The gentle kneading of his fingers on her bare skin was electrifying. Her nipples tingled in reaction.
“Anyway, I’ve gotten to know you better since I—uh—launched that missile by messenger,” Quint confessed. His dark eyes gleamed. “And to like you. I try to make it a point to be honest with the people I know and like.”
Was he being flippant? Or unremittingly frank? Rachel couldn’t tell. She wasn’t thinking clearly at all, not while being bombarded with sensory impulses unleashed by his lazy caresses.
His fingertips reached the edge of her bra and touched the lacy material before he slowly withdrew his hand from underneath her sweater. Rachel’s throat was dry. The way he’d casually fondled her—in public!—conveyed a possessive intimacy she hadn’t granted to him. Or had she?
She was struck by an odd feeling of déjà vu. The last time she’d felt so bewildered had been in the courtroom, during the Pedersen trial when her case was collapsing around her. Quint Cormack had been instrumental in that head-spinning event, too.
“Hey, lookit that!” shouted Austin, running back to join them. He pointed to a facsimile of wooden stocks, used to punish and humiliate lesser offenders in olden times.
A crowd had gathered around to view the mock trial being conducted.
“It’s a kangaroo court,” explained Quint. The kids were excited until he broke the news that no actual kangaroos would be a part of the proceedings.
Rachel listened to the byplay while struggling to regain her bearings. It was jarring to emerge from a sensual haze to the practical and prosaic world of children, though Quint seemed to do so with ease.
The “defendant” in the mock trial was a teenage boy with multiple earrings and a tattoo of a grinning snake on his arm. It was almost identical to the design on his black T-shirt.
“There don’t seem to be any lawyers involved in the proceedings. Do you think we should go over and offer our services?” Quint lightly nudged Rachel with his elbow.
“As a team or opposing counsel? Because I don’t want to represent that boy. I have a strong hunch he’s going to end up in those stocks, no matter who says what.” Rachel cast Quint a covert glance. “I see it as a kind of medieval parallel to the Pedersen case.”
Quint laughed.
Rachel felt inordinately pleased. Though she normally presented an ultraserious demeanor regarding her career—Wade was the jokester of Saxon Associates—making Quint laugh delighted her.
Although it wouldn’t do for her to develop a stand-up comedy routine based on the Pedersen loss, she cautioned herself.
“Looks like you’re right about the outcome of the trial,” Quint said as the teen was led to the stocks. “A fix from the start.”
Not that the accused seemed to mind. When his head and hands were firmly locked in place in the stocks, the crowd cheered, and the boy laughed and made faces, plainly relishing all the attention.
“He doesn’t seem to be taking his punishment very seriously, does he?” Quint traced his thumb over Rachel’s palm.
She felt the familiar pleasant tingling start all over again, deep inside her. This time, she tried to pull her hand away, but he held on and drew a slow widening circle in her palm. Those seductive little tingles quickly turned into a fiery glow of heat.
Which she had no business feeling, Rachel admonished herself, not while she was responsible for four young children at a festival in Pennsylvania. Especially when her young charges were headed toward … A mud fight!
“Quint!” she cried, and hearing the note of alarm in her voice, he dragged his eyes away from her beautifully shaped mouth.
He followed her gaze to a mud puddle the size of Lake Erie, where some actors playing drunken serfs were staging a fierce argument. It was inevitable that one of them would reach down and scoop up a handful of mud to pelt at another.
“Oh, no!” Quint took off in a run and swept Snowy and Brady off their feet, seconds before they could wade into the sea of mud. He was too late to rescue Dustin, whom Austin had given a hearty shove.
Dustin ended up in the middle of the serfs’ fight and caught a mud ball right in the chest. “Hey!” The boy looked around, torn between tears and anger.
“Get ‘em, Dust,” hollered Austin and plunged into the mud himself, merrily throwing gobs of the stuff at anyone within pitching distance. His aim was exceptionally good.
“Austin’s the pitcher on his Little League team,” Quint said to Rachel. He held on tight to the squirming toddlers in his arms. “The coach says the kid is a natural talent.”
“That figures,” Rachel muttered. Young Austin Cormack also seemed to have a natural talent for finding targets, no matter what his choice of projectile. “Shouldn’t we stop them or something?”
The mud war was in high gear. The actors seemed to be having fun and so were Austin and Dustin and the younger recruits, mostly preteen boys, who’d joined in. The majority of adults beat a hasty retreat from the melee and watched from out-of-mudball range.
Despite Rachel’s halfhearted suggestion for intervention, she couldn’t bring herself to go any nearer to the rowdy brawl. She did not want a mud bath, and now the actors were beginning to drag surrounding onlookers into the mire, despite their reluctance to go.
A gleeful Dustin rolled around in the muck claiming to be Babe, the pig from one of his favorite movies. Austin continued to pitch mudballs with the accuracy of a junior Fernando Valenzuela.
“I think I’ll take Brady and Snowy to feed the ducks down by the pond,” Rachel said, snatching both children from Quint’s arms. “We’ll meet up with you later, okay?”
“Have fun. I’ll just stand here out of the line of fire.”
“Looking for clients who want to sue for damages attributed to assault by mud?” Rachel couldn’t resist needling him. “I hope you brought along your cards to pass out.”
“That’s in the same league as ambulance chasing, Rachel. Ouch! I think I’m insulted.”
“No, you aren’t. Because you have to admit that Cormack and Son have taken some rather unlikely cases,” Rachel reminded him. “The Doll House and its slimy proprietor jumps immediately to mind.”
“Saxon Associates definitely wouldn’t put out the welcome mat for the likes of Eddie Aiken. Which doesn’t mean I like doing business with the guy either, my self-righteous little crusader,” Quint added dryly.
Rachel blushed. “I’m neither self-righteous nor a crusader, I just believe in upholding certain standards.”
“Extremely high ones, Rachel.”
“Well, yes. I suppose so. I’m—not going to apologize.”
“I don’t expect you to. Choosing only the classiest, wealthiest clients is nice work if you can get it. Cormack and Son has to go with the old saw ‘a reasonable doubt for a reasonable price.’ Out of sheer necessity, my clients haven’t always been on Lakeview’s ‘A’ list.” Quint was unrepentant.
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward the pond. “Now go feed the ducks while I stick around here pretending I don’t know my mud-crazed little brothers, who are wreaking even more havoc than the paid performers.”
Snowy and Brady were pulling on Rachel’s hands and the trio headed toward the pond. Rachel glanced over her shoulder to catch another look at Quint, who was watching his younger half brothers play.
He was as laid-back about the boys’ behavior as he was about his repulsive client Eddie Aiken, Rachel thought, torn between admiration and astonishment. Though she could never condone representing an Aiken, her instincts told her that Quint’s response to his kid brothers was more realistic than hers.
Her initial impulse would’ve been to lecture the boys, the way the older Saxons always used to scold Wade for running around and making too much noise and generally getting into mischief, unlike the perfectly behaved Rachel and Laurel.
Quint let his kid brothers race around like wild boys. Or were boys that age just naturally wild and full of energy? The ones at this festival seemed to
be, behaving a lot like Austin and Dustin.
As a child, Wade had acted that way, too, though he had been continually reprimanded for it, mused Rachel. No wonder he’d preferred spending all his time with the Sheely family when he’d finally discovered them. Nobody expected things to be quiet and orderly in a house with ten kids.
Thoughts of the Sheelys inevitably brought Dana to mind. Quint had mentioned that she’d gone to north Jersey today to work on a personal injury suit his firm was handling. Rachel had listened with radarlike intensity as Quint talked about his paralegal but hadn’t detected anything other than fondness and respect in his tone.
In the light of day, she felt none of the niggling jealousy that had disturbed her last night. Maybe it was because she was the woman with Quint at the festival, not Dana Sheely; maybe it was the way he looked at her, his dark eyes intent with interest and an almost-irresistible hunger.
Rachel, Snowy, and Brady arrived at the edge of the pond, where she bought specially packaged duck food from a nearby vendor. The children were wildly excited by the ducks, who swam over in increasing numbers for the meal being tossed their way.
While she watched them, Rachel’s mind drifted back to this morning’s drive from Lakeview to the festival. During the more peaceful periods, when the two older children were entertaining the two younger ones with stupid jokes and even sillier songs, Quint had discussed his latest personal-injury suit with her.
It was their first neutral, professional conversation, and Rachel enjoyed it immensely. She admired the way Quint’s mind worked; his analytical skills were first-rate. When not in the position of opposing counsel, she could appreciate his ability to almost instantly separate minutiae from essentials. The way he was able to cut directly to the heart of complex legal issues would prevent missteps and time-wasting diversions, yet conversely, made him an expert at obfuscation. The cloud of confusion he so ably created could send the opposing counsel into a morass of missteps and time-wasting diversions. It had happened to her in the Pedersen trial.
But as they talked, Quint seemed to value her own ability to evaluate and prioritize, to respect her input on hypothetical issues. He didn’t mind her questioning the theories he tossed out, and she let her own ideas flow. Both relished the give-and-take like the lawyers they were, but this time they weren’t adversaries.
She’d learned in their conversation today that Quint was a graduate of Stanford Law School and had been on Law Review, which placed him at the top of his class. She hadn’t known that, hadn’t bothered to check his credentials either before or after the Pedersen case.
Her mistake, Rachel realized ruefully. And a major oversight it was. Last year when Frank Cormack’s attorney son had moved to town from California, all the Saxons had assumed that Quinton had undoubtedly received his law degree from some minimally accredited school whose campus was the beach with a curriculum featuring surfboarding and New Age crystals.
The collective Saxon hubris had contributed mightily to their fateful loss, Rachel finally admitted. They had wholeheartedly believed the Pedersen case was unwinnable for anyone but Saxon Associates. Certainly, no relation to the inept Frank Cormack could possibly be knowledgeable in complex labor and civil-rights litigation, the two underpinnings of employment law. But Quint had proven to be.
Truth be told, he had mastered the fine points, ones Rachel hadn’t even touched upon. The jury couldn’t be faulted for finding in favor of Quint’s client.
He was also no slouch in the tort law department either, into which the subject of personal-injury fell. After listening to Quint outline his detailed strategy for the Polk personal injury suit, Rachel knew that North Jersey Power was sunk if they were stupid enough to take the case to court And she began to believe that not even Aunt Eve could have won the Pedersen case against Quint Cormack. He was that thorough, that cunning, that talented an attorney.
The rain wasn’t falling in drops, it was coming down in sheets. Though the windshield wipers of Wade’s car tried valiantly to clear the glass, the force and volume of the rain made visibility a near impossibility. Many cars had given up the battle and pulled onto the shoulder of the road to wait out the storm, but Wade wasn’t ready to concede defeat. He steered his Mercedes through the deluge, sandwiched between two monster trucks in the right lane who had also chosen to soldier on.
Strange how it could be sunny in New Jersey, cloudy in New York, but once across the Connecticut state line, a rainstorm of Noah’s Ark proportions suddenly reigned. Wade groaned at his own bad pun. Things were really bad when he started talking aloud to himself—and managed to sound like a nerd while doing it.
Of course, things really were bad, he reminded himself, and went down the list. This morning’s disastrous meeting with the Tildens and his aunt at the police station. The disturbing news about Shawn Sheely’s association with Misty Tilden. As for Aunt Eve’s confrontation with Chief Spagna … Wade winced. He couldn’t let himself think about how badly that must have gone.
Admitting that his aunt was right about the speed of gossip in Lakeview—it could beat sound and light—and that he owed the Sheelys advance warning, he’d driven to their house to break the news of the Shawn-Misty connection. And encountered even more frustration.
The only Sheelys at home were Katie and Emily, and neither was functioning at top form. Katie’s goateed friend was with her and she had little interest in anything else, especially not her ancient boss Wade Saxon. Emily was chattering away with several of her clones while passing the portable phone among them. The young teens welcomed Wade with all the enthusiasm of racketeers receiving an IRS agent whose specialty was money-laundering.
After ascertaining that their parents were out of town for a wedding and wouldn’t be returning until close to midnight, Wade casually inquired about Dana’s whereabouts. He knew she’d planned the trip to north Jersey and was greatly cheered to learn that she’d gone alone.
It was the first and only bright spot of the otherwise dismal day, though he didn’t allow himself to dwell on why it felt as though a dark cloud had suddenly lifted.
“Dana called from Sagertown and said she’s going to drive up to Connecticut and surprise Tim and Lisa,” Katie told him, her blue eyes amorously following the bad imitation of Brad Pitt around the kitchen. “She won’t be back till tomorrow night.”
Suddenly Wade felt an irresistible, overwhelming need to visit his best friend. It had been far too long since he’d spent time with Tim, not since Christmas, and it would be good to see Lisa and the kids—his honorary godchildren!—too. Plus, he could really use Tim’s input on the Shawn-and-Misty situation. Maybe Tim would volunteer to talk to the kid himself, and they could work out what to tell their folks, Sheely-to-Sheely.
Thus sparing Wade the unpleasant task of breaking the news himself. And if Aunt Eve should need bail money after her Spagna encounter, well, his parents were in town. She could contact them.
That cinched it for him. Connecticut offered a necessary respite from this very aggravating day.
But that dark cloud which had metaphorically lifted in Lakeview seemed to have literally descended over the state of Connecticut, and as his car waded along the turnpike, Wade was beginning to regret his impulsive trip.
Which took much longer than it should have. It was late in the afternoon, after a drenching harrowing journey, when he finally arrived in the tidy neighborhood near the naval base where Tim and Lisa Sheely lived with their children.
He felt as if he were navigating a boat rather than driving his car through the watery streets. The fast-falling overabundance of rain was taking its toll on the overwhelmed storm drains; being at sea level left no room for runoff. Already, rivers of water gushed along the sides of the street, beginning to meet in the middle.
But none of that mattered to Wade as he pulled his car into the driveway right behind Dana’s little brown Chevy. Instantly, his road fatigue evaporated, and he felt a buoyant surge of anticipation, which he tried to tell himself
was due to this impromptu reunion with his best friend.
It almost worked … until he saw Dana sitting on an Adirondack chair on the front porch of the house. Wade stopped dead in his tracks, shocked by the combined forces of desire and pleasure that overtook him.
He forgot that they’d parted on less-than-amicable terms last night, that in fact, he was furious with her for relegating their unmistakable passion to a mere footnote in experimentation. That she had cold-bloodedly mistaken the unmistakable was just one of the many grudges he held against her. Kicking him out of her house was right up there, along with causing him a miserable, sleepless night the likes of which he had never before experienced.
Insomnia had never been a problem for him. Until last night he’d always managed to sleep like a baby no matter what.
But right now, swept away by the sheer euphoria of seeing her again, he forgave her everything.
Dana, who sat huddled in the chair which she’d dragged as close to the side of the house as she could to avoid the blasts of rainy wind, leaped to her feet as Wade raced from his car to the porch. Wade, here? She couldn’t have been more amazed if a spaceship had landed on the lawn and a troop of little green men were advancing toward her.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded as he joined her on the porch.
Though Wade had made the dash from his car in record speed, he’d still gotten rained upon, and as he brushed the droplets of water off him, Dana scurried to the opposite end of the porch to avoid getting splashed.
And to avoid being near him?
Wade scowled. Clearly, she hadn’t experienced the same exultation he’d felt upon seeing her. But then, why should she? Last night meant nothing to her; she had been buzzed on some specialty liqueur from Bangladesh and feeling a little horny, so she’d decided to use him—and then, just as arbitrarily, to kick him out.
All the negativity which had vanished at his first sight of her returned in full force.
When Lightning Strikes Twice Page 21