Free Candidate: A Love Story by Tracy Ewens

What’s up with that?”
    Kate shook her head in amazement at the absurdity of the conversation. “Argyle. They are argyle. It’s a thing, an accent. Some men are into accents, Ethan. Black is not every man’s ‘go to’ color.”
    “It’s not right. Anyway, Neil told me about the accident last week. You at the hospital in the middle of the night.”
    Kate rolled her eyes, but Ethan continued. “You staying out of trouble?” Ethan smiled and Kate forgot to be mad. He was closest to her in age and usually the one in trouble. Growing up, she had always been the good girl, but Ethan used to ask her if she was staying out of trouble. When she was younger it made her feel a bit rebellious, like maybe she was capable of hanging with his crowd. Even as an adult, if Kate ever felt like getting into trouble, Ethan would have her back. He often infuriated her, but brothers were nice to have.
    “I wasn’t in the accident, as I’m sure you already know. I was just there to make a statement. Yes, I’m staying out of trouble. Thank you for stopping by to see me. I’m sure it had nothing to do with your need to perform your death grip handshake on my client.”
    “Your ‘client’ looked awfully cozy when I walked by. I’m pretty sure there was a little hand touching there.”
    “I . . . I don’t even know what to say to you. We were not touching hands. But let’s just say we were. Let’s say we had just gotten our clothes back in place when you came around the corner.”
    “Oh Christ, please, I’m a visual guy, Sis.”
    “Let’s say that. I was, what’s that you call it, oh yeah, ‘getting some’ with my client.”
    Ethan was now covering his face with his hands to extinguish the image of his sister “getting” anything.
    Kate pulled his hands down and went up on her tiptoes so they were almost eye-to-eye. “So? So what? I’m a grown woman and I do not need a bodyguard. I can do what I want.”
    “So you are,” he gestured between Kate and the conference room door, “with him”?
    “No!” Kate was clearly not making any progress. “I don’t have time for this. I have to get back to work.”
    “Okay, I didn’t mean to get you all riled up.” He kissed her forehead. “I’ll let you go, but Katie—” Kate was back at the door to the conference room, but she looked over at Ethan. “He’s not for you. Not in your league, so be careful.”
    Kate laughed, a little. “That is actually quite insulting, but since you’re an idiot, I’ll let it slide. I love you anyway, now go away.”
    “I love you too. Go be important.”
    Kate returned to the conference room. Her face flushed with some combination of anger and embarrassment. She shut down her personal life, and that sometimes included her family, so Ethan showing up and the thought of getting anything on with Grady had thrown her off. She sat and took a sip of water.
    “Okay. I’m so sorry. Where were we?” She looked up at Grady and he was blowing into a folded piece of paper. As he blew, the paper turned into a cube. He handed it to her.
    “Oh wow, I left you so long that you’ve resorted to origami?”
    “Very good, Kate. I only know two or three things. If you and your brother had been a bit longer, I was going to start working on a swan.”
    Kate smiled and set the paper balloon down on the table.
    “Do I want to know how you know origami? Family immersion trip to the Orient maybe?”
    Grady smiled. “Ah, see, I love the quick wit. No, as I’m sure you already know, the Malendars have never been to Japan as a family, but I have. Didn’t learn origami there though. Picked up the art of paper folding from a girl I dated in college. She’s also the one that introduced me to table tennis.”
    “Wow, important woman.”
    “She was.”
    “What went wrong?”
    “It was,” he pretended heartbreak, “it just wasn’t meant to be. She dumped me.”
    Kate picked up her pad and tried to get the conversation back on track, but she