Lawyers In Love: In His Own Defense (5 page)

She tried to concentrate on the throbbing in her ankle to get Tony off her mind. It didn’t work, though. The man was a steamroller, and not just in court. She spied him coming through the emergency room entry door less than five minutes after he went to park his car. He also must have been a magician to have found an empty space so quickly in the crowded lot.

As soon as he settled into the chair next to her wheelchair, a nurse came to wheel Kristine off to the X-ray department. When she came back an hour later, her sprained ankle in a splint, Tony met her at the desk and snatched the prescriptions from her hand.

“Tony, I can get a cab home,” she said, wishing the smiling cashier would take herself somewhere else so they could have this conversation in private.

“Not on your life.”

“I can get around just fine. I’ve used crutches before.” She reached for the crutches the nurse offered, but not quickly enough. Tony had them.

“Save your energy. You’re not going to win.”

She wanted to be angry, but she found his little-boy grin too endearing to fuel her temper, until he commandeered her wheelchair and started pushing her out the door. “Stop. I told you I’d take a cab.”

“Quit arguing. We’re not in court.” Tony kept walking, pushing her along at a brisk pace, until he came to a concrete island. With what seemed like very little effort he wrestled her and her chair up and over the curb, and locked the wheels.

“Wait here,” he told her unnecessarily before taking her crutches and trotting off across the parking lot. Perched as she was, on this concrete island that didn’t have a wheelchair ramp, she might as well have been in a cell.

Kristine’s tension began to ebb as she sat there helplessly waiting. Why shouldn’t she let him pamper her? It seemed too much of an effort to protest, almost too much even to hold her eyes open.

Tony returned in his fancy car. A black bullet, racy and elegant at the same time. Like him. Sex personified. Then as he strolled over to get her, Kristine remembered how he’d paid for this hundred-thousand-dollar toy and the custom-tailored suit that draped perfectly over his lean, muscular frame.

When he smiled and lifted her out of the chair, though, she couldn’t hold onto her bitterness. Not when all she could think about was the way he made her feel. Like ripping his clothes and hers off and going at it skin to skin. For some reason when she was with him she felt wild and sexy. No other man had ever affected her quite this way.

“I thought I was going to get to sign a cast,” he said lightly as he slid behind the wheel.

“It’s only a sprain.” Maybe she’d let him make a big deal over her injury unnecessarily.

“Feel better, now that it’s all wrapped up?”

She could hardly feel her ankle. “Lots. The doctor gave me a shot for pain.”

As Tony put the car in gear and roared away, she concentrated on his right hand, lean and tan, sprinkled with fine dark hairs. She didn’t think he bothered with professional manicures, from the no-nonsense look of his short, clean nails.

He
could
slide that hand off the gearshift lever and rest it on her knee. Stroke the quivering inside of her thigh. His callused palm would chafe a little, but oh how the sensations would excite her.

Her eyelids drooped. Strands of hair slapped at her face, joining with the salty air to keep her awake—barely awake at that—in the cocoon of the contoured, buttery-soft leather seat. “What?” she asked when she heard Tony’s voice from what sounded like far away.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Kristine forced her heavy eyelids open. He’d stopped in the parking lot of a huge supermarket. “Where are we?” she asked, surprised when her words came out slurred.

“They’ve got a pharmacy. I’m going to fill your prescriptions. Will you be all right by yourself for a few minutes?”

“I—I think so.” It was all Kristine could do to put together three coherent words. She thought she saw Tony frown.

“Kristine, where do you live?”

Strange. She shouldn’t have to think about a question like that, but she did. “At 818 South Enderlin?” Why wasn’t she certain? Her head felt so heavy. Resting it against the back of the seat, she closed her eyes.

* * * * *

Kristine didn’t stir when Tony slammed the car door, or when he started the engine and drove away. The ER doctor must have given her one hell of a painkiller, to have knocked her out this way.

“You’re not going to help me get you home, are you, honey?”

When she didn’t respond, he reached over her and fumbled for the city map he kept in the glove compartment.

It didn’t surprise him to locate her street right here in Hyde Park. The realtor who’d helped him find his condo had steered him here first, telling him how fashionable the neighborhood of homes built nearly a century ago had become with Tampa’s young and affluent. Not fashionable enough, Tony had decided, to make him willing to cope with aged plumbing and termite-damaged wood. He’d had enough of that when he was growing up, more than enough to last the rest of his life.

He found her street, one of the last ones before Hyde Park ended at Howard Avenue. Whoever had plotted out the straight, north-south and east-west grid of narrow tree-lined streets had made sure all the streets flowed logically off Bayshore Boulevard, for which Tony was grateful.

Whatever the doctor had shot her with was still doing its job too well when he stopped in front of a white bungalow with an open front porch. The house wasn’t very big, and he noticed that it looked a lot like all the others on this block of not-so-elegant old houses.

“Here we are.”

Tony started to park at the curb, then reconsidered. He backed up and pulled into the narrow driveway that led to a detached garage behind Kristine’s house—and not just because he’d have a shorter distance to carry her to her door. He had a feeling she wouldn’t want him to advertise his presence. Even in a city the size of Tampa, he doubted there were more than two or three cars like his.

“You’ll probably sue me for this.” Tony felt like a thief, rifling through Kristine’s black leather handbag, but he had to find her keys. If she slept in the car much longer, she was going to be sore when she woke up.

Finally. Among the rumpled papers, pencils, pens, and everything else she’d managed to stuff inside one fairly small container, he found a key ring. He grabbed the purse and her briefcase, got out of the car, and hurried to open the door. Once there, he shoved her purse and briefcase inside.

When he got back to the car, he noticed she hadn’t moved. “Kristine?”

Nothing. Not a sound. Only the regular rise and fall of her chest reassured him she was still alive. He bent, lifted her into his arms, and carried her inside. She’d probably want to kill him when she woke up and found him here, but right now she obviously shouldn’t be alone. He laid her down on a flower-patterned sofa, covered her with the shawl she’d draped over its back, and tucked one of its loose pillows under her injured leg.

Mentally flaying the idiot doctor who’d knocked her out, Tony opened the bag from the pharmacy and read the instructions on the bottles before setting them on the end table by Kristine’s head.

Before she could take those pills, she was going to need some food. He shot another wary glance her way and went to find the kitchen.

* * * * *

In her dream he was so sweet. Not the hard-nosed defense lawyer who tore her to shreds. Caring. Gallant. Her knight in shining armor. No. Not armor, but a black Ferrari. Tony Landry.

He lifted her easily. His heart beat strong and steady against the side of her breast as he carried her away from danger. Through her stupor Kristine fancied she smelled garlic and olive oil, heard something sizzling.

The scene changed. She was playing with Helen on some beach while Mom and Dad looked on. Happy dream. Happy memories. Then the horror began.

Years had raced by. Kristine was older. Eighteen, just out of high school and ready to take on the world. Home from another party, she bounded into the house. It was quiet. Too quiet. Cautiously she opened Helen’s bedroom door.

There was Helen, her eyes open but unseeing, stretched out on a ruffled white eyelet comforter. Dead. Kristine saw the bag of pure white powder. The rubber tubing. A hypodermic needle.

The cemetery. A blanket of pink roses covered the casket, wilted before her eyes in the summer sunshine. Her dad choked back anguished sobs.

“First Elaine. Now our baby, too.”

He wavered, clutched his throat. Tumbled to the ground, his death rattles permeating the silence. Workers began to lower the vault into the earth.

Alone. She was completely, miserably alone. Why had fate taken Helen and left her behind? Then she saw Tony, smiling, mocking her.

When she woke to the sound of her own screams, he was there. Tony cradled her in his arms. His touch calmed her, gave her comfort. Made her feel as though he cared.

Deliberately keeping his touch gentle, he stroked her back. As he soothed her, he sensed something about her… Vulnerability. That’s what it was, and it touched him more deeply than the practiced sophistication of the women he usually sought out.

She’d drenched the shawl he’d draped over her in sweat, tangling it around her body and injured leg. Her breath came hard, as if she’d run a marathon, the pain from her sprained ankle apparently ignored while she dealt with whatever horror had ripped through her mind.

“If you can’t go back to sleep, tell me about it,” he said when her racking sobs started to subside.

Chapter Five

“There’s no way I can go back to sleep.” No way Kristine could risk facing her failures again, not now.

For months after she’d lost Helen and her father within days of each other, that nightmare had haunted her every night. Then it had come less often, until for the past year or so, she’d been able to sleep in peace. Until today.

Had the nightmare come back because she’d failed to exact retribution from Manny Garcia? She imagined it had, especially since this new dream featured Tony Landry, the man who had foiled her effort to make things right.

The man who’d also starred in other dreams. Sensual, sexual fantasy dreams in which he’d aroused her, touched her…left her hot and wet and aching. She couldn’t tell him about those. And there was no way she intended to burden another living soul with the horror she had brought on herself eight years ago.

“Kristine?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

“I can’t talk about it.”

He stroked her tangled hair off her forehead, almost as if she were a child. “Were you dreaming about what happened this morning?”

“No.”

When Kristine looked into his dark eyes, she sensed concern. Guilt. “Tony, it was my fault you almost ran over me. Not yours.”

“Still I contributed to your being so upset you let a reporter get to you.” The slow, gentle pressure of his hand along her back lent credence to his apparent concern.

“I made some pasta. You need to eat before you take those pills.” He gestured toward the amber bottles on the end table.

The smell of a pungent tomato sauce filled Kristine’s nostrils, reminding her of the first, non-threatening chapter of her nightmare. The aroma of garlic and oil that had inexplicably followed a dream that Tony had been holding her tightly against his hard body, carrying her…

“How did you get me in here?”

He grinned, showing teeth straighter and whiter than any human being had the right to possess. “I dug through your purse and got your keys.”

“How long—”

“You were out a couple of hours. Whatever that doctor gave you for your ankle really did a number on you.”

“I guess so.” She shouldn’t have let the doctor order Demerol for her, because she’d known for years how sensitive she was to pain medications. That hadn’t mattered at the time, though, because her ankle had hurt so much. She hadn’t complained when the emergency room nurse had brought the syringe and sent her off to a hazy sort of semi-oblivion.

“I hope I didn’t do anything embarrassing,” she said, imagining she might have acted out a fantasy and crawled all over Tony while under the influence of the drug.

“No. You just conked out. How about eating something now, before the shot wears completely off and you need one of those pills?”

She couldn’t say no. He’d gone to a lot of trouble, given up his entire afternoon to take care of her. “I could be persuaded to try a bowl of whatever that is you fixed. It smells good.”

“I’ll get it.”

When he brought two bowls of pasta and a couple of glasses of the iced tea she always kept in the refrigerator, Kristine noticed he’d gotten rid of his tie and jacket, and unbuttoned the first two buttons of what looked like a custom-tailored, pale blue cotton shirt. He’d also rolled up his sleeves halfway to his elbows, revealing muscular forearms dusted with more of the soft-looking dark hair she vaguely remembered having noticed on the back of his hand.

Tony looked totally confident, completely self-assured in a way she’d never have managed in unfamiliar surroundings. His vibrant masculine presence created a stark contrast with her late great-aunt’s fussy furnishings in the old-fashioned living room.