The Ballerina's Stand. Angel Smits

if she understood. “I don’t do criminal law.” When she frowned, he lifted a hand. “I have colleagues here who do. Let me do some research.” He pulled out a card and grabbed a pen. He wrote on the back. Bring your foster parents with you. Come back and I’ll help. He added his signature so they’d know it was legit.

      He handed the card to the boy, which brought a smile to his young face. He nodded and made a gesture cupping his hand from his jaw to his chest. “Thank you,” he said in accompaniment.

      Then Jason faced Lauren. She was making the same gesture and smiling at Dylan. She signed quickly and Dylan answered, then faced Jason again. “She thinks my foster parents will be glad.”

      Jason lifted his hand and, for one last question, he used his rough finger spelling. “Tina?” He made the question mark in the air as he’d seen Lauren do earlier.

      The boy’s face fell. “She’s mad at me. But she came home. Should she come?”

      Jason slowly nodded, a look of what he hoped was resoluteness on his face. Lauren signed. “We’ll try,” Dylan said.

      That’s all he could ask. As they stood and turned to leave, Jason took a step and reached out to touch Lauren’s arm. She looked back with a questioning frown. Jason tapped her file on the desk and held it up. “We need to discuss your inheritance.”

      She stared at the file. She put her hands together, then moved one forward in front of the other an inch or two.

      “She says later,” Dylan explained.

      Lauren’s hands moved quickly again, and Jason’s frustration returned.

      “What?” Jason asked.

      Dylan’s movements in sign were fluid, perfectly in sync with his words. “She says if you keep me out of jail, she’ll consider it.”

      That was it? Even he could read the message in her body language—she wasn’t asking him. She was telling.

      Reluctantly, Jason nodded and tried to imitate her gesture for later, then slowly created O-K. He must have been close, because she smiled and the boy laughed.

      Jason walked with them to the elevator, feeling strange not speaking the normal, polite conversation his mother had beat into his thick skull, but they seemed comfortable.

      The metal doors whooshed open to reveal a startled Susan, a cup of coffee in one hand and cardboard cup holder with three paper cups nestled tightly in the other. “Oh.” She stared at them.

      “For us?” Dylan asked, his eyes bright.

      “Hot chocolate for you, young man,” Susan said, not bothering to notice they couldn’t hear her. She pulled one cup out, skillfully not spilling anything, and handed it to the boy. She turned to Lauren with a frightened look on her face, as if she knew she’d screwed up earlier, but didn’t know how to not do it again. With a tentative smile, she offered the coffees.

      Not to be outdone, Lauren peered at the cups and chose one, making that same scooping gesture Jason now knew meant “thank you.” She took a sip of the sweet drink, and Jason found his gaze glued to her slim throat as she swallowed.

      Susan cleared her throat.

      “Uh, yes. Thanks, Susan,” Jason said.

      Lauren and Dylan stepped into the elevator and waved as the doors closed. Jason fought the urge to jump in behind them.

      He didn’t say a word, simply grabbed the last coffee and headed back to his desk. He did not want to know what Susan was thinking.

      “New client?” She sipped her own drink as she stood in the doorway.

      “Uh, sort of. She’s not new. The boy is.”

      “Uh, what kind of business does he own?”

      Jason looked up at her, not appreciating the speculation sparking in the woman’s eyes. “It’s a different type of case.”

      “Really?”

      He wasn’t explaining himself, certainly not until he understood what the hell he’d gotten himself into. “Check out sign language classes for me, would you?”

      She actually looked surprised. He glared at her, not liking what was most likely going through her head, though it was probably fairly accurate.

      “And sign us both up.” Jason sat down at his desk and rearranged the computer setup, trying and failing to put his world back to the way it had been before Lauren Ramsey had walked in.

      * * *

      THE ELEVATOR’S MOVEMENT was smooth, and, before Lauren knew it, they were down on the main floor in the shiny marble and chrome lobby. Dozens of people passed, coming and going. The revolving door never stopped.

      Outside, the day was warm, the sky clear. She sipped her coffee, walking with Dylan toward the bus stop.

      There was something different about that man, Jason Hawkins. Lauren couldn’t quite put her finger on it, and the fact that she couldn’t peg it, bothered her.

      Growing up as she had, in foster care, in rough neighborhoods early on, she’d had to learn to read people. Even once she’d gone to live with Maxine, she’d maintained and honed that skill.

      The rich were no less predatory than the poor. They just looked prettier doing it.

      But Jason Hawkins wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met before.

      His office was high-end, chrome and glass, with polish written all over it. But back on the credenza, she’d spied a photo frame of over a half dozen people, all smiling, looking like family. His family.

      Between the frame and his law school diploma had sat a belt buckle. One of those big, shiny Western ones.

      She’d wondered if it was his, or someone else’s. And what was it for? It had caught her eye, and her curiosity.

      She’d had the “joy” of meeting an endless stream of lawyers, judges and social workers in her childhood. Maybe as a kid she’d had a skewed view. But the few lawyers she’d come across as an adult hadn’t changed her harsh impressions.

      Until today.

      Jason had paid attention to both her and Dylan. The fact that he’d figured out how to communicate effectively with them both surprised and pleased her. Everyone else used an interpreter or dismissed her.

      He’d made her feel like she was just like everyone else.

      She stopped, and Dylan, who’d been following her, nearly ran into her.

      “What’s up?” he asked, trying to ask and balance his drink.

      She shook her head, not really able to explain. She glanced back at the building they’d just left and frowned.

      Dylan tapped her arm and pointed to the street. The bus was coming. They had to hurry the last block or wait another hour for the next one. Dylan broke into a run and while she didn’t join him, she did hasten her steps, as much to get away from her own confusing thoughts as to catch the bus.

      * * *

      AFTER LAUREN AND Dylan left, Jason stood at the windows behind his desk, staring at the street below. He shouldn’t be able to make out individuals from up here, but he saw Lauren clearly. Her copper-gold hair bounced in the sun as she hurried behind Dylan toward the bus stop.

      Jason frowned. Why was she riding the bus? One of the world’s prima ballerinas who surely rode in limos and private jets on a regular basis, was catching the bus in downtown Los Angeles?

      He watched until she disappeared inside the bus, and then continued to watch until the bus turned around the corner and vanished between the next street’s skyscrapers. Shaking his head, he turned back to his desk. He had work to do.

      “I’m heading home, boss.” Susan spoke from the doorway and Jason looked up to see her standing there, her purse