by Zoe Chant
To his surprise, that hit home. He had gone years without having a life outside of his work. Just because his work made for a good, full life didn’t mean that he hadn’t been missing something.
But now he was sitting side by side with exactly what—whom—he had been missing. He resisted the urge to touch the small of Tiffani’s back, since it felt too intimate to do in front of a stranger. Instead he indulged in watching her nibble around the edges of her cookie. She ate it in delicate bites, her eyes half-closed. She was clearly savoring it.
First he’d been jealous of a fish, now he was jealous of a cookie. What a strange night.
He said, “What made you choose this trial?”
“It’s the biggest one on the books, isn’t it? Everyone’s saying it’s the trial of the century, certainly the most important thing to happen in Sterling since—”
Florence stopped suddenly, her gaze fixed on Tiffani, and then she laughed.
“Oh, you’re that bad man’s wife, from our last big scandal! If you don’t mind my saying so, you seem to have traded up a bit. This one seems solid.”
“I don’t mind you saying so at all,” Tiffani said. “I completely agree.”
“And you’ve got a real smile on your face when you look at him, not like that chipmunky little grimace you had when you were with that crook.”
“Thank you. I think.”
Martin did actually know the smile Florence meant, even if he would never have described it that way. During Gordon Marcus’s trial, the news had taken vicious pleasure in airing photos of his blonde, beautifully-dressed wife, especially if they could dig up one of her in a bikini. They had all seen a lot of Tiffani during that time, even if the woman in those pictures didn’t really count as the real Tiffani.
And in the formal photographs, Tiffani’s smile was perfect. False, but perfect. Close-mouthed, so her gapped front teeth didn’t show, and glossy-lipped. The supportive wife.
It was only in the candid shots, when she didn’t know someone was taking her picture and she was just keeping Gordon company at some dull, excruciating event, that her smile took on the look Florence had mentioned. Tiffani had always looked nervous in those pictures, almost furtive.
Now that Martin knew her, he understood why. Her life at those dinner parties and corporate functions had been one long, tense series of lies and petty humiliations. He would be happy if he never saw that look on her face in person.
But now he did break with etiquette and put his hand against her back, just to reassure her that however she had looked in the past and however she might look in the future, he would never have used the word chipmunky.
“And why the flash mob, if you don’t mind me asking? Why not protest openly in front of the courthouse? Why get into the courtroom itself with the signs under your clothes?”
“Oh.” Florence brightened. “That was that other young man’s idea, and then he didn’t even show up. The youth can be so unreliable.”
Martin remembered Colby saying that everyone at the protest was a registered, regular member of the Sterling Historical Society, their interest old and documented. No one-offs.
Except, it seemed, for the person who had recommended that they crash the trial—and then hadn’t shown up to do it himself.
Almost like he knew someone might ask questions he didn’t want to answer.
Martin tried to keep his voice perfectly level. “He didn’t come to the protest?”
“No, and I have no idea why, because he seemed so interested. But occasionally you do get that, these flash in a pan bursts of attention—someone signs up and ooh, they’re going to volunteer at our little library for four hours every Saturday, they promise. You get them once and then poof, it’s like they vanished in a magic trick. No one knows how to honor a commitment anymore.”
“Well,” Tiffani said brightly, “you’ll just have to scold him about it at the next meeting.”
“If he even comes,” Florence said, with a darkness determined to squelch the faux-sunshine from Tiffani’s voice. “That was his first meeting before. He came in all full of big plans...”
“Did you catch his name?”
“Why, young man, are you going to track him down for me? Arrest him for not having come to a second meeting?”
Maybe.
“I don’t cooperate with any thuggish attempts by the government to squash free speech and assembly,” Florence said. “No offense intended, of course, and do have another cookie, but if you’re just after making sure that whoever recommended our little act of civil disobedience disappears into the hands of Big Brother, I’m sure I can’t help you.”
Tiffani interrupted by saying that if Florence didn’t mind, she thought she would take some cocoa after all. Florence, who clearly, prided herself on being a good hostess, softened immediately.
The two of them disappeared into the kitchen for a while and when they came back out, they were both smiling. Florence seemed much more relaxed.
She was more open to Tiffani—she was the nice young woman, while Martin was only her young man. He should have known he could trust Tiffani to pick up on that.
“Cocoa’s on,” she said to him cheerfully.” Balancing the cookie on a cocktail napkin on her knee, she said, “Getting back to where we were before, that isn’t what Martin is after, ma’am. No one wants to stop the Historical Society from meeting.”
“Please, call me Florence.”
“Florence. And I’m Tiffani.”
“I remember that now. Tiffani with an I.”
Her tone said she disapproved of the spelling and wanted them to know it even though she was too polite to say so.
“Martin is a US Marshal, Florence, that’s true, and he is here because of his job, but—maybe you heard that we had a bomb threat at the courtroom yesterday?”
Florence admitted she had heard something like that. “But it all turned out to be a hoax.”
“We are ninety-nine percent sure it was a prank,” Tiffani said, nodding. “But then, the next day, we have another courtroom disruption—if it’s just a protest, then everything’s fine. But if someone specifically nudged you to protest when, where, and how you did—”
“Then,” Martin said, “that could mean that someone is testing how the courthouse responds. First to a threat, then to an actual disturbance. And in both cases, of course, nothing happens. Someone could be feeling out our defenses while we get more and more persuaded that this is just a cursed trial that’s going to attract all kinds of strange things. Then maybe we don’t jump when we really need to.”
He was impressed. He hadn’t even had time to explain his worries to Tiffani, and she had grasped them anyway. If it weren’t a huge conflict of interest, he would have tried to hire her on the spot.
“We’re only asking because we care about keeping everyone safe,” Tiffani said. “We want to make sure that there’s no chance that whoever showed up to that one Historical Society meeting was whoever also called the courthouse with a bomb threat.”
Florence had a pugnacious jaw, one that suggested she could defy any amount of pressure they could bring to bear. It insisted that if she decided to help them, it would only be because her conscience told her to.
With that in mind, Martin didn’t want to risk saying anything else. Tiffani clearly felt the same, because the two of them just waited in silence for Florence to make up her mind.
Then Florence stood. “Well, I don’t remember his name,” she said. “I think it started with a T—but he would have signed the guestbook. I’ll go and get it.”
“Thank you so much,” Tiffani said.
“Yes, thank you, ma’am,” Martin added.
He, after all, hadn’t been invited to call her Florence. She didn’t invite him to do so now, either. He felt like he was on probationary status with her and therefore barred from taking another cookie after all.
Florence left the parlor and bustled around for a moment out of sight before returning with a heavy, leathe
r-bound book. Martin wouldn’t have been surprised to have learned it was made out of vellum and the names were signed only in blood. The Historical Society clearly wasn’t to be trifled with.
“Here we go,” Florence said, oblivious to their awe. She flipped open the book towards the end and ran her finger down the page. “Two prepatory meetings this week and then, ah, last week’s meeting. He came in a little late, so his name would be the last—” She broke off suddenly.
Martin’s blood ran cold. “What is it?”
“But that’s not right,” Florence said slowly. “He wasn’t there. I would have remembered that, certainly. And it would be too much of a coincidence...”
Martin couldn’t wait any longer. He took the book from her hands as gently as he could and turned it around so he could read the neat column of names.
At the very bottom of last week’s attendance record:
Terrence McMillan
Chapter Sixteen: Tiffani
They had excused themselves from Florence Edmondson’s house as politely and quickly as they could. (Tiffani had taken two more fragrant, crumbly shortbread cookies wrapped up in a napkin, though, speed be damned. She’d seen how Martin stared at them, and she couldn’t bake to save her life.) They sat in the pale dome light of Martin’s car and talked while they nibbled their way through the shortbread.
“It couldn’t have really been him,” Tiffani said. She knew Martin knew that, but she thought best when she thought out loud. “Florence knows him. And she’s the furthest thing from senile.”
“No, she was sharp enough to cut the real McMillan to ribbons,” Martin agreed.
“Now one of my fondest memories. Okay, so she definitely would have recognized him.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind about that. Which means our mystery man had some reason to not just sign a fake name, but to sign this particular fake name. Interesting.”
“Someone trying to frame the judge?”
“Maybe, but only if they had a pretty low opinion of anyone who’d be looking into it. There’s no reason for McMillan to want to sabotage his own trial. Even if he did want to, he’d have a thousand easier ways to do it.”
“And he’s desperate to have this run smoothly. He wants it as the capstone of his career.”
Martin nodded. “So it’s not him, and it wouldn’t make much sense for someone to try to convince us it was. Which means they’re just throwing mud around—McMillan’s a jackass, so I’m sure plenty of people would be happy to tweak his nose a little. It probably amused our guy to sign the judge’s name while he recruited a bunch of people to interrupt McMillan’s big day.”
“Then maybe it is just a prank,” Tiffani said. She wasn’t hopeful, though. “Maybe it’s not related to the bomb threat and it’s just someone messing with the judge.”
“Maybe.”
“Does it have to lead to something?” She kissed a cookie crumb off her fingertip. “If this part was a prank, could all of it just be a prank?”
“It could,” Martin said, but he didn’t sound any more convinced than she felt. “It’s just that it makes sense as a someone ramping up to something. First it’s just a phone call, then it’s direct intervention within the courtroom, even if it’s harmless. If there’s a third point coming up, I don’t like the direction that we’re going in.”
“No. Me neither.”
“But it’s my job to be paranoid about this kind of thing. And...”
He touched the back of her neck, stroking his warm fingers into the little wisps of hair that gathered loosely at her nape. It made her tingle all the way down to the soles of her feet.
“And?”
“And with you in the picture, I don’t know that I trust myself to think about this clearly. If anything happened to you, it would kill me.”
He said it plainly and simply and she knew—with her whole heart, she knew—that he wasn’t trying to persuade her of anything. He wasn’t saying it to try to convince her that this “one perfect match” concept was really something that applied to them. He said it like it was a neutral, objective fact.
He had no game plan. Loving her was not a project for him, something he would prune and cultivate until at last it reached perfection, whereupon he would leave it alone. He wanted to give her a little romance, sure, but that was just part of who he was. It wasn’t a con. It wasn’t a sale.
She didn’t think she would ever get tired of knowing that.
“I love you,” Tiffani said.
It was the end of the line—it was what she had started to accept from almost the moment they had met, it was what she had flirted with on the sidewalk and thrilled to in the sky. But she could finally put it into words.
I love you and I believe you when you say you love me.
I believe we’re going to be happy together. That I can make you happy—maybe even as happy as I already know you can make me.
She felt like there was a knot in her throat, making it hard to talk. She started to follow this confession by saying that she knew she didn’t deserve him, but then she wondered who she was saying that for. Maybe she sometimes believed it herself, but she knew he didn’t. So why did she feel like she had to announce it?
So when she went on, she was heedless and giddy, and she talked about him, not about herself.
“You’re smart and funny and thoughtful and you care so much about getting everything right, and you’re good to your team and you’re good to little old ladies who think you’re out to squash their civil liberties and also you’re really, really, really good in bed—”
Martin stopped this flood of compliments with a kiss.
It was only now that Tiffani felt how urgent all their other kisses had been, how they had been full of tension, of Martin holding back so he wouldn’t overwhelm her. He had been desperate for her but he’d wanted to give her space. Now there was no space between them at all and certainly no lack of desperation. He kissed her like he had waited his whole life for this moment.
She would have to add a fourth “really” to that “good in bed” part. Maybe even a fifth.
Were they going to have sex in Martin’s car? While they were still parked in front of Florence’s house?
Yes, some part of her moaned. Yes, now, right now. Impulsiveness!
But there was giving herself permission to be impulsive and then there was getting arrested. It wasn’t even that late yet. Tiffani whimpered against Martin’s mouth.
“What?” he said, threading his fingers through her hair. “What is it?”
Okay. She didn’t care if she sounded overwrought.
“I need you.”
Desire darkened Martin’s eyes. “I need you too. Give me just a minute.”
He hit the gas. There was the slightest chance that they might be breaking land speed records, so Tiffani was just glad the streets were fairly quiet. The rumble of the car was driving her crazy, making the delicate skin inside her thighs twitch. Her body pulsed.
She’d known she didn’t live anywhere close to Florence’s neighborhood, but she had thought that maybe he did. But when Martin stopped the car, it was at a little off-road spot in a grassy clearing surrounded by trees. She thought she could see another car way up ahead of them, its lights off.
There was a blank stretch of moon-colored screen that loomed over the clearing. Tiffani had to look at it for a moment before memory clicked.
“Did this used to be a drive-in?”
“Once upon a time.” Martin unbuckled his seatbelt.
Tiffani couldn’t reconcile the desire to laugh with the desire to get on top of him as soon as possible, so she did both. It felt like the height of luxury.
“Martin Powell,” she whispered, “did you take me to a lover’s lane?”
“It was the closest place I could think of,” he protested.
Tiffani unbuttoned his trousers, straddling him. She didn’t even care about the steering wheel pressing into her back, but then Martin found the lever and ratcheted
the whole seat back and down, giving them more room.
She leaned down and kissed him again, savoring the heat of his mouth. He tasted sweet from the shortbread, and he nibbled at her lips as if he were thinking the same thing about her.
When he touched her breasts, she cried out, unprepared for how intense it felt. It shouldn’t have—through a blouse? Through a bra? But for some reason she felt like every nerve ending in her had come alive.
She thought the sex had been good before? Love—the knowledge of love—seemed to only make it better. Her whole body felt new, awakened centimeter by centimeter and touch by touch as he stroked her, held her.
She didn’t know that she had ever been so wet in her entire life. She wanted him so badly. It felt like she was nothing but a trigger waiting for the slightest pressure so she could go off in his hands.
Martin, thankfully, was in no mood to tease her. He brought her to her first orgasm quickly and generously, rubbing her through the sheer silk of panties. Only then, when she could finally relax a little, did he peel them off her and cast them aside. His own need was clear.
“Can I take off your skirt?” he said. “I know it’s risky, I just want—”
“Shh. It’s fine. Undo me, Martin.”
The windows were already fogged up. Besides, if someone was going to come along and see them, they were already in trouble, whether she was half-naked or not.
He found the clasp and her skirt fell away. Tiffani wriggled free of it, casting it down to the floor by the brakes.
She liked what that symbolized. All possibility of stopping was gone now.
Martin touched her almost reverently, moving his thumb over the clipped curls of her mound. He dipped his fingers between her lower lips and then tasted her, sucking his fingers clean.
Tiffani started to cramp up again, wanting more touch, fuller touch.
It only took them a moment to roll the condom onto the length of him. Then Tiffani slid down slowly, taking every inch of his cock inside herself.