happy?”

I nodded. He sighed. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for it myself.”

“But it’s an important part of the legislative process.”

“Yeah. I know. I guess I’m used to filtering through intel reports that are just…different.”

He dropped his bag of chips, bent down to get them, and when he came back up, our legs got tangled together. He wasn’t in a suit that had been his norm since coming back to D.C. Suits that fit him as if he’d been born wearing them and made him look even larger—if that was possible. Instead, he was in shorts and a T-shirt that stretched across the expanse of his chest. When my legs—that were also bare in a summer dress—touched his, it was skin to skin, jolting me back to our milkshake moment that had caused me to scurry and stay away.

Our touch was like every time we’d touched, thunderclouds rolling in and booming off my back and lightning going off in my eyes. I pulled my legs away and turned back to the noodles in my bowl, trying to remember what they tasted like, because the only taste I had now was of Mac and the salty sunshine of our kiss on a boat in Rockport.

He cleared his throat and opened the bag. “What’s this professor’s name?”

“Theresa Sedgewick.”

Dani came down the hall to stand between us, an arm on each of our shoulders. “What about Theresa?”

“She said you knew her.”

“Sure, she’s one of Dad’s friends. From college, I think. She helps us out at the senator’s office once in a while when we need a third-party legal opinion.”

I laughed. “This town really is small.”

“Smaller than a submarine,” Dani said. “What about her, though?”

“She saw me studying in the law library and asked me to help her with some research before classes start next week.”

“Lucky for you! She’s smart and talented.” She stole one of Mac’s chips, and he flicked at her wrist in a way that spoke to all their interactions that I’d seen—sibling harassment and love all rolled into one.

“Which of you is coming to the gym with me?” she asked.

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