Convincing Amy (Amy, #1)

Chapter 12: Matthew's Hand

Chapter Twelve 
MATTHEW'S HAND

December

"Ugh! I don't understand any of this!"

Amy Carter was sitting in the quiet Yale library, studying. Or at least trying to study. Nothing was making sense to her. Civil law had always been her weakness. And there was a fairly reasonable excuse: Amy wanted to be a criminal lawyer, and so the civil branch would often confuse her.

"Matt, can you help me?"

Matthew smiled from behind his laptop computer screen. He'd been watching and chuckling at her frustrated sighs all afternoon as she'd read and re-read many textbooks and documents, making a great mess across the table between them. He finished typing a sentence on his report on precedent before peering over at Amy.

"Of course," he smiled. "What's up?"

She groaned loudly and threw a pile of papers onto the seat beside her.. "I don't understand this," she said a little more calmly, handing Matthew a document that gave basic and complex information regarding corporate law. "It's driving me insane. I've never been good at corporate law."

Matthew skimmed over the words before him, reading the title and subtitles. He smiled: corporate law was his specialty. "What don't you understand?"

Amy gave him a tired and wasteful look. "Everything," she groaned.

Matthew returned a light smile. He put his laptop and other work aside and leant over the table to begin explaining all that she didn't understand. Slowly, he took her through the basics of business law from subpoenas to methods of the law in practise. And for an hour, she seemed to be taking it all in.

She had a huge grin on her face as she began typing up her report whilst Matthew was finishing his. But then something happened that made Amy want to scream. A message came up on her computer: "Low battery."

"Far out!" she said heavily as she saved her half-completed report onto her memory key. She'd have to use one of the library computers.

"What's wrong?" Matthew asked, confused as he watched Amy shut down and close her laptop.

"Battery's almost dead," she told him. "I'm going to use one of the desktops."

"Don't you have a power cord or something?"

"But that's in my dorm, and I can't be bothered climing those thousands of steps!" Amy had become so annoyed at the stairs that led to her dormitory that she'd counted them all so that she could whine about them. "Three hundred and forty-six steps, Matthew!"

He rolled his eyes. "Here, you can use my Mac. I'm done with it." That wasn't completely true: he still had another report to write, but he'd do that later. He didn't want to be separated from Amy because of a flat battery, of all things.

Amy paused. The offer was incredibly tempting. "Are you sure?"

Matthew nodded eagerly. "Yeah, I'm finished." He saved his work and closed all the documents he had open. He turned the laptop around so that it was facing Amy.

"Thanks," she smiled, turning the computer the rest of the way as Matthew started writing down a draft on paper.

When Amy went searching for the shortcut that would take her to the internet, she froze. Not only was Matthew's desktop greatly disorganised and untidy, but his background gave Amy a start. It did look like Matthew, but that person next to him... No, it couldn't be...

"Um, why have you got a picture of Jake Hamilton on your desktop?"

Matthew felt sick. Literally sick. He felt like vomiting. How could he be so careless not to change his background picture. And how was he going to get his way out of this one? He could lie; tell her that he was a fan of Jake Hamilton, but that was a ridiculous excuse. And it sounded extremely corny. He may as well tell her the truth; she'd find out eventually, wouldn't she? She was a smart girl, Amy, and nothing went past her without her intense consideration.