Defender: A Stepbrother Romance (9 page)

“Here,” Kendra said, grabbing one from the couch and handing it to me.

I studied it for a long minute, an idea forming that I wasn’t sure I wanted to pursue. It looked like Eden’s car was hit from a different angle than the report suggested. They said that she hit Joel from behind, so the damage to her car would have been primarily to the front. And there was damage there, significant damage. But there was more damage to the passenger side than to the driver’s side.

I grabbed another photo, this one of Joel’s car. There was very little damage to his car—mostly because those expensive, luxury cars were made of steel, as a car should be, instead of the plastic and fiberglass they made most new, everyday cars—but there was some damage to the quarter panel at the back of the driver’s side. And there were no pictures of the front of Joel’s car at all.

That made me curious.

“We need to hire an accident reconstructionist.”

“I know a good one,” Kendra said. “He testified in a case my former boss worked on.”

I looked at her, reality crashing down on me. “You don’t work for me anymore.”

Her eyebrows rose. “No. I don’t work for Stone, Price, and Goldman anymore.”

I tilted my head. “Just because I got fired doesn’t mean you don’t work there anymore.”

“When I turned in my resignation an hour after you left, it kind of means that.”

“Why would you do that?”

Kendra turned back to her files and continued setting things out into well-organized piles. “You found me. I work for you.”

“But I only have one case, and it’s my sister, so I’m not getting paid.”

“So?”

“And it’s in Texas.”

“Did I ever tell you I grew up in Texas? That my Mom lives in the Lubbock area?”

I sat blankly.

She nodded. “She actually works at the courthouse there. She’s a clerk in Judge Ramsey’s office.”

I started to laugh. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Nope. How do you think I got these photos so quickly?”

I laughed even harder. Just when I thought I’d pissed away every good thing in my life… “Would it be wrong for me to kiss you right now?”

I think she blushed a little. But instead of responding, she simply made a new pile with the information she’d brought with her.

I set my glass down and rubbed my hands together, that old excitement that used to come when I began a new case building in my chest.

“Let’s do this,” I said.

Kendra just nodded, pulling out a legal pad and settling back, waiting for me to instruct her on what to do next.

I
was stumbling
through my front door with an armful of groceries when my cellphone began to ring. I rushed to the table and dropped the bags, hoping my eggs weren’t one of them. I tugged the phone out of my back pocket and my heart jumped into my throat when I saw Crawford’s name on the display.

What does he want?

It had been a week since he went back to New York. He hadn’t called or texted or emailed the entire time. I thought about letting it go to voice mail, but then decided that would only cause my mind to wander the rest of the day if he didn’t leave a message. And he was handling my case, after all.

“What do you want, Crawford?”

“Nice greeting.”

“Do you want me to be nice, or do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

He chuckled, which surprised me a little. I thought the way we’d left things would leave him in a less than humorous mood. It had me.

“I need to talk to you about your case. The DA’s office is pushing to set your trial date sooner rather than later. And I think we should go with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they plan to indict you this week, and then they want to set the trial date for next month. And I think we should let them.”

My heart sank. I hadn’t really thought about how long it would take before I went on trial. But I really didn’t think it would be that quick. I hadn’t yet gotten over the whole arrest thing, and he wanted me to go to trial? I wasn’t ready.

“Crawford—“

“Let’s meet somewhere, Eden. Let me take you to dinner.”

“You’re in town?”

“I just got here.”

Another surprise. I hadn’t thought he would come back willingly, let alone come back so quickly. “I didn’t think you’d want to see me again.”

“You’re my sister, my client.”

I noticed he didn’t say lover.

“What do you say, Eden?” he asked. “Can I take you to dinner?”

“What time?”

“Give me a couple of hours. About eight?”

I had nothing better to do that night.

I
chose
to wear a black dress Jeannie gave me a year before for my birthday, a tight, slinky affair that was not my taste—it was actually something Jeannie would wear, and I offered to give to her—but it fit my mood. I wanted to torture Crawford. I wanted him to hurt the way I’d been hurting all week. I wanted him to see exactly what he was missing out on by walking away from me.

In the privacy of my bedroom, I looked good. The dress hugged all the right curves, hid all the imperfections, and made my boobs look really big with its low cut neckline. I wore my hair up, pinned in a loose knot low on the back of my head. It made my neck appear graceful. And I wore just the subtlest amount of makeup, just enough to highlight my long lashes and rounded eyes. It didn’t look bad…

But then I heard a knock on the door and suddenly realized he lived in New York. He was used to dating models and rich, sophisticated women who bought their clothes from famous designers, not off the rack at Target. To him, I would look like a small town girl trying to be something I wasn’t.

I had the burning desire to change, but there wasn’t time.

I opened the door, a long shawl draped over my shoulders. His eyes moved slowly over my face, dipping over my throat before resting on my eyes again.

“Are you ready?”

I grabbed my bag and gestured for him to move out of the way. I pulled my door closed and led the way down the stairs, walking to the only unfamiliar car in the parking lot, a dark Lexus. Crawford opened the door for me and stood politely as I tucked myself inside. Then he closed the door and was behind the wheel before I could catch my breath, maneuvering the luxury car into what passed for traffic in our small town.

We didn’t speak a word each other for the longest time. It was tense, the silence that sat between us. I finally had to say something, had to take the pressure from my own shoulders before my spine broke with the weight.

“Why did you come back now?”

He glanced at me. “Don’t sound so disappointed.”

“Not disappointed. Curious.”

He stared out the windshield for a long minute before answering. “You’re to be indicted in two days. I wanted to be here for that.”

“How do you know that and I don’t?”

“I’m your lawyer. It’s my job to know it.”

“Shouldn’t you have given me a heads up?”

“That’s what I’m doing now.”

I felt like he was talking in riddles, so I stopped asking questions. He didn’t offer up much either. We were at the restaurant before I could think of anything else we might talk about.

Crawford helped me out of the car, polite as always. Then he guided me inside with a hand on the small of my back. Just the heat of his touch sent tingles through my body. The memory of his hands on my bare skin still haunted me. Sometimes I woke in the middle of the night, turned on like a light from the memory of him. I hated that I liked his touch so much, that his closeness had the power to make my bones turn to water.

I tried to walk faster so that his hand would leave my body, but he stayed right there with me.

The maître d showed us to our table, and he pulled out a chair for me. I slipped the shawl off my shoulders before I sat, allowing him to take it away. When I was settled, I glanced up at Crawford. In that moment, I realized that his attraction for me wasn’t as feigned as he had wanted me to believe. Maybe the rack at Target wasn’t as far out of his range of desirability as I had assumed.

Crawford sat across from me and instructed the waiter, who’d come up behind us, to bring a bottle of wine from some vineyard I couldn’t even begin to pronounce. His voice was calm, but his eyes seemed stuck on me.

I leaned forward just slightly, using a trick Jeannie had taught me. His eyes dropped to my chest, and his even tan did little to hide the blush that touched his cheeks. It made me feel almost giddy.

“So, you just flew in today?”

He nodded, sitting back as he tried to pull his eyes back up to my face. “The DA called me last night, so I flew in this morning.”

“Does Mom know you’re in town?”

“Not yet. I’ll call her tonight.”

“She’ll be thrilled. Two visits in one month after all these years.”

“I’ve seen my mother over the years.”

“Yeah. But you always flew her to you. You never came home.”

“I didn’t have time.”

“Because you were avoiding me?”

His eyes narrowed. “It’s just like you to make everything about you.”

“Am I wrong? You’re not pissed at me for what I asked you to do that summer? Or the kiss?”

If his eyes narrowed any more, they would’ve become tiny little slits that he wouldn’t have been able to see out of. I wanted to laugh, pleased that I annoyed him. But, again, I waited years for that conversation. I wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize it.

“Do you really want to talk about this?” he asked.

“I do.”

The waiter took that moment to arrive with the bottle of wine. Crawford waved him off, choosing to pour us each a glass himself. He swallowed almost half of his own glass the moment it was poured. I didn’t even touch mine.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Tell me what there is to talk about.”

“You were angry with me for asking you for that favor.”

His face crinkled. “And you don’t seem to know why?”

“I always figured it had something to do with your Mom. She’s not a big believer in what we did.”

“Do you blame her?”

“That’s why I couldn’t ask her for help. I thought you’d understand that.”

“I understand that you asked me to arrange something that your father would have disowned you for.”

I shook my head. “What? I don’t think so. He would have understood.”

Crawford sat back. “Then you don’t know your father very well.”

“It was my Dad who taught me to help friends in trouble no matter what it takes.”

“Is that what you call what happened?”

“I think you were mad because you thought that I was breaking some unspoken rule in our household. But you know that your mother’s religious beliefs aren’t the beliefs I grew up with, right? I mean, she dragged us all to church every Sunday for years but she stopped taking me when I got to high school. Dad told her I could make my—“

“You think this is just about my mother’s Catholic values?”

Crawford leaned forward a little, his eyes definitely on mine. And they seemed capable of seeing into my very soul, reading my very thoughts. It made me uncomfortable. I would have preferred him staring at my boobs again than seeing me, the real me.

“What else could it be about?”

“The fact that you asked me to help you get an abortion?” he hissed, his voice slowly rising.

“Me?” I pressed my hand between my breasts and stared at him, so shocked that I wasn’t sure how to react. “Why would you think it was for me?”

He frowned, fine wrinkles appearing between his brows. “Who else could it have been for?”

“I was a virgin, Crawford. It would have been pretty miraculous for me to need an abortion.”

He tilted his head slightly, confusion darkening his eyes. “What do you mean, you were a virgin? I saw you…”

“Saw me what?”

“With my roommate. That night at Stanford, exactly eight weeks before you asked me to arrange for an abortion.”

My jaw came unhinged. I stared at him, unable to believe my ears. All these years, I’d assumed he got angry with me because he thought I was breaking some basic, moral law. I thought he was angry because he misunderstood me when I told him I would make sure no one ever found out about his involvement. I thought maybe he thought I’d already told Mom or Dad. Or maybe he thought someone in town would find out and it would get back to his Mom. He was so angry with me. I didn’t know what to think.

But it never occurred to me that he assumed the abortion was for me.

I started to laugh.

“What’s so fucking funny?” he snarled, leaning toward me across the table.

“You know Jeannie. How could you possibly think that the abortion was for me?”

“I saw you.”

“You saw your roommate trying to cheer me up. He found me crying and he came over to reassure me. Nothing more.”

“But he had his arm around you.”

“If you think that’s how a girl gets pregnant, you need to go back to high school health class.”

His face reddened again, his full lips narrowing into a frown. I laughed, reaching across the table to touch his hand.

“All these years,” I said, struggling to catch my breath, “you thought I would do something like that? I was seventeen, for God’s sake! I panicked when you kissed me and I so desperately had wanted you to kiss me. Do you really think I was mature enough to let some boy knock me up?”

He started to say something but then stopped. He tilted his head again, as though he was trying to angle his ears so that he wouldn’t miss a word I had to say.

“I was such an awkward teenager. I didn’t even date in high school. Hell, I didn’t even date until I was a senior in college!” I laughed again, loud enough to draw the attention of a woman at a table a few feet from us.

“Did you say you had wanted me to kiss you?” His voice was low, almost harsh. But not harsh in an angry sort of way. Harsh in a turned-on sort of way.

“Yeah.” The laughter slowly died as I began to melt under his stare. “I think I did.”

“Why would you want me to kiss you?”

I shrugged. “Maybe because I’ve had a crush on you since I hit puberty.”

His eyes drifted down to my chest again, lingering. And then they slowly moved up to my face again, pausing on my lips as though he was ravaging them with just a glance.

“Why did you leave me there like that?”

“Because I was seventeen and I’d never been kissed like that before.”

“I was your first?”

I shrugged. “In a way, yes, you were.”

He nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. “Are you hungry?”

I chuckled slightly, a little confused by the question. And then my slow, inexperienced brain caught up to what he was really asking. I shook my head no.

Crawford stood and held out his hand to me. He dropped a couple of twenties on the table and pulled me close to him, my hand tucked tight into his. We stumbled out the door and rushed to his rental. The moment we reached it, he pushed me up against the passenger side door, his lips finding mine as his hand slid defiantly up my side. He brushed my breast, my nipple aching at the brief touch. I sighed against his lips, opening to him and loving the taste of his tongue as it invaded my mouth.
God, he knew what he was doing!
I loved the feel of him, the way he ran just the very tip of his tongue up against the roof of my mouth, swirling it around to touch my cheek as he explored every inch of me.

My bones were water, my nerves electrified. If he had taken me right there, right in the middle of a busy parking lot, I would have been up for it. I wanted him. I wanted to feel him inside of me, wanted to feel his hands on my skin, wanted to feel his muscles working under his. The scent of him was enveloping me, consuming me. I couldn’t have walked away from him in that moment even if I’d wanted to.

But he could walk away from me. He opened the door and pushed me inside while my lips were still softened for his touch. Then we were flying through traffic, rushing across town to the same hotel where we’d stayed the week before. If it was the same room, I think I might have decided that it was all a dream and ask him to pinch me. But it turned out he’d gotten himself the penthouse suite this time. He drew me inside, and then his hands were instantly under my skirt, tugging it up over my hips as he pushed me deeper into the room. There was a couch in the center of the space, a desk off to one side. He chose the desk, pushing me up against it until I was half sitting, half reclining on its edge. My skirt was around my waist, his hands quickly tugging my panties down over my hips. And then his fingers were seeking out my clit like he was a blind man seeking the secrets of the universe.

I cried out against his mouth as he found it, his finger applying just the right amount of pressure against that swollen, little button. I spread my legs, more than willing to allow him to explore anything he wanted. I tugged at his belt, pulling it open with one, quick jerk. But he grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand away even as he deepened our kiss and slid his finger deep inside my pussy.