Today he wore tan khakis that moved with him when he walked, fitting every inch of his tight behind and long legs like a man’s pants should, not too loose and not too tight, but oh, so right! His crisp white shirt was tucked into his pants, exposing a slim waistline, which she knew had to contain a sexy six-pack. He switched his black jacket from his left arm to his right as he moved through the tight space around several chairs. He glanced around the room, looking for a seat, until he found the last empty one.
Erica glanced down at her watch and once again thought about her father’s take on men who didn’t wear one. She noticed that the Great Dane’s wrist was still bare, and that his tardiness didn’t seem to faze him one bit. She didn’t want to discount him, but already things weren’t looking good. Damn! she thought.
“Good morning,” the Great Dane said, nodding his greeting to everyone before claiming the seat at the end of the long conference table.
Erica watched him as he scanned everyone, and when his eyes finally connected with hers, she felt a jolt of energy that her morning cup of coffee couldn’t match. And his voice! It was the first time she’d heard him speak, and his simple “good morning” sounded like thunder and music all at once. She closed her eyes for a brief moment and locked it into her memory for safekeeping. She’d always listened to her father’s wise words, but she decided this was one case in which she was going to forfeit his advice. She had always trusted her gut, and right now her gut was quietly telling her to take a chance.
Once everyone was assembled, they quickly went around the room and introduced themselves. Jerome Kimbrough was his name. Jerome, she said to herself, rolling his name around inside her head.
Erica thought his name suited him perfectly. Jerome was a bad boy name, rugged and tough with a biting edge of sexiness. And Kimbrough sounded like a strong family name, uncommon and distinctive. She thought all these things were exactly who he appeared to be, and she wondered if she would get a chance to find out for sure.
Minutes later, the court clerk began to line up the jurors, preparing them for the order in which they would enter the courtroom. Ironically, Erica stood sandwiched between Maude, who was in front of her, and Jerome, who was causing earthquakes and tidal waves behind her. They were in the hallway just outside the courtroom, waiting to make their entrance so the trial could begin.
Erica was glad to have the old woman’s bubbly, enthusiastic energy to balance out the unsettling, if not intense heat she felt from just being near Jerome. As he stood behind her, close enough to reach out and touch her shoulder, she hoped she would be able to contain the wanton desires that kept surging through her body. It was one thing to think about him, but it was another thing entirely to have to sit next to him in a jury box all day long.
She tried to focus her mind on the instructions the court clerk had given them and on the task at hand, which was a huge responsibility. They were charged with determining whether a woman would walk free or be locked away for five to ten years. Erica hoped that civic charge of duty would help her concentrate her thoughts on where they needed to be.
A few minutes later, Erica and the other jurors were seated inside the jury box, listening to the opening arguments from both the prosecution and the defense. Right away, she knew that Ms. Maude was correct—this was going to be an interesting trial.
The unlikely defendant was a short, mildly attractive African American woman of considerable girth who appeared to be in her mid-thirties. Erica watched the woman as she pushed her small glasses up the faint bridge of her wide nose, looking frightened behind her thick lenses. Her hands looked as though they were shaking as she raked her stubby fingers through her long hair weave, which was a bit of a mess. Looking at her, Erica couldn’t imagine the timid woman jaywalking, let alone committing a felony.
The woman stood accused of embezzling three hundred thousand dollars from her employer, Allsource Inc., a large consulting firm that specialized in representing government hospital insurance claims. She had been hired by the firm two years ago as a case manager in their patient advocacy department. Her position was one in which she worked from home on a company-issued laptop and was paid by billing the firm for her time, which they calculated from the weekly time sheets she submitted. She recorded the number of hours she worked each week, whether it was more or less than the standard forty. And therein was the problem.
The defendant’s time sheets showed excessive overtime, earning her well over three hundred thousand dollars in the last two years, and that was in addition to her modest fifty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year salary. There had apparently been no oversight of office procedures or forms, but when a new CEO was appointed last year, everything changed. A probe had been conducted in relative secret so as not to alert any wrongdoers. Once enough evidence had been gathered, they moved in and started making arrests, and that was how the defendant found herself staring down a possible decade-long prison sentence.
What made the defendant’s situation even more serious was that not only was she charged with dozens of counts of embezzlement, they were federal charges because she’d submitted her time sheets electronically.
Erica crossed her legs, perched her small writing pad on her thigh, and began to take notes. She tried to concentrate on listening to the current witness on the stand. She wanted to absorb as many details as she could. But she found it difficult to focus because her mind kept moving to her right, just six inches away, where Jerome sat by her side.
She inhaled deeply, letting the sensual musk scent of his cologne tickle her nose and excite her senses. She wanted to lean over, nestle up to the side of his neck, and breathe. Erica knew that she was attracted to him, for sure. But until that very moment she hadn’t realized how much she wanted him. Then another thought occurred to her. She was enthralled by him, but she wondered what he thought of her. Beyond their brief stares and slight smiles, she couldn’t tell if he was attracted to her, or if he was just being polite.
Erica knew she was an attractive woman. She’d been told that enough to know it was true, plus her mirror gave her living proof every day. She had the kind of face that men found beautiful and the kind of body that made them take a second, and sometimes third, look. She was smart, kind, and successful, all attributes that went above the superficial surface of her obvious good looks. These things made her confident in her ability to attract a man.
She didn’t doubt that Jerome had taken notice of her beauty, but she wondered if a man like him would be interested in a woman like her. Judging from what she’d observed of him, she wasn’t so sure she was his type. She had deduced that he was definitely a blue-collar, low-maintenance kind of brother—given the type of clothes he wore, his lack of accoutrements, and the subtle gangsta street swagger he exuded—which probably made him more comfortable with women of his same social ilk.
This is one time I hope my analytical mind is way off base, Erica thought. There was something about this man that she liked, and she wanted him to like her, too.
She shifted her body in her seat, silently examining herself. She brushed a small speck of lint from the hem of her slim black pencil skirt and adjusted the sleeve of her off-white blouse. She looked down at her red manicured toes, which teased the open space of her black patent leather peep-toe heels. She thought her outfit looked good, and that her double-strand cultured pearl necklace, medium-size silver hoop earrings, and diamond tennis bracelet, which her father had given her five years ago for her thirtieth birthday, all accessorized her clothes nicely. Her outfit was simple with a hint of sexy, but she wondered if Jerome thought so, too. Erica sighed to herself, hoping he did.
Chapter 11
Erica sat back in her chair, trying to clear her mind. She knew that she couldn’t let her curiosity about Jerome, or his possible thoughts about her, disrupt her concentration. She needed to once again remain focused on the task at hand, which at the moment was the testimony being given by a new witness the prosecution had just called to the stand. But just a
s she was about to dive back into the details of the case, she noticed something that struck her as very odd. Jerome wasn’t taking any notes.
She looked at his writing pad and saw that it was empty, void of a single word, even a scribble. Although she had allowed her mind to wander momentarily, she had been paying enough attention to record pertinent information. But in the nearly two hours that they had been sitting in the jury box, he hadn’t captured a thing, at least not on paper. She knew that everyone around them had been taking notes, because she could see the busy hands of her fellow jurors at work, writing feverishly, and she could hear the scratchy sound of pencils gliding across paper made by those behind her.
Just as she was about to look into Jerome’s face to try to figure out what he must be thinking, the judge announced that the court was going to take its first break of the day.
Erica and her fellow jurors rose to be dismissed and filed out of the courtroom in the same neat, orderly fashion in which they had entered. Once they were in the back hallway, they dispersed to different areas for their brief reprieve. Erica knew she had to put Jerome out of her mind, because the man had consumed her thoughts all morning. She reminded herself that she had a business to run, deadlines to meet, personnel to hire, and problems to solve, so she quickly hurried back to the jury room so she could check her e-mail and phone messages.
Time was of the essence if she had any hopes of having a new design to showcase her exclusive new body butter, so she prayed that the graphic artist she’d always used in the past would come through on such short notice. Erica took a deep breath as she powered on her phone and vowed she would never again take the risk of hiring someone who had no proven track record.
To her disappointment, Erica hadn’t received the message she’d been looking for. She didn’t want to, but at this point she had to face the possibility that she’d have to go with the regular Opulence design, which appeared on all the other products. No matter how much she wanted to make a splashy show, nothing was worth missing out on the Fashion Week opportunity.
She quickly sent a few e-mails, cleared out some spam messages, and scrolled through the Huffington Post’s latest headlines. She was about to read an article when she noticed Jerome at the edge of the table, quietly staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. For a moment she sat frozen, in awe of how sexy he was. This man is fine as hell! she thought. His dark chocolate skin looked rich enough to taste, and his smooth bald head gleamed with a high shine, which made her want to run her fingers over its surface. And those lips! He had the kind that she imagined felt good on any part of her body.
Erica was traveling in thought when the court clerk startled her with the announcement. Just as quickly as their break had come, it had ended, and before she knew it, she was standing in the same line, in the same order, ready to go back into the courtroom. This time as they waited in the hallway, she could feel Jerome standing at a slightly farther distance behind her. She wondered if it was intentional, and she felt unsettled by the fact that she wanted him closer, much closer.
Erica looked at her watch. It wasn’t even 11:00 a.m., but she was already feeling tired. Dealing with business pressure had become second nature for her, and over the years she had learned how to handle it with a fair amount of efficiency. But feeling so conflicted about a man she desired, but didn’t even know, wasn’t as easy, and it was draining her faster than her worries about Opulence.
After another two hours of intense testimony from witnesses, and of sitting beside Jerome, who seemed to be preoccupied with things other than the trial—evidenced by his blank writing pad—Erica gladly jumped from her seat when the judge recessed the court for lunch.
As they walked back to the jury room, she had to admit that she was beginning to feel sorry for the defendant. Each person who had been called to testify against the frightened-looking woman seemed to have it in for the accomplished sister, who reminded Erica a lot of herself. They were both in their mid-thirties, single, educated, having earned master’s degrees, well spoken, hardworking, and ambitious.
Erica knew there was still a week’s worth of testimony to go and documented evidence that had yet to be presented, but at this point she was leaning toward the defendant’s innocence.
She knew how dishonest and greedy some employees could be. She had had to fire a few who stole money from the register at Opulence and even tried to sneak products home in their handbags. But she’d also worked in corporate America, and she knew how easy it was to set someone up for a fall. More than once the jealous, mean girls at the magazine she’d worked for had intentionally sabotaged her work, and in one case, they’d falsified documents to make her look bad. But thankfully, she’d been smart enough to record in detail everything she did, creating an airtight paper trail, which made them back off.
Erica knew that she needed to be impartial and that she shouldn’t exercise bias, but looking at the defendant, who could have easily been a girlfriend, cousin, or sister, Erica hoped the bespectacled woman hadn’t really done what she was being accused of.
Once they were back in the jury room, everyone gathered their things and began to leave so they could make the most of the fifty-seven minutes and counting they had left for lunch. Ms. Maude was meeting one of her friends at a restaurant down the street from the courthouse, and she invited Erica to join them.
“I have to respond to e-mails and make some phone calls. But thanks, anyway,” Erica said.
“Okay, but make sure you break away from that phone long enough to eat something. It’s going to be a long afternoon,” Ms. Maude advised.
“You can say that again.”
As the room began to empty, Erica noticed that Jerome was still lingering at the end of the table. Finally, it was just the two of them.
“Erica, right?” he said as he walked toward her chair.
Erica sat her phone on the table and tapped a button on her iPad to clear the screen. She wanted to concentrate on what he was saying, so she removed any distractions. “Yes, and you’re Jerome, right?”
“Yes.”
They both nodded and smiled.
“So, um, what’re you doin’ for lunch?” he asked, his voice sounding rich and deep.
“I’m afraid I’m doing it. I have a lot of work to do, and being out of pocket this morning has thrown me even further behind.”
“Too far behind to eat?”
She laughed and shook her head. “I know it sounds crazy, but if you knew what I was up against, you’d understand.... Lots of important deadlines.”
“Nothing’s more important than taking care of yourself.”
Erica didn’t know how to respond. His comment sounded so rational and, beyond that, so caring. It wasn’t necessarily his words, but rather his tone and the look in his eyes that made her perceive what she thought was genuine concern on his part. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“Well, I won’t interrupt your work. I hope you get it all done.”
“Thanks.”
Erica watched as Jerome strolled out of the room with the same quiet ease with which he’d entered earlier that morning. His words had been few, but their impact had shaken her.
It wasn’t until he closed the door that Erica realized he’d wanted to have lunch with her. He had stayed in the room until everyone left, and then he’d asked what she was doing for lunch. “Damn. What’s wrong with me?” Erica quietly admonished herself for her fumble. She hadn’t had an offer to dine with a man in months, and now here it was, she’d had a fine man asking her to eat with him, and the only reaction she’d had was to return to her smartphone and iPad so she could check her messages.
“Ashley is right,” Erica whispered to herself. She was so focused on work that she let an opportunity to get to know Jerome slip through her fingers. She wanted to run out the door and go find him, but she knew he was probably long gone.
As Erica sat all by herself in the jury room, her mind took her back to what Ashley had told her yesterday—t
hat at the end of the day she would find herself all alone, just as she was right now. And then she thought about the change she’d promised to make in her life.
Erica knew she couldn’t undo what had already been done. Jerome was gone. But right then and there, sitting all by herself in the small, empty room, she made up her mind that the next time the opportunity came to do something with Jerome, she was going to grab it, ride it, and never look back.
Chapter 12
Jerome put on his jacket as he walked out of the courthouse and into the cool, sunny day outside. His mind was swimming so fast, he could barely keep up with all the ripples and waves surging through his head. He’d known from the moment he entered the jury room earlier that morning that the feeling he’d gotten last week about the woman in red had been right on target. And now, after having sat close beside her in the jury box for several hours, looking into her gorgeous brown eyes just moments ago, and listening to her gentle-sounding voice, it was official. She was the one. She was the woman he wanted.
He knew on the surface that it sounded ridiculous, bordered on crazy, that he would be experiencing these feelings for someone he’d just met. Before last week, if anyone had told him that he’d be this caught up in a woman whom he didn’t even know, he would have laughed in their face. He wasn’t the type of man who fell in love on a whim or acted impulsively. He was always calm and sometimes even reserved with his feelings. He didn’t believe in bullshit like love at first sight, or falling head over heels after just one encounter. That kind of fantasy was for fools and daydreamers, and he was neither. In his experience, it took time to build a relationship, and even longer to fall in love.
But he had to change his thinking about that when it came to Erica. Never had he felt the kind of instant attraction and intense desire for a woman that welled up inside him when she was near. She had an alluring energy that drew him to her, wrapping him in a time that stood still. When his mind gave him free moments, she filled it with her vibrant smile and curvaceous body, and today was no different. She was the kind of woman who made him glad he was a man, in a very raw, animal sense.
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