“You, the judge, weren’t an academic wonder?”
“I spent more time getting into trouble than opening books.”
“Trouble as in you couldn’t stay out of high school girls’ panties?”
“Among other things. Truth is the army was really good for me. Gave me focus. I couldn’t be more grateful for the chance I got there.”
“Impressive.”
“Without it, I don’t know where I would have ended up.”
That wasn’t a lie. He had spent many years defending his mother and trying to understand his parents’ choices. His father cheated. His mother, seeing the love of her life having sex with someone else in her bed, lost her mind and found the only gun in the house. Ben understood now that he dealt with the numbing loss back then with the quick use of his fists. He punched as a way of releasing his unspoken grief.
The draining loss lessened with the short move away from his hometown. Something about those extra thirty miles of distance let him focus his energy on sports instead of pounding people. The inevitable name change helped, too.
But he knew all about his secrets. He had lived with them for years, explaining the truth only when he had to and even then in small pieces, like to the governor’s staff and committees who interviewed him for the judicial position. All of that was done in confidence. Still, the truth could seep out at any time. Ben actually waited for the day to come.
He wasn’t worried about that now. No. All the question marks in his head right now related to Callie. He wasn’t about to let this opportunity to really know her pass by.
“Who did you have to shoot?” he asked in a whisper, even though shots rang out from the other stall and echoed throughout the enclosed space.
By the way her eyes narrowed, she heard him just fine. “How did you know that?”
“You said it once in passing.”
“I guess that means you do listen. Good to know. Most men aren’t so good at that.”
“You’re stalling.”
She looked down at her feet and then back up again. “I shot my former boss at the FBI. In the leg. One shot, but it did the trick.”
Then she went silent. Actually looked up at him with those big eyes and an innocent smile.
“That’s it? No story.”
She chuckled. “You asked; I answered.”
“Gee, I wonder what my next question will be.”
“Doesn’t matter because it’s my turn. Why do people think you broke up Emma’s engagement?” The words rushed out of Callie as if she’d been holding them in forever.
“Because I did.”
Callie’s eyes bulged at the fast response.
The question wasn’t exactly a surprise. He knew Callie would hear the courthouse gossip about that one eventually.
“And?” she asked.
“I answered you.” When her eyes darkened and mouth fell, he shot her a smile. “Hey, just following your interpretation of the rules.”
“Oh, come on.”
What the hell. “Emma was in love with Mark and the fiancé was a total ass. All wrong for her. A law partner with no personality. I just helped her to see it. Everyone assumes the rest. All of that untrue, as I’ve said about a million times.”
“Which is why you’re so sensitive about infidelity.”
That was part of it, but he didn’t plan on answering that question—ever—so he ducked it. “Isn’t everyone?”
“That’s not my experience with men.”
“Want to talk about that?”
“Depends. Is that your next question?”
“No.” Since she was now parsing out the questions, he tried to be more careful. “Under what circumstance did you leave the FBI?”
She hesitated for a second. Stared at the gun on the counter and then at Ben. Time passed without her saying anything. Then she picked up the weapon and fired a single booming shot.
The loud clap bounced around in his head. That would teach him to skip wearing the headphones before they started this game.
He didn’t have to move the target to see where she hit. The bullet tore right into the paper guy’s heart. “Interesting,” he whispered.
“Not really.”
He wondered why she was so sensitive about this subject. They had been all over each other, spent hours together without a break, and she refused to fess up on this subject. Now that he thought about it, she didn’t talk much about herself at all. He didn’t, either, but he had good reason, so he had an excuse. He knew the reasoning was convoluted and more than a little hypocritical, but he didn’t care. The part of his brain tasked with rational thinking fizzled around her.
“Ready for the next one?” she asked.
“I doubt it.”
She let her head fall to the side again in that pose she used right before she dropped a bomb or tried to seduce him.
He was hoping for the latter.
If possible, her eyes grew darker. “What’s your real last name?”
Shots rang out from the other stall, but Ben barely heard them. “What?”
“Your. Real. Name.”
This exercise officially had gone too far. “Callie—”
“Your background. The missing pieces are obvious. The fact your past starts somewhere in middle school and there’s not a record of you anywhere before then gave me a hint.”
The options zipped around his brain. He could lie. Walk out.
Or he could tell her the truth.
He cleared his throat. “It’s not Walker.”
“I know that much.”
His mind kept reeling from the topic. “Then why ask?”
“You didn’t give me a full answer.” She didn’t even flinch. Didn’t run in panic when she fished around and came up with a correct theory about his name change.
Made Ben wonder, again, why he found smart women so damn attractive. If this were any indication about what she could uncover with just a few resources, she was nothing but trouble. “Yeah, it is.”
“Did you ever think that it might feel good to share the hard parts of your life?”
“No.”
“Why the change?” Her look of determination and set chin gave way to a certain softness around her eyes. “What happened to you and your family?”
He didn’t hesitate. He picked up the gun and aimed. With little more than a brief glance at the end of the stall, the shot ripped through the circle in the target’s head.
She stared down the lane and gnawed on her lower lip. “I guess that’s my answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re going to get. And I appreciate if you kept the information you do know to yourself.”
“You can trust me.”
He thought so once. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Chapter Fourteen
“The people in this courthouse need to grow the fuck up.” Callie made that observation the next day the second after she closed Ben’s office door and started stalking toward him.
Not that her anger did any good. Nope. He just sat at his desk with his head down and his pen out.
“Have a good time in the bathroom?” he asked with more than a little amusement in his voice.
She stopped on the other side of his desk. Even tapped the tip of her fingers against the wood to get his attention. “This wouldn’t have happened if you had let me use your private bathroom.”
He kept right on signing the papers in the stack in front of him. “I believe I was using it at the time you banged on the door and insisted I get out.”
“You always have an excuse.”
“I get exactly two seconds of privacy a day. I’m not giving that up, too.”
She balanced her fists on his desk and leaned in close enough to smell the peppery shampoo scent in his hair. “Well, does it bother you that you’re starring in the building’s rumors?”
“Not particularly.”
“Why?”
“It’s not a new problem. That’s been the case since I started here.”<
br />
“Being named one of the metro area’s most eligible bachelors must be a real hardship.”
His pen hesitated. “Let’s not talk about that.”
The man was ignoring her concerns. That pissed her off almost as much as the chatter about her love life. He wasn’t even taking a minute out of his busy important morning of signing orders to glance at her. The whole thing made her miss the shooting range. Lots of weapons to threaten him with there.
“Apparently this time everyone thinks we’re sleeping together.” She grabbed the pen out of his hand and threw it behind her.
He finally lifted his head. “I was using that.”
“And do they shut up about it? Nope. They hide in the bathroom, standing around the sinks and chattering like gossipy old women with nothing better to do.” She used her hands to demonstrate the yammering. “Idiots.”
Ben rifled through his desk drawer and pulled out a second pen. No surprise that it looked just like the first one. He clicked the top. “Did they see you?”
“They did when I slammed the stall door open. Nobody said a damn thing then.” Callie smiled at the memory. “Well, the younger one yelped like a puppy. Then they both pretended I was deaf and ran out of there. I thought about chasing them but refrained.”
“Good to hear you didn’t overreact.”
Ben refused to understand her point. She decided to rap her knuckles against his precious desk to get his attention. “The two I caught were in there trying to guess when we hooked up.”
“Old women used that term?”
“They wanted to know why you would bother with someone like me. Which means what, by the way?” When he didn’t respond, she tried again. “Well?”
He slowly lowered his pen. “I’m not taking that bait. There is no way for me to answer that without you getting…”
“What?”
“Bitchy.”
“See, that’s more of the jackassery thing you do.” She pointed at his big brainy head. “Pure jackassery.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Callie, let’s be reasonable.”
He looked nice and relaxed, but she guessed the move was meant to put as much space as possible between them. She had to give him credit for that. The man was not stupid. Well, not entirely.
“Why?” she asked.
His pretty eyes narrowed at her in that way he had of saying “what the hell” without actually using the words. “That’s not a logical response to my statement.”
Frustration boiled up inside her.
“Did you just growl at me?” he asked.
“It was either that or bite you.”
“May I ask why?”
“May I ask why?” She sang more than said the words. “You jumped right back into hoity land.”
“If we’re really going to argue about this you might want to look at the facts.”
“Which are?”
“First, some of the women in question really are old women.” When Callie tried to butt in, he held up a finger and made that annoying tsk-tsk sound. “Second, we are sleeping together.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I actually think it is.”
“The issue is their pathological nosiness.” Theirs. Rod’s. Scott’s. The whole damn building worried about who was with her when her panties came off. Never mind the cases on their desks. Ben’s bedroom antics were the main topic on the e-mail loops these days.
A look between a smile and a smirk fell across his lips. “You sure you’re not embarrassed?”
“More like ticked off.”
“Callie?”
Ben had a way of saying her name that made him sound like a condescending professor. Not that she had all that much experience with those. “About sleeping with you? No. I don’t have a reason to lie about us being together. Well, except for incurring Mark’s wrath again and potentially blowing my cover. You’re not the kind of guy a woman has to hide from people.”
“I guess that’s good to know.”
“You’re a judge, after all.”
“I’m impressed you remembered that.”
She drummed her fingers against his desk, ignoring the way he grimaced with each tap. “Why aren’t you angry about this?”
“The gossip?”
“What else are we talking about?”
“Indeed.” He held up a palm before she could harass him about his word choice. “Yeah, I know. Too hoity.”
Now that was progress. “At least you’re finally recognizing it.”
“Not really.” He laid a hand over hers and stopped her mad thumping against the desk.
She should have pulled away, but his warm skin gave her comfort. With Ben she could be herself, not worry about how each word could be perceived. She stepped into danger territory now and then by calling him names and questioning his background, but she felt safe in saying the words that kicked around in her brain. He’d fight back without demeaning or threatening her. It was a fair and equal debate. That level of security didn’t come around that often, and she enjoyed it.
She even liked that hoity talk of his. Sometimes.
“You make me sound unreasonable,” she said, knowing she was being a bit irrational.
“No.” He made the word last for about six syllables. Sounded about as convincing as some of the criminal defendants who appeared before him.
She didn’t really care what women who didn’t know her thought. She worried about Ben’s reputation. When she left, he’d still be there. Leaving…yeah, she didn’t want to think about that at all. Spending hours with him each day sure beat the mindless days of dialing around on the television remote as she waited for someone to call to offer her a job.
“Get back to the part where you don’t care about the gossip,” she said.
“It’s because—and don’t jump down my throat—” He smiled as he talked. “The rumors are true.”
“You’re not worried about your reputation.”
“No.”
She didn’t understand how that was possible. Having been in a position that demanded a certain level of public responsibility, and nowhere near the amount Ben’s required, she knew every action had a reaction. Ben’s relative calm in the face of another wave of woman-related gossip seemed off.
There was only one explanation. “Because you’re a man.”
He tapped his pen against the desk. “See, that’s a word trap. I now know better than to react to that comment.”
She slid her hand out from under his. “I’m the slut and you’re the conquering male hero.”
“Someone called you that?” His seat shot forward and so did he. He morphed from lazy listening to furious in less than a second. Any redder and his face might catch fire.
“It was implied.”
He eased up on the death grip on his chair’s armrests but the dents in the leather from his fingernails took longer to fade. “It’s not true and saying it is out of line.”
“Agreed.”
“If you hear that sort of name-calling, let me know.”
She actually thought his protective streak was kind of cute. She decided to tweak him anyway. “What are you going to do, choke some old lady with her cardigan sweater?”
His shoulders lowered back to normal height instead of hovering around his ears. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”
“Remember that I can shoot any person who bugs me. And feel free to take that as a warning for your own idiocy.”
“That’s not too extreme or anything.”
“You don’t want to test me.”
He made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Got it.”
“I hate when you say that.”
“Good to know.”
Great. Now he’d be saying it in every other sentence. Just what she needed.
He curled a finger at her. “Come here.”
Uh-oh. He shot her one of those sexy smiles and her control took a lunch break. “What are you doing?”
“Trying
to lure you to my lap.”
That sounded so damned good.
But she was on a job…or something. There had to be a rule against office lap dances. Mark might not have spelled that out, but she was pretty sure it existed. “Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“We’re at work.”
“So?” The question sounded serious.
“You,” she circled her hand in front of his face, “are a no-fly-zone when we’re here.”
“Since when?”
“Forever.”
“So, if I wanted you to climb onto my lap, you’d say no.” He pushed his chair back on its rollers and she got a good long look at the part of his anatomy he referenced.
The man chipped away at her common sense. “I have to stay on this side of the desk with my clothes on.”
“Even if I let you wear the judge’s robe.”
A pretty graphic image flashed through her dirty, unprofessional mind. “What would you be wearing?”
“Hopefully?”—he tapped on his upper thighs as if inviting her to sit down—“nothing but you.”
“I like the way you think, but I’m still not taking one more step toward you.”
“What if I tell you all the things I want to do to you?”
She was two seconds away from doing a flying leap onto his legs. “I’m not going to be tempted.”
“Really?”
She turned back to her desk. Papers sat there, right in front of her, but the black ink blurred. “But you have work to do, so let’s—”
“I would start with opening the buttons of that slim shirt. Let my tongue wander over your breasts.”
She froze, refusing to look at him. Her thoughts were bad enough. “Ben.”
“I’d slip those pants off and see what you have underneath. I’m betting a lacy black thong. A tiny scrap of a thing that barely covers you. It will only take a flip of my finger to move it to the side and taste your bare skin underneath.”
“That’s cheating, since you saw me put it on this morning.”
The chair squeaked, but she refused to turn around and see what made that interesting noise. Once she did, it would be all over. Like, her all over him.
“And just think of how much fun we could have while I strip it off and throw it on the floor.”
Leave Me Breathless Page 12