Risking It All. Beverly Bird

your point?”

      “You don’t believe me. That ah was a classic measure of salt.”

      That was an expression she knew. Grace clenched her jaw until it hurt. “My belief or lack thereof is not the issue here.”

      “Of course it is. It’s the crux of the whole thing. It’s what stands between me keeping you or firing you.”

      “We’ve been through all that.”

      He grinned again. This time, she thought, it was the look of a wolf scenting prey. “No, honey, we haven’t.”

      The tension in her jaw was giving her a headache. A worse headache, she amended. “Stop calling me that.”

      “What you need to relax you is some Jameson’s,” he decided.

      Arguing with him would get her nowhere. She already knew that. Grace told herself that that was why she clamped her jaw shut again and let him get up from the table to make her a drink. His voice came back to her from the bar, warm as smoke now.

      “If you don’t know the difference between Jameson’s and Bushmills, the cola probably won’t throw you off too much,” he commented.

      “I never said I didn’t know the difference between Jameson’s and Bushmills.”

      “This may come as a shock to you—lady—but you’re as transparent as a hooker’s negligee.”

      It was her curse, Grace thought. She’d escaped Maruja to come to America and her cross to bear for that was going to be a lifetime of weird analogies—first Jenny’s and now this man’s. The difference was that Jenny’s made a kind of sweet, warped sense, and McKenna’s were…heated.

      She wasn’t sure what bothered her most—that heated reference or the fact that he thought she was transparent. Grace went for the latter and set about contradicting it.

      “You see what I want you to see,” she told him.

      He brought her the drink. Grace took the glass and sipped, choking as the fire went down.

      “Whoa,” McKenna said.

      Grace bore down hard on her breath. “I like Jameson’s.”

      He gave that laugh again.

      She couldn’t do this, Grace thought desperately. She could handle the crime he was accused of. She could handle his total disrespect for the situation he was in, and she could even handle his innuendos if she had to. But she could not handle that whiskey-rich laugh.

      “You’re going to say ‘stop it’ again, aren’t you?” He sat and watched her. He was amused. “Or ‘shut up.’”

      “It never occurred to me.” Grace took more whiskey.

      “What is it about me that bothers you so much?”

      “Wait. Hold on. Let me find my list.” She bit her tongue as soon as she said it, because it made him laugh again. “Please, I just want to do my job here and go home.”

      He relaxed in his chair. “Let’s get back to the discussion of whether or not you even have a job—with me, that is.”

      Every time he said that, it made her blood chill. Yes, Grace thought, yes, she had to fix that little issue right off the bat. “Are you telling me the truth?” she asked. “About being framed?”

      “My ma would kick my butt for lying.”

      “I’ve never met your mother, so I’ll settle for a simple yes or no here.”

      “Then yes. I am telling the truth.” This time, when he got up, he brought the whole pint of Jameson’s back to the table, along with another bottle of cola. He topped his glass off with both of them. “But that isn’t the issue. The issue is that you don’t believe me.”

      Grace sat back in her chair and gave him a level look. “Do you believe it?”

      He frowned. “What kind of question is that?”

      “Answer it.”

      “Okay, sure, I believe I’m being framed. I am being framed.”

      “Good. Fine.” She sat forward again and began tapping on the keyboard, opening a file for her McKenna notes. “Then I’m your lawyer. Let’s put that aside now and tell me why someone would frame you.”

      “Clarify why we’re putting the issue of my representation aside.”

      “Because you believe you’re innocent. You’d therefore want the best representation money can buy in order to prove it.”

      “And that’s you?”

      “Gosh. I just knew you weren’t stupid.”

      “You’re a rookie.”

      “I work for Russell and Lutz. Nobody gets hired by Russell and Lutz unless they’re ace.”

      He stared at her for a long moment, then slowly he nodded. He gave her the point. If he was innocent, he was going to need the best representation money could buy, and that was exactly what he had unless he canned her or asked for someone else in the firm, and he didn’t have five-hundred-and-up an hour to spend on that.

      “Let me start by telling you why someone would frame me,” he said finally. Then he tilted his head to the side and studied her. “Maybe I’m just a sucker for a pretty face.”

      He’d pulled her right in, Grace realized. Her whole body stiffened in reaction. She’d thought he was finally ready and willing to talk to her. Instead he was playing games again.

      She slapped her laptop shut and stood. “Enjoy your three squares. I hear the baloney sandwiches are great at the penitentiary.”

      “Was it something I said?” he asked.

      Grace headed for the door. “I’m not going to beg you to let me save your sorry backside.”

      “Now, now. No disparaging of body parts. I’ve been very complimentary of yours.”

      She felt her blood pressure spike. “So I’m ungrateful, too.”

      He nodded. “And prickly.”

      “You said argumentative earlier.” This was the craziest conversation she’d ever had. Why was she discussing anything with him? She’d had every intention of sailing out the door, but somehow she’d stalled.

      Of course, Lutz was on the other side of that door, somewhere in Philadelphia. If she left here, sooner or later she’d have to face him and tell him that she had walked out on McKenna. She had a mental image of dollar bills fluttering away on the wind. Grace’s fingers tightened on her laptop handle.

      “I am a sucker for a pretty face,” McKenna said, feigning indignation.

      “Oh, yes. I can tell. You’ve been jumping through hoops to do my bidding since I met you.”

      “I wasn’t talking about your face.”

      It took the wind right out of her. Grace frowned as she turned back to him. “My face is pretty.”

      “Damned tootin’.”

      Damned what? “What kind of expression is that?” One she’d apparently missed in her pursuit of quirky Americanisms, she thought.

      He was looking at her oddly. She’d just come unconscionably close to doing something she never did, Grace realized. She’d almost revealed her remaining ignorance of a few scant aspects of this incredible United States of America.

      She’d lost her accent. She had never completely lost her befuddlement.

      Grace went back to the table slowly. “Whose face were you talking about?”

      “Katherine Cross.”

      “And