I’m sorry to be the one to give you this news, but your sister has been attacked.
They got me on the first transport out, but it was days before I finally arrived at the hospital. She was in a drug-induced coma, her body so broken, her face so damaged, that I barely recognized her. I fell to my knees at her bedside. That’s how convinced I was that she wasn’t going to make it.
They told me it was this guy she’d been dating. I remembered her telling me about him. Justin Fuller. He was a student at the university, too. They had an art class together. Her voice got all dreamy when she talked about him, the way it used to get when she talked about her crushes in high school. I teased her and told her that she sounded like a woman on the verge of making a commitment. But then I told her to be careful, to make sure the guy wore a condom. She assured me they weren’t doing anything yet, that she wanted to wait—and he’d agreed it was a good idea.
Apparently, he’d changed his mind.
The cops told me that witnesses had seen them at a local restaurant. They were fighting. Someone said he heard Justin tell Vanessa that he would get what he wanted no matter what she said. And they saw Vanessa walk away from him. That was the last time anyone saw her before a couple of joggers found her in a local park.
I sat by her bed for weeks. My commanding officers had to arrange for a special leave, and then when I didn’t return, they arranged for my discharge. It could have been much worse, and I will forever be grateful for their understanding. I hadn’t wanted to leave the military, but Vanessa needed me.
I should have been there. I never should have left her on her own.
She told me…I thought it would be okay. It should have been okay.
I ran my head under the spray and tried to let the feel of the water rushing over me calm my nerves. It didn’t really work. I just washed up and got out. I could hear Tierney moving around in the living room. I felt bad for leaving her there to clean up, but it was better than doing what I’d wanted to do, which was blow up at her and tell her what I really thought of her profession. But I had to keep reminding myself that she wasn’t just her profession.
And she wasn’t the asshole who managed to allow Justin Fuller to escape prosecution.
I stood at the sink and shaved, then decided to dress in the bedroom rather than in the trapped humidity of the bathroom. I grabbed my bag and my jacket and stepped through the door into the guest bedroom. I hadn’t expected Tierney to be there.
“Oh!” she cried, staring at me as I stood there with just a towel wrapped around my waist. “I was just bringing you some extra pillows because I couldn’t remember how many there were on this bed.”
“Thanks.”
Her eyes moved slowly over the length of me. She wasn’t even shy about it. But then she turned and headed for the door.
“Hey, Tierney?”
She paused at the door, but she didn’t look back at me.
“I’m sorry about before. I was rude.”
“You were.”
“I let my personal feelings come out, and I’m really sorry.”
She turned then, her eyes coming up to mine. “I guess we should just agree to disagree.”
I lowered my head, showing her that I agreed.
She left then, pulling the door closed behind her.
I dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, just like her, and went out into the living room to get my laptop. Her bedroom door was closed and, for a second, I found myself wondering what she would do if I came and knocked on the door. Probably send me packing. I chuckled, laughing at myself, as I went into the bedroom and fell into bed, grateful for the extra pillows as I tackled a couple of reports before putting it all up to get some sleep.
But it was a long time before sleep came.
Chapter 5
Tierney
I couldn’t sleep. I was usually so exhausted at the end of the day that sleep was not an issue. But I didn’t usually have heated arguments about my profession before going to bed.
He was so angry. I found myself wondering what had happened to him to make him that way. It must have been bad, whatever it was.
I tossed and turned, finally getting up nearly an hour before my alarm was due to go off. I got into the shower and the thought that he’d stood here last night—all-naked and everything—made me feel things that I hadn’t felt in quite some time. I don’t have time to date. I’m usually at my desk until ten or twelve each night, and then I go back at seven. Six days a week. I take Sundays off, but that usually just means that I work at home instead of in the office. I think my last date was over six months ago.
Not that my mom would let it go. She was always pushing me to date, even trying to set me up on blind dates a couple of time. I kept telling her that it would happen when it was meant to, but she—the artist—thinks I’m putting too much faith in fate.
Now I wonder if she wasn’t right.
How pathetic was I to develop a crush on a man hired to protect me? How cliché?
I finished my shower and dressed, twisting my hair into a quick, easy braid before pulling on the jacket that matched my skirt. When I stepped out of my bedroom, Alexander was sitting in the same spot on the couch where he’d been last night, staring at his computer again.
“Morning.”
He looked up, a quick, charming smile appearing on his handsome face.
“Morning. I hope you slept well.”
“I did.”
He dropped the lid of his computer and stood. “Let me get dressed, and then we can head out.”
He was so polite. I’d worried that he would be upset with me this morning, but he seemed okay. He disappeared into the bathroom, and I found my thoughts going places they shouldn’t be. When he came into the spare bedroom last night, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, I was…I’m not a prude. I just…I don’t sleep around either. I’ve been very careful with my body, with my relationships, with my decisions. I haven’t seen a lot of men, especially men who look like Alexander, in that sort of level of undress.
He had tattoos on his chest. I thought maybe that was what got me the most. I mean…damn, he was a handsome man! So strong and well-built. Just the bulge in that towel…maybe I was a little bit of a prude. But it was the tattoos that stayed with me the longest. He had a tree in full bloom across one pec and words across his ribs—though I wasn’t able to see what they said—and an anchor over his heart. I wasn’t usually one who got much from tattoos. I really didn’t see the point to them, but I wanted a closer look at his. I wanted to run my fingertip over the lines of that anchor and to read the words that meant so much to him that he had them permanently affixed to his body.
I heard the water running in the bathroom and realized I was just standing in the middle of the living room like some sort of idiot. I pulled myself together and went to the kitchen, busying myself with making a quick pot of coffee. There wasn’t anything other than mustard and wine in my fridge, but there was always plenty of coffee on hand. If that didn’t tell the story of who I was, nothing did.
Alexander came out of the bathroom in a cloud of man-scented air, his cologne subtle but masculine, a combination of amber and lavender that made my thighs quiver just a little. He was dressed in the same suit he’d worn the day before, a new tie and fresh shirt under his jacket. I watched him come toward me, no longer capable of pretending I didn’t admire what I saw.
“Coffee?”
“Thank you.”
I poured us both a mug and handed him one, watching as he took a cautious sip.
“That’s good.”
“It’s the only thing I can make that isn’t burnt or otherwise unpalatable.”
“I doubt that’s true.”
I smiled, touched by his attempt to bolster my often-flagging self-esteem. But I knew my limitations.
“I tried to boil water for rice once. I ended up having to throw the pan away.”
He stared at me a second, then burst into laughter. “Sorry,” he mutter
ed, catching himself quickly. “But is that really possible?”
“It is.”
He laughed again. “Then I guess I should be grateful for the pizza delivery last night.”
“You should. And for the fact that I didn’t try to make anything for breakfast, though there really isn’t much here to make.”
“I cook,” he said, studying the depths of his coffee cup. “Maybe we could swing by the grocery store tonight and stock up on a few things. You can’t eat pizza every night.”
“I don’t. I eat Thai on occasion. And there’s a pretty good deli down the street that delivers.”
He shook his head, glancing at me with a smile that seemed to transform his entire face. “We’ll stop by the grocery store.”
We left for the office a few minutes later. He bought us bagels at a bakery on the way, insisting that I had to try them. And they were pretty awesome—warm and a little sweet, but not too sweet. Then we got to the office and settled down to the day’s work, him on the loveseat with his heavy-duty laptop and me at my desk.
I imagined it must be terribly boring for him to hang out in my office like that. And following me down the hall every time I had to go talk to someone or meet with someone in the conference room. He even followed me to the bathroom. I felt like a celebrity with a bodyguard always following them around, but I also felt a little like my privacy was quickly disappearing.
Late in the afternoon, I settled at a conference table in one of the dozen or so conference rooms scattered throughout the three floors the firm leased and spread out pictures and depositions and other paperwork in an attempt to prepare for a case that was due to go to court very soon. Alexander sat on the far side of the room, his laptop always open. But he must have gotten restless because he stood and stretched before coming over to where I was. When he caught sight of the photographs I was studying, he flinched.
“What the…? How can you sit here and stare at those?”
“It’s my job.”
“What is this?” he asked, touching one of the photographs. “Who is this woman?”
I sat back in my seat, rubbing the heels of my hands against my eyes. “She’s the victim in a rape trial I’m working on.”
“You’re defending a rapist?”
I could hear the outrage in his voice. I didn’t understand it.
“I’m defending a guy who is accused of being aware of the rape, but doing nothing to stop it.”
“Then you’re defending a rapist.”
“No, I’m defending a man who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Anger flashed across his face. Anger and disbelief.
“How can you defend someone like that? How can you look at these photos and feel no sympathy for the victim?”
I looked at the pictures and saw a pretty, dark-haired woman with bruises on her face and a cut across her throat. I could see the pain in her eyes and the shame that came with sexual assault. But I’d seen it so many times that there was no longer the shock value, the outrage that once overcame me when I would look at them. A professor of mine compared it to a doctor who develops a clinical view of his patients to keep from falling into a depression every time he loses a patient.
“The man who did this to her is in jail serving ten to fifteen years for sexual assault.”
“But if this other guy knew what was happening and did nothing to protect her—”
“There’s no proof that he knew.”
Alexander shook his head, moving away from the pictures and me. “I don’t understand how you can fight for someone like that. What if it was you? What if someone just stood by while you were being beaten and raped and left for dead?”
“You don’t know the details of this case. How can you judge this man based on speculation? How can you jump to a conclusion without knowing all the facts?”
“How can you defend someone involved in the act that left a woman like that?”
Once again we were at something of an impasse.
“This is my job, Alexander. Sometimes it’s not the easiest job, but I have to believe that all my clients are innocent until proven guilty by a jury of their peers.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“That’s my job.”
He just shook his head again. “I need some air,” he said before pushing through the door. I watched him go, not sure what I was supposed to do. I couldn’t convince him that I was doing a good thing with my career. Sometimes I couldn’t even convince myself of that. But I wasn’t going to sit here and let him demean my career either.
I was a good lawyer.
***
We left the office a little before eight, fairly early for me. Alexander hadn’t said more than two words since coming back from his search for air. I thought he’d forgotten our conversation this morning about going to grocery store, so I was surprised when he pulled into the parking lot of a popular grocery chain in the area.
“Do you eat meat?” he asked, as he grabbed a cart and led the way inside.
“As often as possible.”
He glanced back at me and smiled. “Good. I don’t know how to cook much of anything other than meat.”
He led the way to the meat department and we picked out steaks and chicken and pork, choosing a collection of lovely cuts that cost more than I’d spent on groceries in the past two months. Then we moved on to the produce department. He grabbed a huge bag of potatoes and a bag of onions. Then he went to the array of lettuces stacked on one of the display areas.
“What kind do you like?”
“I didn’t know there were different types.”
“Sure there are. You never noticed the different colors and shapes?”
I blushed a little. “I don’t really eat a lot of salads.”
He groaned. “I have a lot to teach you.”
“I’m a pretty good student.”
“I can imagine.” He picked up a head of lettuce that was sort of elongated. “This is romaine. It’s one of my favorites.”
“Do you always eat healthy?”
“I’m not a health nut. But I don’t like the bloat and whatever that comes with eating a lot of fatty foods.”
“I wouldn’t know any different. That’s all I eat.”
“You never have home-cooked meals?”
“Only on the occasions when I manage to get to my mom’s house. And then only if she feels like cooking.”
He made a sort of ticking sound with his tongue. “That’s a little pathetic.”
“My mom’s an artist. I was lucky if she even remembered to feed me when I was a kid.”
“What about your dad?”
I shrugged. “He was sort of hit and miss in my life. He came around a lot when I was about ten and eleven, but then it was just a couple of times a year. And when he was around, he usually took me to pizza joints and places like that because he thought it was what I wanted.”
“So he wasn’t part of your life?”
“Not really.”
“Why did you go to work for him then?”
I turned to the tomatoes, picking through them for one or two that didn’t look too ripe. “I thought I was doing what he wanted. Turned out, he liked the idea of having a kid follow in his footsteps, but only in theory. The reality of it is…I don’t know. I think he might be a little afraid people will find out who I am.”
“They don’t know?”
“Not that I know of. I certainly haven’t told anyone.”
“That sucks.”
I smiled, though I was still turned away from him so that he couldn’t see. But there was something about the way he said it that validated all the things I’ve felt since I was a kid.
We checked out a few minutes later, some of the junk I liked to eat thrown into the cart for equal measure. Alexander insisted on paying for everything—even though my things were probably more expensive than his veggies. He was a real gentleman.
Back at my place, we put our groceries away to
gether, and then he essentially told me to disappear so that he could cook. Instead, I poured us both a glass of wine and climbed up on the counter to watch him work.
“Your dad wasn’t in the picture, was he?”
He glanced at me as he carved away at a large piece of meat. “What makes you say that?”
“You seem to understand my situation in a way most people don’t.”
He turned his attention back to the meat, using the knife like a surgeon might. “My father took off when my sister and I were still pretty little. I barely remember him.”
“You never tried to track him down?”
“Never saw the point.”
“What about your mom?”
He dropped a piece of meat he’d carefully cut away from the rest into a pan of heated oil. It sizzled for a moment, drowning the room in sound. When it settled, he turned back to the hunk of meat and cut off another piece.
“My mom was chronically ill.”
He dropped the second piece into the oil, the sizzle like a hard period on his words.
I sipped my wine as he cut several more pieces, carving the meat until it was gone. Then he flipped the pieces over in the oil and waited for it to brown nicely on each side. Then he lifted the meat out of the frying pan and set them on a grill pan. I watched as he chose a few spices and sprinkled the meat liberally with each, then he bent and put them into the oven, turning his attention to the raw potatoes he’d already peeled and left to soak in water.
“My sister and I pretty much took care of ourselves most of our childhood. My mom found it difficult to get out of bed most days, and when she was up, she struggled to deal with the responsibilities of a family. So I did most things for her.”
“Like what?”
“Paying the bills. Dealing with the landlord and the creditors. Signing notes for our teachers at school.”
DEFENDING TIERNY (Gray Wolf Security, Texas Book 1) Page 5