Joe said. “We’re two lawyers who just finished a deposition and are discussing our case. I got your text, Henley. You said your client is ready to make us an offer?”
“Ha, ha.”
“Three million dollars in exchange for a non-disclosure? Ask me anything, Sarah,” he said in a lower voice, meant obviously just for her. “I’ll never lie to you.”
Ha, ha, she almost said again.
Instead she told him, “I already asked.”
“Were you satisfied with the answer?”
She thought about it for a second, then told him, “Yes, I think so.” Then she switched back to lawyer mode. “You’ll never prove a case against my client, Burke. You should dismiss us now and go duke it out with Atheena. We’d be much more use to your plaintiffs as a friendly than as a defendant.”
“All right, I did lie to you once,” Joe said. “This morning.”
“What?” Sarah forgot all about her performance and instead gave him a hard look. “When?”
“I don’t understand your theory of the case,” Joe said.
“It’s not my job to make you understand,” she snapped, “and you’d better tell me, Burke.”
He smiled, obviously trying to lighten what had suddenly become a tense conversation. “All right. You asked me why I always stay in a different hotel than the rest of you. It’s not because of the firm discount—even though we do get one. It’s for the same reason I did it in Illinois.” He lowered his voice even more. “I wanted to give us somewhere private to go.”
Sarah stared at him in disbelief. “Wait a minute—you think I’m always that much of a sure thing?”
“I’ve never thought you were a sure thing,” Joe said. “But if there’s anything you and I are good at, it’s always planning our moves ten steps ahead of everyone else.”
It was true, she couldn’t deny it, but it wasn’t supposed to apply to her. “So that’s what this is?” she asked him. “Your ‘moves’?”
“You have moves, too, Sarah. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought this through.”
Not nearly enough, Sarah thought. And that was part of her problem.
The two of them studied each other for a moment in the fading light. Joe blew on his hands, then pushed them back into his pockets. Sarah stood with her arms across her chest, hands tucked under her armpits. She knew they should probably go back inside where it was warm, but she wouldn’t leave the conversation now for a million dollars.
“So you think you’ve been planning this the whole time,” Sarah said, her voice laced with sarcasm. “You knew we’d end up here.”
“That’s right,” Joe said. “Standing in front of the Pocatello airport, having this exact discussion.”
Sarah laughed, despite herself.
“And now you think you know the next ten steps,” she said.
“I’m working on it.”
“I see.” Sarah thought about leaving it there, but Joe must have known her curiosity would win out, because as soon as she asked the question, he smiled.
“So you think you know what happens next?”
“I do,” he said.
“Which is?”
“You come home with me tonight or I come home with you.”
“That simple,” Sarah said.
“That simple,” Joe confirmed.
“Why?”
“Because it’s what we both want,” he said.
And again, she couldn’t deny it.
Sarah looked past his shoulder to a couple entering the building. She glanced down at her watch. “We have to board soon. I still have some work to do.”
“I meant what I said,” Joe told her.
“Which one?”
“You can ask me anything, and I’ll always tell you the truth.”
“Really, Burke? You sure you want to make me that offer?” She hadn’t meant it to come out so hard, but there it was. “Because somehow I don’t think so. You obviously haven’t thought ten steps ahead on that one.”
Because they both knew, Sarah thought, that the only real question in all of this—the only thing she could possibly care about—was why: why he left her, why he did it so abruptly and in a way guaranteed to cause her the most pain, why she should ever trust him again, no matter how great he was in bed, no matter how much his strategy might involve being nice to her now, six years too late—
“I have to go,” she said.
“You think I don’t know?” he asked before she could walk away.
“Know what, Burke? Let’s hear it.”
“That I blew it?” he said. “That I hurt you? Of course I know that, Sarah.”
She hadn’t expected him to put it out there like that, to acknowledge it, not to shy away from it, the way she’d been doing every time they wandered too close to