Chapter 4
Ifind Cat standing at the sink, three open stalls behind her. She whirls around as I enter, her pretty pink painted lips that I wanted to kiss this very morning parting in shock. “You do know you’re in the bathroom, right?” she demands.
“Since the door said bathroom, yes. I know.” I close the space between us, and she doesn’t back away. She stands her ground, her hands settling on her curvy, but slender, hips. Her perfume flowery, roses, I think. Sweet, like I knew she would taste, right up until a few minutes ago.
“The sign says women,” she says, “not bathroom. Not men. And unless you have unexpected equipment, or you simply identify as a woman, and that’s what you’re telling me, you can’t be in here.”
“Good to know you understand limits,” I say. “Unfortunately, you don’t know how to use them in your job. And stalking the defense is not how you get a story.”
She glowers. “Stalking you? Last I heard, stalkers do the following. You were in line behind me when we met, not the opposite. And you were the one who cut in front of me. And, in case you didn’t notice, I’m well known in that coffee bar. I didn’t just show up there because you were there.”
“You mean my choice of coffee shop near the courthouse worked out for you.”
“I live right by it and I’m there all the freaking time, and we both know that you are not.”
“You expect me to believe that you didn’t know who I was?”
“Believe what you want,” she says, “but no. I did not know you were there. I didn’t even know who you were until opening statements.”
“Then you aren’t a well-prepared reporter.”
“Look here, Mr. Hotness,” she bites out, immediately adding, “Mr. Arrogant Asshole. Knowing who you are and knowing what you look like are not the same.”
I arch a brow at the irritating territory this has now entered. “And yet you know about Mr. Hotness?”
“Because Lauren Walker is my friend and she told me about your female following this morning. She also told me you hate that name, which may or may not be believable, since she also told me you were a nice guy.”
“I am a nice guy. When it’s deserved. How do you know Lauren?”
“How is that your business?” she challenges.
“You were talking about me with her.”
“The entire planet is talking about you right now, so no. That does not make anything about me or my conversations your business. And for the record, I wasn’t going to meet you this morning at all, which is why I was so late.”
“Why not?” I demand, that reply hitting me in all kinds of wrong ways. “You knew who I was by then, by your own admission.”
“Because I didn’t want some scandal to come out of it or for you to think I was going to get naked with you for an interview. I still need and want one, but not that way. And yet here you are. In the ladies’ room of the courthouse. Seriously? What are you thinking? You have reporters following you around.”
“Says a reporter following me around,” I counter.
“I’m not following you. That isn’t my style.”
“And yet you showed up this morning,” I say.
“I decided that I needed to tell you I was a reporter before you found out, but you left before I could. And I didn’t want to hurt your big-ass freaking ego by making you think I didn’t want to meet you.”
“Did you?” I ask.
“Did I what?”
“Want to meet me.”
“Does anyone ever want to meet an asshole?” she snaps.
“Did you want to meet me, Cat?” I press.
“Does that matter at this point?”
Good question, I think, and yet it does. “Answer,” I order.
“I would have if you were just another good-looking asshole, because then I could have—” She stops herself and repeats, “If you were just another asshole.”
“Good looking?”
“Asshole,” she replies.
“Then you could have fixed me?”
“You don’t fix assholes.”
“Then why consider meeting me if you didn’t know me and you thought I was an asshole?”
“You get naked with assholes and then you say goodbye.”
My cock is instantly, readily on alert. I step closer, a lean from touching her. “That was your plan? To fuck me and say goodbye.”
“It was an option.”
I arch a brow. “Was?”
“Now you’re my job, and I can’t cross that line.”
We’ll see about that, I think. “Who do you write for?”
“The New York News. The ‘Cat Does Crime’ column.”
“And what makes you qualified to write that kind of column?”
“A Harvard law degree, five years of practice, and a family of attorneys.”
“A Harvard law degree,” I say, surprised, though now that I’ve sparred with her, I shouldn’t be.
“And Harvard trumps Yale,” she says, pitting her degree against mine.
My lips curve with that obvious jab and challenge. “And yet I’m practicing and you aren’t.”
“Being good at what you do doesn’t matter if you’re miserable.”
“If you were miserable, why did you do it?”
“None of your business,” she says.
“What if I want it to be my business?”
“Give me a real interview, and you can ask me as many questions as I ask you,” she negotiates.
“I’ll think about it.”
“An interview with you and an interview with your client,” she adds.
“Now you’re pushing your luck.”
“You get nothing you don’t ask for,” she says.
“Do you think he’s guilty?” I ask, sizing her up to decide what I will, or will not, grant her.
“What I know,” she says, “is that you’re winning so far.”
“Let’s hope the jury agrees with you.”
“Because he’s innocent?” she asks.
“Yes. He is. And yes, you can quote me on that, and on this: If he wasn’t innocent, I wouldn’t be defending him.” My cellphone rings in my pocket. “That would be the end of our time together. At least for now.”
“What about my interviews?”
“Give me your business card.”
She reaches into the side pocket of her purse and hands a card to me. I accept it, my hand sliding over hers in the process, that touch between us is electric, and I stare down at her, assessing her. My phone stops ringing and then starts back up again, my gaze flickering over her lips and returning to her beautiful green eyes. I believe her. She didn’t know who I was when we met. And in hindsight, of course she did not. We fought, and I wanted to have make-up sex with a woman I didn’t even know at that point.
“I’ll call you,” I say, heading toward the door, pausing to look at her. “I won’t be your job for long.”
The rest of the afternoon, I watch Reese work the courtroom, and he is no longer a stranger. He’s the man who just had a conversation with me in the bathroom of this very courthouse. He is the man who touched me on the hand, just the hand, and made me feel it everywhere, inside and out. I really felt that touch, probably because those blue eyes of his were burning into me when it happened.
All that aside, he is still the lead counsel on this case, whom I need to interview to do my job properly, but at least I’ve set the stage to get past our initial encounter, by being upfront about that request. The air is clear. I’ve been honest and professional. Well, honest. I’m not sure telling him that he’s an asshole that can’t be fixed can be called professional any more than me telling him that I considered getting naked with him, even if that tidbit was mostly implied. But as far as I’m concerned, the questionable professionalism of those confessions should be cancelled out by him following me into the women’s bathroom. After that encounter, I’m not convinced he’s the nice guy he and Lauren claim him to be, but I am convinced he’s trouble.
By the time the courtroom closes for the day, I’m also convinced that he’s one hell of an attorney who hasn’t earned his perfect track record of all wins and no losses by luck. He’s picked his clients wisely and defended them just as wisely. By the time I’ve left the day behind, and I’m back home in my PJs, with Chinese food and my MacBook both in bed with me, I’m convinced that nothing he said in that bathroom was accidental. I replay the conversation and focus on four significant words from our exchange: “You can quote me,” he’d said. Was that a test? To see what I would or would not write? I frown and decide that even if it wasn’t a test, it’s a message that he wants delivered.
With that in mind, I start working on my column, writing up my detailed outline of my day in court and then using my closing statement to deliver his message and summarize mine: With more horror-show antics that lacked evidence, once again the prosecution came up short and the defense made their case by simply pointing out the weakness in every witness that took the stand. I expected physical evidence, which hasn’t been presented. But tomorrow the medical examiner takes the stand, and that will be the real test of guilt or innocence in the eyes of the courtroom, at least from where I sit, which is admittedly pretty far back. As for where that will leave the defense once the torch is passed to them and they take the floor is yet to be seen, but I find Reese Summer competent and convincing.
On a side note, I’ve been told by those who know Summer that he won’t defend anyone he doesn’t believe to be innocent. In a short, unexpected encounter with him, that is exactly what he told me. He believes in his client’s innocence. I’m not suggesting that means that he’s right and the prosecution is wrong, but in our court system, you are innocent until proven guilty, and thus far the prosecution has not shown guilt. Will tomorrow prove a different story? We shall see. Finished, I sign off with: Until then, —Cat.
I reread and edit my work and then send it off to my editor before I close my computer. It’s done. I’m done. I’ve delivered a message to the general masses and the prosecution for Reese Summer, and I’ve sent a message to Reese Summer: He can trust me enough to grant me those interviews. The question is, can I trust him? With that question in my mind, I plop down on my back on the bed and stare up at the ceiling, replaying my encounter with him in the bathroom, and damn it, I am remembering how good he’d smelled: Spicy and woodsy. How good he’d looked up close and personal. He’s still an arrogant asshole, but he’s also dirty, sexy trouble that I can’t escape as long as this trial is a live media charge. In other words, I have to be willing to play whatever game he plays with me, and games are how you get burned.