Innocent 'til Proven Otherwise

by Amy Andrews

  ‘No. It’s her mole, actually.’

  ‘Her mole?’

  ‘Yes, the one near her top lip.’

  Max rolled his eyes. He knew the one she was referring to, it was rather unmissable. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve noticed the last few days that she’s been scratching it a lot and I don’t like its shape and she has such pale skin … Do you know her well enough to enquire as to whether she’s seen anyone about it and perhaps suggest that she should if she hasn’t? I’d do it but I’m not allowed to talk to the judge so … ‘

  Max blinked. He’d spent the last fortnight listening to her wackier and wackier suggestions for a career change because she couldn’t see what was right in front of her—she was a doctor right down to her very cute toes.

  From lecturing him on getting a chicken-pox vaccination to helping Helen with her arthritis, to dishing out dermatological advice to one of the court reporters and now this. And that didn’t even take into account the Band-Aid she’d produced from her handbag when a child had fallen and scraped her knee in front of them on the street the other day as they’d been walking to the car park. Or the medicated lozenge she’d dished out to Gemma, who’d come down with a hoarse throat on day three of the court case.

  Whether she liked it or not—Aleisha Gregory was a born doctor.

  ‘Says the woman who wants to be an air hostess …’ he murmured.

  Ali gripped the phone. Max was right—she really had to stop dishing out unsolicited medical advice. Right after the judge had her mole seen to. ‘So that’s a no?’

  Max shook his head, resigned to his fate. ‘I’ll talk to her.’

  Ali smiled and winked at Kat. ‘Thank you.’

  Max chuckled at the little note of triumph in her voice and tried not to think of her crammed into an aeroplane loo with him, her skirt around her waist. ‘Say goodnight now,’ he murmured, not sure he was strong enough any more to do it himself.

  Ali grinned. ‘Goodnight now.’

  Kat watched Ali as she rang off. ‘You guys seem to get along well.’

  Ali fluffed the covers and avoided Kat’s keen gaze. ‘He’s my lawyer, Kitty Kat. Nothing else.’ And it would be very foolish to think otherwise.

  ‘I’m just saying … ‘

  ‘Don’t.’ Ali was pleased she’d decided to keep the one-night stand to herself. She didn’t want Kat to be building castles in the air.

  ‘We’ve both come out of terrible breakups and, oh, newsflash, he’s my lawyer.’ She grinned down at her friend. ‘Besides … I think he’s still in love with his wife.’

  It was the first time she’d said it out loud and she felt instantly depressed. Just because sex with Max had been mind-blowing for her and there was obviously a strong sexual undercurrent raging between them, didn’t mean he was emotionally engaged.

  Kat squeezed her hand. ‘Right. So best not fall for him, then.’

  She nodded. ‘Right.’

  Ali awoke the next morning with a mass of nerves knotted in her stomach.

  She thought she was going to throw up.

  Even Max’s ‘we’re going to win’ assurances from their phone call last night weren’t enough to untwist the knot. She hadn’t really believed him then and this morning, looking at her wan reflection, big black smudges under her eyes, she still didn’t.

  Not even a positive prophesy from a crystal ball would have been enough to keep the doubt demons at bay.

  For some Dutch courage she uncapped the bottle of Kat’s vanilla oil and extracted the glistening glass dauber. She dabbed a drop or two at the base of her throat where her pulse fluttered, and dragged the warm glass behind each ear, smearing more oil there.

  Sensitive to Max’s predicament, she hadn’t worn it after that first day. Every time he’d looked at her she’d been able to see the hunger in his eyes and, worse, had felt the answering pangs inside her intensify.

  On a visceral level Ali had sensed that first day that their situation was perilously close to getting lost in the abyss of grey that made the line between black and white wavery and indistinct.

  And she’d known it was best not to feed the beast.

  But if there was ever a day she needed vanilla oil it was today. If she didn’t relax a little she was going to blow a blood vessel or give herself glaucoma.

  Today, she’d take any crutch she could get.

  She inhaled as the scent surrounded her in its sweet embrace. It reminded her of baking cakes with Zoe, of porridge with brown sugar sprinkled on top, of a little bakery in Rome down beneath street level.

  Happy memories. She smiled at her reflection. She was relaxing already.

  Then a set of grey eyes, as grey as that abyss, flashed through her mind. She could almost feel the flare of two very male nostrils as they whispered against the skin of her throat.

  Her stomach growled.

  Max was engrossed in some case notes on his laptop when the aroma of vanilla undulated into the room like an exotic dancer. He turned abruptly to see Ali hesitating in the doorway.

  Lust arced between them as the aroma put him right back in the middle of their flirty phone call from last night. ‘Oh, God, Aleisha, really?’ he groaned.

  ‘Sorry.’ She grimaced. ‘I’m pretty wound up. I needed something. I figured hitting the red wine this early probably wouldn’t look good to the judge.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ he said even as his mouth watered.

  Ali could see restraint and desire swirling like grey mist in the depths of his gaze. She could feel it rippling towards her, shimmering like fog as seductive as the devil’s whisper.

  She took a step back. ‘I’ll wait for you inside.’ And she fled.

  Max turned back to his laptop and sucked in a breath. Just one more day. That was all he had to get through.

  Being in close contact with her for the last few weeks had been difficult with a fully charged libido—for which she was responsible. Every cell in his body was begging to touch her.

  But it was all going to be over today.

  Over for good.

  No more weekend prep. No more squeezing her hand, clasping her shoulder, day after day, assuring her it was all going to work out.

  Which was good. All good.

  He’d say goodbye later today after it was done and walk away. Because he’d already got too close to this case.

  Too close to her.

  He’d vowed after Tori left that he was done with relationships but he was pretty sure that somehow he’d landed himself right back in the middle of one. Hell, he knew more about Aleisha Gregory after a few weeks’ acquaintance than he’d ever known about his own wife.

  He certainly knew she wasn’t interested in a relationship.

  And neither was he—the ink was practically still wet on his decree absolute. This … thing had to end. Today.

  As it happened the case didn’t finish up by the end of the day. Some unexpected power outages caused a security alert and the building was evacuated twice, wasting three precious hours. Closing arguments were delivered in the dying hours of the work day and the judge decided to deliberate overnight and convene again in the morning for her decision.

  Ali wasn’t sure whether she wanted to cry, vomit or stamp her foot as she stood for the judge’s departure. She’d psyched herself up for the big decision and it had been snatched away.

  It was a major anticlimax.

  And meant she had to come back tomorrow and face this all again.

  Max turned to her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said as her vanilla essence drove another nail into the insanity coffin.

  She shook her head and sank back down into her seat. ‘Not your fault.’

  ‘It’ll be quick tomorrow,’ he assured. ‘You don’t even have to be here.’

  She lifted her head and looked him in the eye. ‘Yes. I do.’

  Max nodded as his belly did a triple somersault with a double twist. She was one gutsy woman. Sitting in court day after day stoically listening as her life was pulled a
part and not buckling under the pressure was an act of courage.

  He couldn’t remember admiring a woman more.

  Just one more thing that scared the hell out of him.

  Fifteen minutes later Ali and Max caught the lift together down to the ground floor. It was half full and they shuffled to one side, keeping a safe distance between them. The cab lurched as it began its sluggish descent and Max grabbed the rail to prevent bumping into Ali.

  He was excruciatingly conscious of Ali’s delicious aroma and tried not to inhale during the journey. But the lifts were as old as the building and universally acknowledged as being the slowest in Brisbane so Max doubted he’d be able to hold his breath for the duration.

  Unfortunately the lift also managed to stop on every floor, admitting more and more people, pushing them closer and closer together. By the time a rowdy group of men got in on floor five they were squashed against the back wall like tinned sardines.

  And Max couldn’t hold his breath any longer.

  His body was blocking hers from the mass of bodies around them and his nostrils flared as they filled with her sweet macaroon scent. He felt his body respond, tighten, to their proximity and the carnal essence of her.

  Her curls brushed his face and he shut his eyes as they lightly caressed his cheek with their springiness. The lift lurched to a halt at the fourth floor and their bodies bumped against each other. He reached for her hip to steady her.

  Ali’s stomach clenched as a heat down low mushroomed into her belly and down her thighs. She kept her gaze firmly fixed on the knot of his tie but she was hyperaware of his hand branding her, the heat of his body, the husk of his breath.

  Max dropped his head slightly so his mouth was level with her ear. He shouldn’t be this close—they were in a lift full of people, for crying out loud—but didn’t seem to be able to stop. He nuzzled her hair for a moment then murmured, ‘I want to kiss you. I know I shouldn’t but I do.’

  He’d been going to say that he’d talked to the judge, who had already made an appointment to see her GP, but it seemed his mouth had a mind of its own.

  And the truth had a funny way of coming out.

  As a lawyer, Max knew that better than anyone.

  Ali, grateful for the loud buzz of conversation around her, shut her eyes as his voice whispered to every cell screaming for his touch.

  ‘I’ve wanted to kiss you every day since that night.’

  ‘Don’t, Max …’ she whispered, turning her head slightly towards his ear.

  He groaned quietly into her neck where she smelled so, so sweet. Being with her every day and faking a professional façade while the air sizzled between them was impossible. ‘I can’t take much more of this.’

  Ali’s body swayed closer until they were touching from torso to hip. She wanted to get closer. To turn her head and mash her mouth to his, wind her arms around his neck, grind her pelvis into his.

  ‘Tomorrow …’ she whispered.

  The lift bumped none-too-gently to the ground and brought Max firmly back to earth in more ways than one. But the crowd started to push forward and it was too late for Max to remember there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow.

  Not as she meant anyway.

  Even though his body demanded it.

  That when they left court tomorrow, it would be the last time they saw each other.

  The triple somersault his stomach had performed earlier had scared the hell out of him. The intensity of the way he’d wanted her just now in a crowded lift even more so.

  It was better to chalk their one-night stand up to experience and move on.

  Repeating it was something neither of them needed.

  Max allowed himself to be propelled out of the lift, aware of Ali at his elbow. Their pace slowed as the crowd dispersed.

  ‘So … I’ll see you at nine tomorrow?’ he asked.

  Ali, her body still grappling with an infusion of lust that had hijacked her body, frowned at him. How could he be so together when her oestrogen receptors were shorting out?

  ‘Ah … okay, sure … ‘

  Her confused look made Max want to reach out and snatch her to him so he gripped his briefcase handle hard and stuffed his other hand deep in his pocket. He really had to get away from her.

  And her damn vanilla essence.

  He nodded. ‘Bye.’

  And then turned on his heel and walked away.

  The phone rang at nine-thirty just as Max had finished drying himself off from his shower and he almost didn’t answer it. After all he knew who it was going to be and he’d just spent two hours pounding the city pavements and the cliffs around Kangaroo Point trying to run her out of his system.

  But he did anyway. Because he just didn’t seem to have any self-control where Ali was concerned.

  He secured the towel around his hips and snatched up the receiver on his bedside table.

  ‘So I’m thinking lift designer.’

  Max chuckled despite himself and his determination to keep the call impersonal and brief flew out of the window. He sat on the side of the bed.

  ‘Seriously, those lifts at the courthouse are too damn slow.’

  Max’s smile slipped as he remembered those couple of electric minutes where he’d totally lost his mind and nuzzled her neck. He appreciated her attempt to dispel any awkwardness by making light of what happened but his body stirred beneath the towel regardless.

  ‘Those lifts are too damn full,’ he growled.

  Ali, who had just speared a piece of veal tortellini, paused with it halfway to her mouth. What the hell would have happened if they’d been alone in the lift this afternoon?

  ‘Probably just as well,’ she murmured.

  Max sighed as he swung his legs up on the bed and lounged against the pillows. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’

  There was a moment of silence during which the pasta stayed suspended on her fork halfway to her mouth before Ali slipped it in and forced herself to chew.

  ‘So …’ Max groped around for something to say that wouldn’t get him disbarred. ‘Is Kat home tonight?’

  The existence of Ali’s flatmate, even peripherally, was a good deterrent. God knew he was counting on Kat’s omnipresent state tonight, both in the flat and his mind, to help him keep a tight rein on his libido.

  ‘She was, of course, because we all thought today would be the day we’d know the outcome and she cooked my favourite pasta meal but her younger brother Damian, who is, shall we say, enjoying the freedoms of the city now he’s at uni, rang to say he was in the lock-up for being drunk and disorderly—again—and could she come and bail him out and she was furious and told me he could just sweat it out for a few hours because I was more important but I told her not to be silly, that Damian was much too pretty to be sitting in the lock-up with pimps and drug addicts and she must go … ‘

  Dear God, she was babbling.

  ‘So she left reluctantly but, boy, oh, boy is she ever steamed. I think she’s going to threaten to tell her parents this time if he doesn’t clean up his act. She’s promised not to tell the other two times but I think her goodwill has just run out … ‘

  Max gripped the phone harder. Great, so she was alone in the flat. Probably in her pyjamas. Lying on her bed.

  Ali cringed at the silence that followed. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised, poking at her pasta. ‘I’m babbling … ‘

  She speared another tortellini shell and brought it to her mouth. It dropped off before it made it to its final destination, landing on her hot-pink vest-top.

  ‘Damn it,’ she cursed, sitting up.

  Max frowned. ‘What?’

  Ali leaned forward as she picked the food off her pyjama top, dismayed to see a huge red sauce stain on her top. ‘I spilled some food on my pyjama top. Hang on,’ she said, ‘I’ll just go and take it off.’

  ‘Aleisha?’

  There was no reply. Max stared at the receiver and then bashed it against his forehead three times as he heard rustling on the other
end.

  Was she trying to kill him?

  Ali walked through to her en suite pulling the top over her head as she went. She threw it in the wicker hamper, then returned to the bed. She picked up the phone as she sat and pulled open her bedside drawer looking for something else to wear.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, raising her shoulder to cradle the phone against her ear. ‘Back again.’

  Max shut his eyes. ‘Please tell me you’re not shirtless now.’

  Ali’s hands stilled in her drawer. The raw edge in his voice streaked straight to a place deep inside her belly. She looked down at her bare breasts. The nipples scrunched instantly. The desire that had engulfed her in the lift swamped her body again.

  She was suddenly aware of the cool air on her skin. The feel of the cotton sheet at the backs of her thighs. The slight tickle as her caramel curls brushed her shoulders. The prickle of every tiny hair on her body. The hum in her blood.

  She was aware, too aware, she was a woman.

  She withdrew her hand from the drawer.

  Would it hurt to be semi naked talking to him? She was an adult and in the privacy of her own bedroom. The idea was alluring. Enticing. Naughty …

  And very, very grey.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ she murmured huskily, swallowing against her suddenly arid throat. ‘Why, what are you wearing?’

  Max shut his eyes as an image of her laid out on his bed, her naked breasts bare to his gaze, formed with startling clarity. Every muscle in his body was on high alert. ‘A towel.’

  Ali also shut her eyes. ‘So we both seem to be rather … undressed.’ The thought was as alluring as it was forbidding.

  Max’s eyes flew open as the possibilities paraded through his mind.

  Oh, no, he wasn’t going there.

  He couldn’t.

  He groped for a way to get the conversation back from careening out of control and grabbed the first ill-formed thought that came along. ‘Yep, all ready for bed.’ Then he realised what he’d said and hurried to clarify.

  ‘For sleep, I meant. To sleep … ‘