One Night With You
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With his face flushed and his lower lip sagging, he said, “I’m sorry, Your Honor. Please accept my apology.”
“I take it you told him what was what,” Carl said to her after she adjourned the court for lunch. “He was the attorney for a builder who tried to get that Albemarle Gates property and failed.”
“How did Brown and Worley get it?”
“They say it was bribery, ma’am, but who knows?”
The lawyer for the plaintiff brought four expert witnesses to prove that the diamonds in the bracelet were, in fact, zircons, and the jury’s guilty verdict did not surprise her. She agreed with it.
She left the court longing to tell Reid how her first day went. But why should he care? She went home, turned up the heat, changed into jeans and a sweater and gave some thought to what she would cook for her dinner. She had never been the object of scorn, and knowing that she was made her want to reach out to someone who cared. Dumping her troubles on her sister didn’t make sense, for Claudine would stagger beneath the burden of it as if the problem were her own.
She scrubbed a potato, dried it, patted it with olive oil, rolled it in a piece of paper towel and put it in the microwave oven. She was staring into the frozen food section of her refrigerator when the telephone rang. Please, God, don’t let that be a harasser.
“Hello.”
“This is Reid. How was your first day?”
“Reid! I wanted to call you…I mean, I wanted to tell you about it.”
“Well, how’d it go?”
“Good and bad.”
“You’re going to explain that?”
Why was she so nervous? “Wait a minute and let me get a chair.” She put the phone down, rushed to the kitchen for a swallow of water, dragged a chair to the console on which the phone rested and sat down. “I’m back. Well, first the guard was rude to me when I walked into the building, but a few choice words subdued him. I have a really nice and competent clerk, a Native American man, who’s gracious and helpful. But I had to put the defendant’s attorney in his place with the threat of contempt. Seems he was the attorney for a builder who tried unsuccessfully to get permission to build on the Albemarle Gates property. Have you heard that Brown and Worley bribed anyone to get that permit?”
“They’ve been accused of it, but the accusation didn’t hold up. I suspect you’ve had all the problems you’re going to have at court—news travels fast. All the same, it pays to watch your back.”
“It’s not a good feeling, Reid, knowing that people don’t like you although you’ve done nothing to earn their dislike. Besides, I’m a people person. I smile at folks, and I expect them to smile back, but nobody’s smiling at me here.”
“Nobody?” She imagined that his eyebrows shot up. “I smiled.”
“Yes, you did.” She settled more comfortably in the chair. “At least once.”
Laughter rumbled out of him, and she wished she could have been with him then to see those lights dancing in his eyes. “If I had another potato,” she said, throwing prudence to the wind, “I’d ask if you wanted to share my supper.”
“What goes with the one you’ve got?”
“Steak burger seasoned with onions, egg, mustard, ketchup and Maggi sauce, fresh asparagus and a mesclun salad.”
“I’ve got an Idaho potato, if that would persuade you to follow through with that idea. And I’m pretty good at cleaning up the kitchen.”
“You wouldn’t consider scrubbing that potato before you bring it over, would you?”
“You bet. Uh…what time would you like to have the potato?”
“About a quarter of seven.”
“Great. By the way, does Her Honor drink wine with her steak burger?”
“Whenever she has it in the house.”
“See you later. And thanks, Kendra.”
She hung up and sat there for some minutes contemplating what she’d just done. For a woman who didn’t want a relationship with the man, she had all but initiated one with that invitation. Oh, I’m not going to exorcise myself about it. He’s not married, and he’s good company. Besides, he’s interested or he wouldn’t have called me. She started down to the basement for some firewood in order to build a fire in the living-room fireplace and stopped. Suppose his case came before her! She shouldn’t develop a relationship with Reid knowing that, if his plan succeeded, he’d have a case before her within the next ten months. Oh, what the heck, I can recuse myself.
She toyed with the idea of changing her clothes to look more respectable, but discarded it. She looked perfectly fine in her jeans and sweater, and if she put on anything sexy, he’d think she was coming on to him, and he’d be right. Still, she combed her hair down, put a pair of medium-sized gold hoops in her ears and set the dining-room table.
Her doorbell rang precisely at a quarter to seven and she wondered if he’d been standing at the door looking at his watch so that he could do that. She opened the door and got a sharply raised eyebrow from him.
“Hi. I’d have whistled, if I hadn’t thought it would be rude. You look…like a pretty teenager.”
“Oh. Thanks. You mean the jeans?”
His expression suggested that she was unreal. “I mean the whole package.” He handed her the potato, scrubbed and unwrapped, and a bag containing a bottle of wine. “I hope you like Ch^ateauneuf du Pape.”
“I’m not an aficionado of fine wine, Reid. I go to the liquor store and ask for chardonnay if I want white or Chianti if I want red, so I’ll look forward to this one.”
“It’s smooth. I think of it as a red that suits a lady.”
“That’s the second nice compliment you’ve given me in the ten minutes you’ve been here. After the bashing my ego’s had in this town, I needed it. Now, come on in the kitchen with me and behave yourself.”
“Whatta you mean by that?”
“I mean if you keep saying such nice things, you’ll have me in such a stupor that you won’t get any dinner.”
“Now, you behave. Where do you want this potato?” She held out her hand. “Whoops!” she said when she felt the electric static that passed between them.
He stared at her, and she turned away, went to the counter and began greasing the potato with olive oil. She’d made an enormous mistake, and she had to spend the evening with it.
“What are you doing to that potato?” His voice was too close, so close that she didn’t dare turn to the left or to the right. Dear God, please don’t let him touch me.
“Just what it looks like. Here. Wrap it in a piece of paper towel and put it in that microwave oven.”
“Where’s the paper towel?”