“What?” She looked around, looking in vain for something he might be referring to.
“Except for when you nearly cried.”
“You’re a rat,” she said on a weak laugh, punching at his shoulder.
“Hey, don’t hit your lawyer. I might sue.”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure.”
“So, candidly,” Paul said, scooting onto the desk next to her, “you should take anything you don’t want someone looking at, or pawing through.”
“How about everything?”
Paul laughed. “I don’t think you have a briefcase big enough.” He pointed at the one sitting under the desk. “The nice thing is, you have one here, so you can take whatever files you want to protect.”
“Wow, I forgot. I didn’t take any work home that night.” She sighed. “Lord, it seems like a hundred years ago.”
“You usually take work home?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah.” They laughed at one another.
“Why didn’t you take work home that night?” Paul wondered.
Torie pushed off the desk and began filling her briefcase. Her mother had given it to her when she graduated with her master’s degree. “Well you know about the little, uh, escapade with Pam, of course.”
“Yeah, I guess that would preclude working.”
Torie laughed. “Actually, the snatch and grab didn’t take too long. Getting Bear’s chain undone from the fence where he’d been tied for the twenty-seventh night in a row took a lot more time.” She shoved a file in harder than she’d meant to and gave herself a paper cut. She shook the injured finger, then got back to packing the case. “I was going to call my mom, preempt her usual Thursday night call, and have a nice dinner.”
“Your mom calls you every Thursday?”
Torie smiled. “Yeah, since she went into assisted living, they have all this stuff they do. But Thursday nights are always open. She hates bingo. She’s lonely,” Torie offered, “sometimes she calls three or four times a week. She misses my dad. Still.”
Paul nodded. “My folks were close, too. With my mom gone, my dad fills up his time with hobbies.” Paul made air quotes around the word hobbies, telling Torie that the hobbies were fairly annoying. “My sister has to deal with it more than me, but motorcycle maintenance?”
“Really?” Torie stopped to stare. “You’re kidding, right? He’s not—”
“Oh, but he is. Never touched an engine in his life until sixty-seven, but now? Up to his elbows in it.”
“Wow. Wish my mom could find some sort of hobby other than calling me. She’s been calling every day. She wants Steven to fly back home. I keep telling her—” Torie suddenly realized how it all sounded, and tried to take it back. “I mean, not that I mind her calling, or anything. I’m glad she can, that she does. It’s just—” she broke off as Paul laughed.
“Oh, trust me, I know. My dad called virtually every night, right around bedtime, for about a year after my mom died. He was heading to bed, you know? Hated to go to sleep, knowing she wouldn’t be there. He’d call and talk for an hour or so, he’d get so sleepy, I’d have to yell at him sometimes.”
“Yell?”
“You know, he’d fall asleep talking to me and I’d be calling to him, ‘Dad, Dad? Wake up and go to bed.’”
“Well, at least I don’t put my mom to sleep.”
“Har, har. I’m guessing you said no to Steven and your mom, about coming, right?”
She knew they were both thinking about how easily her frail mother and her brother could be targets. “Absolutely.”
“Good. You about done there?” Paul reached for the briefcase handle as she did.
She jerked back. “Sorry. Thanks.”
“What is it?”
“I, um…” She looked around, anywhere but at him. “It’s my office. Seems weird to be in here. With you. Under these circumstances.” She hesitated, then continued, “I feel like we’re being watched. That’s weirder.”
Paul nodded. “Weirder. Yeah. Let’s go to dinner.”
“So what made you choose this place?” Torie asked as they sat, sipping a nice glass of red wine while they waited for their meals.
“For what?”
“To celebrate?”
“I like low-key. Making partner’s a big step, you know?” Paul said, buttering his bread, then putting it down to use both hands to gesture. “It’s never been my ambition, though. I wanted to build a company, or take over one that’s really messed up and make it hum, make it profitable.”
“Really? You wanted corporate?”
“Yeah, well more like entrepreneur.” Paul shrugged it off, going back to the bread. “Then life intervened. I needed to get into a firm, get some experience. Who knew it would be eight years?”
“Yeah, time flies, and all that. I certainly never expected to work for TruStructure all this time. And now that I have, I guess I’m sorry I didn’t branch out more.”
“Have you thought about doing your own thing? Everyone knows you. They talk about you a lot at the Chamber, from the board to receptionist. I’ve heard your name mentioned at the leads group.”
“Wow, really? They talk about me?”
Paul smiled at her. “Yeah, they do. I guess you did a talk there about cooperative marketing to build business.”
“Oh. That.”
“I hear it was impressive. So, you have the contacts and the know-how. I saw for myself that they didn’t want you taking potential ideas out of there, especially if they were yours to begin with.”
“Yeah. I have to see if I signed a noncompete clause, or something like that. As you say, it’s been a while. I started there just before…well, you know.”
“Yeah.”
The waiter arrived with their dinners, for which Torie was relieved. She didn’t know how to talk to Paul about Todd. As emotional as they both got over his death, with everything going on between them, how would they?
She wrestled with the thought all through the wonderful dinner. It surprised her that this was his kind of celebrating. They were nearly finished with dinner when she ramped up her nerve to ask about it.
“This has been really nice,” she said, looking around the quiet restaurant, admiring the subdued décor. “Nice to go casual, eat good food in good company. Have an interesting conversation.”
“But?” Paul questioned. “I hear a big ol’ but in there.”
She laughed. “Yep. I’m wondering what happened to the party guy. Back in the day, you would have been dancing on the roof of the McClaren building, shooting champagne corks off the roof.”
Paul threw back his head and laughed, open and free.
“Yeah, you’re right. I would have. Now I wonder who would sue me, and for how much, if I hit them in the head with a cork.”
“Oh, come on, you would not.”
“No, but you have to admit, making partner is a bit more of a sober event than passing advanced law practice and principles.”
“No.” She giggled. “I don’t think so. Bigger milestone. I guess that means you should pick a bigger building and something larger than a two-glass split of cheap bubbly.”
“Hmmm, let me think. Well what about City Hall? Or the new Liberty Bell museum. That would be fairly high. Not the highest in Philly, mind you,” he said, pretending pomposity. “Can’t have that. Got to wait for a bigger milestone to do that.”
“Absolutely. But the bubbly, that can be the good stuff.”
“For the roof? Are you sure?”
They laughed and continued the scenario as they wrapped up the meal with coffee and dessert.
“Lord, this is delicious. Want to try it?” She offered him a spoonful of the tiramisu she was having. It was a date gesture, a comfortable thing to do. When she realized it, she started to pull the spoon back. “I’m sorry, you probably don’t like tiramisu.”
He took her hand, holding it steady as he leaned in, eyes on hers, to take the spoon into his mouth. “It’s nice of you to offer. Thanks. Mmmm,” he said, never taking his gaze from hers. “Tastes good.”