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I was 13 years old, again. I was shocked at my physical reaction to this man. He was standing slightly too close to me, but I wanted him to stand closer. I wanted those eyes to laugh for me and with me. I wanted to hear that voice again right now!
    As we made small talk, there was an instant familiarity. Then I realized as he spoke, I was getting aroused and he hadn’t even put a finger on me. And that’s a good thing, too, because I probably would have put that finger in my mouth. He wore no obvious cologne that I could detect, but there were waves of some sort of scent from him that gave me images of being naked in front of a warm log fire someplace remote.
    Mark got back with our drinks. The man said “Mark, I’ve been wanting to congratulate you on the Maersk case. Jessica and I were just talking about how quickly you analyze and get to the core issues.”
    The man looked at me and nodded, as if for assent.
    That wasn’t at all what we had been talking about, but I couldn’t disagree right then. Somehow by making me complicit in that lie, this man had put me at another disadvantage, but I wanted to be there. Complicit, owning a secret with this man.
    “I’m glad you met,” said Mark. “I’ve told Jessica a lot about you Max, and I think she thought I was inflating the image.”
    Max Moore was the head of Mark’s firm. Moore and Associates was known throughout the legal community, certainly, and probably much farther than that. It was the firm of the most-aggressive, and certainly the best-educated and well-supported, lawyers in Seattle. Some of those lawyers had staff who had staff to do research.
    I excused myself to the ladies room to gather my wits about me. Remember when I said some older men were erotic? Max Moore was one of them, exuding an aura of brains, confidence, and sheer power that was pure aphrodisiac. With those eyes that seemed to always be laughing at some joke that only you and he shared.
    “You okay?” Mark asked when I got back to his side. “You left in a hurry. Max had very nice things to say about you.”
    “I’m fine, I just had too much coffee today and didn’t want to leave before you got back,” I said. I did not ask what the nice things were that Max Moore had to say, because I really, really wanted to know, and I knew that would show in my voice, just as the hunt had shown in Mark’s voice for the blond.
    Mark and I were adults. We knew how to exert self-control, so even though we were often approached and sometimes tempted, we kept it together. For a while, at least.
    • • • •
    Life was good. I’d go back to my hometown to see my folks every few months. It was hard watching them get older. They had a comfortable life since my dad sold his fishing boat, or hardware store, or trucking business. I’m not going to tell you which.
    My sister had two kids and was married to a sweet guy we had known in high school who only embarrassed me once by telling me he had always loved me and marrying my sister was second best.
    I told him to never say that again, and he didn’t.
    My dad almost seemed proud of me, his daughter, the city lawyer who had a Porsche (which he pronounced “Porch”), two houses, and who sometimes was referred to in a Seattle Times story.
    But my father loved Mark. If I wasn’t the son my father had always wanted, Mark certainly was. Mark actually stopped coming to some family occasions because everyone (except me) treated him like a god. At the dinner table, if Mark coughed with something in his throat, my mother and sister would race to the kitchen to get him a glass of water. If he just cleared his throat, everyone would stop talking to hear what he had to say. It was gross.
    I teased him about it sometimes. Sometimes I wasn’t very nice, I suppose. Maybe I was jealous. Some of that adulation should have been mine, after all. I may have been making half what Mark made, but my income was still six figures. That was quite small of me, I know, but