Then a thought came along to sour her mood a little: maybe in the end her role here was just to be what Gordon had always wanted her to be. Fun.
You know what? Let’s have a twenty-four hour moratorium on thinking about Gordon.
That might be a good idea. Gordon had been a real—
You know what else? That still counts as thinking about him.
She needed to stop this. Stop dwelling on the fears he’d instilled in her and the time she had wasted on him. If she didn’t want to live forever, then she really couldn’t afford to waste all this time contemplating the mistakes of the past.
Things had happened. She had learned from them. And now, here she was—and here was a pretty nice place to be.
Okay. She tested the barrier of the new wall she’d built up in her mind, waiting for it to fall down at the slightest touch and send all her old insecurities rushing in.
It must have been strengthened by the fact that her lips were still tingling from Martin’s last kiss. It was holding firm for now.
Too bad her sense of direction wasn’t doing the same. She almost walked into Bruce Tompoulidis—the law clerk must have been heading out on an errand for McMillan.
“Earth to Tiffani,” he said, smiling.
It wasn’t a nice smile.
Still, Tiffani tried to be friendly. She was going to have to work with Bruce for the duration of the trial and maybe even beyond that. She wanted to be on good terms with him if she could.
“I’m sorry. I was just... making resolutions to change my life forever.”
“You missed the boat, then. You’re supposed to do all that in January.”
Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he really had gotten over the awkwardness of yesterday’s rejection.
She said wryly, “I forgot t
o buy a calendar, so...”
He chuckled. “Well, I’m glad to have run into you. Literally.” He handed her a slip of paper. “The judge needs his dry cleaning picked up from the place around the corner—here’s the ticket—and everyone wrote down their coffee orders here.” Another piece of paper.
That second piece of paper was filled out on both sides.
“Just go around collecting the money from everyone afterwards,” Bruce said.
There were almost twenty names on the sheet and most of them belonged to people she’d never spoken to before. Well, there was nothing she could do about it now. Her first interaction with them would just have to be standing there while they fumbled around looking for exact change.
And if they were anything like her, they wouldn’t have it. A lot of people didn’t even carry cash anymore. So she would have IOUs from people she barely knew—one way or another, this was going to end with her getting stiffed on the price of at least ten of these specialty coffees.
She would never have minded treating someone, but she minded getting ordered to do it for a whole group, especially when money had been tight for her lately.
He hadn’t given her any money for McMillan’s dry cleaning, either.
“You probably won’t be able to carry all of it at the same time,” Bruce said. “Since we’re talking a couple of suits plus all those coffees. Get the suits first, drop them off here, and then go back for the coffees—if you walk fast, it’ll be fine.”
Why did she have the feeling he would have been stuck doing this himself if he hadn’t run into her?
More importantly, why did she have the feeling she wouldn’t be getting hit with all of this if she hadn’t turned him down for drinks last night?
They got caught up in a little bit of a staring contest. Tiffani backed off first—she couldn’t afford not to. He had been there longer than she had, and he could make her life miserable if he wanted to.
“I’m happy to help, but I really have to make sure to be on time. You know the judge isn’t exactly thrilled with having me on this case. Could we maybe split this up?”
Bruce’s expression was so cold it might as well have had frost on it.