Chapter 8
Gemma had barely slept. She was awake with the first light of dawn streaming through Logan’s huge loft windows, her head throbbing as images of the night before ran through her mind.
Logan had given her everything she’d wanted in spades. Physical gratification and the most basic connection with another human being.
Now she needed to go back to real life.
Her worry for Royce was waiting at the edges of her memory since she’d refused to stew on it last night.
It had been years since she and Royce were together, but she’d cared for him deeply before she learned of his duplicity. She’d done the right thing and ended their relationship when she found out he was married, but her heart was already broken. Hatred had quickly filled in those cracks.
Now he was in danger and she was filled with anxious worry, not only for Royce but for his family.
They must be going through hell.
Again.
She’d been responsible for putting them through it once before. Now the girls’ mother was dead and their father abducted. They must be grown up by now, but surely that didn’t make it any easier.
Logan stirred behind her and she held her breath. Now that sobriety had taken hold, she couldn’t believe she’d spent the night with a guy half her age, and all she wanted to do was escape.
She managed to slip from his bed and out of the apartment without waking him, then stopped home for a quick shower before heading to work.
Two hours later, she was staring into space, barely paying attention as she filled her mug with hot water and picked up a tea bag before settling behind her desk. She had a full schedule today, and she struggled to focus her attention on the matters at hand.
She flipped through correspondence and motions, upcoming cases and influential verdicts. She was just about to put her paperwork aside when her eyes locked onto a familiar name.
HERO Force.
Her head jerked back, not understanding why her one-night-stand’s employer was staring her in the face. She skimmed the paperwork on the latest case she’d been assigned.
Stewart Cole versus Jax Andersson and Leo Wilson. An amount of money that made her whistle and an allegation of wrongful death.
She cursed colorfully.
I have a real knack for sleeping with the wrong guy.
She’d have to recuse herself. Her eyes squeezed shut. It happened. It was a small world with only six degrees of separation that sometimes felt like two or three.
She would handle it.
You’re just feeling like a slut for sleeping with that guy last night. That’s the problem.
An image of him on top of her appeared unbidden in her mind.
She shook her head. Sorry wasn’t the word.
Her thighs were sore from straddling his large frame and there was a tenderness deep inside her from the repeated thrusts of his body into hers.
The sex had been amazing, but she wasn’t the type for one-night stands, and she liked him more than she probably should, especially since he was clearly much younger than she.
The clock chimed. It was time for voir dire in her first case, and she took a deep, cleansing breath before donning her robe and making her way into the courtroom.
As a judge in civil court, she’d seen everything from wrongful death like the HERO Force case to slander and breach of contract. Some of the cases were heartbreaking, but the one today was personal and she’d been dreading it for weeks.
It was a medical malpractice case being brought by the mother of a young woman who had died of breast cancer the year before. The patient was the same age Gemma had been when she was diagnosed with breast cancer herself.
Gemma had lived.
This woman’s daughter had died.
It was hard to make sense of that, no matter the details of the case, and she wouldn’t hear those for quite some time.
It was her job to be impartial, but she was only human.
Some cases affected her more than others, and she needed to work hard to keep her emotions in check and her judgment free from bias.
Jury selection could be a long process in a case like this, and two hours later they’d barely made any progress. The head lawyer for the doctor’s team stood up. “Your honor, we request numbers three, five, and nine be excused.”
She nodded. Those people had close relationships with people who’d had breast cancer. The damn disease was everywhere. If they hoped to avoid jurors who hadn’t been touched by it in some way, they had a long road ahead of them.
She crossed her arms over her chest, thinking of a T-shirt she had in her closet at home that she should wear under her robe sometime during this trial.
Yes, they’re fake.
My real ones tried to kill me!
Oh God, had Logan noticed?
Don’t think about him again.
But her mind went rogue and her cheeks flooded with heat as she wondered what he might have noticed about her chest. She’d only had one other relationship since her surgery – a six month stint with a cardiologist – and he knew about her reconstruction long before they’d had sex.
But Logan had no idea, and it had been very dark in the room and she’d kept her bra on.
Stop it.
She tapped her pencil on her blotter, wishing the lawyers would do something so she could get the hell out of her own head.
There was something about Logan that wasn’t going to be easy to forget, and she hadn’t bargained on that in her quest for anonymous sex. There had been moments during the night when it felt like they’d been lovers for years.
A kiss.
A touch.
His fingers intertwined with hers.
And his body! He was hung. She’d never been with a guy like that, had barely believed April when she told her men of such size existed, like unicorns or Sasquatch.
And the man had stamina. They’d had sex four times in the night, the intimacy of being woken from sleep by sexy kisses and erotic touches still at the forefront of her mind.
Definitely not easy to forget.
The lawyer moved forward to question a potential juror and she snapped back to the present, but it wasn’t long before voir dire turned to quiet consideration and her mind was right back in Logan’s bed.
Man, how old is he, anyway?
That might be a question she really didn’t need answered. He looked about thirty. If that estimate was right, she was a solid fifteen years older than him. Hell, if this were Teen Mom she could be his mother.
She still had that thought in her mind several hours later after she’d adjourned the case for the night and finished some work in her chambers before heading home, exhausted.
It was dusk by the time she got off the bus near her house and started the three-block walk to her door.
The evening air was warm and humid, a breeze carrying the smell of barbecue and flowers.
For the first time all day, her mind was finally free of the buzzards that had been haunting her consciousness since she awoke.
A noise behind her and she turned, relieved to see it was just a jogger. Her neighborhood was pretty safe, but she was always conscious of the inherent dangers of a woman walking alone at night.
She moved to the side as he approached, when suddenly she was knocked hard to the ground, the man on top of her and the foul stink of body odor all around.
“What are you doing?” she exclaimed. She twisted her head in an attempt to see him, but only caught part of a plastic mask.
Oh my God.
The man’s voice was a harsh whisper in her ear. “You listen to me, Judge Faraday. If you ever want to see Anthony Royce alive again, you will do exactly what I tell you.”