Sawyer, Meryl (8 page)

She slid her hands into his hair, furrowing her fingers across his
scalp. His sex hardened, ramming against his zipper. Why had he waited all
weekend?

"Mitch," she whispered, her lips against his.
"Another scar from the same fight?"

Aw, hell. Her questing fingers had discovered the third, deepest
scar hidden in the thick hair above his ear. She'd asked about the two scars on
his face, but he'd dodged the question, saying he'd been in a fight. Not the
truth exactly, but close enough for government work.

"Uh-huh," he muttered, then deliberately distracted her
by angling his hips against the notch of her thighs.

"Don't," she whispered. Smiling.

If he'd thought—for a second—she meant no, he would have backed
off, but her arms were still around him, her lips close to his. Even in the
darkness of the moonless night, he saw the passion blazing in her green eyes.

Her lips sought his and he returned her kiss wildly, his hips
churning against hers, pinning her against the side of the car. And she loved
it. Her fingernails scored the back of his neck; her hips pressed against his.

He looped his hand around her long hair, wrapping most of it
around his palm. With a tug he pulled her head back, exposing the soft skin
along her neck. Trailing a series of moist kisses, he worked his way downward
to the deep V of her blouse. His tongue shot into the tight hollow between her
breasts as his hand captured the soft fullness, squeezing slightly.

He tested the shape and texture, teasing the nipple with the pad
of his thumb until it was spiraled tightly. "Oh, Mitch."

He released her hair and took half a step back. She clutched him,
burying her head in the crook of his neck. He had her blouse unbuttoned in a
second. The bra that greeted him was straight out of a lingerie ad. Half cups.
Lacy. It offered Royce's breasts to him like a pagan sacrifice.

"All right, a front-loader." He unhooked the flimsy bra
and cradled her full breasts in his wide-spread palms. He was achingly,
painfully hard now.

He felt Royce's heart slamming against his hand. Her breath
fluttered against his neck in staccato bursts. He bent and kissed her breasts,
sculpting each taut nipple with his tongue.

"The backseat of your Toyota's looking mighty good."

"I hardly know you," she whispered. "It would just
be sex."

"Hey, it works for me." He teased one nipple, sucking
ruthlessly. He raised his head and grinned his bad-boy grin. "You want me.
Don't deny it."

Just then, a car drove into the dark parking lot. Its blaring
lights hit them like a gust of arctic air. Mitch blocked Royce from full view.
She scrambled to cover herself.

"Jee-sus," Mitch muttered. His timing sucked. The spell
had been broken. Royce was inside the car, key in the ignition.

"See you in a month," he yelled as she peeled out of the
parking lot.

By the light of the pink elephant above their booth in the Liquid
Zoo, Paul studied Mitch, who hadn't spoken for several minutes. Obviously,
Mitch's mind was still pondering the incident with Royce five years ago.

"What happened after she left?" Paul prompted.

"It was the month from hell," Mitch said. "The DA
had been out with a heart attack for weeks, and I had a caseload big enough for
ten lawyers. I didn't want to bargain any of them."

Paul noted the disgust in Mitch's voice. Mitch thought plea
bargaining undermined the whole judicial system. He was probably right. It
certainly made a lot of criminal attorneys rich, defending felons who kept
cycling through the system.

"A case came in at the end of the month about the time I
thought Royce was due home. A man had been killed in an automobile accident.
The survivor claimed the dead man had been driving, but the police suspected
the survivor—who'd failed a sobriety test—had actually been at the wheel.

"The evidence was iffy. The question was whether or not to
charge Terence Winston, a local celebrity with a column in the
Examiner
and
a heavyweight in liberal political circles."

"Didn't you know he was Royce's father?"

"No. We'd been walking along the beach when I'd asked her
name. Between the noise of the surf and my bad ear, I didn't pick up what she
said exactly. I thought her name was Royce Annston, but she must have said
Royce Anne Winston.

"The case was a challenge. Even if we could have proved
Winston was driving, a good defense attorney could have gotten the drunk
driving charge dropped. The police used a breath analyzer and got a reading
that was barely over the legal limit."

"They should have used a blood analysis, particularly since
there was a death involved."

"Hell, they were unusually sloppy all the way around. They
mopped up the accident scene in an hour."

"Typical," Paul said, then took a sip of his lukewarm beer,
thinking. Crime scenes were taped for days, every bit of evidence examined
carefully. But on the street
nothing
was more important than maintaining
the flow of traffic. Too often those crime scenes were released prematurely.

"I persuaded the filing deputy—a wimp who must have gotten
his law degree mail order—to file charges. Winston was a local celebrity. So
what? Why should he get away with anything? Still, the charge would have been
tough to prove. The car had burst into flames. What evidence wasn't charred was
destroyed by water when the fire department arrived."

"Didn't you talk to Royce during all this?"

"I called, but didn't get any answer. The accounts in the
paper never mentioned her name, just that he had a daughter and his wife was
dead." Mitch shook his head. "At the preliminary hearing I saw Royce
again. Only one other person ever looked at me with so much hatred."

The scars on Mitch's cheek were barely visible in the dim light.
Paul knew someone hated Mitch a helluva lot more than Royce. But in all the
years Paul had known Mitch, he'd never discussed who had tried to kill him. All
Paul knew was someone had attacked Mitch. He suspected it was a woman, but he
couldn't say why exactly. Just a hunch.

"Winston had an old friend—some probate attorney-— represent
him. I annihilated him at the prelim hearing without half trying." Mitch
shoved the half-eaten pizza out of his way. "Winston was so stricken,
Royce had to help him walk out of the courtroom when the judge ruled there was
sufficient evidence to go to trial."

"The next morning I picked up the paper. Royce's father had
blown his brains out. He'd been depressed since his wife died and couldn't face
a trial."

"Christ," Paul said. He'd been away, trying to put his
life back together after leaving the police force. He'd returned shortly after
this happened. It had been another six months before he'd rejoined the living.
Mitch never burdened him with his own problems during that time.

"Half the city showed up at the funeral. When Royce saw me,
she went ballistic."

"I suppose you can't blame her."

"No. I'd insisted on prosecuting out of blind ambition. I
admitted it to her at the funeral. It was a spotlight case that would have made
my career. Instead the press was in an uproar and every politician in the city
wanted blood."

"But the press didn't fry you. I wasn't so out of it that I
wouldn't have remembered them attacking you."

"True, the media went after the system and yammered for weeks
about evidence ignored in drug cases that are plea-bargained while we'd
crucified an upstanding citizen. Back then the media was lobbying for mandatory
sentencing, so they ignored me, but it didn't matter. Royce knew what I'd
done."

"That's why you left the DA's office, right?" Paul felt
more than a little guilty. He'd returned shortly after Mitch had opened his own
office, but Paul had been too absorbed with his own problems to ask why Mitch
had left.

"Yeah. The DA returned—pissed big-time—and took all my
interesting cases and left me with a bunch of crap."

"I guess you can understand why Royce Winston isn't your
biggest fan."

"It's been years, dammit. If Royce were honest with herself,
she'd admit that ambition does things to people. And even if I'd been overly
ambitious, I was only doing my job. How was I to know her father was
suicidal?"

Paul could still see Royce's point, but he didn't even try arguing
it with Mitch. She'd lost her father and no doubt saw Mitch as the epitome of
the conniving lawyers she hated.

"Goddammit. After what she did to me on that talk show, I'm
going to be bird-dogged by reporters."

Paul had never heard Mitch this angry. He was one of the most
controlled men Paul knew; Mitch seldom lost his temper. Could it be he did
intend to run for office, and Royce had exposed his plans?

She'd cleverly picked up on something even Paul hadn't noticed
until she brought it up. Mitch refused to defend any man accused of rape. Why?

"Are you defending a cougar? That'll mean more
publicity."

"Actually I'm representing the Wildlife Foundation at a Fish
and Game hearing. They want to destroy some cougar because he attacked a
hunter." Mitch stabbed the air with his finger. "What I want to know
is how the hell Royce found out about it. They just hired me."

"Hey, Mitch, you know nothing can be kept secret. How else
would I make a living?"

"I don't like anyone meddling in my business. You know
that."

Paul nodded, thinking Mitch guarded his privacy—particularly his
past—like a pit bull. And he held a grudge like Kohmeni.

"Geez, you're a celebrity—-already," Brent exclaimed the
following evening as they walked into the elegant St. Francis Hotel for the
auction to finance the Center for Women in Crisis.

Did she detect a hostile note in his voice? Was her success going
to threaten Brent? This was a side of him that she'd never seen until this
moment.

A gauntlet of reporters with belted battery packs and klieg-light
sets greeted them. Pack journalism, Royce decided. If one station came, they
all did. The minicam crews were the harbingers of electronic gossip in the
la-la land of TV news—an amalgam of entertainment and journalism. Did she
really want to be a part of this?

One reporter lunged in front of her, his bald head sprouting a
lonely tuft of red hair like a patch of crabgrass. "Any truth to the rumor
you and Durant were lovers?"

"Don't be ridiculous." Butterflies the size of bats flew
through her stomach. A kiss in the dark didn't make them lovers. Besides, no
one could know—unless Mitch had told.

Would he retaliate for what she'd done to him last night by making
certain Brent found out about that kiss at the party? How could she explain
passionately kissing a man she hated? She couldn't even explain it to herself.

"That creep was Tobias Ingeblatt from the
Outrage,"
she
told Brent.

The
Evening Outlook
was a local tabloid whose stories were
financed by supermarket ads touting the lowest prices in diapers and mayo. It
was such a joke, everyone called it the
Evening Outrage,
but it was
stocked near the registers beside national tabloids. The
Outrage
's
circulation was awesome with its tales of the clandestine clenches of local
celebrities.

Tobias Ingeblatt was their star reporter, she thought with
disgust. He probably made three times what her uncle earned. Ingeblatt
frequently resold his stories to a national tabloid. Usually his pieces
featured the exploits of aliens with heads like light bulbs. He'd made the
front page of the nation's largest tabloid when he'd come up with a story—
complete with a picture—of Bill Clinton getting a preelection endorsement from
the aliens. The issue sold out in one day.

Ingeblatt nosing around made her nervous. More than nervous.

"There are my parents." Brent looked across the room.
"Let's say hello, then see what they'll be auctioning tonight."

Royce kept her hand on his arm as he negotiated his way around the
maze of closely packed tables. The soft light from dozens of chandeliers and
the peach-colored damask fabric on the walls cast a mellow glow across the
ballroom. The dance floor had been turned into a viewing area for the auction
items. She scanned the crowd previewing the auction items for her friends.

"I've ordered wine," Ward Farenholt said as they walked
up. "I'm not drinking that inferior cabernet the charity is serving."

"Good idea." Brent kissed his mother's cheek.

Royce had to admit she envied how close Brent was to his mother.
There was always a distinct coolness between father and son, but Brent was
genuinely fond of his mother. A good sign, she told herself, recalling her
discussion with Talia and Val. You could judge a man by the way he treated his
mother.

Royce mumbled good evening, thinking nothing ever suited Brent's
father. It was a wonder Caroline Rambeau measured up to his standards for a
daughter-in-law, but she did. Ward was fond of Caroline—almost affectionate.
Evidently, he had a heart, but opened it only to a select few.