“Did Kat already tell you what we need you to do?” Shane asked him.
Hale brushed off the leg of his jeans in an attempt to make himself look a little more presentable. It didn’t really work. “Yeah, she tol’ me. I just need to tell the truth about everything I already told her. That’s my phone, and yeah, the messages came from Cindy. That ‘bout right?”
“Good enough. This is gonna be fun,” Shane said and stepped through the courthouse entrance.
The main hallway of the federal courthouse was mostly empty of people or conversation. Aside from the paintings of past judges who had long since retired or low-backed benches with little ferns placed beside them, there wasn’t much to look at, either. The three of us made our way up the carpeted staircase to the second floor with Shane leading the way.
“I’m going to have to try and get this phone logged as an exhibit with the hearing officer. He’s an ornery old cuss, but I don’t think I’ll have any problems. Kat, Hale, just go in and sit down wherever there’s an empty seat near the front. Make sure that Patterson sees you. That ought to throw one hell of a wrench in his gears.”
“I can’t wait to see the look on his face,” I said.
At the towering wooden doors that served as the entrance to the primary courtroom, Shane paused with his hand on the brass handle.
“Everyone ready?” he asked. Hale and I both nodded. “Then let’s do this.”
Shane pulled the doors open and strode confidently into the courtroom ahead of me. Every face turned to look at our small group that was suddenly intruding on an otherwise peaceful trial. One of the men on Shane’s legal team was standing and addressing the judge, but once he saw Shane, the man stopped talking and sat down. Patterson and his squad of lawyers quickly huddled together on the opposite side of the courtroom and began to engage in a furious bout of harsh whispers.
Right behind them in the visitor’s box was the blonde bitch herself, Cindy Reid. When she saw us, her jaw dropped so hard I’d swear I heard it hit the floor.
“He – he can’t be in here!” Cindy said loudly and stuck her finger out at Hale.
“Quiet down!” the judge snarled at her, followed by a bang from his gavel. Poor Cindy crossed her arms and descended back into her chair with a scowl of utter contempt.
Shane stepped past the prosecution’s table and handed Hale’s phone to a snow-haired gentleman who was wearing a brown deputy sheriff’s uniform. The man stuck the phone in a clear bag, had a few words with Shane, and then walked behind the bench and whispered something to the judge. With a quick thumbs-up and a flash of a smile, Shane let me know that he’d succeeded.
“Mr. Logan, this is highly irregular,” the judge stated and handed the bagged phone back to the hearing officer.
“Yes, your honor, I realize that. I apologize to the court for submitting such late evidence to trial, but it is of the utmost importance that the jury be given the benefit of seeing it,” Shane answered, and then added, “In the spirit of justice, of course.”
The judge looked at him with narrowed eyes. “The defense here was just making a motion for a mistrial, Mr. Logan. Please do tell me that whatever it is you’re introducing to evidence has some bearing on that, or I’ll be inclined to support them.”
Shane glanced over at the opposition and replied, “Oh, yes, your honor. I think this evidence will bring crystal clarity to that unfortunate incident. May I proceed?”
The judge nodded gracefully and sat back in his big chair as if he couldn’t wait to watch the show that was about to unfold. I doubted he got many thrills or nearly as much drama out of his normal docket of cases.
“The prosecution calls to the stand Mr. Hale Ellis,” Shane said.
“I object,” barked Crenshaw James, the celebrity attorney hired by Reid. He stood up and leaned across the table like he was trying to force his voice to mentally command the judge. James’s dark, thick eyebrows were scrunched up in the middle of his forehead but there was not a wrinkle or crease to be found in his absurdly expensive suit.
“On what grounds do you object?” the judge asked James.
“Your honor, we have not been privy to any of this new evidence, or this witness.”
The judge seemed to consider it for a moment, but then smiled and told him, “Objection noted…and denied. Please continue, Counselor Logan.”
Hale stood up and walked to the small witness box beside the judge. He stood out like a sore thumb amongst all the suits in the jeans he usually wore when working on equipment, and thought better of it to remove his oil-stained hat as soon as he sat down. Another deputy, the bailiff, walked up to him and held out a bible, which Hale placed his hand on.
“Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” the bailiff asked.
“Uh, yeah,” Hale answered clumsily, and then added, “I do.”
“Your honor, I’d like to introduce exhibit…err…fifteen,” Shane said, pausing as he tried to figure out what exhibit number belonged to the phone he’d just submitted only a few moments ago.
“Go ahead, Mr. Logan.”
“Thank you, your honor.” Shane stepped back over to the hearing officer’s table and took the phone. He walked it over to Hale, held it up in front of him, and asked, “Mr. Ellis, do you recognize this phone?”
Hale bowed towards the microphone and replied, “Yeah. That’s my phone.”
“Did you, Mr. Ellis, at any time, communicate with Miss Cindy Reid on this phone about events surrounding this trial?”
“I did.”
“Objection,” James called out again. “How is this relevant to whether or not Counselor Logan breached the ethics of interest or demonstrates anything of substance besides hearsay, your honor?”
Before the judge could answer, Shane spoke up, “Your honor, I’m getting to that directly.”
“See that you do,” the judge said and continued to recline in his chair. “Overruled.”
Shane turned his attention back to Hale. “Mr. Ellis, there are several text messages in this phone that you sent to Miss Reid, is that correct?”
“Yes,” Hale responded.
“And there are messages from her to you as well, correct?”
Hale nodded. “There are.”
“And at no time before today, did anyone else have access to your phone to, say, plant these messages?”
“I’m the only one who’s used it.”
Shane stepped over to the prosecution’s desk and spoke briefly to the woman I recognized from the coffee shop and Shane’s address on the courthouse steps. She slid him a thin stack of papers, which he took and handed to Hale. At the same time, the woman stepped across the aisle and gave some similar papers to Crenshaw James, who began speed-reading them with a look of disbelief.
“Mr. Ellis, we’ve taken the liberty of printing out the text messages, a copy of which has just been given to the defendant as well, that were discovered on the phone between you and Miss Reid. Can you confirm if these print-outs are the same as the ones on your phone?”
Hale looked through the papers slowly, reading line by line to himself, and then answered, “Yes. These messages are the same.”
“And these are exchanges, to the best of your knowledge, between you and Miss Reid?”
“Yeah. That’s her phone number, right there next to her name. I called her a lot when we were datin’. She texted me from the same phone, so I know it was her.”
“Mr. Ellis, you’ll find bolded numbers beside each message. Can you please read them to the jury, beginning with message number sixty-four?”
Hale flipped the page and found it with his finger, then carefully read the message out loud, word for word, “I saw you on the tv. If we’re going to make this work, I have to know what really happened. Was that really you kissing that guy?”
“Read the next message, please,” Shane said, and then explained to the jury, “This next one is from Miss Reid.”
I w
atched Cindy out of the corner of my eye. She was staring at Hale with a fury I’d never seen come out of her ever before and had pulled on her hair so much that it was quickly becoming a frazzled mess. Little miss perfect was falling apart at the seams.
Hale’s amplified voice rang out as he read the next line on the page, “It was all just a prank, baby. Daddy told me to do it so the camera could catch us and it’d look like we were together.”
Shane nodded to Hale and said, “Go on, keep going. They’ll get a copy to examine later.”
Hale started reading and didn’t stop, going through the messages with only a slight pause between each one, “So it wasn’t for real? … No, sugar. … Why did you do it, then? … Hale, how hard is it to understand? We did it to get that damn lawyer out of our hair. We’re going to bury him with the pictures when I take ‘em to the news.”
“Very good, Mr. Ellis,” Shane broke in to stop him. “Your honor, at this time I’d like to object to the motion for a mistrial.”
The judge moved to the end of his chair and nodded his head in a lively way. “Oh yes, Counselor Logan. Objection sustained. The motion to mistrial is vehemently denied.”
Shane smiled over at Patterson Reid, who was sitting there with a scowl very much like his daughter’s. His gaggle of lawyers were poring over the sheets of paper they’d been handed and arguing quietly amongst themselves.
“Thank you, your honor,” Shane said and continued, “Mr. Ellis, there’s another message under the last one you read, I believe it’s number…seventy. Could you start reading there again, please?”
Hale found his place and picked right back up again, “I thought your father had taken care of everything with that guy, the one who used to work for you? … That was different. It only took money to make him change his mind.”
“Now Mr. Ellis, who were you referring to when you said, ‘that guy, the one who used to work for you?’”
Hale replied, “Oh that was Frank. Everybody knows him. He worked at the phosphate plant for…forever, till he got sick.”
“Frank Miller, correct?”
Hale nodded. “Yeah. That’s the guy.”
“Well,” Shane slapped his hands together and them held them out to his sides. “That about does it. No further questions, your honor.”
Twenty
“How’d you sleep?” Shane asked as he walked into the kitchen. I finished taking a sip of the coffee, a special blend he’d ordered from Indonesia, and put my head against his hand when he placed it on my shoulder.
“Wonderfully, thanks to you,” I answered and gave him a lingering kiss. “By the way, your new place is fantastic, Shane.”
“The land came at a good price.”
He walked over to the steaming pot still in the machine and poured himself a cup. While he stirred the dark brown liquid, Shane looked out the window towards my family’s farm house, which was situated on the other side of a newly-planted corn field in the distance.
“Looks like your father is out there working on that tractor already. He sure is a morning person. Are all farmers the same?” Shane pondered aloud as he watched.
“Early to bed, early to rise. I think all of them live by that saying. He likes to get things done before the late afternoon, though. It gives him time to relax and enjoy the day before it’s over.”
“How’s he dealing with everything Kat, now that your mom’s been gone a few months? I remember how rough it was on him.”
I folded over the newspaper I was reading that had the prominent headline, Reid Found Guilty, and propped my feet up on a nearby stool. “He’s coming along ok. Abby keeps him busy, that’s for sure. He told me the other day that her new boyfriend is coming over to pick her up for a date on Saturday.”
“Uh-oh, I know what that means,” Shane replied with a chuckle and mimed aiming a shotgun.
Shane sat down across from me and playfully put his feet on top of mine. He wouldn’t dare try and tickle me while I was drinking coffee, never mind how early it was for that type of goofing around.
“He got seven years. Not to ruin the surprise for you or anything,” Shane said when I started reading again.
“You think he’ll actually serve that long?”
“I doubt it, Kat. He’ll be in there for at least three though, and the fines have put a serious dent in his accounts. I hear the feds have some plans for Cindy, too. She’s really not going to like what they’re going to throw at her.”
“Oh yeah?” I smiled knowing that the woman who’d tried to make my life hell at every twist and turn would be suffering a little herself. There wasn’t much of a chance that she’d change her ways, but a girl has to hope.
“She’ll be appearing before a grand jury on conspiracy charges. Turns out there’s just enough evidence to show she knew about her father’s dealings and witness tampering to get her a chance in the spotlight. She probably didn’t actually contribute to any of the really bad things that went on at the plant, but she had information about Miller that she didn’t bring to the court’s attention.”
“Plus, she tried to wreck the case and turn it into a mistrial. Isn’t there a charge for mischief or something?” I said and shifted my feet out from under his when they started to tingle before going on, “Anyway, I bet you wish you’d stayed in long enough to prosecute that case. What I’d pay to be a fly on the wall in there while she’s trying to answer all those questions.”
“Ah, you know I’m done working for the government. The Kirkland office is nearly finished being built, and I’m sure the folks that live around here will be glad to have an attorney that they won’t have to travel all the way to Wilmington to see.”
I flipped the paper over to the want ads. School would be finishing up soon and then I’d need to start seriously looking for a job.
“Well, you shouldn’t have a problem getting people through the door, Shane. I can’t begin to tell you how happy Miss Pauline was that her husband could keep working. She said his job didn’t even really change that much. Instead of digging up more pits in the ground, now he’s digging up contaminated areas so all that stuff can get cleaned up properly.”
“Yeah, the auction of the phosphate plant went well. I never doubted for a minute that Patterson would get rid of it if he got convicted. A bunch of people have already told me that things are infinitely better under new management.”
Shane reached across the table and found my hand. He caressed my fingers with his thumb and then lifted my hand to his mouth for a few light kisses. When he was done and I was fully buzzing from caffeine and the tingles his lips sent through me, Shane examined the band, composed of white gold with a marquis diamond in the middle, which rested on my ring finger.
“Have you told anyone yet?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I answered bashfully. “Geez, Shane. You just asked me last night.”
“The answer’s still yes, isn’t it?”
“Hmmm…I don’t know. Maybe I need some convincing, just to make sure,” I teased.
He stood up and walked behind me, and began rubbing my upper back in smooth, relaxing motions. “How about a back massage?”
“And what else?”
Shane moved down my back and said, “Chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate.”
“Ooh, now you’re getting somewhere, handsome. Anything else?”
“I’m just getting warmed up,” he offered, and slipped one warm, devious hand through the part in my robe. There, he cupped one breast and gently stoked the embers of my arousal. Our lips met and a passionate, soul-capturing feeling rushed in as his love lifted me away once again.
THE END
***
About the author:
Synthia St. Claire hails from the great state of Washington where she lives with her adorable husband and several slightly more adorable, but slobbery, labrador retrievers.
As a life-long and avid reader of romance and erotica, Synthia wants to try her pen at creating the hottest, sexiest stories just for
you!
Find all of Synthia’s books on:
Amazon
***
The Alpha Wants Curves
By Arwen Rich
My heart was thudding in my chest, just at the thought of seeing him again. Palms were sweaty. It had been a long time. But he had never been far from my mind.
We had both been changed into werewolves at the same time. Together. We were eighteen, hanging out in the woods. The crush I had on him then had been almost painful – an all-consuming adoration. But I never acted on it. I was just his friend, curvy and self-conscious, and the idea that he might have reciprocated the attraction never even occurred to me. But nearly every night, in my dreams, we were together. Only in those nightly fantasies did Heath's hands find my body, and his lips meet my own.
The werewolves attacked us when we mistakenly encroached on their territory, that night in the forest. We were both bitten.
Heath and I suffered through the changes together – the terror and the exhilaration of transforming into a powerful, majestic beast. The way that our animal instincts had consumed us at first, and then the gradual learning of control. We had shared all of that. A new world had opened up to us – a world where the night was a living, pulsing thing, of which we were a part. Running together in wolf form, through the beautiful pine forests, with the luminous moon shining down upon us, were some of my favorite memories.
And then I had moved away.
My family had taken me across the state – a world away, at eighteen – and I hadn't seen him since. Now I was twenty-two, and my wolf transformations were more solitary. I occasionally ran with the local wolf pack in my new town, but I wasn't close with any of them. My excursions beneath the full moon were still wonderful – loping through the forest, guided by the stars, but they weren't the same without Heath. Sometimes I still felt his touch in my dreams. But I always woke alone, my skin tingling with the fading impressions of his hands.
We had maintained contact at first, but with the distance between us, and our lives intervening, our communication had dried up.
Ultimate Alphas: Bad Boys and Good Lovers (The Naughty List Romance Bundles) Page 31