No Law Against Love 2

by Zoë Archer

  She pulled away and looked him in his eyes. “How do you come to know those names? Are you…?”

  “I am the Earl of Spode. Don’t you know your own history?”

  She nodded her head. “But I’m gladdened you do.” His blood stirred at the sight of her smile. “That means we share the same wild blood.” Her eyes roamed his face hungrily, and then she laughed.

  “What is so funny?”

  “That silly law. Now I’m thankful it exists.”

  “As it helped bring us together once again, so am I.” And then he kissed her.

  ~~~

  Great Britain • All English males over age 14 are to carry out two or so hours of longbow

  practice a week supervised by the local clergy.

  The Lawyer and the Amazon

  Lee Roland

  The minute Tucker Ferrell saw her sitting there, handcuffed to a police station bench, he knew she was the woman he’d waited for all his life. Mid-twenties, dark hair and eyes, a sleek cat of a woman with a long, lean, powerful body. The kind of woman men usually didn’t hit on because she might hit back—literally.

  Tucker was late. A junior partner in his father’s law firm, he should be in the interrogation room keeping the grandson of the firm’s wealthiest client from incriminating himself. One of the older uniformed officers sat beside the cat, and in spite of his need to be somewhere else, Tucker slowed to listen.

  “Phoebe,” the uniform said, “I know he broke the restraining order, but he just wanted to talk to his wife. Face it. You overreacted with the Amazon act.”

  “The bastard talks with his fists.” Phoebe spoke in a low voice, a voice flooded with rage. Her face twisted into a mask of contempt for the man speaking to her. “The last time he talked, she wound up with broken ribs and missing teeth.”

  The uniform rose. “Well, you’re lucky they only charged you with property damage and not assault.” He walked away, shaking his head and muttering.

  Like a hound following a delicate scent, Tucker sat on the bench beside her. He dug in his pocket and handed her his card. She accepted it, read it, and handed it back. “Can’t afford you, buddy. I work for a battered women’s shelter. They don’t have money either.”

  Tucker shook his head. “Pro bono. It’s free.”

  She had an oval shaped face with high cheekbones and an infinitely kissable mouth—a mouth that narrowed to a thin line as she assessed him and his offer. He knew what she was thinking.

  “No strings,” he said, trying to keep his voice neutral. He stood and gave her another card, one for his cousin’s bail bond business. “Call Charlie and tell him I’m good for your bail.”

  Tucker hurried away. Before he turned the corner, he glanced back at her. She stared at him, then nodded her head. Merely acknowledging him, not inviting, not even curious, only recognizing his presence in her world. He swallowed hard and fought the compulsion to go back to her, explain, tell her… What would he say? Oh, God. He hadn’t even thought of Clarissa, the woman he was going to marry next week. He rushed away to the interrogation room, only to find his still drunk client, Remington Braswell III, running his mouth about his illegal exploits.

  ~~~

  She wanted him. Phoebe Marshall lost all sense of the world around her the moment he sat beside her on the bench. Face neutral, hands unclenched, she gave not a flicker of emotion that would betray her desire to stare into those deep blue eyes and kiss that sumptuous mouth. With his blond hair and golden tan, he was the model of a rich beach boy, all grown up and decked out in an expensive suit—and the personification of the kind of man she would never have. She stared at the card. Tucker J. Ferrell of Ferrell, Ferrell and Brenner, Attorneys at Law. Offices were at an expensive uptown address. Disappointment surged when he’d handed it to her. Just another ambulance chaser. He’d help her for free? No strings? Too good to be true, but he went her bail. She’d certainly take that.

  The bail bondsman, a.k.a. Cousin Charlie, came right away when called. He appeared curious and slightly amused, but he took care of things with quiet precision and asked no questions. Phoebe didn’t pay a lot of attention to him. She still reeled with the memory of Tucker Ferrell’s presence when she walked out of the station two hours later.

  ~~~

  That evening, Tucker gritted his teeth and clenched his fists as his father shouted at him across a dining table filled with fine china and imported crystal. Tucker’s mother kept her eyes averted and his younger brother Jimmy grinned at Tucker’s discomfort. William Ferrell was a dynamic man, given to making a lot of harmless noise—unless he was in a court room. Then the noise became a sharp knife that cut through witnesses, often leaving them doubting their own memory of a scene. Mother and Jimmy knew how to work their way around him without risking an altercation. Only Tucker, who was much like him, fought back.

  “You idiot!” William roared. “You let Braswell’s grandson confess.”

  Tucker shrugged. “Braswell’s grandson was drunk. He seriously injured three people, one of them a child. The little bastard wasn’t confessing, he was bragging.”

  “Damn it, Tucker.” William pounded his fist on the table, narrowly missing the silverware. “We represent him. We don’t make the law and we don’t make judgments.”

  “Of course. And the law has nothing to do with right and wrong.”

  Tucker shoved his chair back, stood, and marched out of the dining room. He slowed and drew deep breaths, fighting for calm as he walked outside to his car. No. Not his car. The BMW his father allowed him to drive.

  Tucker graduated from college, spent five years working at odd jobs around the country, then paid, or rather borrowed, his own way through law school. Nearly broke, he’d been soft enough to let Mother talk him into moving back to the spacious family home after graduation. He climbed in the car, started the engine, and drove toward town.

  His cell phone rang and Jimmy’s phone number appeared on the screen.

  Tucker flipped it open. “You’re missing dessert, little brother,” he said.

  “Already ate it,” Jimmy told him. “Ate yours, too. Charlie called. He bailed your pro bono out and you owe him eight hundred bucks.”

  Tucker winced. Maybe his credit card would stretch that far. His plan was to be debt free five years after graduation. He wasn’t going to make it.

  Jimmy spoke again, his tone smug and full of laughter. “Charlie said you better be careful with her, she likes a good fight.”

  “Screw Charlie.” Tucker snapped the phone shut. He struggled not to think about the young woman, not to remember the emotion she stirred in him.

  He had no idea where he was going, but it was a nice evening. The day’s heat, not yet the furnace of full summer, had drained away. The cell phone rang again. Damn. He’d intended to turn it off. He picked it up and answered.

  “Darling,” Clarissa’s voice chirped in his ear. “Do you like orchids?”

  He drew a breath to speak, but Clarissa, as always, carried the conversation by herself. She warbled on about how roses were so common at weddings her mommy had purchased twenty thousand dollars of rare exotic orchids to distinguish her daughter’s nuptials from low class revelry.

  Tucker had asked Clarissa to marry him because his father desperately needed the alliance to represent a rich and powerful corporation and corporate family. He remembered the conversation well. Three months ago, William had come into his office just after lunch and closed the door. He sat in the chair across from Tucker and made his request.

  “You want me to what?” Tucker’s mouth had dropped open in shock.

  “Marry Clarissa Hamilton,” William spoke softly. He looked tired, and yes, defeated. Tucker had never seen him that way.

  William had given him a thorough assessment of the firm and family’s finances, a dismal situation brought about by two major clients who’d skipped the country without paying their fees. “I hate to ask you, son, but if you marry her, Alden Hamilton will give us Hamilton Industries’ le
gal accounts, and his personal accounts. Worth about ten million a year to the firm.”

  “I barely know the woman,” Tucker protested. He’d met Clarissa at a couple of cocktail parties company business forced him to attend. Her bleached blonde head was empty as a birthday balloon. “What makes you think she’d marry me?”

  “When she gets married, she’ll inherit five million dollars from her grandfather’s estate. She wants that money.”

  “She could marry anyone for five million dollars,” Tucker told him.

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know the details, but Alden is upset. He suspects she has plans to do something foolish.”

  “Is she pregnant?”

  William shook his head. “Not to my knowledge.”

  Tucker leaned back in his chair, still a little stunned by what he’d been asked to do. “What’s to say she’ll accept my proposal?”

  “Alden. He said he guaranteed she’d say yes.” William lowered his eyes.

  “He’s blackmailing her? Threatening her?” Tucker slapped his hands on the desk. “You want to be associated with someone like that? To have this firm dragged into that kind of mess?”

  William stood and walked to the door. “It’s your choice, son. Do what you think best. He’ll force her to marry someone, though. It might as well be you.”

  Tucker sat there after his father had left, his mind churning. His first thoughts had gone to his mother. She didn’t deserve to lose everything she had to bankruptcy. And what did he have to lose? Only his self-respect. His mother’s peace of mind was worth that. She’d always encouraged him to be an individual, not a small task given his father’s personality. So, he’d called Clarissa, asked her for a date. She’d agreed. He’d taken her to dinner and between the entrée and dessert, had asked her to marry him.

  Clarissa shrugged her thin shoulders and said, “Sure. I guess you’ll do.” That had turned out to be the briefest statement she would ever make in his presence.

  Tucker had soon realized Clarissa was a very unhappy young woman, and he’d tried to be kind to her. She’d responded to a certain extent, and had fallen into the role of delighted bride-to-be with the zeal of an actress in pursuit of an Oscar winning performance. No love was involved. God knows what would happen on their wedding night. So far, their physical intimacy consisted of a few public hugs and kisses for a camera. Hundreds of cameras. Alden Hamilton walked side by side with senators, congressmen and governors, not to mention millionaire businessmen. His daughter’s nuptials attracted an incredible amount of attention. The benefit to the firm was immediate. In the days that followed, Ferrell, Ferrell and Brenner had received numerous queries about representation.

  Clarissa’s strident voice brought him out of memory and back to the present.

  “Tucker? Are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “So what do you think?” she asked.

  “Orchids are okay.” She’d get what she wanted anyway, and he didn’t care as long as he didn’t have to pay for it.

  “No, no,” Clarissa squealed. “I mean about the white doves they’re going to free when we leave the church.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a little too much?” Tucker couldn’t keep an incredulous tone from his voice. Talk about excess.

  The phone went silent and he thought he’d lost the connection. Then Clarissa said, “I want the doves.”

  Tucker heard the tantrum building in her tone, but he ignored it. “I think it’s against the law or something. Releasing cage raised birds.”

  “Silly.” Clarissa giggled. “Daddy’s going to make you vice-president of the Legal Department when we get married. Then you can break all the laws you want.”

  Tucker found it impossible to argue with her there. He, himself, had successfully defended a guilty-as-hell corporate vice-president on fraud and income tax evasion charges just last month.

  When Clarissa finally stopped talking to catch her breath, he said goodbye and turned off the phone. He thought he’d won the argument about the birds when he told her they would probably shit all over the wedding party as they flew away.

  Traffic was light since the five o’clock rush had come and gone and it wouldn’t be long until complete darkness descended. Tucker knew the shelter’s location because last month he’d had a raging client demand that Tucker get a restraining order lifted so he could go there and teach his wife, a.k.a., ‘that stinking whore,’ a lesson. Even William hadn’t objected when Tucker threw the client out of his office.

  As he turned onto Belcher Avenue he scanned the aging buildings, half of them boarded up, a few posted with condemned signs. Not a prime location to leave a BMW unattended at night. Across the street, a newly landscaped city park buffered the semi-blighted area from the new modern construction to the south.

  The shelter, a three-story concrete block stronghold with barred windows and door gates, sat jammed against an apartment building on one side and a narrow dirt alley on the other. Tucker parked directly in front of the building. He climbed out, set the BMW’s alarm, and walked to the barred front door. He had to pass his ID through a small opening before multiple locks turned and the steel door opened.

  “Welcome to the Gaia Women’s Shelter,” the small, gray-haired woman who opened the door said as she let him into a large vestibule. “I’m Ella, the director.” She secured the door behind him. When she finished, she said, “Thank you for helping Phoebe. She’s the only on-site security we can afford. The police come quickly, but sometimes it’s not enough.” She pointed to a parlor-type room to his right. “If you’ll wait in there, I’ll get her.”

  Heavy curtains covered the parlor’s barred front windows, and worn, mismatched furniture carried the scars of many years use. It was immaculate, but it seemed like a prison that kept the inmates who’d committed no crimes safe from the criminals lurking outside.

  Tucker turned at a small sound behind him. Phoebe entered the room. She stood straight and alert, legs slightly apart for balance, arms at her sides, ready to face any attack that came her way. His eyes slid over her body, and the desire that had slammed him earlier in the day returned. “I’m…” He cleared his throat. “I’m Tucker Ferrell, attorney. I…”

  Phoebe laughed, a genuine, good-humored sound that seemed to come from deep inside. “Well, Tucker Ferrell, I appreciate your charity, but I sure hope you do better than that when we get in front of a judge.”

  Tucker drew a deep breath. “Sorry. I came to talk about the charges against you.”

  Phoebe nodded and went to sit on the couch. He followed her, sitting within easy speaking distance, but not too close.

  “I do have a part time job,” she said. “I could pay you something. Not much, but…”

  “No, that’s not necessary. I do pro bono cases to help people. Will you tell me what happened?”

  Phoebe leaned back and stretched out her long legs. In spite of her relaxed pose, she radiated tension. Tucker clamped his teeth together and forced himself to keep his eyes on her face.

  “I escorted Myra, one of our residents, to court to have the temporary restraining order against her sorry ass husband, Wallace, made permanent,” she said. “Taxis are expensive, and the new courthouse annex is only five blocks from here if you walk across the park. Weather was good, so we walked. Wallace hit us in the center by the fountain. Middle of the day, lots of people around, I didn’t think he’d try something like that in a public place.”

  “He attacked you?”

  “Yeah. He was drunk and I took him down. Didn’t injure him, though, much as I wanted to. In the process, I threw him into the water fountain and broke one of the underwater lights. The police arrested Wallace for violating the restraining order, but unfortunately, the City Code says—” she held up two fingers on each hand and made quote signs—“‘any person who at any time washes his hands, face or feet in any of the fountains in the city or obstructs the flow of water into the same or in any manner tampers with or abuses
such fountain or its fixtures shall be punished as provided in’…whatever.” Phoebe sighed. “So they arrested me, too.”

  “You abused the fountain?”

  Phoebe shrugged. “I abused the fountain.”

  Tucker locked his hands together. Her sweet scent made him crazy. So close, but he didn’t dare touch her. He swallowed hard, not wanting to reveal his desire. “Did you cause any actual damage to the fountain other than the broken light?”

  “No.” Phoebe smiled, and the room grew brighter. “They probably had to flush the water, though. I think Wallace pissed and shit in his pants when I held his head under.”

  ~~~

  Phoebe carefully locked the door behind Tucker as he left. She turned to find Ella smiling at her.

  “Well?” Ella held out her hands, practically begging for information.

  “Well what? He’s a lawyer. A handsome, rich, high-class lawyer who—”

  “Likes you.” Ella laughed softly.

  “No. I’m a hard luck charity case. Look good on his resume or whatever lawyers use to show how important they are.” Phoebe said the words, knowing they weren’t quite true, but still not understanding him. Tucker’s subtle body language had indicated an interest, but he’d made no move to express it.

  Ella laid a gentle hand on Phoebe’s arm. “Phoebe, I know you don’t trust men. You have good reasons not to. But—”

  “I trust some men. Those who don’t hurt us.”

  “That’s what it’s about, isn’t it.” Ella held out her hands as if making a plea. “You don’t trust one to like you, maybe even love you, because you’re afraid of being hurt. Daddy died on you, your mother made a bad choice on a second husband—”

  “Stop analyzing me, Ella. Have you ever seen a man like that lawyer with a woman like me? His kind goes for petite blondes who giggle and spend their time shopping.”

  “Oh, love, you’re so young. We need you, but you need a life outside this place.”