“That secretary of yours is a real pistol! Sharp. Sassy. And that walk of hers has stopped more than one board meeting dead in its tracks,” said Frederick Ramsey, the senior partner of Ramsey, Sandman & Meyer.
He and David McCloud—his protégé, a junior at the firm—were sitting in lounge chairs drinking lemonade on the veranda at the back of Ramsey’s sprawling ranch house on the first warm Saturday of the year. Their daughters—Dahlia and Keely—were already out on the lake, floating in inner tubes, splashing and shrieking. Their wives were who knows where. In the house, doing what wives do.
“Hot stuff, that one—what’s her name? Shannon? And you know what they say about redheads,” continued Frederick, chuckling to himself.
Yes, David knew what Frederick meant. And he knew that most of the men and even some of the women lusted after Shannon Miller, but he did not add to that line of inquiry. Instead he said, “Yeah. Ms. Miller is the best paralegal I’ve ever had—she’s as smart as all three partners put together, when it comes to litigation prep.”
Then no one said anything for long time. The two men watched their daughters horseplay in the distance. Morning turned to afternoon during the pause that stretched out between them, begging for a subject.
Attempting to supply one, David said, “I wonder what kind of women our daughters will become.” […]
