Law of Attraction (8 page)

Finally he did, covering her body with his own, saying her name softly as he slipped inside her. She gasped at the pleasure of his penetration. When she could breathe again, she opened her eyes. Nick was still, supporting himself on his elbows, cradling her head between his hands. Their faces were inches apart, and he was looking directly into her eyes. She felt a different kind of thrill as she gazed at him. It was a moment of perfect silence and connection, more intimate than anything that preceded it. Finally, he groaned, closed his eyes, and started slowly spiraling his hips. She wrapped her legs around his waist and moved with him, pulling him deeper inside of her. She let go of everything else—her crazy work and her crazy family and all the complications of living in the world—and just felt this: this pleasure, electricity, intimacy. They came together in a final explosive orgasm that left Anna breathless and shaky.

Nick rolled to his side, pulling her with him. They lay facing each other, foreheads touching, their long, athletic legs tangled like linguini.
She became aware again of the soft rug under her skin, the crackling fire warming her bare back. Nick was stroking her hair, smiling at her drowsily. Her body was saturated with contentment, and gratitude, and a dozen other emotions she didn’t have names for. Or maybe just too much wine. In any case, she knew that if she tried to say what she was feeling, she would sound corny and trite.

So she joked, “I’ve never been this close to an alpaca before.”

8

A
nna raised her head from the pillow, disoriented. This was not her bedroom. She looked around. This was way nicer than her bedroom. The floor was polished wood, the walls were ivory, the furniture was dark wood with modern lines. She was lying in a king-sized bed covered with a dark brown comforter. Light poured in through a sheer white shade that covered a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows; she could see the vague outline of the Washington Monument through the translucent fabric. Anna sat up and brought her hands to her throbbing temples. Her mouth felt and tasted like an old sweatshirt. As she recognized Nick’s black leather briefcase in the corner, images from the previous night flashed back. She groaned.

Oh Lord, what had she done?

She heard the front door open and muted footsteps downstairs. Seeing him in the light of day was going to be awkward. She might as well get it over with. She slowly swung her legs off the side of the bed. Her whole body ached, and she didn’t see her clothes anywhere. Damn. There was a soft white bathrobe draped on a chair next to the bed. Anna pulled on the robe and shuffled to the master bathroom.

It was bigger than her living room, and tiled in light brown stone. A huge Jacuzzi sat under a skylight. She found a tube of toothpaste by the sink, put a dab on her finger and ran it over her teeth, then bent to the faucet and rinsed her mouth out. Her tongue still felt fuzzy but at least it was a minty fuzz. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair. It was the best she could do for now. Taking a deep breath, she walked out of the bedroom, emerging onto the landing at the top of the loft.

Nick looked up from where he was setting bags down on the kitchen counter below.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” he called cheerfully. He was wearing khaki shorts, an orange T-shirt, and flip-flops, and was obviously less hungover than Anna.

“Hi.” She suddenly felt shy.

“Come on down.” Nick smiled. “The alpaca misses you when you’re way up there.”

Anna descended the steel staircase. “I wouldn’t want to upset the alpaca.”

Nick pulled out a stool and gestured for her to sit at the black granite countertop. “I figured you could use this.”

He set a Starbucks cup in front of her. She smiled and sipped the latte, feeling her headache recede a fraction as the caffeine hit her bloodstream. It was exactly what she needed. She looked around the kitchen. It was gorgeous, all dark wood and stainless steel and granite. The floor-to-ceiling rock fireplace was at her back.

From one of his shopping bags, Nick pulled out a box with the words
JULIA’S EMPANADAS
written on it. It was from a little Salvadoran joint down the street. Anna smiled with delight as she selected one of the miniature meat pies.

“I love these,” she said.

“Me too.”

Nick watched her savor a bite. Then he settled next to her at the counter and they polished off the box of empanadas. Anna sat back at last, full and content, her hangover obscured by a cloud of happiness. She studied Nick. He looked adorably unlawyerlike with tousled dark hair and an unshaven face.

“So,” Nick ventured. “Whatever happened to that guy you were seeing in law school?”

“Josh? We were talking about moving in together once we both got to D.C.”

“I always thought he was a smart guy.”

“But he got a clerkship in Atlanta. He’s staying there.”

“I always knew he was an idiot.”

Anna laughed. “No, he’s a good guy. It just turned out we weren’t serious enough to change cities for each other.”

In fact, Josh was one of the sweetest men Anna had ever met—which made him utterly undatable in the long term. Anna realized in college—when she was on the Dean’s List and her boyfriend was getting expelled—that she had a tendency to fall for bad boys. Ever since, she tried to choose nicer men. With Josh, she’d oversteered. He was so nice as to be totally uninteresting. They’d parted ways exactly as they’d dated—amicably and without passion.

“What about you?” Anna volleyed. “I seem to recall that you had
plenty of female attention at law school. All those groupies at your guitar gigs in the Hark. Has there been anyone special since then?”

“Not till last night.”

She looked at him curiously, wondering if this was a standard line, as she was sure the “grand tour” was. Nick stood next to her stool and gazed down at her upturned face for a minute. He leaned down and kissed her. “Anna, I’m crazy about you.”

Anna felt her body respond to his touch now and to the memory of the night before. She’d expected this morning to be awkward, but she felt natural with Nick, completely at ease. All traces of her shyness had disappeared. She deepened the kiss, pulling him toward her.

After a moment, he drew back an inch to ask, “What are you doing today?”

It was a Saturday morning. Although she’d planned to go to the office today and work on some files, she figured that could wait.

“Well.” She regarded him mischievously. “You promised to give me the grand tour, right? But I think we only covered the rug and the bed.” Anna ran her fingers down his chest and stomach to his shorts, where she caressed the growing bulge. He sucked in his breath and nodded, watching as she stroked him. “I don’t think we hit that nice Jacuzzi in your bathroom.” She let her bathrobe fall open as she gathered his T-shirt to pull over his head. “I’d like to be thorough.”

•  •  •

If her life were a movie, Anna thought, the next few weeks would have been the falling-in-love montage. The time flew by in a dizzy whirlwind of late nights in the office interspersed with later nights with Nick. Most evenings, she would stop by her apartment long enough to give her cat some kibble and a pat, then rush over to Nick’s place. When she spent the night with Nick, they didn’t sleep much; they were too busy exploring each other’s bodies. Between her long hours at work and overtime in Nick’s bedroom, she was constantly sleep-deprived, but fueled by euphoria. After a few days, Nick ceremoniously presented her with her own toothbrush in the cup next to his bathroom sink. She never thought she’d be so delighted to receive the gift of oral hygiene.

They didn’t advertise their relationship, and they were especially discreet at work. They both knew they would catch flack from their colleagues when it came out. Romances between the U.S. Attorney’s
Office and the Office of the Public Defender were unheard of. So Anna and Nick kept their interactions to after-work hours, and simply nodded at each other and tried not to smile too broadly when they passed each other in the courthouse. Grace sensed that something was up, but she didn’t pry. She would wait until Anna was ready to explain why her cheeks flushed pink every time her cell phone buzzed with a text message.

Nick wanted to show Anna everything, to share his city and his life with her, and he ferried her all over D.C. like the enthusiastic host of a TV travel show. They went to the trendiest bars and the best restaurants, rushing home afterward to make love. He took her hiking at Great Falls, to a baseball game in his father’s box at Nationals Park, to the Kennedy Center to see
Wicked.
They spent a weekend at St. Michaels, a resort town on Maryland’s eastern shore, where they lounged on a sailboat, lazily ate crabs drenched in Old Bay, and then thoroughly christened the four-poster bed at The Inn at Perry Cabin. She hadn’t known about this side of Washington—this happy, picturesque side, where beautiful people with perfect teeth played and relaxed. She hadn’t known she could feel this strongly about someone in such a short time. She was falling in love with Nick.

They had no other cases against each other. Most of the time, she could forget that Nick worked on the opposite side of the courtroom. Once in a while, something reminded her with a thud.

One hot July day, they were driving to the Jefferson Memorial for a picnic by the Tidal Basin. Nick had lowered the convertible top of his BMW 650i, and Anna breathed in the fresh air. The whole city was carpeted with colorful flower beds, and her hay fever started to kick in. She opened the glove compartment, looking for tissues. Instead, she found a dull black handgun.

“Jesus, Nick!” She yanked her hand away as if it had been scorched.

Nick looked over, saw the glove compartment open, and stretched over her lap to shut it. She waited for him to say something, but he just kept driving.

“What are you doing with a gun in your car?” she demanded.

He sighed. He obviously didn’t want to get into this with her. She kept staring at him.

“Look,” he said, after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. “I have it for self-defense. When
you
go into Southeast, you get a police escort. I go by myself. I hadn’t planned on getting a gun, but a client
gave it to me, and it’s been comforting to know it’s in there when I have to go into a rough neighborhood.”

“There’s a law against carrying handguns in D.C.”

“You’ve read
Heller.
The Supreme Court says that law is unconstitutional.”

“It’s still illegal to have an unregistered firearm.”

“That’s debatable. C’mon,” he said, placing his hand affectionately on the back of her neck. “Are you gonna turn me in? Stop being a prosecutor for a minute.”

“Nick,” she said at last. “This makes me really uncomfortable. Can you please get rid of it?”

“Okay.”

She studied his profile, wondering if he was just agreeing to shut her up. She decided to take him at his word. Of course she wouldn’t turn him in—so long as he agreed to do the right thing now.

“Thank you. And one more favor. Don’t let me stumble across any more of your work product, okay? The less I know about your job, the less likely we’ll need couple counseling.”

“You’ve got it.”

Anna kept thinking about the gun, though, as Nick parked in a lot near the Jefferson Memorial; as they walked down the tree-lined path to a grassy spot by the Tidal Basin; as Nick spread out the blanket and their lunch. What was she doing dating a defense attorney? Their worldviews were too far apart. Anna tore a chunk off the loaf of French bread and absentmindedly broke off pieces, throwing crumbs to a family of ducks swimming by.

“Those are the most spoiled, overfed ducks in America,” Nick teased. “You’re contributing to the city’s duck obesity epidemic.”

“It’s okay. I gave to the duck aerobics foundation.”

He laughed and pulled her toward him. “Come here, you gorgeous duck philanthropist.”

He kissed her, softly at first, then deeper. She forgot their differences. His lips lingered over hers as water lapped at their feet and the sun warmed her shoulders. She was filled with happiness.

Most of the time, things were so good, Anna didn’t think about their jobs when they were together. They had a great time, even if they were just renting a movie and eating microwave popcorn. Nights were the best. She loved curling up with Nick after making love, feeling his chest rise and fall against her back while she drifted to sleep.

A few nights after their picnic, something woke her while it was still dark. She cracked open her eyelids and found herself lying in bed facing Nick. He was awake and looking directly at her. The streetlights outside his building cast a dim yellow glow in the bedroom and made Nick’s eyes look bigger and darker than usual.

“Can’t sleep?” she murmured, her own eyelids drifting downward again.

“The view’s too good for me to be unconscious for it.”

The words were his usual flirty teasing, but his tone was different. His voice was sincere.

She opened her eyes. Nick was gazing at her with absolute tenderness. His expression shook her. She thought of him as one of the “bad boys” she knew she should avoid, a charming game player who, at best, would use her until she stopped being fun for him. With Nick, she was like a chubby kid eating ice cream. She understood how bad he was for her—but he was so delicious. She’d rationalized that her present happiness might be worth the future pain. Now, though—the way he was looking at her—she could see she had been wrong.

Nick loved her.

There was no question about that.

Anna felt a lump in her throat. She reached out to stroke his hair. As her fingers skimmed his temples, she felt a slight bump. She drew her hand away and saw a thin scar, two inches long, just under his hairline. It was a silvery line in the bedroom’s dim light. She hadn’t noticed it before.

“What’s this from?” she whispered, touching the scar.

“Hm.” His mouth turned down a fraction. “A car accident. I was eight.”

“What happened?”

“My dad was driving through the city.”