Free The Laws of Attraction by Sherryl Woods

very generous of you, sir, but I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
    “What the devil are you saying?”
    He finally risked a look at Ashley and noted that she was listening avidly to every word. “I’m saying that I’m on vacation. We’ll discuss it another time. Thanks for calling. I mean that, sir. It was very gracious of you.”
    He shut the phone off completely and barely resisted the urge to toss it out the back door. He waited for the litany of questions to begin.
    “Go ahead, ask,” he said finally.
    She grinned. “That was about work, right?”
    He nodded, uncertain where she was going. It didn’t seem to be in the direction he’d expected.
    Ashley held up a slip of paper with little marks on it. “I counted half a dozen references to work, minimum. That’s six dollars in your pot, please.”
    Josh fought a laugh. “You counted that conversation in our bet?”
    “Of course. We had a deal. We sealed it with a toast before the phone rang.”
    “Oh, brother, you must be hell on wheels in a courtroom.”
    She grinned. “That’s another one. Seven dollars.”
    He frowned at her. “Dammit, I was referring to your work, not mine.”
    “Did we differentiate?” she inquired sweetly.
    He sighed. “No, we did not differentiate. This is going to be a lot trickier than I expected.”
    “Which means we should probably change the subject, even though I’m winning,” Ashley conceded with a magnanimous air. “Do you know anything about baseball? I’m a Red Sox fan myself.”
    Josh stared at her, not entirely sure if she was serious. “Really? When was the last time you went to a baseball game?”
    She faltered a bit at that. “I don’t actually go to the games,” she confessed eventually. “That doesn’t mean I don’t follow the team.”
    “Then you watch them on TV?”
    “Not really.”
    “Read the sports pages?” he asked, his amusement growing.
    “Okay, okay, I don’t know a damn thing about baseball,” she finally said. “But people in the office mention it. Obviously it’s something some people care about. I thought you might be one of them. I was just trying to make conversation.”
    Josh grinned and held out his hand. “I’ll take a dollar, please. You mentioned your office.”
    She stared at him with apparent dismay. “That doesn’t count.”
    “Of course it does. Office, work, it’s all the same thing.”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” she muttered, as she dug in her purse and tossed a dollar onto the table. “I’m still winning.”
    “And we have a week to go. Don’t get overly confident, sweetheart. It’s unbecoming.”
    She frowned at him. “Seen any good movies lately?”
    “Not a one. You?”
    “No.”
    “Read any good books?” he asked, fully expecting her to slip up and make some reference to a law journal.
    Her expression brightened. “Actually, I read a great one yesterday afternoon. It almost made me late for dinner.”
    “Would I like it?”
    “I doubt it. It was a love story.”
    “Hey, I’m all in favor of love.”
    She regarded him with blatant skepticism. “You want to read this?”
    “Sure, why not? The fish was very good, by the way. You follow directions well.”
    She seemed startled by the praise. Her gaze shifted to his clean plate, then to her own. “I do, don’t I? Maybe I’ll learn to cook while I’m here.”
    “I’d be happy to be your guinea pig,” he offered. “I have a cast-iron stomach. I have to, given how lousy I am in the kitchen.”
    “Maybe Maggie could give us both lessons,” she suggested. “That could be fun.”
    “Even relaxing,” he retorted. “As long as you don’t turn it into some sort of competition.”
    “Not everything has to be a competition with me,” she insisted.
    “Really? I’ll bet by the time you were three, you wanted to know if your hands were the cleanest when you came to the supper table.”
    “I did not,” she said, but there was a spark of recognition in her eyes that suggested