Page 35 of A Favor Owed

She sighs. “Yeah, okay,” she says reluctantly.

“I’m not trying to get you drunk, Pines,” I say, feeling mildly offended. I mean, I actually am, but not for the reason most guys who resort to that shit do it. I don’t need a drop of liquor to get her in bed with me, of that I’m fairly confident. But to get her to talk? There isn’t much I wouldn’t stoop to.

“I don’t think you’re trying to get me drunk,” she says, her eyes wide and her cheeks getting pink.

“I mean, come on. You’re going to need all your faculties about you if you’re going to resist me,” I say. “I already have an unfair advantage.”

“And what would that be?” she says. Now the wide eyes and pink cheeks are the result of amused outrage.

I sit back and look at her with a cocked eyebrow. “Hello? My Irish charm, Pines,” I say, stating the obvious.

She covers her mouth to stifle a burst of laughter. Okay, I have to admit, it’s definitely fun to make this girl laugh. Maybe because she’s such a hard nut to crack, all serious and intense. I’ve always appreciated a challenge.

I keep up the inane chatter as we have dessert. When she’s halfway through with her second glass of Riesling, I decide to venture into the dangerous territory known as personal questions.

“What do you want to do when you graduate?” I ask. I’m genuinely curious. What does a girl like Angela Pines do with a law degree? I imagine her law firm profile:Angela Pines, a specialist in money laundering, loan sharking, and racketeering, enjoys polishing her collection of brass knuckles and playing the occasional round of Russian roulette in her spare time.

She’s been staring at the crème brûlée she ordered and finally takes a bite. “Oh my God, this is so good,” she practically moans. I swallow. “I don’t usually eat stuff like this.”

“Why not?” I practically choke out. As far as I’m concerned, she should be eating crème brûlée, licking ice cream cones, and sucking on popsicles every single day.

“I was vegan for the last few years,” she volunteers, apparently distracted enough by the decadence of her dessert to disclose a personal fact.

“Why aren’t you still?” I manage to ask, forcing my mind to stay on the task at hand and not wishing I was that spoon.

She shrugs. “It’s expensive,” she says. “Hopefully I’ll go back to it someday. It’s the healthiest and most humane way to eat. And it had the added bonus of pissing off my parents.” She takes another bite. “My foster parents, I mean.”

“Right…” I snap out of my spoon-licking-induced haze. Back to business. “So, you were about to tell me what you want to do when you graduate…”

She pauses to sip her Riesling before answering me. “Anything that helps people who’ve been screwed over,” she says.

“Yeah?” Not the answer I was expecting. I thought she’d go with something generic, like corporate law, tax law, defending oil companies that killed baby seals. “Like your Legal Aid job? You’d do that for a career?”

She nods. “Yes, preferably helping victims of human trafficking.”

I almost choke on my beer. This is it. This is gold. “Human trafficking,” I say, nodding like I’m mildly intrigued. “Pretty intense. What made you want to do that kind of work?”

She shrugs. “You know, the whole bleeding-heart thing.”

Not so fast, Pines. I’m onto something here, and you’re not going to bullshit your way out of it.“I gotta be honest, princess. I don’t get a bleeding-heart vibe from you. You seem like a pretty pragmatic kind of girl to me. Come on, I told you all kinds of things about me. Your turn.”

“You talked a lot, but you didn’t really tell me anything about yourself,” she says. An accurate observation.

“Fair enough. What do you want to know?”

“What were you doing before law school?”

“I was a firefighter.”

Her spoon pauses on its way to her mouth, and she looks at me with wide eyes. “A firefighter? Really?”

“No joke,” I say.

“Wow.” She puts down her spoon and is staring at me like I just cured cancer and drug addiction. “A firefighter. That’s so…brave…and, like, heroic and stuff.”

Okay, embarrassing. Time to downplay. “It’s mostly hanging out in the firehouse talking shit and responding to false alarms.”

She shakes her head. “No, it’s amazing.”

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