“Of course I’ve briefed him,” Jamie replied back instantly, “but I want him to hear it from you. Humor me.”
Because she needed to maximize her time, she faced the Frenchman. “I have a court case and I want to beat my opponent.”
He made a dismissive sound. “Of course you do.”
She took a deep breath. “The opposing counsel is my biological father.”
Didier shrugged again. “Sometimes you face those you care about on the playing field.”
“I don’t care about him.” She gritted her teeth against the roiling of her stomach. “I want to crush him. But every time I see him, he gets in my head. I need to become impervious to him.”
Raising his brow, Didier studied her, silently drinking his coffee.
She watched him, trying to catch a glimpse of any sort of judgment. She was good at reading people and their body language—it was part of the job, after all—but she couldn’t get a bead on his thoughts at all. It was both annoying and impressive.
Nodding, Didier turned to Jamie and said something in French.
Jamie smiled. “I knew you’d understand. What do you think?”
Shrugging noncommittally, Didier set his coffee cup on the table. “I will need to talk to her more, but it is possible.”
“What’s possible?” she asked, looking between the two of them.
“For me to help Jamie to get you ready,” Didier explained.
“I have a very good relationship with my parents,” Jamie explained. “I can understand enmity between someone and their parents, and I’ll have insight into it, but I’m not going to have the emotional experience of dealing with it. Didier, however, will.”
Didier nodded. “My father and I were not friends.”
Jamie snorted. “That’s one way of putting it. When Didier was five, he decided he was going to get away from his father, and the way to do that was to play football. So he began practicing. He always carried a football, or soccer ball as you Yanks call it, with him so he’d be prepared.”
She looked at the Frenchman with renewed respect. “Do you speak with your father at all?”
“He died when I was eighteen,” the man replied neutrally.
She leaned forward. “Do you regret how it was with him?”
He shook his head. “It was just the way it was. I did not want to follow his path, and I would not allow him to pull me down that path with his grasping.”
She nodded, remembering the morning she’d decided to go to the homeless shelter before she found herself on the sidewalk again with her mother, who’d used the last of their money for drugs again. “I understand that.”
“Good,” Jamie said. “You’ll spend some time with Didier discussing that. In the meantime, tell me what you do for fun.”
“Fun?” She frowned.
“Where you let your hair down and enjoy yourself,” he explained with a wry smile. Then, as if he already knew her, he added, “Something outside of work.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have time for anything besides work. The only thing I do is have dinner with my friends every so often.” She wasn’t going to add that was mostly because Louisa insisted on seeing her.
“What about men? Or women,” Jamie added.
“Men, and I don’t have the space or inclination to waste my time with them.” She thought about the man in the hallway and shifted in her seat.
Didier raised his brow. “That is not healthy. Love is important, even if it is casual love.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not as easy for women, because if I go out with the wrong person it reflects badly on my career. My career is too important to me to risk that, so I mostly don’t go out. Plus, I’m on the partner track, and because I’m a woman, if I show anything that indicates a lack of seriousness, they’ll count that against me.”
“Are you interested in anyone?” Jamie asked despite what she’d just said.