Attractive Nuisance (Legally in Love Book 1) (17 page)

“I can’t believe it.” Zane pulled back and ran a hand through his hair. He climbed up on the hood of Baby and pulled her up beside him.

“Can’t believe what?”

“I may be jumping to conclusions, pulling in on my line too fast, but…”

“But what?” The air crackled. Camilla stared into Zane’s deep brown eyes.

A smile tugged at the left side of his mouth. “But—I think maybe I hooked the big one.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Complex Litigation

“The courtroom will please rise for the Honorable Judge Harper.” The bailiff requested everyone’s respect as the judge for the Superior Court of Yavapai County entered the room. Camilla smoothed down the wrinkles in her dress.

It was funny. She always wanted to get married in a church, but somehow this seemed more appropriate. There, across the room, was where she’d first seen Zane, where he’d first completely thrown her off her game and made her into a blithering idiot in front of Judge Harper.

In just a week, Zane would be standing across from her, both of them within jaw and claw reach of that burly old bear. And Zane would likely be making her a blithering idiot so joyful she could hardly put three words together in a sentence. Luckily, there were only two words in the sentence she’d need to say that day.

I do.

For now, she mused about Zane looking smashing in his tux. She got dreamy staring across the room at him where he sat in the audience of the courtroom, waiting to be a witness in today’s case—the one she’d never, ever forget, even though neither she nor Zane ended up getting to prosecute it.

Because today neither of them had to make arguments in front of Judge Harper’s growling gaze. And neither did Falcon, surprisingly enough. Once it was established that Dutch Swede’s alleged theft didn’t make him the Beemer Bandit, Falcon lost all interest. The press died down. The whole thing pretty much fizzled. Obviously, Zane couldn’t take the case, since he needed to be a witness for the prosecution. And Camilla couldn’t take it, since she was dating Zane. Yeah, dating. In fact, engaged to. The ring sparkled on her finger, glinting and sending rays of happiness into her soul.

Besides, conflict of interest or none, the County Attorney’s office didn’t have much need for a Jury Whisperer on this trial anyway, since Dutch, for whatever “Dutch” reason, waived his right to a jury trial.

Falcon ultimately chose who received the honor of taking the lead on the BMW theft case: the new Deputy County Attorney for Yavapai County, Sheldon Cleek, the longest serving staff attorney in the office. Not one murmur of complaint erupted when Falcon made the announcement at the Christmas party a couple of months ago. Everyone clapped and pounded Sheldon on the back.

Today, though, Dutch Swede sat at the defense table, frowning in his orange jumpsuit up at the bear, Judge Harper, whose teeth looked whiter and sharper than ever. Swede would plead not guilty, even though all the evidence taken together easily proved his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Nevertheless, he’d insisted. “I want my day in court! Short people deserve a day in court as much as tall people!”

The frown on the alleged thief’s face only deepened as Sheldon brought up fact after fact in the trial. When the courtroom saw the tape from Honey’s surveillance camera, Dutch slumped in his chair. Sheldon led the argument right down to a sure conviction. And when he said, “Your honor, I rest my case,” the air in the courtroom almost rang with the sound of a metal door of the slammer sliding shut and locking.

Out front on the steps of the courthouse, among the towering Doric pillars, Zane and Camilla stood shoulder to shoulder with Sheldon. Sheldon spoke to the three local reporters about the case.

“Yes, the judge’s verdict came immediately. He took only a ten-minute recess to consider and write his opinion. Guilty. Sentencing will happen in seven days. But more than that, the prize car will be back in the possession of the Wishes for Kids fundraisers in time to help them raise funds for the sick kids. I hear Falcon Torres just purchased a block of a thousand tickets in the raffle.” The reporters laughed, and Sheldon patted out the laughter. “Justice has been served today.”

Wow. Sheldon was good with the sound bites.

Falcon really did make a good choice in Sheldon as Deputy Yavapai County Attorney. He deserved it. And Lydia deserved the nice fat raise that came along with it. Destry was headed to college soon.

Sheldon bid them goodbye, leaving Camilla and Zane in the zippy spring wind.

“I can’t believe it’s only a week now.”

“What? Until spring?” She shivered. She’d left her blazer in the courtroom by accident, exposing her bare arms to the chill. “Oh, right. Until your old nemesis gets his just desserts after all these years—time in the state pen.”

Zane pushed her shoulder, and guided her up against a tree in the park in the acre surrounding the courthouse. “No, silly. I pity that guy.” He guided her backwards until he had her pinned against the tree, and he leaned over her, one arm over her against the bark of the old oak. “You know what I’m referring to.” Zane planted a serious kiss on her mouth. Winning cases made him quite adept at kissing, more so than usual. She let it ride until the wind sent a shiver through her. “A week until I can get started on that family we’ve been talking about.”

“You aren’t one of those guys who thinks we ought to give it some time, wait a year, build our marriage?” They’d been over this once before, like at dinner in Wyatt’s Prospector Inn when they went up so Zane could ask him in person to be his best man. She knew the gist of his answer, but the way he worded it still caught her off guard.

“I’ve been biding my time for this forever. I’m ready for real life to begin.”

And a week later, with pop can wedding bells attached by twine to the back bumper of Baby—because there were places her car couldn’t go—it did.

THE END

Note from the Author

Thank you for reading
Attractive Nuisance.
I hope it was as fun an escape for you to read as it was for me to write it. While I am, in real life, married to a judge, he’s nothing at all like the character of Judge Harper. In fact, he might resemble the hero of the story a lot more closely. Okay, I’ll be honest. He’s the hero of all my love stories, in one facet or another.

If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or your favorite online review location. Reviews are the lifeblood of the indie-author! Thanks so much!

More installments in the Legally in Love Series will debut later this year.

Jennifer Griffith lives in Arizona with a handsome lawyer-turned-judge and their five children. She took the Law School Admission Test, but she decided marrying a lawyer was the smarter course of action for her life.
Attractive Nuisance
is her eighth romantic comedy. Probably. She’s starting to lose count. It’s like those rabbits in
Watership Down
—anything over six, the highest they can count, just becomes unintelligible.

Other Available Romantic Comedies

by Jennifer Griffith

The Lost Art

Immersed: Book Six in the Ripple Effect Romance Series

Chocolate and Conversation

Big in Japan

Super Daisy

If you enjoyed Attractive Nuisance, here’s a snippet from
The Lost Art
you might also find kind of fun.

Chapter 1

Cigarette smoke burned Ava’s nostrils as she picked her way through the clutter of tables and chairs in the noisy bar. For once she refused to sit at the back of a room and blend into the crowd because she had no intention of viewing tonight’s guest speaker through a smoky haze. She wanted to see the presenter’s face as clearly and as closely as possible.

Of course, he’d be blinded by the stage lighting and never take a glance at Ava Young. Not that she’d particularly want him to since it wouldn’t matter anyway. Men never did seem to give her a second look. And who could blame them? She looked nothing like her namesake, the famous starlet Ava Gardner from Hollywood’s golden age. None of the curvaceous lines, the luscious curly dark hair, the sultry eyes. Ava Young kept herself nondescript. It was the best way to get ahead in her job as art curator and climb the career ladder at the museum. Besides, it insulated her—from a lot of things.

But oh, tonight, if this dream guy would give her a tiny gift of eye contact, it would set her up for a long time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.” The emcee at the microphone wore a suit with a skinny tie. Ava wished she’d dressed for the occasion in something besides her grey flannel suit and sensible shoes. She’d better find a seat soon, or she’d be stuck on the sidelines and never see him. Tonight he was going to be speaking on his area of expertise—well, one of them; there were so many—crimes against art. Oh, what an incredible mind he had. She sighed, but then she spied an open table right at the front of the room and made a quick break for it.

And then, there he was at the microphone, making self-deprecating jokes, sporting that hair all mussed up at the edges, speaking about great art heists of the last two hundred years. The audience chuckled, they clapped, all while Ava sat in a daze, her chin on her hand, gazing up at the beautiful face that fronted that incredible mind. She almost didn’t listen to anything he said, just felt the calming of his words washing over her.

And then suddenly, his hand was reaching out to her. He was saying something about Fibonacci and the Golden Ratio, the Parthenon, the perfection of beauty, and he was reaching for Ava’s hand, beckoning her to come up on the stage beside him. She turned to stone—in equal parts fear, shock, and pure joy.

“And so,” he was saying in a voice like melted butter, “I would like to ask this stunning young woman at the front table to come onto the stage beside me. From the moment I set foot in the room, my eye fell on her face, which has the perfect proportions of the Golden Ratio, just as described by Euclid.”

And then she was up on the stage beside him, her breath bated, his eyes a centimeter from Ava’s, his warm hand caressing the curve of her cheek. Her eyes gently closed as the rough hand traced her facial lines until—

A scream from the back of the room jolted Ava, and she pulled away from him. The scream wouldn’t stop, but began to pulsate, and sound more and more like…

Ava’s alarm clock.

Blast! And just when things were starting to get good. She should’ve known it was a dream. For one, she’d probably never go to a smoky bar to hear an art lecture. For another, no real life art lecturers were ever that good-looking. Most of all, no man would walk into a room and have his eyes fall on her. Not unless she was the only person in the room. And on fire.

She punched the alarm clock’s stop button. Seven a.m. She had a meeting with museum security later today. And a staff meeting this morning for the big art exhibit coming up. Sigh. Not something she ought to be late for. Luckily her shower and hairdo and throw-on-a-suit routine took almost no time at all.

Something about how vulnerable she’d felt with that imaginary presenter’s hand on hers made her stomach shake, like an aftershock from an earthquake. But after a few sit-ups and crunches, she steeled it. No one at work should see this chink in her armor—not with all the stress coming at them all from the exhibit of a lifetime hitting the Phoenix Metropolitan in a few weeks. She had to be strength itself, especially for poor Friedman. This thing was his baby.

“It’s trash day, Mrs. Chowder,” Ava called to the elderly lady who lived in the apartment across the way as she headed down the stairs. “Can I take yours down to the road for you?” There was a grumbling mumble from inside the apartment, which Ava took as an assent. Mrs. Chowder was like that. Even when Ava occasionally dropped off homemade cinnamon rolls.

Within a few moments she was done at the dumpster and out in the searing sun of Phoenix, running in her clogs toward the light-rail stop.

After a few minutes of sliding along the electric tracks, her phone sang. Zoe. In full auto-rant about a guy.

“Oh, Zoe, I’m so sorry to hear it. He seemed so into you.” Ava muffled her voice so she wouldn’t be one of “those” people having a cell phone conversation on the train.

“At least for a while,” Zoe sniffed so loudly Ava could almost hear it crossing the Rockies from Denver. “I totally thought … this time.”

A phone call wasn’t the same as a hug for her lifelong bestie, but Ava did her best to console her.

“But Zoe. You have a ton of things going for you. You’re beautiful, smart, talented. You’ve got the best job in broadcasting—anchor-babe at Channel 4. Seriously.”

“Yeah, yeah. You don’t need to say it. Any guy would be crazy not to just snap little ol’ me right up, as my mom is forever saying.” Zoe growled in frustration, and it fizzed in Ava’s ear. Everyone on the train could probably hear it too. “It’s not like some billionaire like Kellen McMullen is going to show up on my doorstep and fly me off in his helicopter.”

Ava almost gagged. That was the last thing Zoe needed—a loose cannon and tabloid hopper like Kellen McMullen or one of his other billionaire playboy cohorts. Incredibly good-looking or not, he was no Daddy Warbucks or Mr. Monopoly. Ava would know. She’d been researching investors for the upcoming mega-exhibit, and she knew this dimwit. He and his pals were like the trailer trash of billionaires, and Ava had grown up in Laveen, so she knew about trailers. If only Honey Boo Boo were in his dating age range, they’d be perfect for each other. She almost did the “loser sneeze” on his behalf. But she was on the train. And Zoe was listening.

“What I was going to say is you’ve got a ton of great things going on. Maybe you should just focus on what’s right in life for now, and not worry about what’s going wrong.” A blur of adobe washed past the window. Phoenix had a lot of adobe.

Zoe sighed. “Sometimes I wish I could be more like you, Ava. You’ve gone through a total dry spell dating, but you don’t seem to let it bother you a bit. You don’t get caught up in all the annoying contrivances the world requires. Vanity, all that. You’re always so self-contained and at peace. How do you have it so ‘together?’ What’s your secret?”

Ava laughed. “Please. Zoe. You know me better than that.” Then she muffled her voice again and looked around. No one was looking at her.

“No, really. It seems like I fall apart at the slightest blip in my social life, if I break a proverbial nail. Maybe it’s all the serotonin from the chocolate you eat or the baking you do, but you’re, like, so calm.”

Ava didn’t want to talk about it today, not about herself. Today the call was about Zoe, and the one who got away—despite Zoe’s desperate grip on the rod and reel.

“I seriously don’t know, Zoe. Everybody handles things differently. But what I want to know right now is this: is there anyone else you’ve met in town who could serve as a distraction while your wounds scab over? What about that old flame, Drew what’s-his-name?” That set Zoe on a diatribe about why Drew would never ask her out again, which at least steered the subject away from Ava for a while.

It never ceased to amaze Ava how easily Zoe could get her hooks into a guy and yet never once drag him into her boat. What did Zoe do wrong? After all, she was one of the most recognizable faces in local television, with her sleek dark hair and her stark red lips. On camera she was poise itself, in spite of her frequent off-camera relationship meltdowns.

“Oh, sheesh. My mom is over the edge about it. She’s so grandbaby hungry I could puke just to fake morning sickness to get her off my case for ten minutes, but I knew that would make it worse. She loved this guy and was all over the situation, but no matter what I did he just got more distant. It’s the same story as always. Is it because I’m basically a poisonous cook? Seriously. When my mom gave me an old vintage book last night called
How to Snare a Modern Man
from 1959, I could have choked.” Zoe had hit a hysterical note here.

“How about you send me a summary? Or the whole book when you’re done. I could use a laugh. But what I really want to know about is your latest purchases at Macy’s. I heard they had a sale.”

“Please, Ava. I totally know what you’re doing. Changing the subject. You couldn’t care less about my shopping deals. But, hey. I did pick up the most flattering coral wrap dress I’ve ever seen. It is a little too small in the waist and too big in the bust, but I might grow into it, right? For seven bucks on the 75 percent-off rack, I couldn’t
not
buy it.”

The truth was, Ava had inherited a closetful of Zoe’s shopping mistakes. Some of them would probably be stunning—on someone who cared about clothes or fashion. Ava preferred her usual uniform of loose-fitting tops and trousers, with her brown hair pulled into a tight knot, and her one pair of sensible shoes, the Dansko clogs. It didn’t matter that Zoe pleaded with her on a regular basis to snazz it up a notch. Ava had little use for clothes. They kept her warm in winter, cool in summer, and modestly covered. Good enough, right?

Thirty-five minutes, eleven light-rail stops, and nineteen well-described fashion bargains later, Ava bid her much happier friend good-bye. But as she walked out of the light rail station, Ava stutter-stepped. If a girl like Zoe couldn’t “Snare a Modern Man,” was there ever going to be an iota of hope for a plain girl like Ava?

The odds looked grim.

*              *              *

More of
The Lost Art
is available for Kindle on Amazon.com.