“If you think that’s the only choice, I guess there’s nothing else to do. I don’t want to go to prison,” he said, sounding anxious finally.
“You’ll have to behave if you’re on probation, though. If you get caught with drugs again, and arrested, they’ll send you right to prison for probation violation. We have a shot at probation this time because it’s your first arrest.”
“I know,” he said soberly. “I get it.”
“Let me talk to the assistant DA assigned to the case, and see what I can do.” She had very little to bargain with. He wasn’t gainfully employed or a solid citizen. He was from a well-known family, which no one cared about, and had been caught with drugs.
“What about our lunch?” Zach asked before she could hang up.
“I never agreed to lunch with you,” she reminded him.
“Yes, you did,” he teased her, putting the charm on her full blast. “Or you should have. Come on, let’s go to lunch. We can discuss my case if that will make you feel better.”
“I’ll call you after I speak to the assistant DA,” she said coldly, ignoring his invitation, and ended the call.
It took her two days to reach the assistant DA assigned to Zach’s case, and he didn’t sound interested in making a deal with her.
“Why should I make a deal with you?” he said bluntly. “We got the guy cold. We both know he was selling or planning to. The guy’s a jerk, he’s some spoiled boy who never grew up, he’s probably been dealing on a small scale for years and just never got caught. And you know he’s going to do it again.”
“Then you can put him in prison next time. The prisons are full of guys a lot worse. You said it yourself, he’s small-time. You’re not putting away some danger to society. You’ve taught him a lesson. He gets it. I doubt he’ll do it again.”
“You’re lying to me, counselor, and you know it. He’s probably been dealing again since he got out of jail on this arrest.” She hoped it wasn’t true, but knew it was possible.
She decided to try another tack. “You and I have more important things to do than waste our time on a case like this. You have real criminals to put away, and I need to do my job. Why spend months going to trial when he’s willing to plead for probation?” There was silence on the other end because the assistant DA knew she was right. He did have bigger fish to fry. And Zach Holbrook wasn’t really a danger to anyone but himself.
“I’ll think about it and let you know,” he said, and called her a week later, after the Labor Day weekend. He had just gotten three big cases, and he knew Izzie had a point. He didn’t need a small-time case like this. It was easier to just plead it out. “Okay. If he pleads guilty, we’ll reduce it to a misdemeanor and give him probation. Two years. And if he screws up again, we’ll send him away.”
“Sounds like a deal to me.” And if Zach did screw up again, it wouldn’t be her problem, and they could assign him to someone else.
“I’ll have the papers drawn up and you can bring him in to plead.”
“Just say when, and I’ll have him there.” She hoped she was telling the truth and that Zach would have the brains to show up. If not, the DA would be pissed and so would she, and the deal would be off.
“Sometime next week,” the DA said. “We’ll let you know.”
“Thank you,” Izzie said sincerely. They were both happy to get rid of the case. As soon as she hung up, she called Zach on his cell. He said he was in the Hamptons, and she told him not to go anywhere until the plea bargain was complete. He promised not to and didn’t mention lunch again. He sounded busy when she called, and she didn’t care.
The following week, as soon as she was notified by the DA’s office, she called Zach and told him to meet her there, and on what day. He thanked her for doing a good job, and this time when he met her, he was on time, and wearing a suit, a white shirt, and a tie, he’d cut his hair, and he had shaved. He looked more like an attorney than a defendant. The meeting was over quickly. The plea bargain and probation were confirmed by the judge after Izzie entered the guilty plea for Zach. They didn’t assign him to drug rehab, because two random drug tests had come out clean. They assigned him a probation officer, whom he had to check in with once a month. The PO was a woman, and she was a little flustered when Zach turned the charm on her. He couldn’t help himself. It was how he related to women. And she was flattered by the attention. He was such a good-looking guy. Other than that, Izzie was impressed by how circumspect he had been this time, and they shook hands outside the court. She was in a hurry to get back to her office for a meeting with her boss, and delighted that the case had been disposed of. Zach looked serious and appropriately chastened when he thanked her again.
“You did a great job,” he said seriously.
“There wasn’t much I could do. You need to stay out of trouble now, or they really will send you away,” she warned him.
“I know. I’m not crazy, and I don’t want to go to prison. How about lunch?” he asked her, cautiously this time. She was one of the few women he’d met who was impervious to his charm.
“I’m late for a meeting, I can’t. But thank you anyway.”
“What can I do to thank you?” he asked gratefully. She realized then that he had actually been scared, although it never showed. There was something vulnerable about him, which made her feel sorry for him again.
“You don’t owe me anything, Zach,” she said kindly. “I just did my job. I’m glad it worked out okay,” despite the guilty plea, but at least he wasn’t going to jail. And maybe he had learned a lesson from it. For his sake, she hoped that was the case.
“Would you ever have dinner with me?” he asked wistfully. It was hard for him to imagine that she would, and she seemed like she was about to say no. “You’re a nice person, and I’d just like to thank you.”
“Stay out of trouble,” she said, smiling at him. “That’s all the thanks I want.” And he looked so sad as he gazed at her like a big forlorn puppy that she didn’t have the heart to turn him down. “Sure, maybe we can have dinner sometime.” She didn’t really mean it, but didn’t know what else to say.
“How about tonight?”
She didn’t want to, but thought it might be easier to just do it and get it over with. Reluctantly, she said yes, and felt foolish as soon as she did.
“Sure. I have to make it early. I have a brief to write tonight,” she said sternly, to remind him that this was a business dinner and he was a client, not a date.
He suggested a restaurant she knew and liked close to her office, at seven-thirty, and after agreeing to meet him there, she jumped into a cab and went back to work. She felt faintly stupid for accepting the invitation, but it was two hours out of her life. And she forgot about him as soon as she got to the office, until she was ready to leave at seven o’clock, and then remembered her appointment with Zach. She brushed her hair and put on lipstick before she left her office, and walked to the restaurant carrying her briefcase with the work she had to do that night. It felt more like a nuisance to her than a date. And he was still wearing the suit and had taken off the tie when she arrived. He had a deep tan after the summer, and she couldn’t help but notice again how handsome he was.
She ordered a glass of wine, and he ordered a scotch and water after they sat down, and he was predictably adept at drawing her out in conversation. He was at ease with people, especially with women.
“Married?” he asked her as they sipped their drinks, and she shook her head. She didn’t tell him about the broken engagement, and the guy who’d broken her heart and married someone else. But she looked serious for a moment and then took another sip of her wine and relaxed.
“No, single,” she confirmed. She knew he was single from the court papers and probation report.
“I lived with a woman for two years. She had a kid who was like my son. We broke up and she moved to L.A. She’s married now. I haven’t seen the boy since she left. It was nice for a while, though.” Everything in his life wa
s transitory, and she suspected he didn’t want the responsibility that went with a solid life. “Why is a beautiful woman like you single?” he asked her with a dazzling smile as he nursed his scotch, and changed the subject back to her.
“I’m not the marrying kind,” she said easily. It had been her pat answer for the last two years, and made getting dumped seem better.
“You just haven’t met the right guy,” he said confidently, as though he might be it, which seemed laughable considering how they’d met. “My guess is you work too hard.”
“Probably. I enjoy what I do,” and then she laughed. “When I’m not doing pro bono criminal work, which doesn’t happen too often. I’m a corporate lawyer, which is more interesting to me.” It wasn’t his idea of fun, but it clearly was to her. She was wearing the dark gray suit she had worn for court, and it looked like a uniform she was comfortable in.
“I’d love to get you out to East Hampton sometime,” he said. “It’s so relaxing there at my grandmother’s place.”
“How is she, by the way?”
“She’s better. She’s staying in Palm Beach for the winter. She’s going to let me stay in East Hampton this year. It’s great there in the winter. I can walk on the beach and think. I go fishing every day. And I love to sail.” It sounded like a wholesome life to her, unlike the felony charges against him, which were a different story. But maybe that had been an aberration and what he was describing was the real guy. He was a man of many facets, not just the criminal she had represented.
She was surprised by how pleasant dinner was, talking to him. He was easygoing and relaxed, respectful and funny, and incredibly smart. It seemed too bad that he had never gone to college, found work he wanted to do, or had parents who cared about him when he was young. He might have done more with his life than being a beach bum at his grandmother’s house and dealing drugs. He insisted on paying for dinner, and was polite and considerate when he put her in a cab, and he looked at her through the open window and thanked her for having dinner with him.
“I’d really like to see you again sometime,” he said and looked as though he meant it, and for an instant, she felt the same way. She nodded and then the cab drove away, while she remembered things he had said during dinner. He seemed like such a reasonable person and a kind man. And it was a strange twist of fate that their paths had crossed. She was glad she had kept him out of jail. He surely didn’t belong there, and as the cab took her to her apartment, she couldn’t help thinking that Zach Holbrook was a guy who deserved a real chance, and she hoped he’d get one, and turn his life around. If he’d had a caring family, like hers, his life could have been so different. She was still thinking about him when she walked into her apartment, turned on the lights, took off her jacket, and sat down at her desk. She pulled her files out of her briefcase. She had hours of work ahead of her, but she couldn’t help thinking about how surprisingly pleasant and intelligent Zach had turned out to be. It had been the best evening she’d had in two years. And then she buried herself in the brief she had to write. But strange as it was, her dinner with Zach Holbrook had been a breath of fresh air, and gave her hope that there were still nice men in the world. He made it easy to forget his foolish mistake.
Chapter 3
Izzie heard from Zach a week later, and she knew she’d been thinking of him more than she should have been. Something about their evening together had made her feel human and like a woman again. He was handsome and sexy, but his gentleness and honesty were what had appealed to her. Being with him was so much less complicated than with the men she knew, who were always in competition with her. Zach had no ax to grind, and he was so open and real about everything that she couldn’t imagine him running off with some debutante, like her fiancé. Nothing impressed him because of where he came from, and he had nothing to prove. He didn’t care about any of the status symbols other men his age were chasing. All he wanted, he had said at dinner, was a good woman who was the real deal. As she was, he was fed up with phonies and fakes. Izzie had been engaged to a man who had turned out to be both, and was in hot pursuit of all the trappings of success. The girl he had married had been just another step up on the ladder he was so desperate to climb. Zach didn’t care about any of it. And when he invited her to East Hampton for the day, Izzie accepted. They had spoken on the phone several times by then, and she liked him, and his texts made her laugh. His arrest seemed so completely not a part of who Zach was that she didn’t care about it anymore. And no one had to know. She had seen at their second meeting how respectably he could behave. And when he picked her up at the train station in East Hampton, she was happy to see him. He had come to the station in a beautiful old Buick his grandmother kept in the garage. It was in mint condition.
They had a fantastic time swimming in the ocean. He took her fishing off a point near his grandmother’s home, which was an elegant old house. He was healthy and athletic. There were a caretaker and housekeeper at the house, but they were off for the weekend, and Zach had made her lunch himself. They walked along the beach at sunset, and he wanted to take her out on his small sailboat, but the sea was rough. Instead they went to Montauk and explored the lighthouse and had dinner at a noisy restaurant where the food was delicious. She had never had as good a time with any man in her life, or felt as at ease. And although she was usually cautious and somewhat distant on first dates, he kissed her before she left, and she had never felt as hungry for any man in her life. Maybe because it had been two years since she’d liked or trusted a man. Zach melted her ordinarily cool reserve with the searing, white-hot force of his kiss. He was very sensual and stirred something in her that she had never felt before. All the pent-up emotions of the past two years came rushing out, and she could hardly bring herself to leave his arms. He stood waving at her as the train pulled out of the station on its way back to the city, and he called her as soon as she got home.
“Wow, what happened right before you left? I felt like an avalanche had hit me.” He sounded as shaken by it as she was, and he went to New York to see her the following night. They were going to go to dinner and a movie, and wound up in her bed instead, and he never left. She went to work the next morning, feeling like she’d been reborn, and he was waiting for her at her apartment when she got home. He cooked her dinner and they could hardly wait to get back to bed. He was the most powerfully sexual man she had ever known. He spent the week with her, and they went back to East Hampton for the weekend.
Justin called her on Saturday morning, when she and Zach were about to go out on his boat. Her brother wanted to know how she was, because he knew that weekends were lonely for her. She told him she was in the Hamptons. He was surprised, since she had seemed down when she’d visited him in Vermont.
“Well, that’s good to hear. How did that happen?”
“I’m staying with friends.” She sounded happy and relaxed, and promised to call him on Sunday night when she got home. After they hung up, Justin commented to Richard that it was the best he had heard her sound in two years, and maybe she was coming back after all her anger and bitterness over the broken engagement. He felt like the sister he knew and loved was back.
“Maybe she’s in love,” Richard suggested, though he didn’t really believe it. Justin’s sister had been so shut down for so long that he thought it would take a long time for her to come alive again. But if she was happier now, for whatever reason, he was glad, and he knew Justin worried about her. They both agreed that it would take a remarkable man to make Izzie trust someone again.
For the next several weekends, Izzie went to East Hampton with Zach. They cooked together and walked on the beach, sailed his boat, and spent quiet nights by the fire in his grandmother’s luxurious home. It was all like a dream, and a new experience for her to abandon herself to a man, even her ex-fiancé. And as an added bonus, their passion for each other seemed to be limitless. He came into the city to be with her during the week, and hung around at home or met up with friends while she worked. E
ven her mother noticed a new lilt in her voice when they talked. She didn’t want to pry but said something to Julie when she dropped by the store.
“Is anything happening with Izzie?” Kate asked discreetly. She knew she wasn’t privy to all her children’s secrets anymore, and she didn’t try to be. They had a right to their adult lives.
“No, not that I know of. Why?” Julie didn’t know about Zach either. Izzie hadn’t told anyone, and didn’t want to yet. She wanted to keep the magic of their relationship to herself, and the circumstances surrounding it would be hard to explain. She wanted to protect it for now, since it was so new.
“She sounds great,” Kate said, looking pleased, and mentioned it to her mother when they had lunch.
“I hope it’s not some rebound romance,” Grandma Lou said wisely. “She’s been so locked up and down on everyone for so long, she’s liable to go off like a rocket for the wrong guy.”
Kate shook her head. “That’s not Izzie’s style. She’s too sensible for that.” Kate had faith in her children and knew them well. And Izzie was the most levelheaded of the four.
“Those are the ones it happens to. She was hit so hard when Andrew walked away and married that girl. And it’s taken her a long time to come back. I hope you’re right and she’s finally thawing out. I just hope it’s with the right guy,” Louise said with a determined look.
“I don’t even know if it is a guy. Maybe she’s just happy at work. But she sounds terrific, and she said something about going to East Hampton for the weekend,” Kate explained. “She said it was to visit friends.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Grandma Lou said, trying to reassure them both. She had great faith in Kate’s children, but she was also realistic about the pitfalls of life. Their mother still worried about them all the time, and sometimes forgot that they were grown up. She was concerned about Julie working too hard and not having a boyfriend, and about Izzie not getting over her broken heart. She was happy about Justin and Richard and thought they were a good match and a great couple. And she was mildly concerned about Willie’s flock of girlfriends and overactive sex life and hoped he didn’t get one of them pregnant. They were all on the right path with their careers, but with the exception of Justin, none had settled their personal lives yet, and it sometimes kept her awake at night, worrying about them, just as it did Kate.
Against All Odds Page 4
