Page 49 of Indiscretion

“I can’t believe you remember my favorite wine.”

“We drank enough of it up at the cabin we’d rented in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Remember, you kept swearing the old guy sitting alone in the bar was Mick Jagger? You put on ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ and were acting it out on the dance floor.”

I covered my face as I laughed. “Oh my God. Why do you have to remembereverything? Thatwomanwas not happy when I asked to take a picture and told her who I thought she was.”

Apopcame from the kitchen, followed by thegluck-glucksound of wine being poured into glasses. Simon came back into the living room just as I finished unpacking the last of the Chinese takeout from the bag.

“You ordered enough for six people.”

“I couldn’t decide what to get. I’ve missed my Friday-night Chinese takeout.”

He passed me a wine glass and took a seat on the rug diagonally across from me at the coffee table. I liked that he’d suggested we eat like this instead of at the table. It brought me back to our college days. “Do you still do pizza on Tuesdays, too?”

He opened one of the cardboard containers and used chopsticks to dish some shrimp and broccoli onto his plate. “Of course. Except now I don’t eat a whole pie, because the calories don’t incinerate with a half-hour workout at the gym like they used to.”

Simon was being modest. He looked good.Really good. Even after traveling all night from Mumbai.

“Thank you again for being okay with eating in tonight,” he said. “I’m wiped out.”

“Of course.”

“I tried to get us reservations at this fancy vegan place, Eleven Madison Park. I would’ve gotten my butt in gear to take you there. But they didn’t have an opening for more than three months.”

“This is perfect.” I shoveled some vegetable lo mein onto my plate, and we exchanged containers and a smile.

“So tell me about this job you got,” he said. “Do you like it? I never thought I’d see the day when you worked for the bad guys.”

“To be honest, I’m just happy to have a job.”

“I still can’t believe you didn’t fight getting disbarred.”

“There wasn’t anything to fight about. I did it. End of story.”

“But you were provoked.”

“Sadly, that’s not a valid defense.”

Simon popped a shrimp into his mouth. “So what exactly does a paralegal do? It’s not like a secretary, is it?”

“No. You assist the attorneys, but not the same way an administrative assistant would. It’s doing a lot of legwork, like drafting motions and prepping witness lists. It really depends on the level of work the paralegal can handle.”

“Sounds like the lawyer who hired you got a total score. The level of work you can handle isher job. I hope she appreciates you.”

“She is a he, and while Dawson can be an ass most of the time, I do think he already appreciates that he doesn’t have to explain things to me.”

“The guy’s an ass?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”Handle. Man handle. “You wouldn’t have been able to walk the next day.”Great. Now my brain was back there again, where it had spent the hour-long trek to Simon’s apartment, a trek that should have been a half hour, tops. But I’d been so thrown by the comment Dawson made that I’d gotten on the A train goingdowntowninstead ofuptown. And I didn’t notice until we were all the way down at City Hall. Thankfully, an uptown express train had pulled in as soon as I got off the wrong one, so Simon didn’t have to wait too long. But I needed to pull my mind from the gutter.

Simon’s forehead creased. “Naomi?”

My eyes jumped to his. “Yeah?”

He smiled funny, and I realized he was holding a carton out to me. “I asked if you wanted to try a crab rangoon? They’re vegan, so the crab is probably tofu, but I figured we could give them a shot.”

“Oh. Sure. Yeah. Thanks.” My zoning out was rude, and a subject change was definitely in order. “Tell me about the work you’re doing in India.”

Simon lit up as he spoke about the kids he’d been helping. He told me about a six-year-old girl who couldn’t even speak because of the facial deformities she was born with. He and his team had done five surgeries on her, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room when she’d come back last week and said his name. Her parents told him she’d been practicingDr. Andrewsall day and night.

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