The bar is pretty low, she thought wryly to herself as she adjusted the placement of her purse. She avoided looking at her phone to see what time it was. She’d gotten to the restaurant ten minutes early which was a mistake because now she had been waiting ten minutes just to get to seven o’ clock. All he has to do is show up, be polite and not be married!
It had to be better than the last times she had dated. Well. There had only been three times, really. Each time she went out with someone, they became her boyfriend. And then turned out to be a terrible piece of shit.
Calvin had made her feel like she was special and mature when she was at law school, she being sixteen and he being twenty-four. He broke up with her because she refused to have sex with him—reminding him that it was the law and he could get charged with statutory rape since she was a minor.
Then there was Martin, who cheated on her and told her it was her fault because she was too fat, and he liked her personality but “needed” someone hotter physically to get him going.
And finally, Justin. Who told her he was divorced. Who proposed to her. Who lived with her for two years while he was “between jobs” and whom she had strived hard every day to be supportive to, so he wouldn’t sink deeper into the depression that always left him angry and tired. Who ended up still married with yet another side piece funneling him money.
Maybe it’s because they were all Tin Men, she thought humorlessly.
From where she was sitting, she could see the door to the restaurant. It opened and she straightened, her heart leaping into her throat though it was barely seven o’clock. Her eyes widened when she saw the person who came in.
Of course, there was no way she could ever forget the face of Kavan McBride. Not when she had stared at him for so long during his trial. Even then, she had hated how attractive he was. Bronzed skin, dark hair, incredibly soulful eyes. The way he moved was as graceful and powerful as a lion, which was ironic considering he was a wolf shifter.
Valerie’s hands clenched around her purse. Could it be a coincidence that he was here? McBride had never seemed to hold his conviction against her. As far as criminals went, he took it all in stride. He never made any threats, which was unusual when she put someone away for life. When he talked with the press, he never pretended like he was unjustly imprisoned and never said anything about her.
Now, she wondered if it had all been a ploy. If he knew he was going to get out of jail and now he’d come looking for her, so that he could get his revenge. What better way to stop the cops from coming after him when she was dead than to never have threatened her at all?
He stopped at the front desk and the hostess waved him to follow her. They headed straight for where Valerie sat and she ducked her head, trying to hide her face.
He wore a red shirt fitted across his broad shoulders and tight jeans that suited the atmosphere just right somehow. And he carried in his hand a single white rose. Valerie’s head came up again and her eyes widened. McBride froze a few meters away. His gaze flickered to the book on the table—The Phantom of the Opera—and then to the white rose she wore in her hair.
Oh, God.
This could not be happening.
It was a nightmare.
Kavan McBride could not be the man that she had arranged to meet here!
The hostess smiled brightly at her, apparently not noticing their mutual distress. “Your date has arrived.” She gave Valerie a subtle thumbs up and wink. “Your server will be with you shortly.”
McBride sat heavily across from her. As the hostess walked away, they stared at one another. How rude would it be, Valerie wondered, if she just got up and walked away? Surely the rules of etiquette didn’t apply when the person she was meeting was not only a convicted felon but someone she had personally sentenced to life in jail, only for him to get out of said sentencing because of quibbles in the law that, in all truthfulness, didn’t make much sense?
He was the first to speak. “What are you doing here, dressed like that?”
His tone made her bristle. She flipped the book over, even though she already knew he’d gotten a good look at the cover. “I’m just here having dinner by myself.”
“And you’re dressed up because?”
“This is not dressed up.” She gave him a cold gaze. “Besides which, even if it was, then I’d be dressed up because I felt like dressing up and putting on some sexy lipstick. Sometimes I just want to look good for me, you know. It’s not all about men.”
“Did I say it was?” he shot back. “If you’re here alone, why did the hostess say that your date was here? And for that matter, why didn’t you tell her that you were here alone?”
Valerie’s cheeks flushed as she glowered at him. Now was not the time to be embarrassed. So, the dating agency fucked up and matched her with Kavan McBride of all people. They need to do better background checks on their members. They are going to get an angry letter from me tonight. She was not going to let this mistake ruin her night. She was going to send McBride off, and then she was going to have a lovely dinner all by herself.
“I don’t know why she thought it was me,” Valerie said stiffly. “But I am here on my own and I haven’t been waiting for anybody.”
The server came over, smiling brightly. “I see your date has arrived. Were you waiting for anybody else?”
Valerie ground her teeth together.
“We’re not waiting for anybody else,” McBride said.
“And he’s not my date,” Valerie bit out. Which was, honestly, not going to help her case at all. She had told the hostess and the server that she was waiting for a date. She shouldn’t have done that. Now she just looked like an idiot.
The server looked a little startled but kept her expression positive and professional. “Can I start you off with anything to drink?”
“A glass of white wine, please,” Valerie said. She wasn’t going to let McBride ruin her night. No, she was still going to have a lovely night; she was going to drink some wine, eat some good food and order dessert. Make that two desserts! Her doctor did say he was concerned about her weight loss, after all.
“Water,” McBride said. “No ice.”
Valerie fought to keep herself from glaring at him. So he was going to stay, was he? Well, that was just fine. She didn’t care. She could ignore him. Although she had to wonder why he was only getting water. He seemed more like a whiskey on the rocks kind of guy.
He probably has more than enough alcohol at home, she sniffed to herself.
“So. You’re my blind date. I have to say, it’s rather… ironic. I guess algorithms don’t know when two people should not be matched.”
Valerie saw no point in continuing the lie that she had meant to have dinner alone. “It completely ignored my requests, too. I specifically said I didn’t like a man with tattoos and you’re a freaking gallery.”
None of his tattoos were visible now, but she remembered them. The tribal patterns winding down his arms. The list of names on the inside of his wrist. Names, she was certain, of people he had killed. Thinking about that now made her blood run cold.
McBride laughed. “That’s what is bothering you about this situation? That I have tattoos?”
“I’m just saying, if Lizzie Hendrix is letting criminals sign up with her agency, the least she could do is design algorithms that take note of things that people actually say and not match a tattoo hater with someone covered in them.”
McBride shrugged. “I guess it matched us up on more important issues. Maybe it saw that we were both interested in the justice system.”
Valerie slumped back in her chair. So much for ignoring him. So much for having a night with a good dinner and two desserts just for her. She grabbed her purse and rooted around in it for the money she needed to pay for the stupid wine she ordered but wasn’t going to be able to drink.
“You can have the table if you want,” she told McBride as she pulled out the money and tossed it onto the table. “I see no reason why I should stay
here any longer. And believe me, I am going to be lodging a complaint about this. So whatever account you have, you might want to open another one under another fake name.”
“Hey,” McBride protested, standing as she stood, “I didn’t sign up with a fake anything. And if you’d bothered to look at my past, you’ll know that I have never been so much as suspected of hurting a woman. That’s not my style. I certainly wouldn’t lure you or anyone else on a date to hurt them. I wasn’t planning on hiding anything from my date tonight. We both know I’m going back to jail, and I was going to be completely honest about that. All I was looking for tonight was some company.”
She almost believed him.
Almost.
“Since we’re both here…” McBride’s brow furrowed. “Maybe we could actually talk about my case? There’s no reason I should have been released, and I’m curious about how I got out. Maybe you could shed some light on the subject.”
Valerie hesitated. He looked so genuine about it. But she owed him nothing. She leaned over the table, pressing both her hands to it as she glared at him with all the force she could muster. “You belong in jail. There is nothing else to talk about.”
She spun on her heel, knocked into the server and apologized even as she fled for the door.
Chapter Three
Camille put a chicken Caesar salad in front of Valerie, glaring at her when Valerie tried to protest that she wasn’t hungry.
“You’ve been here since before I arrived, and I haven’t seen you eat anything all day.” Camille put her hands on her hips. “And since you all but admitted that you skipped dinner last night because of your disastrous date, I am not leaving this spot until you’ve eaten that full thing.”
Valerie nodded reluctantly. Her stomach growled something fierce, and she was starting to feel dizzy and short-tempered from hunger. Camille was right. She needed to eat, and this was about as appetizing as anything else. It only took a few bites for her mouth to realize that it was as hungry as her stomach, and she began to eat voraciously. When she was done with the salad, Camille gave her a small pasta dish. Soon enough, Valerie was finished eating and feeling much better for it.
“Thanks,” Valerie said gratefully, smiling at Camille. “I needed that.”
“I know you did.” Camille settled down in the chair across from her. “Now why don’t you tell me more about your date, other than it being a disaster?”
Valerie sighed. She had been trying not to think about it at all, preferring to get actual work done but she had been more or less unsuccessful in that endeavor. She folded her hands on her desk and explained everything that had happened, from the time Kavan showed up to when she left.
To her dismay, Camille started giggling.
“It’s not funny,” Valerie said. “Do you know what the governor would do to me if he found out I had gone on a date with a criminal, even if it was unintentional?”
“Yeah, that’s not funny,” Camille agreed, “but the fact that this agency paired you with Kavan McBride? That’s hilarious.”
Valerie glared at her.
“Hey, at least he’s hot, right?”
Valerie glared harder.
Camille only smiled back, a glint in her eye saying that she wasn’t going to just let this go. And Valerie had to admit, now that she thought about it, laughing at the situation was better than being upset over it. She cracked a grin as she nodded. “That’s true. He is hot. If he wasn’t a criminal and covered in tattoos, I might actually give him a shot.”
“Oooh, that’s not fair at all!” Camille pressed her hands to the desk. “Rejecting a man over his tattoos? I’d understand if he had naked women plastered all over him, but Kavan’s are artistic and tasteful.”
“I don’t like tattoos.”
“And why’s that?”
Valerie thought of the ink spread over Kavan’s rippling muscles and caught herself getting a little warm under the collar. She cleared her throat, avoiding Camille’s eye, and mumbled, “They make him look like a hooligan.”
“Valerie Gilson!” Camille pressed her hands to her mouth in mock shock. “I never thought I’d hear you say something so prejudiced. Shame on you! Haven’t you ever heard the saying, don’t judge a book by its cover?”
Valerie opened her mouth to retort but before she could, the door to the waiting room opened. Her mouth dried as Kavan McBride himself came in. He wore a suit. Cheap, off the rack but it fit him well enough. The cut emphasized the breadth of his shoulders, which tapered to his waist and gave him an impressive cut. She found her heart beating faster and swallowed hard.
“Camille,” she hissed, but Camille was already heading out.
She shut the door behind her, and Valerie quickly stashed the dirty dishes away and checked her face in the mirror. She dabbed the tomato sauce from her lips, reapplied lipstick and pulled on her judges’ robes again before patting her hair back into place. Once she was seated again, she pressed a button on her intercom, indicating to Camille that she could let Kavan in now.
The door opened and Kavan came in. With his lawyer, Mr. Caleb Friction. Valerie fought to keep a look of surprise off her face. She stood, nodded in greeting to both of them and addressed Caleb.
“We didn’t have an appointment.”
“No.” The lawyer looked rather pleased with himself as he settled down. “I just wanted to come over and let you know what was going on with the retrial.”
“Got another delay, did you?” Valerie shot back, keeping herself relaxed.
Why Caleb seemed to be so delighted to rub her face in the fact that her ruling was overturned for stupid reasons, she didn’t know. It wasn’t as though they had anything to do with each other outside of this case. She wondered, idly, if he was one of the people who bought into the whole ‘she hates shifters’ rhetoric that was going around, despite the fact that she consistently gave shifters lighter sentences than her peers and threw out cases that were obvious attacks.
Even her ruling with Finnegan ended with the media saying that she had only done it for peer pressure and because she wanted to ‘trick’ people into thinking she cares.
“I’ve found a flaw in the warrant that you issued against my client—” Caleb started.
“I want to talk to the judge alone,” Kavan interrupted.
Caleb turned, looking surprised. Valerie met Kavan’s eye and felt her cheeks start to flush. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here, and yet he was also staring at her with such concentration that it unnerved her. Valerie fought to control her reaction. Usually, she had no problem brushing off uncomfortable attention, but this wasn’t exactly… uncomfortable. At least, not in the way she normally would have thought.
“Kavan, I would advise against—”
“I know.” Kavan waved off Caleb. “But I want to talk with her alone.”
“I’m fine with that,” Valerie said.
Caleb looked between them for a moment, his brow furrowed. Soon enough, though, he shrugged and stood. He patted Kavan’s shoulder, whispered in his ear and reluctantly left the two of them alone. Valerie studied Kavan. His shoulders were tight, his eyes hard and there was a strange pinch to his brow.
“Well?” Valerie asked. “What did you want to speak to me about?”
“I…” Kavan dropped his gaze. When he looked back up, though, his gaze was even more intense. So much so that Valerie had to stifle the urge to gasp. “I wanted to apologize.”
Her mind flashed to the previous night, and she pressed her lips tight together to avoid telling him it wasn’t his fault at all. She nodded at him to continue. As a judge, she had to be seen as in control and confident at all times. This was doubly so when there were people like the governor out there who thought that a woman as young as she was with her political leanings had no right to be a judge in the first place.
“This case…” Kavan waved a hand in the air and shrugged. “I honestly did not expect that any of this would happen. I never thought that I’d be let out o
f jail. And even if I had hoped for it, I never wanted it to hurt your career.”
“That is… unexpected to hear.”
Kavan shrugged again. “There is a reason I didn’t fight all that hard, you know. The trial, the sentencing.”
Valerie nodded. She had suspected that, at least. “I figured it was because you messed up somehow and Lancaster told you to take the fall for someone else. I know that what you did was attributed to Philip King before he ended up with his millionaire wife.”
“Philip wanted out of the Family.” Stress crept into Kavan’s voice. “He has a daughter who needs her father, and he was fighting to get free. But that’s not the only reason why I took the fall for him, and it’s not like everything I was accused of was his.”
Valerie was silent, too surprised by his confession to say anything. She wished she had a recording going but then Caleb would find a way to use that against her, anyway. Or did Kavan have the recording and he was going to release it to hurt her career?
But no. For one thing, it wouldn’t do much, unless he was expecting to cry foul at her for not using the confession against him. Besides, if he did release the information it would hurt his friend. That wasn’t Kavan’s style.
“Then why did you take the fall for him, Kavan? You said it wasn’t the only reason. So… what else?”
Kavan shrugged again. He sighed. “I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
Kavan studied her intently before nodding. “I was afraid Lancaster would tell me to kill him. Philip was only in danger to begin with because he refused to kill Lizzie. But I was the one who was sent to kill her in the first place. And I don’t know if I would have if Philip and Bethany hadn’t been there. In any case, you’re right. I messed up because I didn’t follow orders. So, I figured, if I went to jail and took some of the heat off of one of the Godfather’s favorites, well… it’d help my case, at least. And if I could get Philip free at the same time…”
The Shifter's Fake Fiancé Page 3
