Chasing Forever (The Forever Series #1)(14)

“You don’t like your food?” Lucas asked, leaning into her shoulder.

Of course she liked her food. It looked amazing. It smelled amazing. She didn’t like being forced to spend the day in close contact with him. It reminded her of how pathetic she acted six years ago craving more time with him as if she were a lost puppy with no life outside of him. “It tastes fine. I’m not hungry.”

Lucas arched one eyebrow. “If you say so.”

“So Regan, how do you like working for Martin and Black?” Jack asked, drawing her attention away from Lucas’s compelling amber eyes. Couldn’t his eyes be a little less noteworthy?

Like black to match his heart, she thought bitterly. He had long dark lashes, a perfectly sculpted jaw line, and dimples. If God was fair, he would have spread the genetic wealth. But no, Lucas got it all.

Regan placed her fork diagonally across her plate. “I haven’t been there long, but I’m really excited about being part of the team this summer.”

Jack took a sip of water. “You’re lucky the partners paired you up with Lucas. He’s a great attorney, one of the best at Martin and Black, even if he hasn’t officially made partner yet. I’m sure you’ll learn a lot from him.”

Luckily, she didn’t have any food in her mouth. She might have choked, and that would have been embarrassing. Would Lucas bother to perform the Heimlich maneuver on her or would he let her die? Judging from his behavior six years ago, he probably wouldn’t lift a finger to help her. He was that big of an *. “I hope so,” she responded flatly, because what else could she say?

“You don’t have to be so formal. Do you like working with Lucas?” he persisted, wagging his finger between the two of them.

“Well, um…” she said stalling for time. She couldn’t blurt out the million and one reasons why working with Lucas was anything but lucky, so she settled for a vague answer that meant nothing. “He impressed me in the deposition today.” She could tell from his deposition that he was smart, brilliant even, but she suspected that six years ago too. She didn’t need to sit through a deposition with him to learn that. It was one of the reasons she found him so attractive when they met. Now, however, it was one of the reasons she hated him. “I guess that makes me lucky to be working with him this summer.”

Lucas squeezed her leg under the table and she briefly fantasized about bending his fingers backward, but she shifted away from him instead. “I think you’ll be impressed with Regan too,” Lucas said, smiling at her and then turning back to Jack. “She’ll be supporting me and Richard this summer. Everyone in the firm is excited she accepted the position. We have high expectations and from what I’ve seen so far, I think she’ll exceed them.”

Smiling, Jack nodded his head in her direction, then returned his attention to Lucas. “The deposition went well. Don’t you think?”

“I’ll have to review it in detail, but I think Michael Anderson came close to admitting that North Relief contacted Peterson before the dissolution of the partnership. What do you think?” Lucas asked, turning toward Regan.

With two sets of eyes boring into her, she forced herself to concentrate on the conversation instead of Lucas’s earlier comment. Since when did a senior attorney ask a summer associate her opinion of a deposition in front of the client? Almost never or at least that’s what she assumed, but what did she know. She hadn’t been a summer associate before. “I think you’re right, but he did try to downplay the idea North Relief made an offer or that they had mentioned any mine in particular.”

“He did,” Lucas answered quickly. “But I’m not sure that matters. And once we receive the business records we subpoenaed, he might clarify. I couldn’t get him to answer the question clearly.”

***

An hour and thirty minutes later, Regan sat in a chair in front of Lucas’s desk, yellow notepad in hand, listening to Lucas rattle off a list of a hundred things she needed to complete in the next few weeks. Her hand cramped uncomfortably trying to document every word coming out of his mouth. She wanted to ask him to slow down, but she’d rather die than admit that she couldn’t keep up with him.

On the drive back to the office, Lucas hardly said two words to her. She wondered if she had made some sort of mistake during lunch. She ran through her limited contributions to the conversation, but nothing obvious popped out at her. Thinking back to college, she remembered his mercurial moods. One minute he acted like he couldn’t get enough of her and then other times he looked right through her.

Sadly, she should have realized his attention was part of a game. When his friends were around, he hardly acknowledged her, but when it was the two of them, the things he said and did had her eating out of his hand, quite literally. With the power of all his charismatic charm focused on her, she actually felt interesting and desirable. She loved when he would absently twist her hair around his finger while they talked. Just the thought of it made her shiver. She was totally pathetic, but she learned her lesson. She rolled her pen between her hands and straightened her spine.

“Regan, are you listening?” Lucas asked, his voice terse.

“Huh?” She lifted her head to look at him.

“Did you hear a word I said?”

She nodded blankly.

“About the research I need you to finish in the next couple days?” he clarified.