I grab my keys and we head out the door to Memorial Park, the best spot to run in the city. After last night’s rain, the air is warm but dry—a gorgeous summer day.

“I stayed at Stanton’s,” I tell him casually.

His round eyes widen. “Really?”

“It was late,” I explain.

“Uh-huh.”

“I was tired,” I offer.

“Mmm . . .”

Then, with exasperation, “It was raining!”

He nods, his boyish blue eyes seemingly all-knowing. “So it was.”

As an attorney, it’s important to know how to turn the tables on a witness. How to steer them away from certain topics. So that’s what I do.

“And how did your ‘date’ go?”

Brent smirks deviously. “A gentleman never kisses and tells.”

On slow days at the office, he has a tendency to fill the empty sound space with his more outrageous stories. The actress who blew him while a thousand paparazzi swarmed outside her car; the heiress who had a thing for danger and how he screwed her while suspended from the chandelier of a sixteenth-century castle. Not all the stories involve sex—just his favorite ones.

“I don’t see any gentlemen here.”

He barks out a chuckle. “Good point. Let’s just say she left my house walking crooked this morning, and leave it at that.”

We start at the Washington Monument, a warm-up pace, side by side but careful to avoid the many other joggers, bicyclists, and in-line skaters on the path. DC is a young city, active and, at least in the area I live, attractive. You can practically see the rivalry in the air, like smog in LA. Everyone wants to be at the top of their game—ready to move up or push someone else out.

If greed is good, in DC, power is king, and everybody’s jockeying for position to get a piece of that pie.

Our steps are steady, our breathing deep but even. “What do you think of facial hair?” Brent asks out of the blue.

I look at his smooth, youthfully handsome face that has gotten him into trouble more than once and shrug. “Depends on the face. Why?”

He rubs his jaw. “I’m thinking about growing a beard. Might save me from getting hit on by high school girls.”

I laugh at his predicament. “I think you’d wear a beard well.”

Several more minutes pass before the Jefferson Memorial comes into view. I believe that when the monuments were being planned, someone didn’t like Thomas Jefferson—because his is pretty far out there. Isolated. In terms of visitors, Jefferson got royally screwed.

“So . . . about you and Stanton . . .” Brent hedges.

I catch his expression from the corner of my eye and it makes me stop short.

Concern.

Uncomfortable friendly concern—like he’s working up the nerve to tell me something he really doesn’t want to have to tell me.

“Did he say something to you? About me?”

Another lesson learned from the promiscuous big brothers? Boys talk.

“No—no, he hasn’t said anything. I just . . . you do realize that Stanton is . . . emotionally unavailable?”

“That’s one of the things I like best about him. Who has time for available?”

We’re walking now, side by side, getting our breath back.

“But you get that he’s . . . spoken for?”

“Of course I get it, Brent—he talks about Jenny and Presley all the time. He’s got a picture of them on his desk and a bunch at his apartment.”

There are pictures of Stanton leaning close to Jenny, in a hospital bed, holding a newborn baby in a pink blanket. Stanton and a little blonde in pigtails, standing next to a shiny pink bicycle after her first ride. Stanton, Jenny, and Presley sitting together on a Ferris wheel, smiling brightly. The three of them are fair-haired and perfect—like the southern version of The Dresden Dolls.

Brent gestures with his hand. “Personally, I think you and Stanton would be great together. And, hey, you wouldn’t even have to change your monogram.”

With a laugh I shake my head. “You are the only straight guy I know who knows what a monogram is and would use it in a sentence.”

“That’s how I roll.”

Then he shrugs. “I just . . . I don’t want to see you get hurt, Sofia. However . . . unintentionally it may happen.”

Brent’s a playboy, but he’s not a shit. He’s had casual lovers or girlfriends who were ready to take things to the next level, when he preferred to remain at their current cruising altitude. When those relationships ended, and emotions inevitably bruised, he’s always felt bad about it—guilty, even.

I tug at his sleeve affectionately. “I appreciate that, but it’s all good. That’s the beauty of friends with benefits—no one gets attached.”

Brent returns my smile and we’re back to jogging. “On a purely selfish note, it’d suck if our unit at the office got screwed up.”

“Our unit?”

He nudges me with his elbow. “Yeah—we’re kicking ass and taking names. We’re like the Avengers. The good ones, anyway.”

“Ooh!” I gasp, playing along. “Can I be Thor? I always liked the hammer.”

He pats my head. “No, you poor, foolish girl—you’re Black Widow, Jake’s the Hulk, Stanton’s Captain America.”

“And who are you?”

The metal of his prosthetic pings as he flicks it with his fingers, grinning. “I’m Iron Man.”