“Maybe.” Victoria shrugged. “I don’t know how I’ll feel in a couple years, so I’ve taken precautionary measures to keep that option open.”
“‘Precautionary measures’? What does that mean?” He took a sip of his beer.
“I had my eggs frozen when I was thirty.”
He paused, mid-sip, and then set his beer bottle back down. “That’s . . . very forward-thinking.”
“Maybe it seems that way now, but I predict that in five, ten years, it’s going be an option a lot more women consider.” She leaned in. “Let’s be honest, it’s an advantage you men have in the dating game, a chip you wield over us—our biological clocks. How many times have I seen a woman, like me, single in her thirties, successful in her career, but she’s in a near panic when it comes to her personal life because she wants kids and she’s done the math: she has to meet a guy by the time she’s this age, so she can get married by this age, and pregnant a year later. I say the hell with that. I will decide if and when I’m ready to have kids. I’m not about to cede control over that to Fate, waiting around for Mr. Right to show up on my doorstep.” She paused, catching that.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
“Wow.” Ford rested his arms on the table. “I can’t decide if I’m frightened by you on behalf of the entire male gender, or really fucking turned on.”
She flashed him a grin. “All part of my allure.” Taking another sip of her cocktail, she decided it was time to turn the tables. “So what about you? Why are you still single?”
“Maybe I’m no one’s idea of Mr. Right.”
“I’m not even going to stroke your ego by responding to that.”
He gestured vaguely. “You’ve heard it all before. Afraid of settling down, don’t want to lose my freedom, enjoying playing the field . . . the usual stuff.”
Yes, Victoria had heard it all before. But with several years’ experience deposing people and cross-examining them on the witness stand, she’d gotten pretty good at sensing when someone was holding back. And there was something about Ford—perhaps that touch of wariness lurking in the depths of those blue eyes—that made her think there might be more to his single status than this rote list of thirtysomething male commitment angst.
She tabled the issue when their French fries and dips arrived. After asking Ford about work, she learned that he’d discovered an interest in writing in college, and had started as a beat reporter in the Trib’s metro department after graduation. From there he’d worked his way up to the position of investigative journalist.
“It’s a different way of approaching a story,” he explained. “Beat reporters tell you what happened—the straight-up facts. For example: so-and-so got arrested for such-and-such crime. An investigative journalist, on the other hand, might look at how the arrest was handled, or why this person was arrested when there doesn’t seem to be much evidence, or why the police aren’t looking at this other guy over here.”
“Basically, you’re just nosy.”
“I like to think of it as asking the bigger questions. Digging a little deeper to find the real story.” He gestured. “Take you, for example.”
She pulled back in surprise. “Me?”
“Sure. I’ve been trying to figure you out for a couple weeks now. Then you made that comment the other night about your father, that you haven’t seen him for over twenty years.”
“So? What does that tell you?”
“For starters, I’m guessing your parents were either never married or got divorced,” he said.
“Divorced.”
“And can I also assume that your mom raised you?”
“She did.”
“See? There’s the story,” Ford said. “Divorce lawyer, raised by a single mom yourself, you go out of your way to help my sister, also a single mother. Do you know what that tells me?”
Probably, she didn’t want to know. “I didn’t go out of my way,” she scoffed. “Your sister was crying in the hallway while pushing a baby stroller. I asked if she wanted to wait for you in my place, and everything spiraled from there.” She pointed a French fry at him. “You want your story? You Dixons have invaded my life, that’s the story.”
He shook his head. “I think you have a soft spot, Victoria Slade.”
Something about the way he was looking at her made her think of Audrey’s comment the other evening.
You could knock on his door, have great sex with a gorgeous man, and be home in less time than it takes to get a mani-pedi.
Still not a good idea.
But when he looked at her that way, it took her a moment to remember why.
* * *
IT WAS DARK outside by the time they left the bar and drove home. In their parking garage, Ford asked when she’d started her own firm, which led into a conversation about one of her very first cases.
“They were two of the most stubborn people I’ve ever met in my life,” she said, as they walked to the elevator. “The husband and wife both refused to move out of the house while the divorce was pending, so they drew a line down the middle and each stayed in their respective half.”
Ford laughed, punching the up button. “Get out of here. That’s like something out of a sitcom.”
“I’m completely serious. They used painter’s tape on the floor to make the line and everything.”
“How does that even work? How do you divide a kitchen in half?”
“Oh my God, the kitchen . . . No, you can’t divide it in half, so we had to negotiate a schedule of the hours each of them could use it. The other lawyer and I spent two days fighting over things like who got to eat breakfast first, or the wording of clauses that required each party to be responsible for cleaning up his or her own dishes.” They stepped into the elevator. “It’s funny now, but at the time I kept thinking, ‘I did not work my ass off in law school for ridiculous shit like this.’”
She smiled at the memory as the elevator doors closed, and leaned back against the wall. Then she noticed Ford was watching her. “What?”
“Just thinking how different things might have been if the blond woman hadn’t sat next to me that night at The Violet Hour. Right at the moment you looked over.”