I ignored Josh’s sarcasm and switched back to the case. I wanted to finish all my work before I left so I didn’t have to spend the weekend worrying about it. Our Vermont trip was tomorrow, and while I wasn’t looking forward to two days in a cabin with Josh, I was looking forward to my first vacation of the year.
I didn’t count my trip to Eldorra for Bridget’s coronation. I’d only been there for a weekend, and it’d been so crazy I barely had time to sleep, much less sightsee.
“Now, about the Bowers.” I tapped my pen against the paper. “Lisa mentioned we could provide free medical checkups for Laura while she’s healing.”
“Yes. Usually, we have them come into the free clinic.” Josh waved in the general direction of the exit, and it only occurred to me now that he must’ve been staffing the clinic all day. The pop-up tent was set up outside LHAC, so I wouldn’t have seen him arrive. “But given Laura’s situation, we can make home visits. We just have to fill out the appropriate paperwork…”
For the next hour, Josh and I worked on the Bower case together. He created a checkup schedule and handled the medical paperwork while I finished fact checking the details and gathered the information we needed to clear Terence’s record.
I snuck a glance at Josh while he scribbled something on a blank sheet of paper. His brow etched with a frown of concentration, and I realized it was the first time I’d seen him work.
“Like what you see?” he asked without looking up from his paper.
Heat crawled up my neck again, this time from embarrassment. “Only if the thesaurus changed like to be a synonym for loathe.”
The corner of his mouth curved up a fraction of an inch. “Truce, JR.”
I couldn’t tell whether the soft reminder was mocking or not, but it made my stomach flip. Maybe he had poisoned the cupcake.
I highlighted a passage in the case with more aggression than necessary. Josh and I made a surprisingly good team, but I didn’t fool myself into thinking our truce was a precursor to an actual friendship.
Only a few things in life were certain: death, taxes, and the fact that Josh Chen and I would never be friends.