He'd been the TA in her Contracts course. After a few classes, some of the students started hanging around together afterward, going out for pizza, talking the ever-fascinating law talk. And then one night everyone else went home early.

She and Joe had closed the place, in the course of the night leaving Contracts behind them, discovering a mutual interest in backpacking, skiing, the Great Outdoors. Christina also liked Joe's looks, his full head of black hair over a chiseled face. A cleft chin like her father's.

Joe and some friends were going out in the Tahoe Wilderness for five days over Thanksgiving. Would Christina like to come?

No push, no come on. She'd liked that.

After a while, she came to recognize that she liked his manner and his personality in a lukewarm way that occasionally got up to a fair impersonation of heat. That was all right. Maybe it would change – she would wait. She didn't trust too much passion. She also desperately wanted to believe that the 'like' could over time transmogrify into 'love.' It was why she had after all this time picked a nice person, someone whose company was, if not thrilling, then pleasant, livable with.

Joe was now at his desk at four in the afternoon, twirling a pen between his fingers, glaring at Christina, struggling to control his anger.

'I don't know why you're so mad,' she was saying.

'I'm not mad. I just thought we'd already talked about this. I mean, you didn't even mention it last night, and now here you are, dressed to impress.'

She spread her hands in front of her. 'Joe, this is a simple business suit.'

'Yes, but every other applicant for summer clerk or anything else sends in a letter and a resume. Then we review it and decide whether-'

'I know all that. Mark Dooher asked me to come down, so I thought it would be appropriate to dress nicely.'

'Which on you doesn't-' He stopped himself, not wanting to say it, to admit that whether she liked it or not, her beauty was an issue, over and over again. 'I'm… maybe I'm a little disappointed, is all.' The pencil snapped between his hands, and he looked down at it in surprise.