Courthouse Steps. Ginger Chambers

Louise Baron, Attorney-at-Law emblazoned on the door. He had known from the beginning that this was going to be a difficult case. Forty-two years had passed since the murder occurred, the accused was a well-respected, wealthy, influential man in the community and the evidence was mostly circumstantial...all hard enough strikes to overcome. But he hadn’t counted on having to deal with someone like Amanda Louise Baron, or her unwanted effect on him.

      * * *

      AMANDA WATCHED the car pull away. It certainly had taken them long enough! What were they doing? What were they talking about? Her? Her grandfather? The case?

      She moved away from her spy’s perch in the corner of the room, letting the vertical blind swing back into place. As usual, Tessie had made the necessary adjustments to keep the afternoon sun from interfering with her computer screen.

      Tessie sat at her desk, a silent witness to her employer’s antics from the moment she’d entered the door and scurried to the corner. At last the secretary’s silence came to an end. “We had a call while you were out,” she said. “Judge Griffen wants to set the disqualification hearing for tomorrow morning. You know him—he doesn’t like to let grass grow under his feet. They want a callback as soon as possible.”

      Tomorrow morning! Amanda thought of her laden desk. Could she possibly be ready by tomorrow morning? She checked her watch. She had the rest of the afternoon and tonight, and if she made judicious use of every second... “Tell him I’ll be ready,” she said. “What time?”

      “Eight-thirty. He has a trial scheduled at ten.”

      “Right,” Amanda said. “I guess I’d better get going.” As she started into her office, she felt her secretary’s eyes follow her. Pretending to an innocence she didn’t feel, she paused to ask, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

      “May I ask what that was all about just now? Or is it some kind of deep, dark secret?”

      Amanda shrugged. “Oh, nothing. I just...” She stopped. Tessie would see through her in a second. “I ran into Ethan Trask,” she admitted wryly. “Literally! Well, I almost ran into him. Actually, we almost ran into each other. Neither of us was watching where we were going—him driving, me walking.”

      Tessie lifted an eyebrow at her unaccustomed inarticulateness. To complete her humiliation, Amanda felt herself flush. And she was a person who never flushed.

      Tessie’s eyes widened. “I’ve heard that he lives up to his reputation. Plus he’s even better-looking than his picture. Must be true,” she decided.

      “It’s not that at all,” Amanda declared. “He almost ran me down in his car just now! Anyone would be upset.”

      “Would anyone peek out the window to see what he did next?”

      “I was merely—”

      “Watching to see what he did next?”

      “My behavior is strictly in the best interest of my client. Ethan Trask is the enemy. I was conducting a little surveillance, that’s all.”

      “Did you learn anything?” Tessie asked dryly.

      Had she learned anything? Amanda couldn’t answer truthfully. How did she explain that despite the man’s determination to prosecute her grandfather, she found him fascinating? He was so self-contained, so controlled. He barely ever smiled, and when he did, his lips made only the faintest movement, as if they were unaccustomed to the motion. His decisive intensity acted on her like a magnet, drawing her to him. When he first jumped out of the car to see if she was hurt, she had seen genuine concern in his eyes. But the hard, no-nonsense edge had soon returned. Which was the real man? she wondered. And should she care?

      “He signaled properly before pulling into traffic,” she murmured in answer to her secretary’s challenge.

      “That must have been a big disappointment.”

      “Not really,” Amanda claimed. “Not when I’m looking for keys to his psyche.”

      Tessie rolled her eyes. “That’s a bunch of baloney and you know it.”

      “It never hurts to be prepared.”

      Tessie snorted as she twisted back around. She hadn’t believed Amanda, hadn’t believed anything she’d said. Amanda recognized the fact and knew that she would have to live with it. Just as she knew that, whether she liked it or not, every time she went near Ethan Trask something seemed to happen to her internal balance wheel, and her equilibrium went right out the window.

      So...how was she going to spend the next eight to ten hours? By preparing an argument that she hoped would allow her to continue to pit herself against him in a courtroom. Did that make sense? No. But these weren’t ordinary times. And it was her grandfather, not to mention the rest of her family, who would pay if she allowed any kind of reckless emotion to get in the way of what she had to do.

      Reckless emotion! Her? Amanda almost laughed. She had always been the steadiest of the Baron crew. The middle child. The one who had never caused anyone a moment’s worry. Good, steady Amanda. Amanda, who had suffered quietly when her father had committed suicide. She still sometimes felt as if she’d never get over his death, yet she hadn’t gone off the rails like Liza and Jeff. Reckless emotion?

      Amanda closed herself into the pseudowomb of her office. This was her domain. In here, she was in charge. She had hung every picture, arranged every book.

      Her gaze drifted to the newspaper photograph of Ethan Trask. Since she had left the room earlier—how long ago was that, a hundred years?—the dart had fallen from his nose. Gravity had pulled it to the floor.

      Gravity, magnetism...

      Amanda snatched the photograph from the wall and crumpled it in her fist.