Law of Attraction (30 page)

He got out of the car, avoiding the dirty puddles where last night’s snow was melting. There was a pretty flower shop on the corner of 18th and Wyoming. Should I bring her flowers? he wondered. Would that send the wrong message—or the right one? He paused in front of the shop. He wasn’t sure how to handle this. He hadn’t dated anyone since Olivia’s mother died; he hadn’t been interested in anyone else. And he certainly didn’t know how to handle this particular dating situation, fraught with workplace issues, race issues, age issues, issues he probably hadn’t even spotted yet.

After a moment’s hesitation, he pushed all that aside. He would handle it like any other problem: he would confront it head-on. He would tell Anna how he was feeling, and give her a chance to respond. It might be controversial, it might be messy, but it would be out in the
open and they could deal with it honestly. Let the chips fall where they may. He stepped into the shop and bought a bouquet of deep purple irises.

He knocked on Anna’s door a few minutes later, flowers clutched in his hand, his heart beating in his throat. The chain inside clanked, the door swung open, and Anna was standing in front of him. She was still wearing pajamas. Her blond hair was in a ponytail, and her face was clean and makeupless. She looked natural and beautiful and very young. Her eyes widened when she saw him on her doorstep, and then widened even more when she saw the flowers he was holding by his side.

“Hi, Anna,” he greeted her.

“Hi,” she gulped.

“I’m sorry to just show up like this, but I wanted to apologize to you. I overreacted yesterday. What you did wasn’t so bad. It’s just a blip, and we’ll handle it. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. Actually, I do know. That’s what I wanted to talk with you about. Can I— Do you have a minute?” He gestured toward her house.

Her cheeks went from a light pink to a deep rose. She looked acutely uncomfortable. She’d initially opened the door a few feet. She didn’t open it any farther now. In fact, the opening seemed to narrow a bit. She glanced back into her apartment.

“Well—uh—actually—” she stammered. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

Suddenly, Jack got it.

“Do you have company?” he asked.

“Um—yeah.”

He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might have a boyfriend. How did she have time for a boyfriend, he thought fleetingly, when she was always at the office? But it didn’t matter how. She did. The flowers in his hand felt incredibly heavy.

“Who’s at the door?” a man’s voice called from inside her apartment.

“Nobody!” she cried back. Her face was panic-stricken.

Jack’s head recoiled as if she’d slapped him. She saw it.

“No, Jack, I didn’t mean that
you
were nobody. I just meant that, it wasn’t anyone that needed to be—that had to have a—what I meant is . . .”

As she stuttered out the incoherent explanation, a dark-haired man
wearing an untucked shirt and wrinkled pants came to the door. As Jack saw the other man’s face, he felt a strange sense of recognition. He knew who he was looking at, but the person was so far removed from his normal place in the world, so out of context, that his appearance just didn’t make sense at first, and Jack didn’t fully comprehend who it was.

Then his brain caught up to his eyes. It was Nicholas Wagner. In rumpled clothing. In Anna’s house. At 8:00 a.m. Jack’s blood froze, then boiled.

“Nobody, huh?” Nick said mockingly, blinking his eyes in the bright winter sunlight. He stood behind Anna and looked at Jack venomously over her shoulder. “I think we’ve met.”

“What are you doing here?” Jack asked him slowly. His jaw started to clench.

“The same thing as you, apparently,” Nick said. He reached past Anna and took the flowers from Jack’s hand. “Thanks, she’ll love these.”

“Nick, no!” Anna cried. She spun from the man behind her to the man on her doorstep. “Jack, it’s not like that!”

Jack turned and strode back up the steps to the street. His chest was a tight, raging battle between abject humiliation and wanting to punch that Wagner kid. He had to get out of here before he became a number on today’s lockup list.

Jack shook his head as he strode down the sidewalk, barely able to comprehend the enormity of his miscalculation. Everything he’d thought was wrong. Anna wasn’t interested in him at all. She was dating the defense attorney.

He became aware of a pattering of feet behind him. “Jack, wait!” Anna cried. She was racing up to him, barefoot on the wet sidewalk. He didn’t break his stride, but she caught up and trotted next to him. “It’s not like that—he was drunk, he just needed to stay over.”

“You were out drinking with the defense attorney?” His legs were longer than hers; she had to jog keep up with him.

“No, he came over, unannounced. He was stumbling drunk and feeling guilty about getting D’marco off the first time. I felt sorry for him. I just let him sleep it off on my couch.”

“He acted an awful lot like your boyfriend.”

“Well, we were . . .” She slowed and fell a few inches behind Jack.
He stopped and turned to her. They stood facing each other in the quiet gray morning, an odd couple: he in his suit and trench coat, she in bare feet and pajamas.

“You were what?” he asked.

“Not while the case was going on . . .”

“What?” he demanded.

She swallowed. “Dating.”

“When?”

“Between the first case and our investigation.” Jack turned and walked even faster toward his car. She ran to catch up. “I was going to tell you!”

“When were you going to tell me?”

“Okay,” she admitted. “I wasn’t going to tell you.”

“You lied to me.”

“No!”

“You said you knew him from law school.”

“I did know him from law school. I just—all this happened after law school,” she finished weakly.

A thought suddenly struck him. He wondered if she could be that treacherous. He slowed his step and narrowed his eyes, searching her face.

“Is that why you’re investigating Officer Green instead of D’marco Davis?”

“No! Jack, no! I would never try to sabotage our case!”

“You see how bad this looks, Anna. How am I supposed to be able to tell what side you’re on? How can anyone?”

“You know me, Jack. Jack! Look at me!” She grabbed his arm with a strength he wouldn’t have guessed the slim woman had. He spun to face her. They were inches apart, her hand grasping his arm. She looked up at him—a direct, courageous look—but her lips were quivering. “You
know
me. I wouldn’t try to hurt our case. Jack, I’m on your side.”

Her big blue eyes pleaded with his. They were beautiful eyes, he thought. Beautiful and traitorous. When he spoke again, he had reined in his anger, hurt, and humiliation. His voice was cold and emotionless.

“This is textbook misconduct, Anna. You’ve betrayed this case.”

“No, I’m committed to it!” Her voice became more hysterical as his became flatter. “It’s been over between me and Nick for a long time! It
won’t affect my work on the investigation!”

“There’ll be no more of your ‘work’ on this investigation.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is a conflict of interest.” He turned to his car and unlocked it. “You’re off the case.”

“Jack, please—” She put her hand on his arm again.

“Enough!” he thundered.

Anna flinched and stepped back. Jack stood still for a moment, bracing himself on his car. He looked over at her, shivering and barefoot, tears brimming over her eyes. A fleeting instinct told him to put his arm around her shoulders, to draw her into an embrace, that she would welcome it. A few minutes ago, he had been hoping for just such an opportunity. But he couldn’t trust her anymore. He took a deep breath and lowered his voice.

“This is not negotiable.”

Jack wrenched the door open and climbed into the driver’s seat. All the hopes he’d held this morning were destroyed. He didn’t look at Anna again as he started the car and pulled off.

30

W
ith dismay, Anna watched from the snowy sidewalk as Jack’s car drove away. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. Jack had come here to apologize and—she thought of the flowers—to tell her something more? Instead, he’d found Nick Wagner hanging out in her living room. She groaned. How Jack must have felt! She thought of the look on his face when he slammed the car door. The possibility of forgiveness was nowhere on it.

And Anna hadn’t just lost Jack—she’d been fired from Laprea’s case. She’d reneged on her promise to Rose and the debt she owed Laprea’s children. The purpose that had driven her days was suddenly gone.

When her bare feet became so cold that the pain turned to numbness, she turned and trudged back to her apartment.

As she walked in, Nick came out of her kitchen holding a cup of coffee. He offered the mug to her. She ignored the offer, put her hands on her hips, and looked at Nick furiously. She thought she saw a trace of a smirk on his face, but it quickly became a look of rather unconvincing regret.

“What the hell was that all about?” Anna’s voice was a decibel below a shout.

“Anna, I’m sorry—”

“You’re sorry? You wouldn’t have to be
sorry
if you hadn’t been such an asshole! You came to my house drunk! I let you stay here so you wouldn’t freeze to death—and this is how you repay me? By flaunting yourself to my boss? Why did you come to the door? Why did you take those flowers? What the fuck were you thinking?”

“It wasn’t right! He was coming on to you—and he’s your supervisor. That’s sexual harassment!”

“Not if it’s wanted!”

“Was it?” His voice quieted. “Wanted?”

“That’s none of your business. Nick, I can’t believe what you just did!”

“I’m sorry, but I saw this guy here, trying to win you, and I just reacted. It was an instinct, you know. To fight for my girl.”

“I am not your girl!”

“I know that!” he shouted back. Coffee sloshed out of the mug. “I am very aware of that!”

“You were a dog peeing on a fire hydrant! I am not your territory!”

“Do you think this is easy for me? Seeing you sitting next to him in court? Getting phone calls from the two of you? Knowing all the time you’re spending with each other, the long nights with your heads together, planning how to beat me? We never even talk anymore. Okay, we can’t date—but we’re not even
friends.
Look.” Nick lowered his voice and put his hand up in a gesture of peace. “I didn’t want to get you in trouble. I got up this morning and I passed your room, and there you were, sleeping, and I just wanted to climb in with you. I thought I did a pretty good job of restraining myself.”

Anna felt some of her fury dissipate. She understood what Nick was saying; she had felt a similar nostalgia just last night.

Seeing her face relax a bit, Nick continued to plead his case.

“All I wanted to do this morning was apologize—sober this time—for what D’marco did to you. I just wanted to make it right.”

“Great job, Nick.” The anger had left her voice, replaced with exhaustion. “You got me kicked off the case.”

“Christ.”

Nick set the coffee mug on her kitchen table and stepped cautiously toward her. He approached her with his arm outstretched, slowly, carefully, like a wrangler approaching a wild mustang. He laid his hand gently on her bare arm and looked down at her. An electric warmth radiated down her arm from where his fingers lay. She looked at his face. His hazel eyes held a spark they hadn’t last night.

“I’m so sorry, Anna.”

“You don’t seem sorry. You seem glad.”

“Maybe I’m a little bit of both,” Nick acknowledged softly. “Because this could actually be a good thing. There’s no conflict now. We can be together. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you want it, too. Come back to me, Anna.”

He moved his hand slowly up her arm.

She looked at his face, momentarily confused, thinking that she
must be misunderstanding what he was saying. She remembered what he’d started to say last night, before he passed out.

“No conflict
now
?” she asked slowly. “Are
you
still representing D’marco Davis?”

“Not in the case involving your assault. I decided I can’t do that. But on the homicide—” He grimaced. “Yes.”

She backed away from him in astonishment. He was asking her to get back together with him—not because
he
was getting off the case, but because he had gotten
her
kicked off. She felt her fury growing in a hard, tight knot in her chest.

“I don’t have a choice,” Nick said. “Please, try to understand, it’s not about you—”

“You selfish asshole. You come to my house drunk, flaunt yourself to my boss, get
me
kicked off of Laprea’s case—which, by the way, you’re going full steam ahead on—and then you expect me to fall sobbing into your arms with gratitude? Get out,” she said, pointing to the door. When he didn’t move, she grabbed his coat, opened the door, and threw it out onto the wet concrete steps. “Get out!” She pushed him through the door and slammed it shut.

She just wished she’d done it nine hours ago.

She leaned back against the door, breathing as hard as if she’d just run a sprint. Her anger felt like a hot itch over all of her skin. She looked at the side table. The box of empanadas and the bouquet of irises sat there next to each other. But she was alone.

•  •  •

Three hours later, Anna sat uncomfortably in a chair in front of the U.S. Attorney’s desk. Her anger was gone, replaced by a nervous tightness in the pit of her stomach. The U.S. Attorney was looking at her like she was an interesting but worrisome specimen he’d found growing in a petri dish. Carla Martinez sat protectively next to her, and a gray-haired man whom Anna recognized as the Chief Muckety-Muck of Something or Other sat on the brown leather couch to their right. Anna’s legs were crossed and her ankle in the air was jittering nervously. She noticed the jittering, stopped it, and shifted, nervously awaiting their verdict.

After she’d thrown Nick out, Anna had decided that she had to tell Carla everything immediately, before Carla heard it through the grapevine. So Anna had showered, put on her most serious dark suit, caught the Metro, and marched herself into Carla’s office. Anna confessed the
whole story—or most of it, at least. She didn’t mention Jack’s flowers or the possibility that he had come over for anything other than professional reasons. Carla listened quietly and asked a few questions, but she didn’t jump up and down or scream. Carla seemed to take the whole thing as a setback, but not, as Anna had imagined, the most horrendous thing that had ever happened. Anna realized that the chief of the Domestic Violence and Sex Crimes Section had seen plenty of scandals in her time.