Naked Love

by Jones, Lisa Renee

  The system worked today. You are innocent until proven guilty. Nelson Ward was not proven guilty. But justice is not done until the crime is solved. It’s time that we the people demand that the crime be solved. Demand justice for Jennifer Wright and her unborn child. Until then, —Cat.

  There. Done. Marked off my list.

  From there, I plan out next week’s columns, and I’ve just finished up when my cellphone rings again. I look down to find Liz’s number on caller ID. “Hi Liz.”

  “I just heard from your publisher,” she says.

  I glance at the time. “At eight o’clock on a Friday night?”

  “Yes. The trial ended. They’re in a panic to sign you. They raised the offer to seven hundred thousand. Five hundred for the trial book as long as Reese Summer signs on as a consultant. His compensation is on you. The second option book, will be two hundred thousand, which is double your last book.”

  As long as Reese signs a consulting form. That knots my stomach for no good reason. He will. I know he will. “Okay.”

  “Okay? I just said seven hundred thousand dollars and you said okay? I know we said seven-fifty but this is close.”

  “I know. I’m exhausted. It’s been a crazy week.”

  “You and Reese have issues.”

  “No.”

  “No?” she presses.

  “No.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Is this better than taking a proposal out to the masses? I don’t like their connection to Dan.”

  “I believe it is for this reason: If you walk away from your option publisher and don’t get more, your option publisher won’t take you back at this price. This is a lot of money to gamble with.”

  “Right. I’ll let you know Monday.”

  “Sunday night,” she insists.

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t like ‘okay,’ Cat.”

  “Okay.”

  She makes a frustrated sound. “I’ll call you Sunday.” She hangs up. I send my column to my editor that appears to be hanging in my browser and consider starting on Monday’s, but Kelli’s arrest would change it completely. Instead, I research what I’m going to write about post-Nelson Ward. Maybe post-Reese Summer. I pinpoint a few interesting cases and start doing research, two of which I’d like to sit in on the trials when they begin.

  It’s nine, and the coffee shop is empty and closing in half an hour when my phone rings with Reese’s number, and I breathe out, nervous to answer when that is not what I feel with Reese. “Hello.”

  “Hey, beautiful. Are you at home?”

  Home. Which home? His home? My home? “I’m at the coffee shop.”

  “I’m in an Uber. Hold on.” I can hear him giving the driver this address. “Okay. On my way. Nelson gave a statement about Kelli before getting on a plane and out of town.”

  “Out of the country?”

  “No. He agreed to be within reach if needed. Kelli was taken in for questioning.”

  “How do you think that will play out?”

  “I think she’ll lawyer up and be tough to break, but Nelson is going to file for divorce and pile it on her all at once.” His phone beeps. “Hold on.” He is gone a moment and returns. “That’s Royce. I’ll see you in ten.”

  “Okay.”

  We disconnect and I sigh. I seem to be the queen of “okay” tonight, when I’m not sure I’ve said that word this many times in my life. I’m simply not that agreeable. I yank at the tight knot at the back of my head and free my hair before I start to pack up, and suddenly Dan is sitting in front of me. “You’re writing a book with Reese, I hear.”

  “You heard wrong. I’m writing a book. Reese agreed to be interviewed. Would you like to be interviewed?”

  “I’ll tell my story my own way.”

  “Of course you will. Because you are so very predictable.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means an asshole never lets someone else tell their story because they don’t want to be called an asshole. Hopefully your writing is better than your ability to present evidence.”

  “There’s more to my story than you know, little girl.”

  “Little girl?” I laugh. “You really do speak great asshole.”

  “You have a smart mouth.”

  “Thank you. My mama taught me. She’d be proud.”

  “You were hell on me in your write-ups.”

  “And now we get to the reason you’re standing here. Do better. I’ll do better. I’m fair.”

  “You were hell in a courtroom, weren’t you?”

  “Yep, but I hated every minute of it. I think you do, too.” I lean forward. “And you will never do better if you hate what you do.”

  “Maybe I’ll retire and write books.”

  “If that’s what you want, then you should do it. Don’t keep losing cases when the result is no one going to jail. Because like you said, no one went to jail. And Jennifer deserved better than that.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Asshole.”

  He turns and walks away.

  I watch him exit, and Reese walks in the door, his dark hair a rumpled, sexy mess, his tie loose. Dan grunts at him and disappears. Reese frowns and walks toward me, all loose-legged swagger and hotness and just seeing him still makes me warm all over. He stops at the table and pulls me to my feet, and he doesn’t seem to care that we’re in public. The fingers of one of his hands tangle in my hair and he’s kissing me—no, drugging me is the only way to described how this man’s tongue makes every nerve ending in my body tingle.

  “Hi,” he says, stroking hair from my face.

  “Hi.”

  “You having an affair with Dan?”

  I laugh. “No. Believe it or not, I’m not attracted to assholes.”

  “Good thing I’m not an asshole. How do you feel about pizza, champagne, me, and bed?”

  He assumes I’m going home with him, when I’d assumed—nothing. I didn’t know what we were doing, but now, with him, I think I was living in the past again. Seeing the ghost of Mitch who is long gone. “Yes to all,” I say. “Please.”

  We both start smiling when I say please.

  I decide that call he took in private was nothing, while he’s becoming everything.

  30

  Reese

  I wake Saturday morning to Cat curled next to me, that sweet floral scent of her clinging to me and the sheets, pretty much sealing the deal on morning wood. Unfortunately, my phone is also buzzing on the nightstand, and appears to be the reason I woke up. I grab it and note the seven a.m. hour and my sister’s number on the display. My cell stops ringing and she immediately sends me a text. Answer your phone, superhero. Glad you won your case, but the rest of your life calls. She means my parents’ marital problems, and that isn’t a situation I’m prepared to deal with in front of Cat, at least not until Cat and I have the “my fucked-up family” conversation. Which, to be fair, I need to have this weekend.

  Knowing Stacey, she’ll call back another ten times. I ease away from Cat, careful not to wake her. I snag my pajama bottoms and T-shirt from the floor and pull them on but I don’t walk away. I stand beside the bed, staring down at Cat, fully aware that my invitation for her stay through the end of the trial has ended.

  No. My excuse to have her stay. Only, I still want her here, and it’s time to have that straight up conversation. She needs to know that I don’t want to wake up or go to sleep without her next to me. I’m not letting her leave.

  I round the bed and walk into the bathroom, brush my teeth, and splash water on my face. Since the meetings I set up for today when I was on my way to pick up Cat last night aren’t until after lunch, I decide coffee and Cat are on the menu. I exit to the bedroom again, and find Cat has snuggled deeper into the blankets, completely content and sound asleep. Coffee first, I decide. Cat later. I smile and head downstairs, flipping on the fireplace in the den, which is off the kitchen, before I brew a
cup of coffee and set up my computer on the island. I grab a barstool at the end cap of the island, with a good view of the stairs, where Cat will eventually travel.

  After keying my MacBook to life, I scan the headlines about the case and pull up Cat’s column with the intent of reading it. I also plan to make this my new morning ritual now that the trial is over and the millions of cameras are off. Now, I can admit that was a hell of a lot of pressure.

  My phone rings, which I expected. I glance at caller ID and answer the call. “Hello, sunshine.”

  “Answer your phone when I call,” my sister snaps.

  “I was asleep. I do that occasionally.”

  “Mom and Dad had a huge fight.”

  “You said that yesterday when you called me on the final day of the trial of my career.”

  “Yes, but now she left him. She won’t answer our calls. No one can find her. Dad’s freaking out.”

  “Maybe she finally got smart and found another man,” I suggest, one of my few statements anyone could call hopeful.

  “That’s your reply?” Stacey snaps. “Really, Reese?”

  “I spent years battling this war with them and got the fuck out. You should too.”

  “She won’t return our calls. What if something happened to her?”

  “How long has it been?” I ask.

  “Twelve hours.”

  “She’s fine,” I say, comforting my sister, though I’m secretly worried. She doesn’t cut off her kids. Or her ass of a husband, for that matter. “She’s a fifty-five-year-old woman who’s beautiful, smart, and capable. Give her some space.”

  Her phone beeps. “That’s her. I’ve gotta go.” She hangs up.

  I dial my brother Dylan. “He’s got another girlfriend,” Dylan says as his greeting.

  “Of course he does,” I say, weary of this topic.

  “She’s thirty-two. Blonde. Beautiful. I’d fuck her. Dad’s fucking her. It’s fucked up.”

  “I knew he wouldn’t change,” I say. “I don’t know why she stays. We’re all grown up now. We don’t need stability, and there was never stability in the first place.”

  “Apparently, she’s not this time,” he says. “She disappeared.”

  “She just called Stacey.”

  “Thank God,” he says. “I had this image in my head of one of Dad’s women killing her. I’ve told him that. He’s going to pick a crazy one, one day, and there will be no turning back.”

  “And now you get why I left.”

  “I’m taking that to mean you won’t be home for Christmas again,” he says.

  “Hell the fuck no.”

  His line beeps. “I don’t have to look at the caller ID. Stacey is calling me.”

  “Text me an update. I’m going to be in meetings today.”

  “Always working and winning. Congrats, man, on the win. I hope he didn’t do it.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Fuck,” Dylan growls. “Stacey hung up.”

  My line starts beeping. “She’s calling me,” I say.

  “I’ll call her. Consider Christmas. You have about three months to decide. I can’t do another one alone.”

  “Come here to me,” I suggest. “Get away from the hell there.”

  “I might. I really might. Ciao.” He hangs up.

  I start reading Cat’s column, lost in the mind of this woman who has taken over my world. She’s sharp, witty, and intelligent. She’s also tough as nails, with a big attitude that shows in her writing. My fingers thrum on the table. My mother is all of those things, and yet she stays with my father when I am certain Cat would kick me to the curb if I acted like him. Why does my mother stay?

  Footsteps sound, and I look up to find Cat entering the kitchen in a fluffy pink robe, the top gaping widely and offering me a glimpse of her left breast. Her long blonde hair a tangled, sexy mess that just makes me want to fuck her ten times to Sunday and forget work. She crosses to the island to stand on the edge right beside me, her green eyes bright as she reaches for my coffee and takes a sip. She crinkles her nose. “You drink your coffee like stout whiskey,” she says, setting the cup down. “It gets the job done, but it’s no fun in the process.”

  I laugh and swivel my chair around, pulling her to me. “Like I get the job done?”

  “Yes, but sometimes you’re fun.”

  “Sometimes? Is that right?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Sometimes. Sometimes you’re very intense, like in the shower yesterday.”

  “Right. About that—”

  “You don’t need to explain,” she says, flattening her hand on my chest. “You had cameras and the world watching. I know how trial days are, remember? And I wasn’t at your level of public exposure.” She kisses my cheek. “I’m going to leave you with your stout coffee and make something more palatable.” She skirts around me, and I swivel my chair to follow her, watching as she navigates my kitchen like she’s lived here more than a week. And she is basically living here.

  “What time are you going to work?” she asks, sticking a pod in the coffee maker and setting a cup underneath the spout.

  “Noonish,” I say. “But my meeting isn’t until four. I’m reviewing pretty much everything going on in the firm that I’ve missed up to today.”

  “I’m sure that is a load,” she says. “I’ll head home after I shower.” She turns away, giving me her back as she doctors her coffee, while I’m focused on that word: Home.

  Fuck. She has one of those that isn’t here. We can both forget that anytime now.

  “Cat.”

  She turns to face me, crossing her arms in front of her. She never crosses her arms in front of her. “I have work to do too, and laundry, along with what is probably piles of mail. I can’t believe I haven’t even thought about my mail.”

  I stand up and step in front of her. “Do you really want to be there instead of here?”

  “I have my own apartment, Reese,” she says, those arms uncurling, her hands settling on my chest.

  “Okay. Would you rather be there than here? We can stay there.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, Cat. We. That’s what we’re doing, right?”

  “We have been, but—”

  “But? I can tell you that you don’t have to finish that sentence and I already don’t like it. Either we are or we aren’t.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? That’s passive for you.”

  “It’s my new word. I do agreeable, and then when I’m not agreeable, you remember how agreeable I’ve been. Because when I’m not agreeable, I’m really not agreeable.”

  My hands settle on the counter on either side of her. “You referenced how intense I was yesterday. You do know that I was not in normal form, right?”

  “Of course I do. Like I said, you had the cameras on you. The pressure was intense.”

  “Talk to me, Cat.”

  “I—It’s stupid and I feel ridiculous.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “You took a call and just left me sitting there in the coffee shop, and I don’t know why, but it felt weird. Like you were hiding something. And no, I don’t know why. Because you’ve never been secretive before, but it felt secretive, though you have a right, and—”

  “You’re right,” I say. “I got up because I didn’t want you to hear that conversation. It was my sister and it was family drama.”

  “You think I can’t handle your family drama? You do remember mine, right?”

  “Look,” I say, pushing off the counter and scrubbing the stubble on my jaw, “my parents are one big war zone. They always have been. They are the reason I’ve had no interest in relationships.”

  “And yet I’m here.”

  “Yes. You’re here. You’re different. You made me break my own rules, but I need you to know that I’m not going to be my father, and yes, I’ll elaborate on what I mean. I would just prefer to do it when I’m not about to leave for work.”

  “Okay,” she says, “but kn
ow this: Nothing you tell me about your parents affects who you are to me.”

  I cup her face and kiss her. “I hope not, because I’m not letting you go. One way or the other, we’re together this weekend. We can stay here or at your place.”

  “We can stay here, but I do need to go home and check on things and get some things handled.”

  “Why don’t we meet back here right before dinner and I’ll take you someplace nice? Or I can pick you up and bring your things here, if you have a bag.”

  “Why don’t you just call me when you’re wrapping up?”

  “That works. Do reservations at eight work for you?”

  “Yes. Great.”

  “In the meantime, breakfast.” I scoop her up and start walking, with the bedroom our destination breakfast location. I climb the steps and lay her on my bed then join her, settling on top of her.

  That’s when my phone starts ringing in my pocket again. I ignore it and lean in to kiss Cat, but she presses her fingers to my lips. “Shouldn’t you get that?”

  “No.” I remove her hand from my mouth and kiss her. She tasted like toothpaste earlier. Now she tastes like toothpaste and coffee, which is apparently exactly what I needed to have that morning wood return. My phone starts ringing again. Cat pushes me back. “What if it’s your family?”

  “It is my family.”

  “Then you take it. You deal with it. I’ll go take a shower.”

  I roll off of her and onto my back. “Fuck.” I grab my phone and look at the number. “My sister.”

  Cat leans over and kisses me. “I’m not going anywhere. Take care of them.”

  She climbs off the bed, and I roll to watch her leave, not giving two shits that my phone stops ringing again. Right now, my mind has gone to a place it has never gone with any other woman: I’m falling in love with Cat. Hell, I probably already am in love with her. Either way, there’s no turning back. I wasn’t lying when I said she had me at “asshole.”