Chapter 3
I THUMBED THE ANTACID OUT of the top of the quickly diminishing roll as I waited for the receptionist to acknowledge me.
Peter—no surprise—hadn’t called back for another appointment, and I’d put off the few new inquiries I’d gotten until after the eighth.
It didn’t matter. My heart wasn’t in it.
I found it increasingly difficult to think about work with the date for the interrogatories looming.
The best I could hope for out of the day was pretty toes.
“Thanks so much for squeezing me in,” I said to the receptionist as I bit down on the antacid, chewing discreetly until the fruit taste filled my mouth.
I’d been practically living on the rolls of chalky goodness since my last encounter at the courthouse with Erik Jensen. I couldn’t think of him as Mr. Tall, Dark, and Dangerous any more, not when he had so clearly positioned himself in the Dangerous-only category.
“My pleasure,” said the receptionist. “Right this way.”
She came around the counter and led me toward one of the high leather chairs sitting in a row at the back of the salon.
“Can I get you something to drink? Coffee or champagne?” she asked.
“Champagne would be lovely, thank you.” It was barely noon, but nothing went better with antacids than champagne.
A petite Asian woman took the bottle of nail polish I’d chosen and set it on the rolling cart beside her.
She placed my feet in the warm scented water, and the receptionist placed a champagne flute in my hand.
For a few blissful minutes, my troubles vanished into the myriad bubbles.
I loved getting pedicures. Next to sex, there was very little that felt as good, and despite my profession or maybe because of it, sometimes sex slid into second place.
I spent so much time cramming my feet into impossible high heels, a habit I had no intention of changing regardless of what happened with my business.
It was heaven to have someone—even someone I paid or maybe especially because it was someone I paid—rub the knots out of my arches.
It would be easy to get caught up in the class disparity, but as someone who made her living the way I did, I knew the woman with my foot in her hands didn’t need my condescension or pity.
She needed my money and honest gratitude.
She gave my arch another long stroke, involuntarily curling my toes, and I bit back a groan of disappointment when she set my foot back into the water and reached for her nail shaping tools.
Closing my eyes, I let my mind drift. The problem was, when it drifted, it always seemed to end up back at the eighth and the upcoming interrogatories.
Nothing good could come of that. I dug in my pocket and fished out what was left of the roll of antacids, thumbing one off the top.
As soon as the fruit-flavored chalk hit my tongue, I let out my breath and felt my chest relax a fraction of an inch.
My response to the pastel discs had become almost Pavlovian.
It was worse than the brief time I’d smoked during college.
It had gotten to the point where I couldn’t get through my day without the small rolls.
The eighth had to hurry up and get here before my habit became an obsession.
I sucked on the antacid instead of chewing it and closed my eyes, giving myself over to the slightly ticklish feeling of pale-pink nail polish being painted on my toes.
Scarlet or hooker-red would have seemed a more obvious choice, but I’d found that for most of the men I worked with, they liked at least the initial illusion of innocence.
Not that any of that mattered if I lost the business I’d worked so hard to build. I bit down on the antacid, grinding it to powder with my teeth and wishing it was as easy to crush the specter of Erik Jensen and the looming deposition.