Page 12 of Love in Fine Print

“Family law.”

“Do you have a specialty?”

I was usually the one with all the questions. Most people found out I was a lawyer and left it at that. He was probably worried about me suing him. “Divorce.”

“Oh.”

My eyes cut to the side, and I tried to see what his reaction was out of the corner of them, but I couldn’t really get a read on him.

That particular piece of trivia often caused men’s balls to shrink to the size of peanuts. It was what I called my ‘cold shower open.’ Any sort of casual romantic flirtation that I wanted to extinguish was easily doused when men heard the words divorce and lawyer consecutively.

I understood where their minds went. The last thing a man would want was to face getting a divorce from a woman who specialized in it. I’d found that most men were more terrified of being taken to the cleaners after a failed marriage than they were of the commitment itself.

After several seconds of silence, I still couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

It was driving mecrazythat I couldn’t read him. “You okay over there?”

“I was just thinking that would be sad. You spend your days with people going through one of the hardest times of their lives.”

I waited for the punchline. Surely, he had to be joking. Everyone had lawyer jokes, especially divorce attorney jokes.

But he wasn’t kidding. I could see the sincerity on his face.

“It’s not that bad.” It was, but to admit that felt too vulnerable. But if I didn’t do it, then someone could get taken advantage of. And that wasn’t going to happen on my watch.

My Apple watch buzzed and I saw that it was a message from Trevor.

Trevor:Text me when you find out what’s what. And holy shit, that was hot.Followed by about ten flame emojis.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just Trevor.”

“Checking to make sure you’re still alive?”

“Something like that.”

I shifted in my seat and accidently put some weight on my ankle, which began to throb even harder. I looked out thepassenger side window so the pain I was in wouldn’t be evident. I hated showing any sort of weakness, even to Trevor or my best friend Bailey, but especially to strangers.

Trying to take my mind off the pain, I asked, “So you said you used to play ball. What do you do now?”

The question caused Ben’s shoulders to tense slightly. Chances were no one else would have noticed but I was trained to read people. It was why I was so good at my job.

“Never mind.” I shook my head. “It’s none of my business.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m a, um, I inherited my grandmother’s business.”

It was obvious that he didn’t want to say anymore, which, of course, made me want to ask him more. I would have, but we pulled into a parking structure and directly up to a no parking, no stopping zone.

“I don’t think you can stop here.”

“It’s fine.”

He flipped on his hazards and was out the door in less time than it took me to undo my seatbelt. I opened my door and was just about to step down when he appeared. His arms were scooping me up as I objected loudly, “I can walk.”

“I’m sure you can.”

I knew that patronizing tone. I used it often. I did not appreciate it being used on me, however.

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