“Maggie and Melanie have already listened to me moan and groan enough about all this. They came straight up to Boston to get me after the trial. If you think I’m in bad shape now, you should have seen me then. I was totally impossible and unreasonable. They threatened to have me committed if I didn’t take some time off.”
“Really? Good for them.”
She frowned at him. “Don’t tell me you’re a proponent of the tough love approach, too.”
“I’m a proponent of love in all its forms,” he retorted genially. “Now let me do these dishes, and I’ll get out from underfoot.”
“Josh, I don’t think I’m so shaken that I can’t wash a few dishes. Doing something totally mundane and mindless will be good for me,” she said, anxious for him to be gone before she changed her mind and threw herself at him.
“If you say so,” he replied.
“Go. Do something fun and don’t spend one second worrying about me. I promise I’ll be here in the morning, bright-eyed and ready to go fishing.”
He studied her intently for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, then, you win. I’m out of here. Call me if you change your mind and decide you need company. It doesn’t matter what time it is. I’m not on any sort of schedule right now. I can be back here in a few minutes.”
“I will,” she promised.
He leaned down and gave her a hard kiss that stirred regret that she’d already decided to send him on his way.
“Just something else for you to think about,” he teased lightly. “I don’t want you wasting your whole night on useless guilt.”
After he’d gone, Ashley touched her lips. It had been a helluva tactic. As stressed-out as she was about things in Boston, there was a whole lot going on right here to give her pause. One of these days she’d have to figure out why she was so attracted to a man who seemed to have an endless supply of time on his hands and no noticeable goals that she’d been able to discern.
Josh wasn’t happy about leaving Ashley alone, but the stubborn set of her jaw had told him she wasn’t going to give him any alternative. Better to go gracefully than add to her stress by digging in his heels and staying put. Besides, he had some thinking of his own to do. Maybe this was the perfect opportunity. Ironically the questions plaguing Ashley were not that much of a stretch from those bothering him.
Not that he’d gotten a murderer off recently. He swam in a different legal pond, mostly with the corporate barracudas. It was cutthroat law of a different kind, and he’d pretty much concluded months ago that he wasn’t suited for it. He was always hired to represent one side, but he was too damn good at seeing both sides of the picture, especially in some of the high-stakes mergers and acquisitions he handled. His evenhanded judgment made it a lot harder to go for the jugular, even when that was precisely what he was being paid to do.
People who hired Brevard, Williams and Davenport could pay for the best representation available. More and more lately, Josh had wanted to be on the side of the little guy who couldn’t afford the big guns. Maybe this was his chance to do just that. He had no financial obligations, no family to consider. If he was ever going to dramatically alter his income and lifestyle, now was the time.
A part of him wanted to go back to Ashley’s and bat the whole idea around with her for a while. He had a hunch she would bring a unique perspective to the picture. Maybe it would even help her wrestle with her own dilemma. They could be sounding boards for each other, at least once she got over the shock of discovering that he was one of those lawyers she thought he held in such disdain.
He sighed and dismissed the idea. Ashley didn’t want a sounding board right now. She wanted to hibernate and lick her wounds. He honestly couldn’t blame her. He’d give her tonight to do that, but come morning, he was going to be back over there and was going to insist they talk her situation out some more, especially if she was still neck-deep in guilt.
“You look like a man with a lot on his mind.” Mike startled Josh out of his reverie when he found Josh still sitting behind the wheel of his car in his driveway after he’d driven home from Ashley’s.
“Just thinking about this and that,” Josh said, climbing out of the car and plastering a fake smile of welcome on his face. “What are you doing here?”
“Actually I was out for a walk and saw your car turn in. I decided I’d stop by and see if you wanted a little company. Melanie and Jessie went shopping for school supplies so I’m at loose ends.”
Josh grinned at the restless note in Mike’s voice. “Is that what marriage does to you, makes you incapable of being on your own for a few hours?”
Mike laughed. “Pretty much. I’m still shocked by that myself.” He gave Josh a speculative look. “You’re on your own pretty early, too. Did Ashley kick you out?”
“She had some things she needed to think through,” he said, careful not to allude to what those things were. If she didn’t want her family to know, it wasn’t up to him to spill the beans.
“About your relationship?” Mike prodded.
“No way. To hear her tell it, we don’t have a relationship.”
“I see. What’s your take on that?”
Josh gave the question some serious thought. He liked her, no question about that. He was attracted to her. Definitely no question about that, either. Did they have a future? How could he possibly answer that when neither of them had a clue what they really wanted for the rest of their lives, professionally speaking, anyway? He settled for giving a reply that was honest as far as it went.
“I think that depends on how determined she is to go back to Boston,” he told Mike. “There’s not much chance of having a relationship with someone whose life is hundreds of miles away.”
Mike didn’t seem convinced. “You hear about longdistance relationships working all the time. They’re tough, but it can be done if both people are committed to it.”
“I think it’s a little soon for either of us to be thinking about commitment. We barely know each other.”
“Sometimes the whole lightning-bolt thing happens,” Mike reminded him. “It happened that way for me and Melanie. Same thing with Rick and Maggie. Maybe it’s the way things go with the D’Angelo women.”
Josh thought of how connected he sometimes felt to Ashley, far more connected than he’d ever felt to Stephanie, despite having known Stephanie so much longer. Maybe Mike was right. Maybe time had nothing to do with love. Still, for a plodder like him, it seemed wrong to be thinking of jumping from thoughts of an eventual engagement to a certain woman one day, to a full-throttle relationship with another woman a few days later. A full-throttle affair, maybe, but he’d already vetoed that idea.
“Let’s not jump the gun,” he told Mike. “I don’t think Ashley’s in the best place to be worrying about a relationship with anyone right now.”
Mike regarded him with pity. “A word of advice, don’t wait for her to decide or to be in the right place. If you want her, let her know it. If you want her to stay here, then pull out the big guns and persuade her to stay. If she’s anything like her sisters, this area is in her blood just as much as Boston is, but it might take a little push to help her realize that.”
Josh nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now how about a beer?” he suggested, anxious to change the subject. “We can swap lies and gossip about everyone we know except the D’Angelo women.”
Mike laughed. “Total avoidance. It’s a great tactic. I used it a lot. In the end, it didn’t matter. You can get those women out of your head, but it’s impossible to get them out of your blood.”
Josh was beginning to get that. Oddly, it didn’t terrify him half as much as it should have.
It took a great deal of courage for Ashley to call Jo in