Walk of Shame (Love Unexpectedly 4)

I’m still blinking back tears, but at least I manage to walk away with my head held high.

He catches up with me before I can make it to the elevator, his fingers wrapping firmly around my biceps and pulling me back around. “Georgiana.”

“What?” I snap, turning around. “What can you possibly say that you haven’t said a million times already with every scowl, with every eye roll, with every you’re ridiculous? You think I’m stupid and worthless. I get it.”

The guy’s expression is one tangled knot of emotional constipation. “That’s not what I think.”

“Yeah? Okay. I’m sure there was another interpretation of me being the brainless Scarecrow.”

I try to turn away, but he holds me still, his fingers in a vise grip around my arm. “Just—just give me a minute,” he snaps.

I wrench my arm free. “A minute for what? So you can think of new ways to insult me again? Pass.”

“I thought we had a deal,” he says in what seems to be a slightly desperate voice. “You tag along with me today, so we can prove—”

“That I don’t fit into your world?” I say, whirling around and taking a step closer to him.

He looks wary but doesn’t step back, not even when I stab my pointer finger into his solar plexus. “You know what? I think we can skip the whole exercise,” I say. “I don’t care about whether or not I fit into your world, because I’ve seen enough of it to know I don’t want to belong.”

“Georgiana.”

I put my weight against my finger, pushing away from him disdainfully. “Save it. Go find some woman with a big old brain who enjoys your condescension. Because this girl? She’s not it.”

“Wait—”

I don’t wait. I keep right on walking. “Hey, Charles,” I call over my shoulder, carefully avoiding looking at Andrew. “If anyone comes looking for me, take a message, would you? Let them know I’m unavailable because I’m off being ridiculous.”

Andrew Mulroney, Esquire, doesn’t say a word, not as I stab the elevator’s up button, not after I step into the safety of the elevator itself.

I catch a glimpse of him as the doors shut, his expression utterly blank, and even as I hate him, I want to know what he’s thinking.

I want…him.

Andrew

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

Andrew looked across the desk at another of the firm’s partners and realized he hadn’t absorbed a single word Katherine Hopkins had said since coming into his office ten minutes earlier.

He gritted his teeth against the unfamiliar sensation of being distracted. It wasn’t a familiar emotion. Nor a welcome one.

“Anyway,” Katherine said with a dismissive wave of her hand, “thanks for listening. Poor Jim’s sick to death of hearing me talk about this, but if I don’t vent to someone about the bitch, I’ll implode.”

“Not a problem,” Andrew said smoothly, even though he wasn’t entirely sure who the “bitch” was in this scenario.

Not that it mattered. Like himself, Katherine specialized in divorce law, and also like himself, she had no shortage of high-maintenance, shark-like female clients.

“How are things with you?” Katherine said as she smoothed her skirt and stood. “I’m still jealous you got the Dotson case, by the way. Although it’s just as well. The lawyer in me salivates over the rumored lack of prenup, but the woman in me sort of hoped Liv and Chris were going to beat the odds and make it. They’re so dang likable.”

Andrew shrugged. “Famous people get divorced just as often as regular people.”

She tossed her long dark hair back and sighed. “I know. But sometimes I want to believe in the fairy tale. Don’t you?”

“You’re living it,” he said, picking up the pen he’d bought himself when he graduated from law school. “I’m not.”

“Not yet,” she teased. “And, I didn’t think it was going to happen for me either, but then…bam, forty-two rolled around and I met Jim. You’re only, what, twelve? You’ve got plenty of time.”

Andrew gave a grim smile. His age was a favorite joke around the office. He knew thirty was young to make partner, especially at a firm as large as this one. But then that had sort of been his life. He’d skipped a grade here, another one there. College in three years instead of four, and so on. As far as his professional life went, he’d always been ten steps ahead of his peers.