by Ann Jacobs
Wells riddled Kristine with a steely gaze. “There was no chance Landry could have tampered with the jury?”
She glanced away from Andi, making herself look Wells in the eye. “No. It surprised me the judge didn’t direct an acquittal. The evidence was circumstantial, too weak to convict Garcia.”
“Word in the office has it that you went with Tony Landry to a Bar Association party. People say you two spent a good portion of the evening alone—aboard his boat if gossip can be believed. Your personal relationship with the defense counsel hasn’t colored your opinion, has it, Kristine?” The look on Wells’s face reminded Kristine of the way someone might grimace if he’d just bitten into a rotten oyster.
Relationship? What relationship? She’d tossed the opportunity for an affair with Tony out the window last weekend when she sent him away. Never mind she’d hardly slept since then for wanting him. “No, sir.”
“You might be interested in knowing Landry just won acquittal this morning for a client who was caught red-handed, selling cocaine to school kids like your sister. Like Helen.”
Kristine struggled to stay composed. Tony had convinced her many of the clients he represented were innocent of the crimes they stood accused of. And that he tried to plea-bargain most of the cases where he believed clients to be guilty. She’d believed him when he told her his real love was seeing justice served, helping innocent clients like Ezra Ruggles win freedom on appeal.
He’d made her question her beliefs and wonder if her goals weren’t off base. Tony had made her want him more than she hated dope dealers, need him more than the retribution she’d been seeking for eight long years.
She fought to keep her emotions under control, but when she left her boss’s office she was close to tears. “I’ve got to go,” she muttered, not meeting anyone’s gaze as she stumbled out of the office and onto the street.
For a long time she sat on a bench by the bus stop, too torn by conflicting wants and needs to move. Then she got in her car and headed for Harbour Island. Though Wells obviously disliked Tony, the man had no reason she could see to lie. And Tony had never claimed that all the clients he represented were without blame. Still, she owed Tony the chance to explain, she told herself as she pulled into a parking space close to the boat dock.
He’d told her he lived here, in one of these high-rise condos developers had thought would attract up-and-coming professionals who worked in downtown Tampa. She should have asked which one.
Kristine gasped for breath when she stepped out of the car into the steamy air. Six o’clock in the evening, and still the sun bore down on her. When sand blew against her sweaty pantyhose, it stuck, making her itch in places she couldn’t scratch. Damn it, she’d never find him in this maze of high-dollar tenements.
She spied a pay phone over by the dock where boats bobbed on gentle waves. Ignoring the sand in her shoes, she hurried to it. She had to talk to Tony, though by this time she’d almost managed to convince herself he was as guilty as Wells had charged.
“Krissy!”
She set the receiver back on its cradle and looked toward the sound. Tony. Naked except for boxer-style swim trunks, he stood on the deck of his boat. He had the nerve to grin at her as she stomped down the wooden dock toward Miss Trial.
“You. You…shyster. Do you feel good, knowing you pay for this—and that black toy you drive—with the blood of children?”
Chapter Ten
If tears hadn’t been pooling in her gorgeous eyes, and if Kristine hadn’t looked so adorably disheveled standing on the dock yelling at him, Tony might have picked her up and dunked her in the bay to cool her off. Instead he reached up and grabbed her, setting her down on the deck but keeping a good hold on her. He didn’t let her go until he’d untied the boat, walked up to the cockpit, and started the engine.
He scanned the sky for signs of the thunderstorms he’d heard predictions of earlier, shook his head. Not a cloud, or any other indication the steamy, sunny weather was about to change.
“Here, Krissy. Calm down and tell me what’s upset you. We’re going for a little ride.” Maneuvering between the buoys, Tony headed for the channel that would take them into the deeper water of the open bay.
“Let me off this boat. Tony, I don’t want to be with you.”
“Really? Then why did you come looking for me?”
She opened her pretty mouth, snapped it shut, and scratched a spot just below her knee. If looks could have killed, Tony figured he’d be six feet under.
“Tony, I mean it.”
He grinned as he revved up the powerful inboard engine and held Miss Trial on course. “Go on, honey, get out of those hot sweaty clothes. You should find something you can wear down in the cabin.”
She squirmed, scratched again. Sand, he figured. It had a way of catching in whatever you were wearing and making you want to strip down.
“Where?”
Was it his imagination, or had Krissy begun to cool off? “You’ll find some shorts and T-shirts in the second drawer of the chest by the bed,” he yelled over the engine’s roar.
His clothes would be way too big for her, but at least she wouldn’t find any feminine garments since Gretchen had cleared her stuff out on her last visit two weeks earlier.
He was glad about that. He had enough to overcome with Kristine without having to explain away tangible evidence of other women who had passed through his life.
“Where are we going?” she asked in none too polite a tone when she came back up on deck.
His pale blue T-shirt came almost to her knees, making him wonder what, if anything, she had on under it. “Out on the bay. Come on, let me have it. Tell me why I’m pond scum. May I assume it’s for taking on Dino Martinez’s defense?”
“He was guilty. Dead-to-rights guilty. The police caught him in the act of selling cocaine to kids. Children, Tony.” Tears rolled down Kristine’s cheeks. Tony had to stop himself from reaching out and brushing them away.
Tony couldn’t dispute her words. The kid had been caught red-handed. If it hadn’t been for some mishandled evidence he’d been able to use to create doubt in the jurors’ minds, Dino would most likely be on his way to prison, and Tony doubted it would have been one of the minimum-security facilities. There were times it didn’t pay to be related to a guy purported to be a local drug kingpin.
“The defendant was hardly a hardened criminal himself,” he said, trying to hold on to his temper.
“He was old enough to be peddling poison. To children, Tony.”
Tony had heard enough. Though Krissy apparently thought otherwise, not everything was black if it wasn’t white. Meeting her challenge, he fashioned an argument in his own defense.
“Dino’s barely sixteen years old himself. It was your boss who pushed to have him tried as an adult and refused every reasonable offer my assistant made to bargain the charges down. He was determined to see Dino get the maximum sentence.”
“Why?”
“Dino is Manny Garcia’s nephew. Wells figured he could make some points with the press for hitting at Manny through the kid. I didn’t get involved personally with Dino’s case until Hank figured out that Harper had crucifixion on his mind.”
Kristine leaned back against the cushioned seat, closed her eyes. “Dino Martinez is just sixteen?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t see letting Wells send a sophomore in high school to Raiford just because his uncle is the guy’s favorite whipping boy in his very vocal war against organized crime in Tampa.”
Her eyes opened, and she met Tony’s gaze. “Come off it. Nobody in the state attorney’s office would try to send a sixteen-year-old to a maximum-security prison unless he’d killed someone. I mean direct, out-and-out murder, not slow death by cocaine.”
“Think again. That’s exactly the fate Wells had in mind for Dino. Don’t you read the papers?”
“Yes, but…are you sure he’s just sixteen? I never heard anything mentioned about his age.”
“It wasn�
�t something Wells wanted to advertise. Dino celebrated his sixteenth birthday two weeks before he got arrested.”
Lightning crackled to the west, barely visible in Tony’s peripheral vision. He waited, mentally counting the seconds between the lightning strike and the thunderclap that would follow.
“Hadn’t we better head back?” Kristine obviously had seen the signs of a thunderstorm, too.
Letting up on the throttle, Tony slowed the boat. “Yeah. Looks like we’re in for a squall.”
Briefly he scanned the area for a likely spot to ride out the storm if it got too bad to make it back. Nothing, unless he wanted to count that little cove less than a quarter of a mile south of their position, west-southwest of the tip of the south Tampa peninsula.
The sky darkened. Thunder rolled. Lightning played against the western sky. What had been a calm, murky bay suddenly began to look like pea soup as the wind churned its surface, making the sturdy Miss Trial lurch like a drunken sailor.
The air, pleasantly salty until now, took on the smell of rotting fish and seaweed as the temperature plummeted by what must have been at least twenty degrees. Tony gripped the wheel, his muscles straining when he wrestled the big boat toward the cove and safety.
Suddenly the rain came, solid sheets whipped in crazy patterns by gale-force gusts that tossed Miss Trial around as though she were a ten-foot rowboat. Raindrops pricked Tony’s face like thousands of tiny needles, chilling him to the bone.
“Go below,” Tony shouted, hoping Kristine could hear him over the howling wind. “I’m heading for shelter.”
No need for her to get soaked, too. Bracing himself for the jolts that came as the boat climbed four-foot and bigger waves, Tony kept going forward. The sight of calmer water beyond a tangle of sea grapes and Australian pines allowed him to let out a sigh of relief. Cutting the engine, he dropped bow and stern anchors before fastening down the canvas and taking refuge in the compact cabin.
* * * * *
Everything seemed to be in place, he thought as he glanced into the head and galley before stepping into the salon. Where the hell was Kristine?
“Krissy?” he called.
“Is the storm over?”
He followed the muffled sound of her voice to a lump under the covers of a bed set into an alcove along the far wall. “No, but we should be safe here,” he told her after he sat down and started to stroke her back.
Tousled blond hair emerged, followed by the rest of her, still almost as drenched as she’d been when he sent her below half an hour earlier. “Where are we?”
“In a little cove on the southern bank of the bay. We’re protected from the worst of the wind.”
Tony wished nature hadn’t decided to make a liar of him by sending a massive whoosh of air through the cabin, punctuated by the clattering of thunder in the distance. Miss Trial swayed, tugging against the two anchors that held her fast.
“Don’t take this wrong, Krissy, but I think you’d better get those wet clothes off.”
She shot him a sheepish glance. “Oh, no. I’ve gone and gotten your bed all wet.”
He was getting the bed wet, too, but he didn’t give a damn. “That’s the least of my worries. Come on, let’s find some dry stuff to put on. Then I’ll see if I can put together something for us to eat.”
He doubted Kristine would care for the other suggestion that rose to the forefront of his mind when she stood up and gave him a prize view of her assets, covered only by that wet T-shirt that hugged every enticing curve and clung to the hard nubs of her nipples.
Thunder rolled, and the sky lit up again with what seemed to be a thousand bolts of lightning. The boat rocked wildly in the wind. Goose bumps popped up on Kristine’s naked arms, making Tony want to strip her out of her wet clothes and wrap her in his embrace.
Instead he grabbed a dry swimsuit and peeled off the one he had on. “Sorry,” he muttered when she squeaked out his name. He jerked on the dry garment as fast as he could. Hadn’t she ever seen a naked man before?
“Would you go somewhere else?” Kristine’s cheeks bloomed with color in spite of her shaking. “I’m afraid I’m not quite as brazen as you.”
Tony couldn’t help grinning as he handed her another T-shirt and a pair of shorts that had a drawstring she could tighten up around her slender waist if she were too damn shy to go naked under the big shirt.
“Too bad,” he said as he turned his back and headed for the galley.
She had no idea how safe she really was. He had no condoms on the boat, and he’d long since passed the stage in his life where he habitually carried some around in his wallet. He seriously doubted his Krissy would have protection stashed somewhere in the handbag from hell. The most he could hope for as far as sex was concerned would be a passel of frustration.
No way was he going to try cooking. The way the wind was tossing the boat around, he’d run too great a risk of setting it on fire. He rifled through his meager stock of food and found some crackers and a can of tuna, to which he added some cheese and a couple of beers from the refrigerator.
“Hungry?” he asked when he set the tray of goodies on the table by the built-in bed.
The wind whined, its sound eerie in the twilight. “Tony?”
He met her wide-eyed gaze. “What?”
“Are we really safe here?”
He looked through the porthole at the raging storm. “I think so. I brought her through a hell of a lot worse waves than these to get us here. We’re less than a hundred yards from shore, probably not even twenty yards from shallow water. I’d have gotten us in closer, but I was afraid I’d run aground.”
“All right.”
Picking up one of the beer cans, Krissy took a healthy swig. When her tongue darted out to catch a bit of foam, Tony wished he were that beer.
“We may be here a while,” he said, hoping to hell she was over her righteous fury about his defending Dino Martinez.
“I know.”
Her innocent blue gaze was burning a hole in his shorts, and he could no more control his cock’s natural reaction than he could force the storm to subside.
“I shouldn’t have gotten so upset. I should have known you wouldn’t have defended that boy if there hadn’t been good reason.”
Tony’s conscience wouldn’t let her let him off so easily. “No. I wouldn’t have tried that case. It was small potatoes, except for the fact that your boss decided to crucify a kid. It was a good thing I could free up time, or he just might have won.”
“Did you get paid?”
Tony couldn’t help grinning at her naiveté. “Of course. Manny pulled out all the stops. Told me he’d pay whatever I asked, just keep his nephew out of jail.” He piled some tuna onto a cracker and handed it to Kristine.
“Thanks. You know, you don’t have to paint yourself black, Counselor. It wouldn’t hurt for you to admit once in a while that you have a heart that does more than pump blood to your money-grubbing brain.”
Tony shifted one leg, reminded that his heart was doing a great job pumping blood to his cock. “Okay. I’m a great guy. Just ask me. What do you say we take up where we left off the other night? If I remember correctly we were just about to get it on.”
He loved the way she blushed, as though this was the first time she’d ever heard frank sex talk. Her gentle touch on his knee, hesitant as it was, made him want her hot and wet and now.
“Krissy?”
The smile she shot his way was half-sweet, all sexy. “May I touch you?”
God, but she had him on fire, and she hadn’t even gotten down to business. “Be my guest,” he said, bracing himself for a jolt he imagined would hit harder than the lightning that crackled outside the portholes.
“You’re so solid. So hard.”
Her breath tickled his chest when she spoke, and her fingers burned a path up his thigh. When they trailed across the front of his swimsuit and explored his swollen cock he damn near died.
This was going too fast. He’d be
tter tell her now this wasn’t going to end up with him buried deep inside her the way he wanted. The way he was pretty certain she wanted, too.
“Take it easy, honey. I might as well let you know now, all we’re going to do is play. I don’t have any protection.”
She gave him a playful squeeze. “But I do, Counselor,” she told him as she grabbed her purse and fished inside. “Look!”
A condom. A very welcome, one-inch-square packet sealed in bright gold foil that sparkled between Kristine’s thumb and forefinger. The condom that very well might save his sanity.
“Thank God at least one of us came prepared.” He slung back the bed covers and pulled her down on him, on top of the soft cotton sheets.
She snuggled up close, twined her long silky legs with his. “Thank my boss,” she said as she pressed the condom into his hand.
Her boss? “You got this from Harper Wells?”
“No, silly. From Andi Young. The woman I work for every day. She said if I was going to tangle with hunks like you, I should be ready for anything.”
He let out the breath he just realized he’d been holding, grinned at Krissy. “And are we going to tangle?” he asked when she cupped his backside with warm, gentle hands.
Chapter Eleven
“We’re going to tangle.”
Tony’s grin was positively predatory. His hands felt cool, yet they scorched her with their touch. His lips warmed and softened hers. Everywhere he touched her, she burned.
Kristine liked the feeling, wanted more. “Take it off,” she murmured when he reached under the T-shirt she wore and pressed her hips more firmly against his rock-hard penis.
She should have been embarrassed when that flimsy barrier was gone, but she wasn’t. When she lay in his arms, her naked torso molded to his flesh. Melting sensations began deep in her belly.
Waves rocked the boat. Thunder rolled. She tightened her hold on his hard-muscled torso. He would keep the world at bay, keep her safe. In that, she trusted him implicitly.