Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
JASPER
This is awkward, but I owe it to Professor Rutherford to at least try and salvage this internship and my 3L year. He told me he and Marshall are friends and former law partners too, so the stakes here are enough that I have to swallow my embarrassment and try to move forward.
“Hi,” I manage, sticking my hand out to be as professional as I can be. “I mean, hello. I’m Jasper Dawson.”
Marshall looks at my outstretched hand for a beat, and then shakes it, and I swear I see his full lips curl into a smirk.
Lord help me, that’s sexy.
“A bit beyond handshakes, aren’t we?”
I swear I see his eyes darken as he asks the rhetorical question and he doesn’t act as if his skin prickles and sparks. Mine does.
My brain falters a bit, wanting to go back to the night before when I had opened my hotel room door to greet this snack of a man waiting on the other side. He had worn dress pants and a button-down shirt, signaling he was some sort of professional. Of course, I had no way to know it was a profession that actually mattered. He smelled fantastic when I got close to his skin. Like sandalwood and soap. Maybe leather too, but a fainter scent than the rest.
The smirk on his face in the here and now rises to show a flash of white teeth that looks sexy as hell with the contrast of his dark stubble, and it jars me back to the present and the fact I’m standing in his office.
I look anywhere but him. The expanse of windows, the dark wood bookcases, the couch.
Fuck, not the couch.
“This is awkward,” I finally acknowledge, going with the advice to always say the quiet parts out loud. I can tell my straightforwardness surprises him. I am much younger, so maybe he thinks me less mature than someone who would be so up-front.
Marshall raises an eyebrow and then rests his ass on the front of the desk, so his height difference isn’t quite so pronounced, or at least, I no longer feel like he’s looming over me.
Not that I minded that last night when I was on my knees for him, and he was…
I clear my throat.
“This is awkward, but it is also—” I falter, reaching for the right word, trying to get my bearings.
“Did you know who I was? Last night?” Marshall interrupts me. It’s startling for a moment, because he seems much more like the kind of guy to wait out talking and awkward silences. The kind of guy who will let someone else fill those silences so he can read into their words.
I clutch the leather strap of my messenger bag across my chest. “I did not,” I answer truthfully. “It was the painting in the hallway that tipped me off.” I try a smile that doesn’t work. “Thirty seconds before Penny knocked on your door.”
He just nods.
I lick my lips, wondering if I should stay as silent as he is, some sort of refusal to talk stand-off. Then I remember why I am here.
I ignore the rush of heat that I get from watching him watch me lick my bottom lip nervously.
“I can…compartmentalize…how we might otherwise know each other, Mr. Caffrey. I am sure these things happen more often than I could guess.”
Marshall would know, of course, he seemed smooth as hell last night. No stranger to hookups. And he is the lawyer between the two of us. Well, make that The AIDS/HIV law expert. Capital “T” on “the.” He is famous in certain circles. Circles I have a chance to touch right out of law school if I correctly leverage this internship and the chance professor Rutherford handed me.
And I intend to do just that.
Marshall raises an eyebrow, looking at me for a long minute.
“Well,” he gestures with his large hands, palms up. Given my body’s reaction to just seeing those hands, this is going to be harder than I thought. “The truth is, Mr. Dawson, I owe Lincoln Rutherford far more than taking on a competent law student for a summer internship. You aren’t my employee. You wrote and applied for the grant that’s funding your time here. But, what I signed on for was to have an intern help me on this rather large case this summer and I still need that warm body.” He gives me a look I can’t read. “Yours is just as fine as anyone else’s.”
I nod slowly, feeling the heat of something that is part anger and part blush heat my cheeks. This guy is an asshole, that’s for sure, trying to make it sound like he is doing me a favor by letting me stay in the internship. The internship I worked for that benefits him. He’s getting a free paralegal for this case, but I don’t say that.
Warm body, I cringe internally at his choice of words, feeling them tumble over my brain and bristling at his insinuation about last night. He didn’t have to go there. For a moment, a feeling I thought I was long past threatens to come up. Not quite shame, but something close enough to make me feel cheap.
I bet he used to be a jock. I clock the muscles under his dress shirt and the square cut of his jaw. Probably a former frat boy, too. Figures.
The first item on my to-do list after work will be to move up my flight home. Originally, I had given myself a few days of cushion after the trial, but now I can’t imagine staying longer than necessary.
Even then, it’s going to be a long summer.