Defender: A Stepbrother Romance (11 page)

“
W
e’re more
than prepared to go to trial on that date,” I said, relishing the shock that filled the prosecutor’s eyes. He thought he was hitting me with a ton of bricks by suggesting a trial date less than ten days away. But he was actually giving us more time than I’d thought he would.

“You can take discovery with you when you go. I understand you’re from out of state?”

I nodded. “New York.”

“Are you a member of the Texas bar? If not—“

“I am.”

I surprised him again. That pompous fool thought he had me all figured out, but he was wrong. I liked that.

“Will there be pictures of the front of the Bentley in the discovery?”

The prosecutor’s eyebrows rose. “Why? The impact was on the—“

“It’s part of the car. I don’t know about Lubbock, but in most parts of the country, it’s customary to take pictures of the entire accident scene, including all angles of all cars involved.”

“I assume they will be there.”

“Good. Because they weren’t among the investigative photos we saw. I wouldn’t want to have to go to the press with the incompetency of the Lubbock Police Department.”

The prosecutor’s eyes narrowed. “I realize you come from New York City and things are different there. This is a smaller city; everything is a little more relaxed.”

“Yes, well, relaxed or not, I expect if you’re going to press charges against an innocent woman for something that was another party’s fault, you should have all your ducks in a row.”

I gestured to Kendra that I was ready to leave. We stood, but the prosecutor was clearly not done yet.

“Your
sister
was legally drunk that night. Even if there’s damage on another part of the Bentley, that doesn’t negate what the blood tests show.”

“About those tests. I’d surely love to see them.”

“They should be in with the discovery.”

“I certainly hope so.”

I looked down my nose at the prosecutor, causing him to squirm in his chair before he stood, rising to his full height—which was barely five two compared to my six two—his eyes narrowed.

“We do everything by the book here.”

“Then we shouldn’t have a problem.”

I walked out of the office and nearly ran into a young man with a hand truck filled to the top with boxes. Kendra’s eyes widened slightly, and I gestured for her not to comment. We led the way downstairs and watched as the young man fit most of the boxes in the trunk of my rental, the rest shoved into the back seat. It wasn’t until we were alone, negotiating downtown traffic, that she finally voiced the comment that was clearly written in her eyes.

“That’s a heck of a lot of stuff for a case like this.”

“They threw every piece of paper they could find at us, hoping the excess would slow us down. It’s a tactic I’ve used myself.”

“What are we going to do with it all?”

I thought about it for a second, realizing we only had one real choice. “We’re going to take it to my parent’s place and see if Mom and her bridge club will be willing to sort it out for us.”

And, of course, mother was thrilled. The moment we pulled into the yard, she was on the front step, waving. There was interest in her eyes when she saw Kendra, but I wasn’t as quick to squash it as I might have normally been. If she wanted to believe I had something going on with Kendra, maybe she wouldn’t be as quick to notice the change between Eden and I.

We unloaded the boxes and arranged them around the dining room, my mother absorbing my quick instructions and taking control as I had hoped she would. Mom is definitely the kind of person who’s always organized and quick to take over when she sees a task that needs doing. Within an hour, three of the boxes were already empty, the materials inside placed in carefully ordered piles.

Dad came in when he saw my Mom’s bridge partner drive up, and it was his idea to call Eden. I was hoping someone would. I just didn’t want it to be me because I was afraid someone might hear the eagerness in my voice. It was bad enough that I found myself glancing out the window every few seconds, but when I saw her walk up…was it possible for my heart to stop and pound all at the same time? She was in jeans and a thin t-shirt that hugged her shape like a second skin. My palms physically itched to slide underneath, to feel all the promises of pleasure her body had fulfilled the previous night, my lips swelling just at the thought of tasting her again.

I grabbed a sheaf of papers and stared down at them, trying without success to forget all the things she did to me.

“Hey, darlin’,” Dad said as Eden walked into the room. “Thanks for coming.”

She accepted his kiss on her cheek, her eyes drifting over me before shifting to Kendra. The flash of jealousy that filtered through her eyes made my heart stutter again. After everything she put me through that summer…it seemed only fair she should be tortured just a little.

“Has anyone seen any pictures yet?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Mom said even as she negotiated the growing clutter to greet Eden. “But we haven’t opened half the boxes yet.”

“What can I do?” Eden asked.

“Why don’t you help Kendra organize the emails,” Mom said.

There were a lot of emails. They had included every email that was even remotely related to this case. And we were going to have to read through each and every one just in case there was a little hint of strategy or evidence on any of them. Kendra already had a stack two inches high, and that was only the beginning. I suspected there would be enough emails to fill a five-inch binder.

Eden hesitated only an instant. She glanced at me, inclining her head slightly in greeting, before taking a chair beside Kendra. Kendra smiled, offered her hand, and then explained what she was doing. After just a few minutes, Eden had her own stack of emails growing in front of her.

I turned my attention toward a couple of boxes shoved off into a corner. I thought I hit pay dirt when I found a group of records from a local doctor, but it turned out to just be a follow-up on Joel’s visit to the family doctor. There was nothing there but the mention of a whiplash injury that was probably just the doctor’s desperate attempt to find something wrong with the boy.

I kept digging, losing myself in the legal jargon. It was one of my favorite parts of legal work. I’d always enjoyed research. When I wrote a history paper in high school, I always took the research far beyond where it had to go because I just loved discovering every little nuance of a subject. That’s why I was a good lawyer, why I won so many of my cases. Because I was prepared. And because I loved what I did.

I was elbow deep in the last box when I found something that got my attention. At first I thought it was just a random receipt the prosecutor had put in here to throw us off the trail. But then…
Shit!
It was from a liquor store just two doors down from the restaurant where Eden ate that night. A receipt for five bottles of vodka.

Joel was buying vodka—an excessive amount of vodka—just moments before the accident.

We really needed to find those blood alcohol tests, especially the one performed on Joel. If I could prove they were both over the legal limit at the time of the accident—talk about your reasonable doubt!

I got up and stepped behind Kendra, glancing over the growing stack of emails. “Have you found anything about breathalyzers or blood alcohol tests yet?”

She shook her head.

I glanced around the room. My mother and Alistair had their heads together by the windows, studying the contents of one of the last boxes. Mother’s bridge partner, Winnie, was organizing a stack of receipts of some sort. Eden was sitting to my left, the tip of her tongue just peeking out between her lips as she studied the papers she was organizing. I slid my hand under her hair, squeezing her neck lightly.

“How about I call Sara’s and order some lunch for everyone?” I offered.

My mother shot me a look like I’d just offended everything about her. “No. I’ll go throw some chicken in the oven.”

I shrugged, trying to pretend it didn’t matter to me. But that was exactly what I was hoping she’d say. My Mom’s chicken was like nothing else…my stomach grumbled impatiently just at the thought. Her cooking would beat a local fast food restaurant any time.

I slid my fingers under the back of Eden’s collar, wanting so badly to touch her. She glanced back at me but didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. I could read her thoughts as they danced through her eyes and it made it almost impossible for me to breathe. How long had I wanted her to look at me that way? To have her do then, finally, frustrated me in a way that even adolescence had never done.

“Why don’t we take a break?” Dad suggested.

Dad, Kendra, and I moved into the living room while the ladies went into the kitchen to put on lunch. The moment Eden was out of earshot, Dad muttered, “I’m worried about her. She seems pretty worried.”

I sat on the edge of the couch and leaned forward, burying my fingers in my hair for a second. I had to get my thoughts together or the first word out of my mouth would give me away. I couldn’t stop thinking about Eden, about touching her. I wanted to go into that kitchen and pull her into my arms, make her mine again and again…but then I imagined the look on my mother’s face when she realized what was happening, and it cooled my need.

I looked up and immediately realized that Alistair thought I was upset about Eden’s legal case. Kendra shot me a look that suggested she thought I’d gone insane or something.

“She’s got no reason to worry,” I said. “The prosecutor is pushing this forward, hoping to catch us off guard. But we know what we’re doing.”

“You’re prepared to go to trial now?”

“I we went to trial tomorrow I could poke so many holes in their case that it would turn this whole thing on its head.”

Relief washed over Dad’s face. “Are you sure? That’s great.”

I patted his knee lightly. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

I glanced at Kendra. She inclined her head slightly as I got up and stole out of the room. I could hear her explaining the accident reconstruction stuff to him. I wasn’t sure we should be putting so much into that one basket, but if it kept him from panicking, so much the better.

I slipped outside, craving a little space. I love my family, but like any normal American male, I could only take so much. I walked along the driveway to the barn where Dad had his workshop. Some of my fondest memories of my childhood took place out there. When my mother and I first came to live with Alistair and Eden, I didn’t trust anyone, let alone men. My real father just wasn’t a great example of what it meant to be a man. The only thing I ever learned from him was to fight.

That’s why my stepdad was something of an enigma to me those first few years. I kept waiting for him to raise his voice, to dictate the behavior of the people in his home. I expected to see bruises on my mother’s face, on Eden. It was a long time before I realized that not all men hit the people they cared most about. And when I did figure it out, when I figured out there were other things a man could do with his hands besides hurt…it was a revelation for me.

I walked along his work benches, touching a random tool, then a chisel. He taught me how to carve in soap those first few times out there. I made a car once, complete with moveable wheels. I still had it somewhere, drying out and cracking, but you could still tell what it was. And then I moved on to wood. I once imagined I might work in clay and marble and some of the other mediums Dad used. But then I took a debate class in high school and those dreams were replaced with others. I still liked to use my hands, though. I had a wood burning kit in my apartment that got a good workout from time to time.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

I turned and watched as Eden walked toward me, the warm afternoon sunlight like a halo around her slender figure. She was quite a sight in any backdrop. But I liked that, liked the way the sun shone against her pale skin, making the contrast of alabaster and black seem that much deeper, that much richer. And it didn’t hurt that it made her shirt almost transparent.

I grabbed her arm and pulled her around in front of me, trapping her between my body and one of Dad’s workbenches. She giggled until I kissed her, until my lips pressed firmly against hers, until my tongue stole the words right out of her throat. She groaned, her body relaxing as it melted in my arms. I slid my hand under her shirt as I had wanted to do all day, rewarded by the silkiness of her skin, the goosebumps my closeness brought out against her ribs.
Damn!
I could never get too used to the feel or taste of her.

Her hand slid over my shirt, and her fingers wrapped around my tie as she tugged me closer. And then she twisted her head, her lips moving from mine to burn a path over my jaw, her tongue sneaking a taste of that delicate little spot under my ear. I made a sound that was somewhere between a moan and a chuckle, and need soared through me until I thought I might explode from the tension that was building in places that didn’t take kindly to pressure.

“You’re driving me crazy,” I hissed against her ear.

“Am I?”

That sound again. “You know you are.”

She looked up at me, her eyes rounded with innocence. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

She ruined it by laughing. And then we were kissing again, my hand sliding under the bottom edge of her bra, searching for that nipple that seemed to stand up and mock me each time I touched at her. My fingers just grazed it when I thought I heard a car on the gravel outside. I pulled away to look, but she tugged at my tie again, her lips skating over my jaw. And then I was lost, the need destroying all common sense I might—or might not—have had.

I lost myself for a while, her kisses more addictive than any drug, prescription or otherwise. I’d waited for so long that I couldn’t wait a moment longer. I wanted her. I needed her. Only her.

It was a thought I had never had before. And the moment it floated through my mind, it elated and terrified me all at the same time.