“Not rude. Just . . . blunt, I guess. Most people don’t say stuff like, ‘Do you like your job or do you do it because your parents told you to?’”

“Well, one, I’m not most people, and two, I didn’t say exactly that. Lots of people do things because they’re expected to do them. Very few people do things because they love to do them.”

She leaned around him to grab some tissues and that’s when he saw the glasses she had to wear when she worked.

“You wear glasses?”

“When I’m doing close-up work, yes.”

“I like them.”

“Hm.”

“I went to college because it was expected. I never had any intention of doing anything else. I’m the oldest, it’s my duty. But I don’t resent that. My family values education and it’s absolutely true that my education has served me well, presented me with opportunities I’d never have had otherwise. As for law school? For a while I considered urban planning. I still love it, though I do it from a different angle.”

“What about urban planning appeals to you so much?”

She liked to listen to him talk. Liked the easy way he had. So sure of himself, cocky, arrogant even, but not in a douchey way. He liked who he was.

“As you point out, I grew up with a lot. My parents raised us with the knowledge that we had a duty to give back because not everyone had what we did. My father and grandfather before him have always been involved in city planning issues. My grandfather is a master at getting people to pony up money and other resources to social services, for instance. My father and I sit on a committee of public and private representatives to deal with the scarcity of services for the homeless in the county.”

“And how does planning affect that?”

“For instance, there are shelters, but the people in them can’t come in until after six at night and must be out by seven in the morning. They don’t always have the sort of facilities you’d need to land and then keep a job. So how do you then transition from homelessness to getting an apartment if you can’t wash your clothes? If you have no ability to shower?”

You took shitty baths in sinks at gas stations. Your clothes smelled. She got that.

“So we helped raise money and get the neighborhood involved in the planning of a day center. There’s a laundry where people can wash their clothing and their blankets if they stay on the streets. There are showers with donated soap. A few days a week we’ve got nurse practitioners who come in. It took a lot of people from a huge array of perspectives and interested groups to make it happen. Took us seven years from the first talks about ideas to getting it up and running.”

“Wow. Congratulations, it sounds like a much-needed service.” And it was a prime example of what she’d meant about how he was an ass**le, but not an entitled one. He took his skills and his connections and he used them for good. “But you went into law instead of planning?”

“I did. I like the law. Levi and I are good at it. We have different practice areas of course, but it’s a family business and I found my place in it. I do have a brother who is an architect, so clearly that runs in our genes too. I interned at my family’s firm during the summers and realized that’s what I wanted to do. I like the courtroom and not everyone does.”

“So you’re like one of those TV lawyers?”

He laughed as she smiled at her desired result. Of course she knew television lawyer shows were like the bane of actual lawyers, but she liked it when he laughed.

“Not so much. I do a lot of trial work. Appellate. I don’t know if I’d love it as much if my practice was mainly motions and briefs. I like the people I deal with. Most of the time I like my clients.”

“Appellate is what?”

“State supreme courts, United States Supreme Court, U.S. appellate courts.”

She had him pegged as a mover and a shaker and he clearly was. She wasn’t an expert on the legal system, but she knew enough to understand that if you argued before those courts you were a hotshot.

“I’m impressed.”

“No, you’re not.”

Annoyance rankled her. She was being serious and he blew that off. “Don’t tell me what I am or am not.”

He turned his head, careful to keep his body in place. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“It’s pretty difficult to offend me. But telling me what I think or feel is a way. I don’t say things I don’t mean. And if I’m wrong, I’ll say so.”

“I apologize. And thank you for the compliment.”

“Apology accepted.” She paused a moment and got back to work. “So tell me about your daughter.”

“It’s your turn to tell me something. I know you were in foster care. Do you have any biological family at all?”

“Some.”

“Are you in contact with them?”

She had one aunt who sent her Christmas cards. She used to never even open them. But a few years back she started to. They never said much and she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not.

“Not really, no.”

“Ah.”

Ah? Like he knew? She was touchy when it came to this subject, which is why she so frequently steered far in the other direction from it.

“How did you meet your ex-wife?”

“We’re still talking about you. Why did you leave Arkansas?”

“Have you ever been to Happy Bend?”