“I’d love to continue this debate,” he told her in a voice that she found absolutely infuriating and patronizing, “but we have people out there waiting for us.” Just as Sarajane took a step toward the door, he added, “How about we continue this later? Say, perhaps over dinner?”
Other women might melt all over him like chocolate over a hot fudge sundae, but she wouldn’t. “In a pig’s eye,” she snapped.
“I was thinking of some place a little more spacious, say, a restaurant.” He said it as if the idea had just come to him, as if his entire life hadn’t been conducted in the grip of lust. “I happen to know this intimate little place—”
“I just bet you do.” Without sparing him a look, Sarajane pushed past Jordan and marched out the door—before she did something stupid like pulling him into her arms again.
The air within the outer office was by no means brisk, or even fresh, but after the heat that was blazing inside the supply room, stepping outside made her body feel as if it was enveloped by the breeze of a new spring day.
He was right on one count. They did have work to do, especially her. Work that refused to do itself no matter how much time she gave it.
About to head to her own crammed desk, Sarajane stopped short when she saw Alicia Juarez. The other woman made eye contact and began to walk in her direction.
Alicia was a nurse at the Children’s Connection fertility clinic, and Advocate Aid often gave the clinic free legal advice, handling its paperwork and, on occasion, untangling messes that arose. Its help had been invaluable three years ago, during that awful period when the organization was besieged by one scandal after another. First there was that series of unfortunate fertility mixups, and then there was that black-market baby ring that had somehow attached itself to the organization by preying on the needy character of Robbie Logan, himself a victim of childhood kidnapping.
The tempests looked as if they were about to be unleashed again after the Portland Gazette ran a story about a teenage father whose parental rights had been completely ignored, first by his girlfriend, then by the Children’s Connection who took his baby and passed it along to an adoptive couple without consulting him. The story made it sound as if the father, one Thad Sanders, was desperate to gain custody. In truth, he just wanted to be bought off, but no one paid attention to that. It was the scandal they were all eating up.
Although trouble at the organization was the logical reason for the young nurse’s unexpected appearance, Sarajane had an uneasy feeling that the barely subdued look of fear on Alicia’s face had nothing to do with that.
Jordan and her own unbridled reaction to him momentarily forgotten, Sarajane quickly circumnavigated a desk and hurried over to the woman. Alicia was just a little more than two years older than she was, and they were friends, even though the fast pace of both their lives sometimes made it impossible to touch base as often as they would have liked.
Sarajane put her hand on Alicia’s arm and felt her friend trembling. Her concern increased. She tried, however, to seem cheerful, hoping that would bring her around. “Alicia, hi. What are you doing all the way out here in no-man’s land?”
“Miss, I’ve been waiting here for over an hour,” a burly man with day-old stubble declared, suddenly catching her arm. “That means that I’m ahead of her.”
“I’m sure you are,” Sarajane replied sweetly, suppressing the urge to tell him to sit back down. “But she’s not here on business. Are you?” she asked, lowering her voice as she directed the question at the woman whose long, black hair and golden complexion she had always envied.
A feather would have sent her to the floor when Alicia nodded her head. “I am.”
“Get in line, honey,” the man directed haughtily. “It’s first come, first served around here.”
Before she could open her mouth with some soothing platitude, Sarajane heard Jordan cheerfully inform the man, “Ah, democracy at work. But not, I’m afraid, in your case.” His smile widened as he placed himself between Sarajane and the heavyset would-be plaintiff. “The young lady’s invoking Sadie Hawkins’s rules.”
The man looked at him, clearly confused. “That some kind of legal mumbo-jumbo?”
Jordan’s face was never more serious. “You might say that.” He turned toward the office manager. “Sarajane, why don’t you show your friend to my desk?”
“Legal mumbo-jumbo my foot,” Sarajane said in a whisper between lips that were hardly moving as she passed him. “You’re citing a character out of a comic strip, aren’t you?”
Following, Jordan allowed himself a smile. He supplied the name of the actual strip. “Li’l Abner,” he told her. “Hasn’t been around for decades. You’re full of surprises, Sarajane.” And then he momentarily shifted his eyes toward the back of the office, to the supply room. “But then, we’ve already established that.”
She opened her mouth to say something, only to shut it again when nothing came out.
Jordan leaned over, whispering so that only she could hear. “You’re blushing, Sarajane.”
“It’s hot in here,” she informed him tersely. It was a lame comeback and she knew it, but she couldn’t just let the comment go.
His smile only deepened. “My thoughts exactly.”
And then he straightened and transformed right before her eyes from a Casanova to the personification of a professional attorney as he turned his attention to Alicia Juarez.
Jordan gestured toward the empty chair before his beleaguered desk. One week into working here and the cavalcade of papers surrounding his ancient computer had doubled, albeit neatly so because he had a thing about neatness, even in the midst of chaos.
“Please, have a seat, Ms.—?” He paused, waiting for the woman to fill in the name.
“Juarez,” she told him as she nervously made contact with the chair, perching rather than sitting. “Alicia Juarez.”
“Ms. Juarez,” he repeated, covertly looking at her left hand to see if he should stretch her title out and insert an R between the two letters. The hand with its neatly trimmed, short nails was devoid of any jewelry, making her legally single in his eyes. “What can I do for you?”
“Alicia works for the Children’s Connection.” Sarajane told him when Alicia hesitated.
Sarajane was still hovering, he thought. It was a habit of hers, one that, he’d noted, he was on the receiving end of more than the other two lawyers in the office. Was it because he was still new in her eyes, or because she had this overwhelming need to control and micromanage everything she could?
Whatever the case, he could do without having her breathing down his neck, judging every move.
“I can take it from here, Sarajane,” he assured her, turning toward Alicia. “I’ve done some legal work for your organization,” Jordan told the young woman gently, hoping to help her get her narrative started.
To his surprise—and Sarajane’s—Alicia shook her head. “This isn’t about the Children’s Connection.” The words seemed to come tumbling out in a heap, as if glued to one another.
“It’s not?” Sarajane interjected before Jordan could say anything.
Jordan spared her a glance that was less than patient, even though his voice remained controlled. “I’ve been here since Monday. I think my training wheels can come off, so you can—” He didn’t get a chance to finish.
“It’s about Joe,” Alicia said suddenly, looking at Sarajane.
“Joe?” Jordan asked. “Is that your—” He was going to ask Alicia if Joe was her significant other when Sarajane interrupted again.
“Joe is her older brother.”
They were back to sparring again, Jordan thought. Funny, for a moment back there in the supply room, he really thought they had connected. Clicked. Which meant that they should have been moving on to another stage of their relationship instead of reverting back to where they had been that very first morning—and again the morning after that—despite the fact that he had rescued her from the mugger, and then had taken h
er, the following day, down to the precinct to file charges against the man. That should have put them on a different footing. And yet it hadn’t.
It seemed that with this woman, any progress made was only temporary, destined to fade from memory as they returned back to step one over and over again. It was like being stuck in some kind of science fiction time loop. He could only go so far before he found himself yanked back to the very beginning again.
It bothered him more than he liked.
“Thank you,” he replied coolly, then turned his attention toward the angst-ridden young nurse sitting on the other side of his desk. “Why don’t you tell me in your own words exactly what it is that you need me to do.”
“I need you to represent him—my brother,” she added needlessly. He saw that she was nervously twisting her fingers together in her lap. “He’s in jail right now, and I can’t make bail,” she lamented. “And the court-appointed lawyer he has wants him to accept a plea bargain, but he won’t do it.”
Jordan nodded, doing his best to be sympathetic, at least for Alicia’s sake. She seemed genuinely distressed by what she was telling him. “And why is that?” he wanted to know.
Alicia took a breath, as if she was fortifying herself before saying, “Because he’s innocent.”
Ah, the battle cry of two-thirds of the prison population, Jordan thought. He couldn’t help the wave of cynicism that washed over him. But he kept the harsh words to himself. The young woman sitting before his desk with fingers that were all but knotted together looked too upset to have that little fact callously pointed out to her.
So instead he asked, “And what is it that your brother’s innocent of?”
Alicia let out a ragged breath. It was as if words failed her.
“Take your time,” Jordan coaxed gently.
“But not too much,” Sarajane pleaded as another two people walked in.
It was bad enough conducting what were supposed to be private interviews out in the open like this. He didn’t need an audience of one not so secretly critiquing every word he uttered.
“Sarajane, why don’t you show those two people where they can sit?” he instructed more than suggested. She didn’t like him telling her what to do, he guessed. But more than that, he saw her reluctance to leave Alicia’s side. “She’ll fill you in later,” he promised, instinctively knowing that Sarajane would give Alicia no peace until she’d heard everything.
Grudgingly, Sarajane walked over to the newcomers.
Jordan leaned in closer, lowering his voice. “All right, what was your brother officially charged with?”
Alicia pressed her lips together. He noticed that they quivered a little. She was struggling not to cry, he thought. As he waited, his eyes never leaving her face, he reached over to the side and opened the drawer where he’d seen Sarajane stick the box of tissues. He placed them on his desk before Alicia.
“The official charge is grand larceny,” she told him, then tagged on quickly, “but he didn’t do it.”
“And that’s what we’ll tell the judge,” he assured her, never once allowing his lips to curve at the simple, almost sweet naïveté she was displaying, “but I’m going to need a little more to offer than that.”
Ordinarily, the story should come from the accused, but he thought he’d let himself find out just what he was in for before going to talk to her brother. He could tell by the look on Sarajane’s face that there was no way he could even entertain the idea of turning Alicia down and survive, at least not intact.
“Why don’t you tell me what I’m going to be up against?”
“Then you’ll do it?” Alicia asked eagerly. “You’ll take on my brother’s case?”
Because human contact was essential and telegraphed comfort, he took her hand in both of his and smiled as he told her, “That was never in question.”
From across the room, Sarajane saw Jordan smiling at her friend. And she felt something stirring inside her belly she neither liked nor wanted to let into her life. But the sharp sting of jealousy needed no invitation. It came unannounced, unbidden and all the more hoary for that as it quickly burrowed right in, making itself at home.
She sighed and realized she might be facing her third strike after all.
Chapter Seven
Alicia’s hands were folded before her on his desk. Only close scrutiny on his part allowed Jordan to see that her hands weren’t folded so much as tightly gripped together, as if that was the only thing that was keeping her from falling apart.
Alicia took a breath and began, her voice hardly more than a whisper at the start, then taking on strength and breadth as she continued explaining her brother’s predicament to him.
“Joe is—was,” she amended ruefully and there was a flicker of anger in her eyes as she was forced to change the word, “the chief mechanic for Hell’s Raiders, the successful motorcycle racing team,” she interjected, in case he had never heard of the name. Few outside the racing world had. “I don’t know all that much about them, but I do know that he’s put in a lot of extra hours, hours he wasn’t paid for,” she emphasized, “working with their engineer to build this new kind of engine that uses alternative fuel. The modifications made the motorcycles run faster—and cleaner. The fuel he used was even safer for the environment,” she added with feeling.
“Might be just what we need,” Jordan commented, his voice soothing, his words meant to urge her gently to get to the heart of the matter.
“It certainly was what the team needed,” she told him. “They tested the engine prototype and it performed even better than they’d originally hoped for during the initial trials. Everyone was excited. They were sure this would put them in the running for the lead this racing season.”
He could hear her tone drop just at the last word. “But?”
The enthusiasm faded from her eyes. She pressed her lips together. “But then the plans for the engine went missing.”
“What about the prototype?” He knew people who could work miracles just by looking at an example. If they had the engine, they could work backwards and write down the plans. Problem solved.
But Alicia was shaking her head. “It vanished,” she answered quietly.
“And they arrested your brother because—?” he asked, leaving the end of the sentence open for her.
He could see how reluctant she was to fill in the blank. “Because Joe was the last one who worked on the plans—and the engine—before they went missing.” She drew herself up. “I know this looks bad for him, but he didn’t do it,” she insisted with feeling. “Mr. Hall, my brother is a single dad with two kids to raise—Joey junior and Lia. He works very hard and he really loves those kids.” Her eyes were passionate as they pleaded with him. “He wouldn’t do this to them.”
He banked down the urge to comfort the woman. That wasn’t going to help her. Right now, he needed to play devil’s advocate, make her aware of all the possibilities. “Did you stop to consider that he might have done it for them?”
Alicia’s soft brown eyes stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
He knew it was filial love that was blinding her. But no one on the jury was going to be related to Joe Juarez. They were going to be looking at the facts. And at what was obvious.
Jordan mapped it out for her. “Well, considering the state of affairs these days with the price of gas going through the roof, everyone’s looking for an alternative fuel and a better, more efficient engine that will run on it. And there’s your brother who just happens to have both in his hip pocket.”
Alicia splayed her hands on his desk, leaning forward. Incensed at the mere suggestion that her brother was a common thief. “Joe wouldn’t do that,” she insisted. “He’s not like that.”
Everyone was like that when the chips were down, Jordan thought. “When your brother went to work for these motorcycle racers, he signed an agreement, didn’t he?”
Her eyebrows drew together in confusion. “What kind of an agreement?”
“That any idea he might come up with that had anything to do with enhancing or augmenting their vehicles actually belonged to his bosses.” He’d seen it happen time and again, brilliant inventors made to surrender their life’s work because they had accepted someone else’s terms in order to get funding to get them started.
She thought for a moment, trying to remember. “Yes, but—”
There was no but in this case, he thought. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, but that was just the way things were.
“Think how it must have felt to your brother, to actually have come up with something that would put him on the map, make him a lot of money for his family, and then to know that he would never reap any of the benefits that might come of that because he signed his life away to his employers.” His eyes held hers as his voice dropped lower, but the underlying intensity continued to build. “Think how frustrated that must have made him feel, to stand back and know someone else, not his children, would get the money, that someone else would get all the fame that rightfully belonged to him.”
“No.” She shook her head with feeling. “Joe’s not like that,” she cried again.
It must be nice, he thought, to have someone believe in you that much. Outside of Jenny when it came to Eric, he’d thought such women were pretty much wishful thinking on the part of males. Obviously not.
“Then he’s a saint,” he told her matter-of-factly.
He saw the disappointment wash over her face. “You sound just like his lawyer.”
“No,” he corrected patiently because there was method behind his being so harsh. “I sound just like the plaintiff’s lawyer. That’s what they’re going to say at the trial. They’re going to point out the obvious to the judge and the jury. They’ll hang their whole case on it and right now, from where I sit, it sounds pretty convincing. Are you sure you still want to fight this and not just tell your brother to accept the plea bargain that he’s being offered?” He did his best to look sympathetic, to her plight if not to her brother’s. “Maybe you should try talking to him again.”
Mr. Hall Takes a Bride Page 7