Maybe This Time Read Free

The housekeeper will clean and cook for you. If you come by tomorrow, Kristin will give you a copy of this folder with everything you need in it and your first check, of course.”
    Andie sat there for a moment, a little stunned that she’d said yes. She’d felt the same way after he’d proposed.
    â€œI’d appreciate it if you could go down as soon as possible.”
    â€œRight.” She shoved her hair back, picked up her purse, and stood up again. “I’ll drive down tomorrow and see what I can do. You have a good winter terrorizing the opposing counsel.”
    She headed for the door, refusing to look back. This was good. She’d given back the checks and cut the connection, so she could spare a month to save two orphans. Will was in New York for the next two weeks anyway, and he’d come home to a fiancée with no debt, and then—
    â€œAndie,” North said, and she turned back in the doorway.
    â€œThank you,” he said, standing now behind his desk, tall and lean and beautiful and looking at her the way he’d used to.
    Get out of here.
“You’re welcome.”
    Then she turned and walked out before he could say or do anything else that made her forget she was done with him.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    After Andie left, North sat for a moment considering the possibility that he’d lost his mind. He’d had the résumés of several excellent nannies on his desk, and he’d hired his ex-wife instead.
Fuck,
he thought, and deliberately put her out of his mind, which was difficult since she’d mentioned blow jobs. Which were irrelevant because he and Andie were over, had been for ten years.
Blow jobs.
No, she was right: Draw a line under it. He went back to work, making notes on his newest case as the shadows grew longer and Kristin left for the night, definitely not thinking about Andie, his black capital letters spaced evenly in straight rows, as firm and as clear as his thinking—
    He stopped and frowned at the page. Instead of “Indiana” he’d written “Andiana.” He marked an
I
over the
A
but the word sat there on the page, misspelled and blotted, a dark spot on the clear pattern of his day.
    There was a knock on the door at the same time it opened.
    â€œNorth!” his brother Sullivan said as he came in, his tie loosened and his face as genial as ever under his flop of brown hair.
    Say hi to Southie for me,
Andie had said. It had been ten years since anybody had called Sullivan “Southie.”
    â€œYou look like hell.” Sullivan lounged into the same chair Andie had taken and put his feet on the desk. “You can’t work round the clock. It’s not healthy.”
    Your whole life isn’t the damn law firm, North,
Andie had said a month before she’d left him.
You have a life. And you have me although not for much longer if you don’t knock off this I-live-for-my-work crap.
    â€œI like my work,” he said to his brother now. “How’s Mother?”
    â€œNow that’s health. That woman was built for distance.”
    North pictured their elegant, platinum-haired mother running a marathon in her pearls, kicking any upstarts out of the way with the pointed end of her heels as she crossed the finish line. She’d been thrilled when Andie left.
    â€œIt’s you I’m worried about,” Sullivan was saying. “You’re working too hard, too much on your plate, trying to run the whole practice with Mother gone—”
    â€œMy plate is fine. However, I am in the middle of—”
    â€œNo, no, it’s time I helped out.” Sullivan smiled at him. “I’ve been thinking about what I could do, but I figure you’d fall on your number two pencil before you’d let me help with the practice.”
    North looked down at the black pen mark that made “Andiana” such a blot. A number two pencil would be a good idea if