LawyersinLove_Bundle

by Ann Jacobs

  Lisa picked up her iced tea and took a long sip. “Guys can’t be trusted. Period. They’re fine for fun and games and absolutely essential for sexual satisfaction. That’s all.”

  “When did you come to that conclusion?”

  “When I was seventeen.”

  Casey guessed the iced tea must have sprouted some foreign object, the way Lisa was staring at it.

  “What happened?” Casey asked when the silence started getting to her.

  “Jake Wells—he was my first lover—swore from the time we were fourteen that we’d always be together. He said he loved me, every chance he got. But that didn’t stop him from telling his daddy every guy in school had fucked me before he skipped town and left me three months pregnant.”

  “You had a baby?”

  “She was stillborn. It was okay. Nobody wanted her anyway. Not my parents. Certainly not Jake.

  “My wants didn’t count. Anyhow, I figured soon enough that I was better off without a baby to raise on my own.”

  The sadness showed in Lisa’s eyes, although her words sounded upbeat, almost callous. Casey reached across the table and held her hand.

  “You’ve got to know not all men are like this Jake guy.”

  Lisa’s laugh was hollow sounding. “You may be right, but I’m not willing to take a chance. Flavor-of-the-month’s a safer bet. For me.”

  “Mike’s history?”

  Lisa nodded. “He had to go and say the words I least wanted to hear.”

  “That he loves you?”

  “Yes.”

  Casey wondered if she’d cringe the way her roommate apparently had, if Craig should ever murmur those three words in her ear. She didn’t think so.

  But she might drag him off to Las Vegas for a quickie wedding if he ever proposed, instead of risking that he’d change his mind the way Buck had.

  “So you’d rather let Mike go than risk getting hurt again now, however many years since Jake let you down?”

  “I’d even rather do without sex.”

  That, Casey imagined, wouldn’t remain a problem for long. Men flocked to Lisa like flies to hot dogs on the grill. Unless—

  Unless Mike had already gotten under Lisa’s skin before she sent him on his way. The way Craig was under Casey’s skin now.

  “If we don’t get a move on, we’ll both be late to work,” Lisa said, sniffling as she grabbed her backpack in a very un-Lisa-like way.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Craig went through the motions, but thoughts of Casey kept intruding as he prepped witnesses for the Ranger trial.

  Of all the people he’d rather not have as second chair, Dwayne Cramer was it. But the boss hadn’t given him a chance to protest before he made the announcement a few minutes ago. If there was any consolation, it was that a second body at the prosecution’s table would show the defense that the state attorney’s office meant business.

  He reminded himself that winning the case would keep him squarely on target toward his personal goals. Still, he clenched his fists under the table when the other lawyer joined him in the conference room. He had no delusion that Dwayne would keep his mouth shut while he prepared the psychologist who was to testify for the prosecution.

  “How was your weekend?” Dwayne asked when he got situated at the table.

  “Fine.” He hoped his tone would discourage further conversation. Keeping Casey off his mind was hard enough without having Dwayne remind him of her.

  “Get any work done?”

  No such luck. He should have known Dwayne wouldn’t take the hint. “Some.”

  Dwayne gestured toward his own left leg. “How’s the training going?”

  “Fine.”

  “No pain when you run?”

  Dwayne didn’t need to know he wasn’t running or biking—that the damn triathlon itself would tax his patched up leg enough without him torturing it ahead of time.

  “No,” he said shortly.

  Anybody else would have known his monosyllabic replies meant he wasn’t interested in idle conversation. But not Dwayne. By the time the police department’s psychologist arrived to be briefed on his testimony, Craig’s mind was doing flip-flops between sex and murder.

  Making love with Casey, murdering his colleague.

  All the psychologist’s talk about sex addiction skewed those thoughts toward Casey, so much that when the interview was over Craig could barely remember what the shrink had said. He’d taken notes, though, and presumably so had Dwayne.

  “Piece of cake,” Dwayne announced before the psychologist had cleared the door. “No jury will believe Ranger’s a sex addict.”

  “Why not? Our own expert witness just said it’s possible.”

  “Because Ranger didn’t bash into his own wife, or crack her in the head. He ran his car into a total stranger.”

  Craig shook his head at Dwayne’s lack of logic. “That makes him look more insane than if he’d taken out his frustration on the woman who caused it.”

  “Frustration, man. Not insanity. Trust me.”

  Problem was, Craig didn’t. Dwayne, who had been with the state attorney’s office twice as long as Craig, had won less than half as many convictions. “Let’s hope our jurors feel that way,” he said as he gathered his notes and prepared to leave.

  Maybe a good, hard workout would clear his head.

  * * * * *

  It didn’t.

  Every time he glanced in one of the mirrors at the gym, Craig got a glimpse of Casey showing an adoring but apparently feebleminded mass of whale blubber how to use the universal machine.

  The hot pink thing she had on covered her head to ankles but concealed nothing.

  How many other guys besides him and the beached whale had hard-ons from ogling her?

  Everybody, he imagined.

  Everyone, that is, who was heterosexual and not so narcissistic they had to gawk at themselves while they pumped iron. Inexplicably Craig wanted to put blinders on them all. Or dress Casey in one of those veils and robes like women in Saudi Arabia wore.

  Yeah, that ought to do it.

  He doubted Casey would agree. She liked sashaying around in her sexy workout togs and thong bikinis. She just plain liked looking sexy. Hell, he liked her looking sexy, too. But damn it, he was the only guy who was sleeping with her, the only one with a right to think lascivious thoughts about her.

  Good thing she got off at seven. Maybe he could make it until then without dragging her somewhere private and getting his Casey fix. Making a superhuman effort to keep his eyes to himself, he finished his strength-building routine and headed for the pool.

  Casey watched him leave, then turned her attention back to Todd.

  “Take it easy,” she told him. “You don’t want to do too much the first day.”

  “I’m okay.” Todd’s protest came out on a gasp for breath as he suddenly let go of the handles on the machine and sent weights clattering down onto their stacks.

  His jowls had turned an alarming shade of red, and sweat poured off his brow and through his tentlike T-shirt. The flab on his arms quivered like jelly.

  While Casey had been feasting her eyes on Craig, Todd could have suffered a stroke. Guilt washed over her, but not enough to make her forget the rush she got, savoring the memory that for one magical weekend Craig McDermott had been her very own Playgirl playmate.

  And it wasn’t over yet. She’d be meeting him as soon as she finished up here.

  “What’s next, beautiful?” Todd wheezed.

  Hopefully not a heart attack, she thought, returning Todd’s anemic smile. “Come on over to the desk. I’ll check your pulse and blood pressure.”

  “But I’ll never get in shape—”

  “You certainly won’t if you kill yourself. Take it one day at a time.”

  Casey took Todd’s vital signs and recorded them in his folder. Then she met his gaze. “It looks as if you’ve survived your first day with the weights. Go on now, hit the steam room.”

  “Could I
talk you into dinner? A salad or something, maybe?” Todd’s expression was pained, as though contemplating a meal that didn’t contain several thousand cholesterol-laden calories tied his oversize stomach up in knots.

  “I’d love to, but I have plans.”

  He frowned. Then his expression brightened. “Too bad. Maybe next time.”

  “Maybe.” Casey felt shallow as she watched Todd lumber away. The banker seemed to be a perfectly decent guy even if he was as big around as he was tall. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t ring any bells for her.

  Then she put guilt into perspective. It wasn’t just Todd. Other guys who weren’t grossly overweight or out of shape had asked her out, too, and she’d said no. Because none of them had attracted her the way Craig did. He drew her in a way she couldn’t explain.

  The attraction was stronger than her simply drooling over his to-die-for looks, less easily explained than by his athletic prowess and the ambition she had no doubt would take him wherever he wanted to go. She had plenty of reasons to have fallen in love with him. The question Casey asked herself as she got ready to meet Craig was what had he seen in her.

  * * * * *

  Not even sexual anticipation had managed to banish that question from Casey’s mind. “Why did you ask me out?” she asked Craig once they finished eating a Chinese take-out dinner at his apartment.

  He nuzzled her neck. “Guess.”

  His arms snaked around her, his large hands capturing her breasts and kneading them lightly through her shirt and bra.

  “I mean, why did you do it last week, after spending months ignoring me every time you came to the gym to exercise?”

  Instead of replying, he rolled her nipples with his thumbs and forefingers. Soon she was squirming and her pussy was gushing its juices down her thighs, but she had to know. “Why, Craig?”

  “I needed to prove to myself that sex isn’t addictive. For the Ranger case.”

  So he’d figured her for an easy lay. Well, she certainly had proven him right. Still, knowing it didn’t set well. She pulled away, then turned and looked him in the eye. “You asked me out because you wanted sex?”

  “No. I mean, not entirely. But you asked why I suddenly decided to ask you out when I hadn’t before. I’d been busy. Concentrating on my job. Until this case came up, I had been avoiding distractions. Baby, you were definitely a distraction. Every time I came to the gym and looked at you, my cock got hard.”

  “So when you needed a quick fix of sex you hit on me?”

  He had the decency to look abashed. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose I did.”

  “Why didn’t you go see your regular girlfriend?”

  “I don’t have one. At least I didn’t, until now.”

  “What about her?” Casey gestured toward a framed photo of Craig in a tuxedo, a sleek looking blonde at his side.

  “That’s Tara Enderlin. She’s a colleague, not a girlfriend. As a matter of fact she’s married to a detective lieutenant in the Tampa Police Department. He’s the other guy in the picture.”

  When she looked closely Casey saw that the other man had his arm around the blonde.

  “Oh.”

  Craig caught her chin in his hand, forced her to meet his gaze. “You don’t have to worry about other women, baby. You’re my only lover. The only lover I’ve ever had.”

  “Ever?” He couldn’t have meant what she thought he just said.

  Suddenly he seemed to have developed a keen interest in one of the takeout cartons on the table. “I couldn’t refute Ranger’s sex addiction insanity defense unless I knew firsthand what it was he’d gotten addicted to,” he told her, his tone defensive.

  “So you hit on me because you thought I’d be an easy lay.” Fury got Casey hot, even quicker than their foreplay did.

  “I hit on you because you’d turned me on since the first time I saw you. But, baby, you’ve got to admit you came on mighty strong.”

  The man had the audacity to grin. She itched to hit him. His ulterior motive didn’t wash. Knowing he’d sought out the bad girl he’d thought she was because of his job was downright insulting.

  “I’m out of here,” she snapped, snatching up her things and heading for the door.

  “Casey. Don’t go.”

  Refusing to meet his gaze for fear of giving in, she clutched the doorknob like a lifeline. “We’re through. Over. You’ve solved your professional problem, so you’ve got no need to come sniffing around me any longer.”

  “Wait. Please.”

  She paused, her hand still on the doorknob. She knew she ought to have walked out on the bum, but part of her wanted to stay. The masochistic part. Steeling her mind against him, she opened the door.

  He took her bag from her hand and stepped between her and freedom. “Go sit down. We’re not through yet.”

  “No.” She wasn’t going to give in easily.

  Craig grasped her elbow and escorted her to one of the black leather and chrome sling chairs in front of a large-screen TV. “I said sit down.”

  If she didn’t, would he back off? Casey didn’t think so, considering the ferocity of his expression. Giving in for the moment, she sank onto the chair.

  Craig hesitated. He did his best arguing standing up, but intimidating her was the last thing he wanted to do, so he took the other chair, then cleared his throat.

  This was like arguing a case, he told himself, except that he was both the defendant and his lawyer. The outcome here meant a hell of a lot more than laying another stone on his pathway to success. That realization scared him shitless, but he tried to swallow his fear.

  “Casey?”

  “I’m listening. Say whatever it is you have to say,” she mumbled through tightly clenched lips.

  She was still pissed. Royally. He groped for words that would de-fuse her anger.

  “I was attracted to you from the first time I laid eyes on you. Remember? You were taking a tour of the gym with Russ while I was working out.”

  “I remember.” Her expression didn’t soften, not one bit.

  “If the timing hadn’t been all wrong, I’d have asked you out when you first came to work.” Craig thought he saw a flicker of interest in her eyes, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “I have goals. Things I want to do, and a timetable for getting them done. Then wasn’t the time for me to get involved with a woman. Any woman. The time’s not exactly right now, either, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

  “Casey, I want us to be lovers.”

  “Well, we were, so you got your wish. With amazing ease. You ought to be proud of yourself.”

  There was definitely a point to the tongue-in-cheek saying that a lawyer who defended himself had a fool for a client. Unfortunately he couldn’t hire a colleague to get him off the hook now, the way he would if he ran afoul of the law instead of his lover.

  Craig studied Casey. A small muscle twitch near her jaw and the rigid way she held her shoulders belied her look of passive disinterest. Her whitened knuckles called attention to the fact she’d clenched her fists—probably so she could restrain herself from strangling him.

  “I am proud of myself,” he said after a long pause. “Proud of picking the perfect woman to be my first and only lover. What man wouldn’t be?”

  “You really mean you hadn’t had sex before we—?”

  “Yeah.”

  That wasn’t a fact he was particularly anxious to share. He’d kept it to himself for years. But if she wanted to rub it in, he’d let her. He was that desperate to get out of her doghouse.

  “How’d you learn?”

  “What?”

  “How did you learn how to do it so well?” She hesitated, then added, “You asked me.”

  He couldn’t resist pointing out that she was hardly a qualified judge as to how skillfully he made love. “As to how I found out what to do, I learned more or less the same way I learned the law. By reading. I went out and bought some sex manuals. They’re in my bedroom if you’d like to see them
.”

  The look she shot him hinted that she wouldn’t be going anywhere near his bed any time soon. “You didn’t ask your friends?” she asked.

  “Hell, no. I’d have been laughed out of every locker room from high school until now if I had.”

  “Why?” She unclenched her fists, laced her fingers together.

  “Why what?”

  “Why hadn’t you had sex before? Don’t tell me you didn’t have plenty of chances.”

  He wouldn’t dodge the question or insult her by sprouting moralities, but he took care choosing his words. “Fear at first. Fear I’d get some girl pregnant and throw away my future, the way my brother had. Later, I guess it was partly habit and partly that I kept myself too busy to take advantage of the opportunities.”

  For a long time she sat there, her only movement that little twitch of a muscle near her jawbone.

  Craig wanted to touch her, hold her. But he didn’t dare, so he told her about his blueprint for success. He explained how he’d stayed on course so far, graduating near the top of his class from college and law school, passing the bar, and amassing an impressive record of convictions for the state attorney’s office.

  Warmed to his subject, Craig continued. “In a couple more years, I’ll move over to the other side. Get a great job doing criminal defense with a big firm. Then I’ll get serious about settling down, finding a wife who’ll help me build my practice, and having a family.

  “You see, baby, I kept away from women because I couldn’t take a chance on fucking up and letting myself down.”

  “I see. What would happen now if one of those condoms you’ve got so many of should fail?” She spoke softly. Too softly.

  He tried to take her hand, but she jerked it away. “It wouldn’t be a serious problem now,” he told her. “We’d get married. I’m beyond the point now where having a family would put my career in jeopardy. I wasn’t when I was sixteen and had just stood up at my brother’s shotgun wedding.”

  “You’re sick. For years you avoided screwing women because of your ambition. Now you deliberately chose to have sex with me for basically the same reason.”