For the Defense

by Maggie Wells

  Cool and collected, Coulter picked up another fry and dredged it through the small mountain of ketchup he’d squirted onto a pile of napkins. “Missing the point, Wingate. I chose you,” he repeated.

  Frustrated, Simon shook his head. “I didn’t have to take you on.”

  “But you did.” Coulter popped the fry into his mouth and chewed, his gaze impenetrable.

  “You’re acting like I had no option. I could’ve said no.”

  “You could have, but I knew you wouldn’t.” Coulter plucked a fresh napkin off the pile by his elbow. He wiped his fingers, balled it up and tossed it at Simon’s chest.

  Simon stared down at the wadded napkin, wondering how the hell he’d stepped into this mess. He’d never been the kid who was picked on in school, nor had he been the bully. He’d been the one who stood on the sidelines disapproving, but doing nothing to stop things from happening to other kids.

  Simon wasn’t a man inclined to allow himself to be pushed around. He’d never thought himself to be complicit in his silence, but now he felt it. Wiping his damp palms on his pants, he focused on keeping his breaths slow and even. He was too smart to pick a fight with a bully. Coulter’s resources far outstripped his, and if he were prepared to make good on his veiled threats, there could be repercussions from this confrontation and they would impact more than himself. So Simon chose to stand down. He wasn’t about to be run over.

  Holding up his hands in mock surrender, he said, “Whoa. This conversation is escalating to a place it doesn’t need to go. I’m only saying I don’t intend to keep practicing law here in Pine Bluff for much longer, and I think it might be better for you to find somebody who can handle your needs on a more long-term basis.”

  Coulter picked up his burger, peeled back the wrapper to expose more of the loaded sandwich and smirked at Simon. “I understand you’re only here temporarily, but our relationship can go on even after you leave Pine Bluff. You see, my business interests are wide and varied, and I pay well to have those interests...protected. Seems the occasional favor shouldn’t be too much to ask.”

  He paused long enough to take another outsize bite. Simon waited patiently while the man chomped the food into submission. When he swallowed, he looked across the table, his expression once again flat and unflinching.

  “I’m having a box delivered to your office tomorrow, Simon. Express, early delivery. You’ll sign for it, and I’ll pick it up when I get back to town tomorrow evening.” He tapped the table with two fingers, commanding Simon’s attention. “Oh, and this is definitely one package you’re not going to want to handle.”

  Without another word, Coulter balled up the remainder of his burger and tossed it into the paper sack. Snagging his fries and tea in one hand, he climbed off the picnic bench and pulled his keys from the pocket of his pants.

  “Thanks for lunch. I’ll call you when I’m ready to swing by tomorrow.”

  Simon sat frozen while the man walked away without a backward glance. He flinched when the Viper’s powerful engine roared to life. Feeling gut-punched, he stared at the trash Coulter had left strewed across the table.

  Another mess for Simon to clean up.

  He sat still, waiting for Coulter to pull out and take off. When the roar of the engine faded, Simon closed the lid on his box and swallowed a pang of regret. He’d never order one of the Daisy’s mile-high clubs again. And he’d forever resent Samuel Coulter for ruining the silly joke for him.

  * * *

  BACK IN HIS office five minutes later, Simon put a call through to his father. This time when it went to voice mail, he left a message. “Dad, it’s me. I need to schedule some time to talk to you tonight. It’s important. We may need to conference granddad in on the call too.” He paused a minute, trying to think of what else he might need to say. At last, he settled on a simple “I’m sorry. I think I may have screwed up again.”

  Ending the call, Simon rocked back in the oversize leather executive chair and covered his eyes with crossed forearms. His whole life, he’d wanted to stand out. To not be the third Wendell but to be the only Simon. Now he was coming to realize if he was going to distinguish himself in any way among the Wingate men, it would probably be as the family screwup.

  The realization gnawed him. He was not a stupid man. He had ambition, and sometimes it blinded him. He was competent in his skills and comfortable in his own world. Were those bad things? No. If he could remember them here, where he was a fish out of water. Maybe he could figure out a way to snare Samuel Coulter without compromising his own ethics.

  Lifting his phone again, he scrolled until he found the contact information he’d taken from Lori’s business card. When the call connected, he spoke with a quiet urgency.

  “Will you come to my house tonight?” he asked when she answered. There was a pause on the other end, and he threw himself into it. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Why me?” Lori Cabrera asked.

  “Because we want the same thing.”

  “We do?”

  “Yes.” He decided he needed to put forth something in a show of good faith. “And, Lori?”

  “Yes?”

  “I think... I mean, I hope, uh... Jasmine should be home soon.”

  “What? How? What are you saying?”

  Simon shook his head. “I can’t answer those questions. All I can tell you is—”

  “Hang on. I have another call,” she interrupted. “It’s Lena. Hang on.”

  Simon gripped his phone hard. He was about to disconnect when a breathless Lori came back on the line. “Simon?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Jas is home.”

  “I’m glad,” he said, the words flowing out of him on an exhalation.

  “I don’t know what you did, but—”

  “I didn’t do anything,” he insisted.

  There was a beat of silence. “I’ll be over at five thirty,” Lori said at last.

  Chapter Thirteen

  She strode up his front walkway, unsure exactly what she was going to say to Simon. She’d spent two hours at the Joneses’ house. At first, Jasmine had been unspeakably sassy and belligerent. Lori had hardly recognized the girl. She was glad she’d refused Lena’s request to go along. Lori wasn’t sure she wanted her baby sister to witness the rapidly escalating power struggle between Jasmine and her parents.

  Rick Dale had been smart enough to drop the girl in front of her house before he hightailed. Smart thinking, as Jasmine’s daddy was a former University of Georgia lineman. The scrawny guy she’d seen at the Reptile Rendezvous would be the equivalent of snapping a toothpick. The Joneses were so relieved to see their precious girl they hardly noticed Jasmine’s sour attitude.

  At first.

  Lori followed Jasmine to her bedroom. There, she heard all the expected complaints. They were in love. No one understood. She wasn’t a baby.

  It took Lori a full thirty minutes and a whole lot of nodding and humming her sympathy. She graciously refrained from pointing out how quickly her beloved had bailed on her. Finally, the girl worked herself around to admitting she’d been scared to stay with Rick overnight. In talking it all through, Lori was able to ascertain the couple hadn’t “gone all the way.” Jasmine claimed she told him she wasn’t ready, and he loved her enough to respect her wishes. Plus, his bed kind of stank. And his apartment was “gross.” He had a roommate named Justin who gave her the creeps, and she didn’t mind coming home much. But she loved Rick, and Rick loved her, and she was only staying at her parents’ house because the sheets and towels smelled better.

  In the end, Lori was convinced Jasmine had scared herself.

  Now she was anxious to see Simon Wingate. Maybe even a little scared. She wanted to talk with him, maybe try to talk some sense into him in regard to Samuel Coulter if she could. She wanted to stop sparring with him and air out all this unspoken tensi
on between them once and for all.

  * * *

  “HI,” HE SAID as he answered the doorbell. “Come in.”

  “Hi. I was surprised to get your call, but I guess you heard that Jasmine is home again,” she said, shoving her fingers into her jeans pockets and giving a lopsided shrug. “I heard your client made a phone call. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” he said, his expression grim. “I need to talk to you.”

  Lori heard the apprehension in his statement and proceeded with equal caution. “Okay. What do you need to talk to me about?”

  “Please sit.”

  They chose seats on opposite ends of the sofa, but Lori noted how he turned his body to face her directly, and she liked it. She wanted to put all their bickering aside. She didn’t know him well, but, aside from his tastes in clientele, what she did know, she liked. Probably more than she wanted to admit.

  Simon inhaled deeply and he tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I need you to bear with me while I talk this out in a way which won’t get me disbarred,” he said quietly.

  “Disbarred?”

  “I’m having some issues with a few things about a client,” he said, choosing each word carefully. “Of course, most of my interactions with this client are bound by attorney-client privilege.” He paused and cast his eyes to the ceiling. “Hey, did I tell you I’m also being subtly blackmailed?” he asked, keeping his tone light and casual.

  His eyes met hers and held. She sucked in a short breath, but played along. “No. Are you? I didn’t think people were blackmailed outside of the movies.”

  He nodded. “All the time. You see it a lot in politics.” He stared, prompting her to read between the lines.

  Politics. Someone was threatening to hurt his family politically. Someone who was a client. A client with enough money and clout to hurt the Wingate family’s political prospects in some way.

  Samuel Coulter.

  Lori pressed the tips of her fingers to her lips to keep from speaking the man’s name aloud. She didn’t want to do anything to cause Simon to shut down their conversation. She offered a wobbly smile as she parsed through various ways of approaching the problem.

  “Okay, well, wow. Puts a new spin on things, does it?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “So, uh, I’m not sure what the bounds of attorney-client privilege are exactly,” she began.

  “They cover pretty much everything, unless, of course, a client decides to tell someone who is not their attorney, or the client uses the attorney’s services to commit a crime or fraud.”

  “Has your client done either of those things?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” he responded, speaking with enough deliberate care to make it clear something may have been done without his explicit knowledge.

  “Wow. Okay. Complicated. How about I ask some questions and maybe you can answer them if you can or tell me if you can’t?”

  Simon nodded. “Might work.”

  “Okay.” She gave a laugh. “I never thought I’d be the one asking questions. You’re the lawyer, not me.”

  He gave a wry smile. “I bet you’re pretty good at asking questions all on your own.”

  “All right. I guess we’ll kind of begin with some random stuff to warm up.” She paused and tried to come up with the most innocuous question she could think up. “Is your first name actually Wendell?”

  He laughed. “Absolutely. Telling women my name is Wendell does nothing to benefit my cause.”

  “It has a certain nerdish charm,” she allowed. “Tell me, are you presently retained to represent a man named Samuel Coulter?”

  “Yes.” Simon punctuated the admission with a brisk nod.

  “Does this conversation have anything to do with a particular client?”

  He pursed his lips, considering the question from all angles. “I don’t think I can answer one way or another.”

  “Fair enough.” Lori ticked the yes column on her mental score sheet.

  “Do you believe one of your clients may be engaged in criminal activity?”

  Simon beamed a smile at her, but he shook his head. “I can’t answer directly. Calls for speculation. I have seen no evidence of criminal activity, but I think we can make a general assumption at least one of my clients has allegedly engaged in some questionable, if not criminal, behavior.”

  “Okay, so if I were to invite Ben over here for a beer, and he and I were to have a conversation about all of our suspicions about all of the people who may or may not be doing things of a criminal nature here in Masters County, is there any way you could point us in the right direction?”

  This time Simon laughed. “You went way too broad in your questioning. Granddad used to say, ‘You catch a lot of little fish with a big net, but you need a strong hook to snag the big ones.’ You were on track. Stick with specifics where you can.”

  “Okay, well, I’m not the one who wanted to talk without doing any talking,” she retorted tartly.

  He inclined his head in acquiescence. “Understood.” He tapped his fingers on his denim-clad knee. “I hear Ben had a friend from the DEA visit,” he asked in a studiedly casual tone that made the fine hairs on her arm ripple.

  She hesitated, watching him carefully. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  He shrugged. “Curious, is all. Were they stopping by to say hello, or was there a purpose in coming here?”

  Lori frowned, uncertain how much she should disclose to this man. After all, he was representing the man Special Agent Simmons had come to Masters County to investigate. Maybe his whole come-over-and-talk thing was a ruse. Perhaps she’d read the situation tragically wrong.

  Her mind racing with possibilities, she answered, “I can’t comment on that.”

  Simon blew out a breath. “Okay, so we both have things we can’t talk about.” He studied her intently. “I am going to assume if the DEA has business in Pine Bluff, it has nothing to do with any of my clients.”

  She gave an overly hearty laugh to signal he was way off base without saying the words.

  “Or maybe it does,” he amended, speaking slowly. “Only one of my clients has had any difficulty lately, and nothing I am aware of would fall under the purview of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Unless you’re going to try to convince me Timmy Showalter is a bigger fish than I thought.”

  “No. Timmy’s nothing more than a kid who doesn’t make good choices.”

  “I’m trying to figure out what the issue might be,” he pressed.

  “The issue is, you can’t talk about whatever it is that’s eating at you, so we’re sitting here talking in circles.” She tossed up her hands in frustration. “What am I doing here?”

  Moving closer to her on the sofa, he said, “Lori, I’m not the bad guy here.”

  “I know,” she whispered, touched by the raw vulnerability in his plea.

  “Do you?” he asked, leaning in closer to peer into her eyes. “I really want you to believe me.”

  “I do.”

  “Okay,” he whispered, almost to himself. “I have a lot of thinking to do, and I need to talk to my dad and Wendell about some stuff, but I wanted you to—” he slanted her a rueful smile “—keep an open mind about me.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, breathless.

  “I wish this was easier.”

  The rasp in his voice was enough to make her believe him. “You wish what was easier?”

  “You and me.”

  “You and me?” she asked, stunned, but pleased by his directness.

  “Yes. I want things to be easier between you and me.”

  She found herself caught up in his intense stare. “You do?”

  “Yes. I want to be...with you, but I also want to feel like a man who deserves to be with you.”

  “And you don’t think you are
?”

  His laugh was short but genuine. “You’ve spent the past couple of weeks reminding me I’m slime like my client.”

  “True,” she murmured.

  She gave him a playful once-over, mainly because she was unable to look him straight in the eye. Her entire life, she’d been taught there were only two sides to every coin. Right and wrong. Truth or lies. Grace and sin. Now she found herself seated on a squishy sofa across from a man she wanted more than she cared to admit, and staring into a giant gray abyss. She wanted him. He wanted her. That was the truth.

  “Lori—”

  “You’re right. This is complicated.”

  “I’m working on uncomplicating things. The problem is, there’s more at stake here than me or you or what either of us might want.”

  “Okay,” she replied. Her desire to push or cajole him into stepping out of the dark and into the light was immediately subdued by the earnest appeal. So she asked the only question she had left. “Then what can I do to help?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  After extracting a promise from Lori not to give up on him and asking her to stand by as he figured out a way to wriggle out from under Coulter’s thumb, Simon showed Lori to the door.

  Thirty minutes later, he had both his father and grandfather conferenced in on a call. Once he brought his father up to speed regarding Samuel Coulter, Simon told them about their lunch meeting and the not-so-veiled threats Coulter issued.

  His grandfather broke in. “So he’s implying he has the means to damage your political prospects.”

  “Not only mine,” Simon said morosely. “All of ours.”

  There was a beat of silence. At last, his father spoke up. “The man can’t possibly have anything on me. I’ve done nothing wrong.” Dell paused and Simon could conjure his earnest, thoughtful expression in his mind’s eye. “To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never met him. I think it’s an empty threat. The man is operating under the general impression all politicians have something to hide.”