Chapter 19
Grant went inside to have a word with Stephanie before he got to work on the docks, but she’d suddenly disappeared. He asked Amelia, the teenage girl working the register, where she was, and Amelia gestured to Stephanie’s room behind the restaurant.
He went down the short hallway that led from the kitchen to her room, but stopped short at the sound of her agitated voice.
“But you said I have until the end of September to get you the money!”
Grant knew he shouldn’t be listening, but he couldn’t seem to move.
“I can give you nine thousand now, and the other thousand at the end of the month. Please file the appeal. I promise I’m good for it.”
As Grant waited breathlessly to see what she would say next, his heart beat fast, and his stomach ached over what she was dealing with. He knew he should stay out of it. She wouldn’t appreciate his interference, but he simply couldn’t bear to listen to the fear and panic in her voice.
He stepped to her open door. “Fire him.”
She gasped and gestured for him to get out.
Grant didn’t move. “Fire him.”
“Get out,” she whispered.
“Tell him you no longer need his services,” Grant said loud enough for the scumbag lawyer to hear him. More softly, he added, “I’ll get you someone better. I promise.”
Stephanie’s expressive eyes shot daggers at him. “Yes,” she said into the phone, speaking through gritted teeth. “You heard him right. I don’t have the money, so I guess you’re fired.”
As she ended the call and turned to him, Grant was braced for her fury. She surprised him when she didn’t yell at him for butting in to her business. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not? You’re prepared to pay him nine thousand dollars and that’s not enough to retain his services to file an appeal? He was extorting you, Stephanie. He was going to take your money and run.”
“You don’t know that! He was going to file the appeal, and now I’ve got no lawyer and no appeal. What am I supposed to tell Charlie when I see him on Friday?”
“I’ll have a new lawyer for you by the end of the day.”
“I won’t be able to afford your lawyer.”
“A lot of the guys I know would handle a case like this pro bono because of the publicity it’ll generate. Let me make a few calls and see what I can do.”
She rested a hand on her stomach and grimaced.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Stomach pains. I can’t believe I just fired our new lawyer. We had all our hopes pinned on him.”
Grant closed the small distance between them and put his arms around her. “Breathe, baby. Deep breaths.”
Keeping her arms hanging loosely, Stephanie took a couple of rattling breaths.
“I promise I won’t let you down.” He ran his hands up and down her back as he surveyed the austere quarters that included a twin bed, a beat-up dresser and a view of the marina’s gas tanks through a small window. “I bet your stepfather has nicer accommodations in prison than you’ve got here.”
Stephanie pulled back from his embrace. “I like it. It’s free, it’s clean and it’s close to the water.”
“You would’ve liked my place in Malibu.”
“Anyone would like a place in Malibu,” she said, rolling her eyes at him and starting to sound more like herself.
He caressed her cheek. “Will you be okay?”
“I will be as long as you keep your promise and find me another lawyer.”
Grant bent to kiss her gently. “I’ll keep my promise.”
She looped her arms around his neck to keep him there. Teasing him with flirtatious strokes of her tongue, she had him breathless with longing in two seconds flat.
Grant tightened his hold on her and kicked the door shut, sealing them off from the hubbub of the marina.
“What’re you doing?” Her eyes were closed and her lips were slick. “I have to work.”
As he smiled at her halfhearted protest, his hands were already under her tank top, seeking out her nipples. “I just need a minute,” he said, backing her up to the door.
She arched her back to encourage his attention to her breasts. “I guess I have a minute.”
A minute turned into five when his hand ventured under her skirt as her talented fingers freed him from his shorts.
“No condom,” he somehow managed to say through the thick haze of lust that had stolen his sanity.
“I’m on the pill.”
Oh, God . . . Was she saying . . . Without a condom?
It’s official, he thought as he tugged her panties off, I’ve died and gone straight to heaven.
Pressing her against the closed metal door, he arranged her legs around his hips and surged into her heat.
The sensations were so exquisite, so intense, that he nearly came with one stroke.
“God, that feels good.” He bit his lip to refocus the attention on the pain rather than the growing crisis below.
Stephanie didn’t help when she arched enthusiastically into him and clawed at his back. “I can’t believe we’re doing this at work,” she whispered between hot kisses.
“There was no way I could wait until tonight.” He squeezed her ass cheeks and had to bite his lip again when her tight channel clamped down on his cock.
Suddenly, he needed more. Sweat streamed down his back as he tightened his hold on her and shifted to bring her down on the twin bed, where he came face-to-face with a stuffed Pooh bear.
“Harder,” she said, driving him crazy with the harshly spoken word.
“I can’t. Pooh is looking.” While she laughed, he turned Pooh so he was facing the wall, and gave her what she wanted. They came together in a cataclysmic moment of complete unity that left them panting and sweating.
“Mmm,” she said, her lips vibrating against his neck. “If we get in trouble for this, it was all your idea.”
“Absolutely,” he said, capturing her lips for another heated kiss.
“Stephanie! Are you still on the phone?”
“Oh, crap.” She pushed on Grant’s chest to dislodge him. “Amelia needs me.”
He withdrew from her, got up and extended a hand to help her. When he tried to “help” with her clothes, she slapped his hands away, so he focused on pulling up his own shorts.
“I’ll go out first,” she said, running her fingers through her spiky hair. “How do I look?”
Grant hooked a hand around her waist and kissed her swollen lips. “Like you’ve just been thoroughly ravished.”
“Fabulous.”
“Yes, it was.”
She smiled, kissed him once more and opened the door, looking both ways in the hallway before she ducked out.
Grant closed the door and dropped onto the bed.
He’d never done anything quite like what’d just happened in this tiny room.
Before Stephanie, sex had always been a civilized encounter between two willing participants.
Before Stephanie, he now realized, sex had been kind of boring.
The thought made him feel guilty toward Abby, but he couldn’t deny the truth.
Mindful of his promise to Stephanie, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and scrolled through his contacts until he found Dan Torrington’s number.
He was told Dan was in court and left a message for him.
His next call was to his uncle Frank, who was also unavailable at the moment.
Again, Grant left a message. In both cases, he used the word “urgent.”
He stashed his phone in his pocket and left Stephanie’s room.
On the way past the kitchen, he caught her eye and winked at her.
She smiled at him, and if he wasn’t mistaken, a bit of a blush colored her cheeks, which was deeply satisfying to Grant.
Whistling a chirpy tune, he stepped into the bright sunshine to find his father, brothers and Ned occupying one of the picnic tables.
The whistle died on his lips when he realized they were staring at him. “What?”
“What yourself,” Big Mac said with a glint in his eye. “Where ya been?”
“On the phone, if you must know.”
Evan elbowed Adam. “Is that what they’re calling it in LA these days?”
For the second time that day, Grant wanted to kill his youngest brother. Rather than jump him, though, this time he chose to ignore him. On most mornings, he might’ve joined them for coffee and a doughnut, but today he wasn’t interested in sitting on the hot seat.
His ringing phone gave him an excuse to head down the main pier. He was relieved to see Dan Torrington’s name on the caller ID.
“Counselor. Thanks for calling me back.”
“No problem. Don’t tell me you finally got yourself arrested.”
“No,” Grant said, laughing, “not yet. Listen, I have this friend . . .” Grant relayed a synopsis of Stephanie’s story.
“Wow, man, looks like you’ve stumbled upon your next screenplay.”
“Maybe,” Grant said, once again ignoring the buzz of interest that overtook him. He was dying to write this story. “But that’s not my primary concern. She needs help, Dan. This whole situation is outrageous.”
“It certainly sounds that way. You say she testified, but it didn’t do any good?”
“She said it was like she was screaming at the top of her lungs, and no one was listening.”
“You believe her?”
For the second time that day, Grant said, “I do. She loves him. I think he’s the only person in her life who was ever kind to her or took an interest in her. She’s eaten up with guilt over the fact that his kindness toward her resulted in fourteen years in prison.”
Dan sighed. “I hate cases like this. They make me see red.”
“Can you help her?”
“You bet I can. Let me check the schedule and see how soon I can get there.”
Grant’s mouth fell open in shock. “You’re going to come here? You yourself?”
Dan laughed. “I do actually work, you know. And miscarriage-of-justice cases like this interest me.”
“She doesn’t have a lot of money, so let me know what you need to get started.”
“Don’t worry about that for now. We’ll see what’s what after I’ve had a chance to dig a little deeper.”
“I owe you big for this.”
“Yes, you do. At the very least, I want a consultant’s credit on the screenplay.”
“You got it,” Grant said with a chuckle.
“I’ll be in touch.”
Grant sprinted down the main pier, past the picnic table full of nosy McCarthys and straight into the restaurant. He did a one-handed leap over the counter and made a beeline for Stephanie. When he reached her, he picked her up and swung her around.