by Cindy Dees
CHAPTER FIVE
HE’D HAD SOME good sex in his day, but nothing—nothing—compared to what he and Dani had just done. The intellectual and emotional connection he felt with her made all the difference in the world. Here, he’d spent all those years chasing the most beautiful women he could find, when really he ought to have been chasing the ones who were smart and made him laugh. He felt like a gigantic fool on the one hand, but the luckiest guy in the world on the other hand.
Rain still pattered against the tall casement windows over the quiet crackle of the fire. “Stay the night?” he murmured.
Another first. Normally, he couldn’t wait to get women out of his bed and out of his house so he could get some peace and quiet. But he actually wanted Dani to stick around. He loved the idea of falling asleep with their legs tangled together and her bright red hair spread across his chest. He wanted to smell her on his pillows in the morning.
She made an inarticulate sound against his neck that he would take as a yes.
“Can you move?” Personally, he felt like he had no bones. She’d burned them all to ash somewhere in the volcanic heat of their lovemaking.
Another sound. This time it sounded negative.
“Me, neither,” he sighed. Frankly, he was pretty damned okay just sprawling with her on the sofa, naked with her in front of the fire listening to it rain for a while.
Which was, of course, the cue for a cell phone to jangle somewhere close by.
“Crap. Mine,” she groaned.
He groaned as well as she rolled off him and laid across his lap, reaching down to her purse on the floor. Hark. Her pert, round tush was now sticking up in his lap while her pelvis rubbed tantalizing against his junk. “Mmm. I like this arrangement.”
She shot him a flirtatious grin over her shoulder as she stuck her cell phone to her ear. “Hi. This is Dani.” She listened for a moment and then lurched upright, frowning. “Is he okay?” Another short pause. “Can I see him now? Yeah. I’ll be right down. Thanks.”
Cam’s trouble radar went on full alert. “What’s up?” he asked quickly.
“My client. Alexei Koronov is in the hospital. Well, the infirmary at the jail. But he would normally be hospitalized.” She climbed to her feet and started collecting strewn bits of clothing.
“What happened?” he bit out as he followed suit and started pulling on his clothes.
She picked up the shredded remnants of her dress. “Crap. It’s destroyed.”
“Need to borrow a T-shirt?”
“As nice as that sounds, I have my business suit from this morning.” She stepped into the WMP regulation knee-length gray wool skirt and straightjacket. She transformed into an uptight corporate ice bitch before his eyes.
He gathered her into her arms as she reached behind her head to twist her hair up into some sort of casual bun. “Do you have any idea how hot it is to see you in that suit and know what a smoking hot number is hidden beneath that boring old gray wool?”
“Next time I see you in gray wool, I’ll let you know,” she retorted.
He grinned. “That can be arranged, Counselor.”
“Should I call a cab?” she asked as she gathered her belongings.
“Of course not. I’ll drive you down. I want to see how Koronov is doing, anyway, and find out what happened.”
“You can’t gather any evidence if you see him tonight. He’s injured and possibly medicated. I’ll get anything he says to you thrown out of court.”
“I’m a human being, Dani. Not a blood-sucking, jugular-biting machine. The guy’s been hurt. I’ll cut him a break.”
“You know what they say about those prosecuting attorney types....”
He grinned and swept her sexy curves up against him. “And what’s that?” He kissed her before she could answer, though, and he’d completely forgotten what he’d asked her by the time they broke apart abruptly, staring at one another.
“Work first,” she panted.
“Then sex. Lots and lots of sex.”
She followed him down to his garage. The hour was late and the weather lousy, and they made it across the city in good time on the deserted streets. They ran together into the jail and handed over their keys and phones to the night guard.
Another guard led them down a series of long, sterile hallways to the jail’s infirmary. Cam held the door for Dani, who got partway through and then rushed forward past him to a bedside.
Alexei Koronov was in the nearest bed, an IV drip hooked up to his arm. His chest was bare and the top of a bandage spanning his torso peeked out from under a plain blue blanket.
“What happened?” Dani was asking as Cam joined her.
Koronov looked back and forth between his lawyer and Cam shrewdly before answering, “I took a narrow, improvised blade in the left side. It was poorly aimed and missed both the appendix and intestine, catching mostly muscle. However, as a precaution, intravenous antibiotics are being administered to prevent possible peritoneal cavity infection and sepsis.”
A man in green surgical scrubs came over. “I couldn’t have said it any better.”
“In other words, you were shanked?” Cam asked.
Koronov shrugged while the prison doctor nodded.
“Weapon recovered?” Cam asked without any real hope. Shanks—improvised knives made from all kinds of objects ranging from spoons to toothbrushes—were the bane of prison authorities. They had a strange tendency to disappear after a stabbing incident, never to be found.
The doctor grunted sardonically. “Yeah. Koronov disarmed his attacker, used the shank to take out the three other guys who’d helped the first one jump him, then administered first aid to his surviving victims, staunched his own bleeding and laid down to wait for the guards to arrive. He still had the shank when I got there. I bagged it up for you.”
“Surviving victims?” Cam asked sharply.
“Nothing’s admissible,” Dani snapped just as sharply.
“First guy broke his neck in the process of letting go of his knife. No one saw it happen. Or at least, no one’s talking.”
Dani glanced up at him warily. “I need to speak in private with my client.”
“Nothing’s admissible,” he threw back at her.
She looked down at Koronov. “What can you tell me about the incident?”
Her client shrugged and then winced slightly. “Four guys jumped me. One stabbed me in the side. I took his knife—rather violently—and defended myself.”
“Did you break his neck?”
“I acted reflexively.” He added modestly, “I have a little martial arts training.”
The doctor snorted. “A little? I’ve got a smashed elbow, a broken nose, two dislocated shoulders and at least six broken ribs, along with various other cuts and contusions.”
Cam blinked. For the first time, he looked at the other patients in the far beds, and they looked as though they’d been through the zombie apocalypse. “Jesus. You did all that?”
Koronov followed the line of his gaze to the other prisoners. “Yes. I broke his neck.”
“Self-defense,” Dani said quickly. “They jumped him. The evidence points to it. And he rendered first aid after the fact.”
Cam saw where she was going. “I see no need to file any additional charges over this incident. Your client has no previous history of violent behavior, and I’m sure we’ll have no trouble getting depositions that state he was the initial victim of the attack.”
He caught Koronov paying close attention to the exchange, his pale gaze intent. Koronov asked Dani low, “So, if I assault or kill someone in here, I can be charged for it like if I was on the outside?”
“That’s correct,” she answered.
An unholy gleam entered his eyes. “Excellent.”
“Alex,” she said in a warning voice. “Don’t pull any crazy stunts in here to get your sentence extended.”
“Extended?” Cam echoed.
“Not admissible,” she snapped.
&nb
sp; “What the—”
“Not here.” Dani dragged him by the arm away from her client and over toward the doctor’s desk. “Go sign for the knife. I’m invoking attorney-client privilege and talking to him alone. Now.”
She returned to Koronov’s bedside, and the pair engaged in an intense little argument too quiet for Cam to hear. But the topic of debate was obvious. Her client seemed to think it was a great idea to attack or kill a few more of his fellow inmates, and Dani was doing her level best to talk him out of it.
Cam muttered to the doctor, “Is Koronov a psycho?”
“Oh, no. Just the opposite. He’s not only completely sane, he’s brilliant. A gifted physician. Deals well with the regimentation of confinement. Follows rules. Gets along with the other inmates. Stays to himself whenever the Slavic mob types are moving around the jail. But otherwise, he’s shockingly well adjusted in light of the unnatural environment of a lockup facility.”
“What’s all this if he gets along so well with everyone, then?”
“Probably a gang making a move on him. After this display, though, I doubt he’ll have any more trouble with the toughs in here.”
“Either that, or they’ll kill him.”
The doctor leaned close. “Between you and me, I think this attack was supposed to kill him. Talk around the jail has been that the Russian mob has it in for the Koronov kid.”
“Will the mob try again? Should we think about protective isolation?”
The doctor snorted. “Who’s gonna go near this guy again after he went ballistic and all but killed four of the toughest bastards in the whole jail?”
“Why’s his lawyer having to argue him out of killing someone else, then?”
“You know, I did overhear him asking one of the guards yesterday how to get a parole board to turn down an inmate for early release. It’s almost as if he’s determined to stay in jail.”
Cam stared over at Dani and her client, frowning. Something weird was going on, here, and Dani was caught up in the middle of it. Concern not only for her career, but also for her safety surged through him. It was all he could do not to rush over to her, bundle her up in his arms and carry her out of here.
Thankfully, before too much longer, she huffed loudly and looked up, seeking him across the infirmary. Their gazes met, and a smile entered her eyes. He strode swiftly to her side. “All done here for tonight?” he asked.
She nodded and followed him back down the long white corridor. He couldn’t tell if she was being thoughtful or worried on the ride back to his place, but he left her alone to think. He knew all too well the necessity of working through elaborate mental logic trees in their line of work.
Finally, as they pulled into his garage, she sighed.
“You okay?” he asked low. He turned off the car and turned to face her in his little coupe.
“I’m in over my head with this guy. He actually told me to do a lousy job of defending him or else he’d fire me and bring in the worst public defender in the city to work his case.”
Cam stared. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“It’s like he wants to go to jail and pull hard time.”
“Have you asked him why? The prison doc told me he finds Koronov sane and reasonable.”
“So do I. It’s the darnedest thing.”
He got out of the car and went around to open her door for her. “You know what you need?”
“Do tell.”
“Sex. Lots and lots of gnarly sex.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it a conflict of interest for the defense and prosecution attorneys to sleep with each other in the middle of an active case?”
It was as if she’d punched him in the stomach. He hadn’t even stopped to consider the ethical implications earlier. He’d been so intent on her, so wrapped up in the magic they were making between them that it hadn’t even crossed his mind that there might be a problem with the prosecution and defense attorneys making passionate love with each other in the middle of a case. A shocking oversight on his part. He’d never done anything like this before. Ever.
He smiled ruefully. “Your client did specifically tell you to make a mess of this case. It may possibly be your obligation to sleep with me.”
She smiled up at him wistfully. “Earlier was epic. But it was also a huge mistake we can’t repeat. I really can’t.”
She was right, of course. And he loved that about her. People often scoffed at him for standing his ground on seemingly trivial points of ethics. But it was a slippery slope. Make a shortcut once, and the next time it was a little easier to do, and a little easier, until right and wrong meant nothing anymore. He smiled gamely. “I’ll drive you home.”
CHAPTER SIX
DANI SPENT SATURDAY digging through old personnel files at WMP. Zoey had obtained the password to the human resources department’s computers and passed it to her on the down low. When she had a list of twenty names of female lawyers who’d left the firm not long after being hired, she went home to send them emails from her personal computer where WMP couldn’t potentially monitor her outgoing messages.
That done, she went for a vigorous run in Central Park. She took a shower and made herself a power smoothie. But then she was out of ways to distract herself from thinking about Cam and last night.
She couldn’t believe she’d thrown herself at him like that. Of course, he’d been all over her, too. It had been instant chemistry, hot and unstoppable. And both of their careers were over if they got caught.
It was nearly midnight when her cell phone rang, lurching her out of bed and away from her steamy, frustrated thoughts of—
“Hey, Dani. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about you.”
“Cam. Me, neither.”
“So, we got a little distracted on Friday. Tell me about yourself. Where are you from?”
They talked until the batteries on their phones went dead and the eastern sky was growing light. And the more they talked, the more infatuated she became. They had more in common than she would have guessed, the only notable difference being his parents’ wealth. But the values they’d been raised with and the lives they’d led had been quite similar. She was impressed to find out he’d insisted on paying for his own law school and had only recently paid off his student loans.
It became a nightly thing. Somewhere between ten o’clock and midnight her phone rang, and they talked into the wee hours of the night. She felt strange knowing he was in the same city, only a few miles away, and yet totally inaccessible to her. Maybe she was so attracted to him because he was forbidden fruit. Or maybe he was just hot. Either way, she’d fallen hard for the assistant district attorney.
With every phone call, the pressure built inside her to repeat that epic Friday night on his sofa. She’d known sexual frustration in her life before, but nothing like this. And no matter what she tried to distract or exhaust herself, none of it worked. Every night she tossed and turned, tormented by X-rated dreams featuring Cam. She’d had no idea until now that she had such a dirty imagination.
Two weeks into their secret phone relationship, she was so exhausted she could barely follow the thread of the conversation, which was actually very interesting as he retold the details of a complex case.
“I’m sorry I’m so sleepy, Cam. It’s not you, I promise. I’ve just been sleeping terribly.”
“Why’s that?”
“I keep dreaming about...well, you know. Us.”
“Really?” he sounded surprised. “Like what?”
She winced. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“But you did. So spill. What do you dream about?”
She sighed. “Sex. And more sex. All kinds of sex. With you.”
“Ah.” A long silence fell on the line. Then, “Yeah. Me, too.”
“You dream of sex with yourself?”
He laughed. “No. With you, Einstein.”
She smiled into the receiver. “Really?”
“Why do you sound
so surprised?”
She made a “you moron” face at herself in the mirror facing her bed. “I figured you must dream about lots of women. Your subconscious has a wide selection of previous lovers to choose from, after all.”
“I already told you, I’m done with the whole sleeping around thing. It was a lonely, soul-sucking way to live. I’d rather stay in every night and talk on the phone with you than go out clubbing and picking up random women to have meaningless sex with.”
Her heart warmed. “Aw. You say the nicest things.”
“I’m not being nice. I’m telling you the truth.”
And he was. She heard the conviction in his voice. She asked longingly, “How much longer until the Koronov case is over? I really want to make love to you, again.”
He made a sound of frustration. Both of them had been trying to push the case forward, but the court dockets were jammed, and it was taking forever to get movement on the case.
“If only something were happening,” she grumbled. “There’s not a darned thing going on in the case, and it’s not like seeing you would be any huge crime at this point.”
“Slippery slope, baby.”
“Yeah, I know. Party pooper.”
He laughed a little painfully. “Believe me, I’d be all over going down that slope with you if I weren’t worried about your career. But I couldn’t live with myself if I wrecked your reputation because I couldn’t keep it in my pants for a few months.”
“You have a great deal more self-discipline than me. I’m dying, here.”
His laugh got even a little more pained. “Don’t tell me things like that. It’s hard enough staying away from you.”
After that call, there was no way she was sleeping any time soon, and she flipped on the TV in her bedroom. She wasn’t particularly paying attention to what was on, and ended up sucked into a really well-done, scary horror flick.
Maybe that was why she had the nightmare. Or maybe it was because she secretly feared that Cam would get tired of waiting for her and move on to another woman. But she lurched awake literally sobbing as she woke from a dream of Cam marrying another woman.
She glanced at her alarm clock. Four a.m. Too late to call Cam and hear the reassuring sound of his voice. She comforted herself by texting him a quick note through her tears telling him she missed him.