Lawyers In Love: In His Own Defense (6 page)

Suddenly she realized how pathetic she must look, dirt-smudged and ragged. How could she even dream a man like Tony would give her a second glance? She stared down at her torn dress and bare legs, imagining how awful her hair must look, tousled as it must have been by the wind. Kristine sighed as she picked up a fork and twirled spaghetti strands around it.

“You have many talents,” she said after taking her first bite. “This tastes delicious.”

“It was either learn to cook or starve when I was in law school,” Tony replied, his gaze on her hot and speculative. Seemed he hadn’t realized she wasn’t the kind of woman men looked at
that
way. “Do you really like it?”

“Yes.”

She liked
him
too, even though she shouldn’t. Not only was he way out of her league, he was the enemy. He used his talents to set criminals free.

Funny. When she looked at him, she saw only a gorgeous man who made her feel like a woman. Not a villain but a decent, well-intentioned man who had abandoned whatever plans he had this afternoon to take care of a wounded adversary.

Kristine forced herself to concentrate on eating. The sooner she could say goodbye to Tony Landry, the better. He made her forget why she’d become a criminal lawyer…why she had vowed to exact revenge for her lost family. When he looked at her as though she were a prize morsel he’d like to taste, she almost forgot she wasn’t the kind of woman likely to attract a hunk like him.

“You don’t have to stay,” she told him when he got up and turned on her TV.

“Don’t you want to see yourself on the news?”

She shuddered. “Not particularly.”

“Well, I do.”

Picking up the remote control, he settled against the cushions at the opposite end of the sofa and propped her splinted leg on his lap. “I’m anxious to see just how black they’ve painted me for getting Garcia acquitted,” he muttered, his lips twisting in a scowl.

The news story featured her as tragic heroine to Tony’s mustache-twirling villain, using his wily tricks to get Garcia—one of the press’s favorite targets—off the hook. Kristine sat up and stared, disbelieving, when the reporter on the scene for Channel Eighty-Four showed footage of Tony’s car careening toward her and reported the near miss, but not the rescue.

“That’s not fair!” she exclaimed.

“The press seldom is. Look.”

She followed his gaze to the screen, where the anchorwoman had moved on to a piece on the horrors of addiction to cocaine, the kind of a soft news report Kristine normally would applaud.

“You certainly don’t favor legalizing that poison, do you?” she asked when she noticed Tony’s disgusted expression.

He flipped off the TV and stood. “No. But I don’t like seeing my clients being convicted by the press after they’ve been acquitted in a court of law, either. It’s time for your pills. I’ll bring you some water.”

Clearly he had no intention of giving her equal rebuttal time. Kristine had to admit, the man was a master at getting in the last word, because before she could comment, he’d picked up their dirty dishes and disappeared into the kitchen.

When he came back and handed her a glass of water, that devastating smile had returned to his face. Lethal in its impact, it robbed her of the will to assert her own opinion. Docile now, Kristine took the pills and washed them down with a gulp of water.

“Thanks. I hope these don’t knock me out the way that shot did.”

Her gaze locked with his. His eyes changed color like a chameleon, first brown, then greenish gold when she viewed them in the muted light from the window. Mercurial eyes, just right for a man whose image shifted from moment to moment in her mind.

“I really do appreciate everything you’ve done. You must think I’m a klutz, and I don’t mean just in the courtroom.”

“I think you’re an angel.”

The skin between her breasts burned when she noticed him looking there.

“God, Kristine. I could have killed you.”

She glanced at her chest and noticed the jagged tear in what had been her good gray dress. Dried bloodstains, a small scratch just above the top of the plain white cotton bra he couldn’t help but see through the gash in the material. Embarrassed, she laid a hand over the part of her bare breast framed by the torn fabric.

“You saved me, Tony.” For a moment she wished the sight of her evoked his passion instead of his sympathy.

“So soft. So pretty.”

Very gently he lifted her hand and traced the length of the scratch Kristine guessed must have come from one of the sharp pieces of shell used as filler in the asphalt paving for Tampa streets.

Maybe he did want her. The intense look on his handsome face as he stroked her bare skin didn’t project sympathy, for certain.

“I’d better go,” he said, practically snatching away his hand. He stood and gave her an apologetic look.

Disappointment washed over her. She wanted him to stay, wanted to feel him touch her. Kiss her. Hold her against his hard, strong body and keep the memories at bay. She couldn’t ask, though. He wasn’t the white knight of her dreams, merely a stranger whose personal life had touched hers by a crazy twist of fate.

When he let himself out her front door, she smiled and waved goodbye.

Afterward, for what seemed like hours, Kristine lay there on the couch, her mind slowed by the medication she’d taken. The sting of losing her first case should have hurt more, but she felt only mild regret, faint amusement.

And she couldn’t hate the clever defense lawyer who’d thwarted her plans. He’d saved her from what could have been a very painful death.

When she giggled, the sound reverberated through her silent house. She had the feeling Tony had wanted to stay, that he’d sensed the same inexplicable pull toward her she did toward him.

Wishful thinking. That’s what it had to be.

She’d think of some appropriate way to thank Tony Landry for giving up his afternoon to play cook and nursemaid to her. Then she would forget him. After the disastrous way she’d handled the Manny Garcia trial, she doubted Andi would ever assign her another case where the defendant needed a lawyer of Tony’s stature.

Out of sight, out of mind. At least Kristine hoped that would be so. She needed it to be true, because now that she’d seen the caring side of Tony Landry, she couldn’t hate him any more than she could imagine a future with him.

* * * * *

Tony couldn’t get her out of his mind. He quit pacing the length of his office and picked up the clear crystal dolphin Kristine had sent with her thanks for his help the day he almost ran her down. Its graceful lines reminded him of her.

Hell, everything reminded him of her. In the three weeks since he’d left her house to avoid making a complete ass of himself, he’d spent more time thinking about her than he had about his clients and their legal problems. And he’d repeatedly mulled over the few words he’d been able to make out when she’d been in the throes of that nightmare and figured out exactly nothing.

Hell, he’d even called Gretchen and had her come up for a weekend. He might as well not have bothered. All he’d done was make a fool of himself, trying to rekindle a flame that had been fizzling for months—a flame that had died the minute he laid eyes on one young, blond lawyer. Kristine had something that turned him on. He hadn’t figured out what, but there was definitely something about her—qualities way beyond the glamour and sophistication that had attracted him to Gretchen.

He set the dolphin back onto his desk and picked up the phone.

Vernon Burnside, who’d joined Winston Roe the same year Tony had, had grown up in Tampa’s society circles. “Got a minute, Vern?” Tony asked when his colleague picked up the phone.

It shouldn’t have surprised him when Vernon told him he’d come right over, but it did. Tony shook his head. He still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that since he’d become a partner the associates seemed to interpret his invitations and suggestions as orders.

“Tony. How can I help you?”

Tony turned from watching a boat go under the Kennedy Avenue Bridge and held out his hand. “Good to see you. Sit down. Want a drink?”

Except for his thinning light brown hair, Vern looked about the same as he had eight years ago. He shook his head. “Better not. I have to pick up my daughter from her ballet lesson on the way home. I can call my wife to do it, though, if you need me to stay.” He shrugged, as though resigned to doing his job but none too happy about the prospect of working late.

“This shouldn’t take long.” Tony recalled attending Vern’s wedding soon after they had started work. Vern’s devotion to Deb and their family had probably contributed to his slow progression from law clerk to senior associate in the firm’s corporate division. “You’re from Tampa. What do you know about Kristine Granger?”

“The Kristine Granger you nearly ran over with that sports car of yours?”

Tony thought he saw a twinkle of amusement in Vern’s serious blue eyes. “That one. What happened to her family? I know she’s from Tampa, but I get the impression she’s very much alone.”

Vern leaned back and closed his eyes, as if that would help him remember. “She’s Dale and Elaine Granger’s daughter. He was a stockbroker. Old Tampa family. He died the summer before we came to work here.”

“How?”

“Granger keeled over and died in the cemetery. Had a stroke or heart attack just as they were burying Kristine’s little sister Helen.”

“Jesus Christ. Kristine had to have been just a kid.”

“She’d graduated from high school that spring. Left here right after her father’s funeral, went up to Gainesville. Didn’t come back to Tampa, I don’t think, until she passed the bar last year and took the job with the state attorney.”

“Where was her mother when all this happened?”

“She’d died a couple of years earlier. Cancer, I think. Beautiful woman. Helen looked just like her.”

Horrible. Losing her whole family in the space of a few years had to have torn Kristine apart. Still Tony couldn’t connect that tragedy with her obsession to put everybody who’d ever touched illegal drugs behind bars. She apparently made no bones about that goal, since at least a dozen people had mentioned it to him before and after Garcia’s trial. “Was Kristine involved with drugs?”

Vern shook his head. “Not that I know of. Her sister was, though, big time. Died of an overdose. Gorgeous girl, but wild. Liked all-night raves, dated older guys. Some of my buddies took her out. Not me. I wasn’t into jailbait, no matter how pretty the package. Helen was just sixteen when she died.”

Tony tried to maintain a poker face, but hearing what Kristine had gone through staggered him. No wonder she was obsessed about convicting everybody connected with illegal drugs, from street dealers to kingpins. He had no trouble deducing that her obsession to punish drug dealers also explained her apparent disdain toward criminal defense lawyers in general, him in particular.

How had she survived, and how in hell could he get around the tragedy of her past so he could see if the incredible attraction he felt for her might lead to something more? Tony leaned back in his chair, tried to formulate a cogent argument to convince her he was just a man, not the devil incarnate.

A man whose cock and balls had suddenly gotten incredibly particular about who sent them into overdrive.

“Tony, are you all right?”

He forced himself to meet Vern’s gaze. “Sure. Thanks for filling me in.”

“No problem. Mind if I ask why you wanted to know?”

Tony minded, but he shrugged and muttered, “No reason but curiosity about why she took me on in court.”

“Because our fine state attorney thought an open trial would attract a lot of press attention, win or lose?” Vern suggested.

That was a distinct likelihood. But Tony was more interested in Kristine Granger than in Harper Wells’s political machinations.

Ready to end the conversation, Tony stood, waited for Vern to get up, then started walking toward the door. Right now, he needed a few minutes of solitude.

“Go on. You don’t want to be late to pick up your little girl.”

He watched Vern hurry down the hall toward the bank of elevators. But all he could think about was Kristine, eighteen years old and totally vulnerable. Alone in a world where he was certain nothing could have made sense to her, the way he’d been after they’d hauled his father off to jail and dumped him, ten years old and scared shitless, into a crowded foster home.

Tony pictured Kristine, focusing on the one thing she must have seen as alien in what had once been her perfect world. The poison that caused her sister’s death. No wonder she hated everyone connected with illegal drugs.

Sinking onto the leather sofa by the bar, Tony buried his face in his hands and allowed his emotions free rein. At least he’d had his old man when he was eighteen, even though he’d had to take a long bus trip every time he wanted to visit Bob Landry in a prison visiting room. Kristine had apparently had no one at all.

Had she gone to counseling? Had friends helped her cope? Vern had told him bare, stark facts, facts that posed more questions in Tony’s mind. To get answers, he would have to seek them from Kristine herself.

And he wouldn’t get them by pretending to ignore the chemistry that had threatened to erupt between them that night at her house. He owed it to himself and her to see if that mutual attraction would fade or burst into flame.