Going Too Far. Tori Carrington

far, if he had half a brain in his head.

      He absently rubbed his chin.

      Wow…

      4

      MONA LYNDELL BANGED THE carafe of coffee down onto the conference table, jolting Marie from her thoughts and nearly launching her straight from her chair.

      Marie blinked at the firm’s usually mild-mannered secretary, surprised that the movement hadn’t been the accident she’d expected it to be. Rather the expression on Mona’s face as she stared—or rather glared—at firm senior partner Barry Lomax was enough to turn the hot coffee into ice cubes.

      “Uh-oh,” Jena leaned closer to Marie and whispered. “Don’t look now but I think we’re witnessing a lovers’ quarrel.”

      Marie’s eyebrows hiked high on her forehead. Lovers’ quarrel? What was Jena talking about? Mona had worked for Barry for nearly thirty years. Barry had been married three times, not once to his secretary. Her gaze moved from the couple in question, noting the way Mona appeared to seethe while Barry continued on outlining the partners’ cases and who was handling what and who needed an assist in other cases.

      Mona left the conference room seeming to take all the tension with her.

      Marie crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, wondering when the entire world had stopped making sense.

      The roomy conference room at the firm of Lomax, Ferris, McCade and Bertelli was airy and decorated with a real feel for the Albuquerque American Indian culture, just like the offices and waiting area. Usually the surroundings relaxed her. But as she looked at Barry Lomax—Dulcy’s mentor and friend who had invited the three of them to sign on with him to ensure his legal legacy when he retired—she suddenly felt like an entire subculture existed right under her nose without her knowing about it.

      At the end of the table, Dulcy—five months pregnant and practically glowing with the happiness of her life—corrected Barry on one of her cases, while, next to Marie, Jena tapped her pen against her legal pad and glanced at her watch, no doubt anxious to get home to her ex-hockey player/doctor husband.

      Truthfully, she hadn’t been able to concentrate on a whole lot since leaving Ian’s office earlier. And although three hours had passed since she’d planted a hot wet one on him, she swore she could still taste him on her lips.

      She reached for the coffee with the intention of washing him off. But since chicken soup and a half of a sandwich at lunch hadn’t succeeded, she doubted this would work either. She raised the steaming black liquid to her lips. Maybe she could scald the taste away.

      Barry sighed and sat back in his chair. “I think we’re done. Anyone have any new business to discuss?”

      “Nope,” Jena said, closing her notepad. “I think that about covers it.”

      “For me, too,” Dulcy said.

      Marie sat forward and leaned her forearms against the table. “Actually, I have something.”

      Three pairs of eyes focused on her, making her wish she hadn’t said anything.

      “Well, it’s not something in the traditional sense of having something. It’s not a new case or anything…”

      Jena elbowed her. “Get to the point, Bertelli.”

      Marie grimaced at her and sighed. “I just thought that you all should know that the Treasury Department is questioning my father in connection with a racketeering charge.”

      Dead silence. Marie could virtually hear her own heart beating as she waited for some sort of verbal response. And waited. And waited.

      She cleared her throat. “The details are a little sketchy yet,” she said. “But I’m in contact with his attorney. Basically, all I know is that two days ago my father was pulled in for preliminary questioning at which time he contacted an attorney.”

      “Not you,” Jena said quietly.

      Marie looked down at the table where she was worrying her hands. She put her hands in her lap. “No.”

      At the end of the table, Dulcy shifted in her chair, not an easy move given her ever widening girth. “Who did he retain?”

      “Ian Kilborn.”

      “Who?” Jena asked, leaning closer.

      Marie stared at her. “Ian Kilborn.”

      Jena stared at her as if she’d gone soft in the head, then looked at Dulcy who gave an odd sort of smile before averting her gaze and pretending an interest in the files in front of her.

      “Who’s Ian Kilborn?” Barry asked.

      Jena waved her hand. “We all grew up together in the same neighborhood. You wouldn’t know him from there, of course, but you might be familiar with him by the cases he’s represented lately.”

      Dulcy nodded. “There’s Raphael Mendoza…”

      “Serial robber who steals women’s intimate apparel,” Jena added.

      Marie sank lower in her chair.

      “That guy who killed his priest after he confessed to killing his wife,” Dulcy counted off on her fingers.

      “Jamieson.”

      “Yeah, that’s him.”

      Jena lifted a finger. “Then there’s the Britney Hiawatha case.”

      This lifted Barry’s snow-white brows, making him look more like James Brolin than Sean Connery. “The prostitute who…”

      He didn’t need to finish, because the story made news due to the sheer gruesomeness of the details. Hiawatha had basically turned any johns who didn’t pay her into modern-day eunuchs.

      And if Ian hadn’t gotten his clients off altogether, he’d gotten the prosecutors to cop to lesser charges after pulling a few courtroom stunts that had nearly gotten him disbarred.

      “Oh, he’s good,” Barry said, shaking his head. “Very good. I’m surprised I didn’t recognize the name. Kilborn, right? Kill ’em Kilborn.”

      Marie rubbed her forehead. It was bad enough that this was the man her father had hired. This was also the guy she fantasized about sleeping with while…well, while she was sleeping and had no control over where her thoughts ventured.

      Good Lord.

      “You and Kilborn grew up together?” Barry asked.

      “In the same neighborhood,” Marie said. “We weren’t exactly…friends.”

      She caught Jena giving Dulcy one of those “really?” faces she hated and felt the urge to elbow her friend so hard she’d fall backward in her chair.

      “Oh,” Dulcy said.

      But she hadn’t said it in the way Marie might have expected. Instead, she seemed surprised by something that didn’t have anything to do with the present conversation.

      Marie looked at her. Dulcy’s face had gone white and she was clutching her stomach.

      “Are you all right?” Marie asked, getting up from her chair and hurrying toward her friend.

      Then Dulcy smiled, so brightly it nearly hurt to look at her. “I’m…fine. I just felt the baby kick.” She laughed. “I mean, at five months, I’ve felt him kick before, but not this insistently.” She rubbed her palms over her stomach. “Ezzie jokes that I’m going to have a horse. I’m beginning to think she may be right.”

      Ezzie was Esmeralda, Dulcy and Quinn’s housekeeper, although she was more family than hired help, especially since she didn’t get paid. Marie got the heebies whenever she was around the old Indian woman because Ezzie looked at her as if trying to figure something out. Marie never stuck around long enough to find out what.

      “That’s