Law Offices of Spencer White and Associates

Los Angeles, California

 

Mika blinked a few times, telling himself it was just an apparition, a piece of his overworked imagination playing games with him. He had been thinking about her this morning, so she appeared at his office door. Nothing strange about that.

But she didn’t disappear. And then she spoke his name.

He stared at her harder than he’d looked at anything in a long time. She was so familiar to him! There were little things about her that were different, lines along the sides of her mouth that hadn’t been there when they first met fourteen years ago. But she still had the same deep red hair, shorter now than the last time he saw her, and the same intense blue eyes. Her face was heart-shaped—the only woman he’d ever met that he could actually say that about—with the same full lips that had once offered him a pleasure he’d yet to find anywhere else. And her body…she was thinner now than when he’d first set eyes on her, but still so curvy and impossibly beautiful…

He’d walked into the kitchen of a buddy’s house, looking for a fresh drink during a pretty chaotic party. He was a senior in college, about to graduate and face a future he wasn’t sure he wanted, attending a stupid party at the home of the son of a colleague of his father’s, a high school student he barely knew. And there she was, this gorgeous girl, smearing pâté onto crackers that were supposed to serve as a hangover preventer for the partygoers.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he’d said, speaking to her back. “You hiding out in here, or are you part of the catering company?”

She didn’t respond, not even with a hesitation in her movements.

“You should come join the party. The keg is about to die, but there’s still his father’s liquor cabinet waiting to be raided.”

Again, no response.

Well, hell, he’d thought. Another pretty girl who was clearly uninterested.

“Be a bitch, then.”

She turned in the middle of that particular sentence. Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t.

“Did you just call me a bitch?”

“Yeah. That’s what I call women who ignore my most charming come-ons.”

She lowered her head slightly, a smile slipping across her full lips that only added more salt to the wound.

“You are a bitch if you’re going to ignore an honest college boy trying to have a little fun at an end of the year party.”

“Yes, well, there’s something you should probably know about me.”

“Will it change my opinion of you?”

“It might.” She lifted a hand to her ear, brushing her thick hair back over her shoulder. “Two things, actually.” When she looked up, her eyes were so bright and filled with amusement that he wanted to dive into them, lose himself in them for the rest of his life. “First, I’m only seventeen. I’m in high school.”

“Oh, fuck!”

She laughed, a strange, soundless laugh. “And I’m deaf. I didn’t hear a thing you said before I turned around.”

“Now I know that’s a lie. You’re hearing me just fine now.”

“I’m reading your lips.”

“Bullshit!”

She laughed again. “Try me.”

He covered his mouth and asked her if she was really just seventeen. She shrugged when he was done, his hand falling back to his side.

“No clue.”

He grunted. “That’s fascinating!”

“Not really. Been doing it since I was a little kid.”

“What about…” He moved his hands.

“Sign language?”

“Yeah. What about that?”

“I know it, but prefer to read lips when I’m around hearing people.”

“Show me!”

She laughed a third time, her mouth twisting into the most intense smile, but the sound nothing more than a few heavy breaths. It was strange, but beautiful all at the same time. And then she lifted her delicate hands and began to speak with them, moving them so quickly that he couldn’t imagine ever learning her language well enough to understand what she was saying.

He would, though. He’d learn to do it as fast as she. It came in handy during arguments.

He moved his hands now, standing in his law office, moving back into it like he’d last spoken that silent language just yesterday rather than more than a decade ago.

What are you doing here? Why are you in my office? When did you come back to Los Angeles?

She shook her head, turning to escape out the door. He was fast, though. He ran around his desk and snatched a hold of her arm before she could get halfway through the door. He slammed it closed and began speaking to her again, demanding answers to the same three questions.

She shoved his hands away.

“I can read lips!”

He tilted his head slightly, looking at her from a new angle. This close up, he was overwhelmed by how good she looked, how much the same she looked. He raised his hands to respond to her again, but she again pushed them down.

“Speak!”

“What are you doing here?”

She shook her head, her eyes scraping over his face like nails on a chalkboard. “I work here.”

“Why?”

“I needed a job!”

“I thought you were teaching in Albany?”

She frowned, her bottom lip puckering in a way that made his tastebuds water with the need to draw it into his mouth.

“How did you know that?”

“We still have mutual friends.”

The frown grew slightly, but then turned into something more like anger. Or determination.

“When did you come back to Los Angeles? Why didn’t you let me know you were here?”

“You’re my past.”

It didn’t feel that way right at that moment. He had to step back, or he wouldn’t be able to stop what might happen next. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks, taking in everything about her. She was wearing a pencil skirt that hugged her hips, a blouse that bulged at the buttons that were meant to keep her full breasts from revealing themselves to the world. And there was this pulse in her throat that was beating visibly, pounding like she was a woman who’d just run a marathon. He wanted to touch his tongue to it, to taste the sweetness of her skin and discover if it was the same sweetness that he’d gotten to know so well all those years ago.

“Why are you in my office?”

She reached up and dragged her fingers through her hair, the short haircut changing the shape of her face, but falling so perfectly against her jaw that he almost couldn’t imagine her looking any different.

“They sent me up. Said you needed a temp to replace your secretary.”

“And you agreed?”

“I didn’t know it was you. If I had, I never would have accepted this job, let alone this assignment.”

She was leaning against the door, her hands slipping behind her body almost as if she thought she might be able to sneak a grip on the doorknob without him noticing. There was tension in her expression, in her shoulders. He wanted to touch her, wanted to wipe some of that tension away. He wanted to assure her that he meant her no harm.

“They told me about you downstairs,” she said, the slight monotone that was always there in her voice, the drag that came from being unable to hear her own words, increasing with emotion. “Told me about your escapades.”

“Escapades?”

“I guess you decided that you needed to live up to the reputation you had back in college.”

Mika understood what she was talking about then. Rather than feeling shame, as she had clearly wanted him to feel, he was amused.

“Jealous?”

Her cheeks brightened, and she lowered her stare. “Why should I be? We haven’t even seen each other in more than a decade.”

“Because you left without giving me so much as a chance to say goodbye.”

She wasn’t looking at him as he said it. He was kind of glad she hadn’t been.

“I’m sure Julie could send someone else up,” he said, waving his hand near her face so that she’d look up. “You don’t have to stay.”

Relief seemed to flood her eyes. But it stopped mid-flow, turning into something dark. “I’ll stay.”

“You will? Why?”

She shook her head, her eyes moving to his desk almost as if she hadn’t noticed it before. She crossed the room and snatched a gold-framed photograph off the edge of it. He could see her hand shake as she held it, could see the tension grow tenfold in her shoulders.

“You shouldn’t have this.”

She spoke quietly, almost as if she hadn’t meant to say the words aloud at all. He knew what she was holding and why it hurt her so deeply. He wondered all those years ago why she hadn’t taken it herself. But he was often glad she hadn’t, glad that he had it to study whenever he needed a reminder of why he was in the place he was.

He stepped up behind her and slipped the frame from her hands, setting it gently back down on the desk. He touched her gently, his fingers brushing the side of her face. She stood still for a moment, almost as if she welcomed his touch. But then she pulled away.

“Have you seen him recently?”

“I go every Saturday morning.”

She hadn’t waited for his response. She was out the door and gone, not bothering to pause and read his lips. It crossed his mind to go after her, to demand the answers she had denied him the day she disappeared from his life. But he knew her well enough to know that she would just run faster if he tried to give chase. He’d just have to wait for her to come back to him.

He’d always known she would. He just hadn’t known it would take a full decade.