Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) - By Elizabeth Ruston Page 0,9

foolish making, yet at the same time it made her feel deliciously pampered even to sit there and think about it.

She had held off for so many years buying herself the kinds of things she dreamed about: even something as simple as pretty, lacy underwear, bought at full retail price instead of from a discount store. Every time she checked off another item on the list, she felt more prosperous. And what was most shocking, by the time she got to the end of it, was that the entire spree cost her less than three thousand dollars. Somehow she thought it would cost closer to ten thousand—maybe even more. She had built it up so much in her mind, it seemed an unreachable goal back when she had practically nothing.

She still remembered too vividly that day in college when she looked at her bank statement and saw a balance of $4.32. Back then, spending three thousand dollars on luxuries might as well have been ten thousand—fifty thousand, for how impossible it seemed. But these were different times, she told herself with joy. She had finally made it. And furnishing her perfect apartment was one of the happiest experiences of her life.

She didn’t regret any of it now—not a single purchase. Even though she could have used those thousands of dollars over the past six months. But she had to believe she would find her feet again one day. And when she did, she didn’t want to have to start over, pulling herself up from the kind of impoverished life she had grown so accustomed to since her childhood. She accepted that her rapid rise was over—there was no other way to see it. What she didn’t want to accept was the idea that she might start sliding backward to where she came from in the first place.

The food she ate at the airport wasn’t sitting well in her belly. Sarah pulled out the ingredients for a smoothie—organic orange juice, a frozen banana, frozen strawberries and raspberries and blueberries—and whirled them all in her blender. Then she took sips here and there as she changed out of her battle suit and wiped off all her makeup. She pulled a shower cap over her still-behaving hair and stepped into her bathtub shower. And replayed portions of the day as the warm water washed it all away.

***

Sarah set her alarm for four o’clock the next morning to give herself time to exercise. She never used to be that way. She’d roll out of bed, drink a huge mug of coffee, and answer her e-mails before she even started to dress.

But becoming a partner had reformed her. Her immediate boss, Richard, sat her down the day he made the offer and told her she needed to make some changes.

“We’re making you a team leader,” he said. “Elevating you to partner. Not an equity partner,” Richard had continued before Sarah could even register the news. “So you won’t receive any of the firm’s profits, but we consider this level of partnership an important step to full status, once you’ve proven yourself.”

He assigned her a team of five younger litigators. From then on, Sarah would be responsible for all of their files, all of their cases, and for making sure they turned in time sheets for every minute of their time by the end of every day.

“If you don’t write down the time, it never happened,” Richard said. “We only get paid for what we bill.” Sarah had heard that speech many times. She always had more billable hours than any of the other associates. It was one of the factors, Richard said, they’d considered when promoting her. “We know you understand money, Sarah.”

She agreed that she did.

And then she proved it by negotiating an even higher salary than the last team leader had been given.

“We have one concern,” Richard told her. “We need our team leaders to be in top form. The job comes with a lot of stress—you already know that. But being partner is going to double, triple that stress. You understand?”

“Of course.”

“You’re not much for working out, I take it.”

Sarah tried not to feel insulted. She thought she looked pretty good: same slim body she had maintained since high school, always turned out in professional-looking clothes and hairstyle.

“Our insurance premiums go down if all the key employees have gym memberships,” Richard told her. “So that’s included in your package. We have a list of different ones you can go to—you can find