Advice of Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 1)

by Trueman, Debra

“Now, why would I do that?” I asked her.

  “Because I like you more than you like me,” she said, then she stomped her foot. “I hate it when that happens!”

  “Yeah, that’s the worst. I’m just glad it’s you and not me.” I ran my fingers through that incredible hair and looked at her. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever laid eyes on. “We better get out of here before you attack me.”

  Landra threw her head back and laughed. “Take me to my party!” She hooked her arm around mine and walked so close to me all the way to the car that I was almost tripping over her feet.

  The party was held at a mansion in Terrell Hills, an upscale old neighborhood where a lot of San Antonio’s founders had settled. It was a black-and-white affair, with the city’s elite getting a chance to show off their diamonds and furs. The smell of perfume and hairspray belted me as soon as I walked into the large foyer and a woman standing by swooped over to take Landra’s coat. I held Landra’s elbow as we walked into the main living area of the mansion, mainly because I wanted to occupy my hand so it didn’t stray to her back again.

  There was a huge array of foods spread out in different areas of the house. A woman at one station was making shrimp fritters; another was making fresh corn tortilla quesadillas. There were three separate buffet tables, one serving Italian cuisine, one French and the other Mexican. The centerpiece of the main dessert table was a champagne fountain, and it wasn’t the cheap stuff. It was surrounded with bite-size pastries, pies and cakes, and chocolate dipped fruit with bowls of whipped cream and different sauces. We made our way around the house talking to a couple of people that either Landra or I knew, and ended up at a bar outside by the pool. I got a glass of champagne for Landra and a beer for myself, then we systematically hit each food line until we were stuffed to the gills. We’d settled outside to eat and we had just finished our third plate of food.

  “You ready for desert?” Landra asked.

  “Where are you putting all that food? Do you have a tapeworm?”

  “You’ve eaten as much as I have!” she said insulted.

  “Yeah, but I’m a lot bigger than you.”

  “Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean hungrier,” she countered. “Besides,” she said, nuzzling up to me, “I wanted to feed you a strawberry.”

  Just the thought gave me an erection. “I’m starving,” I said. I took her hand and led her back towards the house, but she pulled me to a stop before we got inside.

  “Thank you for coming tonight. I’m having a really good time with you.” She put her arm around my waist and hugged me, then she looked up at me like she was about to do something.

  “Don’t kiss me right now,” I warned.

  “Just a tiny one?” she teased.

  I was about to tell her that there was no such thing, when some guy came up and interrupted us and started talking to Landra. He was a good four inches taller than me, which would put him around 6’4”. I’ve never considered myself short and I’ve always been in decent shape, but next to him I felt almost wimpy.

  “Hi Landra. You look great,” he said. He literally looked her up and down and it really pissed me off.

  “Drake. This is Samuel Collins. Sam, this is Drake Reeds.”

  We shook hands and I immediately disliked him. You can tell a lot about a person by his handshake, and notwithstanding the guy’s size, he shook hands like a pansy. His palm was pliable and clammy. I felt like I needed to wash my hand.

  “How do you two know each other?” he asked me.

  Landra and I looked at each other then back to Drake. “We have mutual friends,” I told him, and I left it at that. He hung around for a couple more minutes while he and Landra talked about different people they both knew, then he left us in search of a gin and tonic. We made our way back inside towards the desert table, but were sidetracked again by an opposing counsel I was up against in a custody matter. We had talked for a couple of minutes when Landra leaned in and whispered that she was going to the ladies room and that she would meet me back there. I watched her walk off while I tried to concentrate on what the other lawyer was saying as he harped on and on about the merits of his case. Landra walked up the sweeping staircase out of my line of vision and I was just about to turn away when something caught the corner of my eye and I did a double-take. Drake Reeds was heading up the stairs behind her.

  Now, typically, I’m not a jealous man. And I don’t know if jealousy was what I was feeling right then or not, but I was definitely feeling something and it definitely didn’t feel good. I tried to put the thought of the two of them out of my mind, after all it was probably nothing, but for some reason I couldn’t let it go. I had long-since tuned out my opposing counsel and I realized he must have asked me a question because he was looking at me, waiting for me to answer.

  “I’m sorry. I thought I recognized someone over there. What was the question?”

  “Tuesday. Can you meet Tuesday to discuss it?”

  “Sure. Yeah, Tuesday’s fine. Just call Penny and let her know what time.”

  I hate talking business at parties and I finally managed to get away from the guy. It had been a good 15 minutes since Landra and Drake had disappeared. I made my way back to the bar and got another beer and was headed back to where Landra told me she’d meet me, when there was a tremendous noise outside like the sound of breaking glass and immediately afterward, a collective roar of people yelling and screaming. I headed in the direction of the commotion to see what had happened and I could see that there was someone lying on the ground beside the pool and people were looking up and pointing towards the second story of the house.

  “Call 911!” people were shouting.

  Apparently someone had fallen through the upstairs window and there was glass all over the patio. I could see a pool of blood underneath the person’s head and his legs were all twisted and contorted on the pavement. When the realization hit me, my blood went cold and my heart started thumping so hard I could literally feel it through my shirt. I was moving backward the first 10 feet or so while things sunk in, then I finally got my shit together and turned around and sprinted across the patio, through the house, and up the stairs as fast as I could go.

  “Landra!” I was shouting frantically before I even reached the top of the stairs. I stopped and got my bearings and headed in the direction of the room from where Drake had taken the dive. “Landra!” I kept calling out. There were so many rooms in the damn house that I was in and out of four of them before I came to the room with the broken window.

  She was sitting on the bed when I came in, holding the top of her dress in place where it had been ripped and she seemed to be in some catatonic state, rocking back and forth. She was trembling, staring out into nothing, and she had black eye makeup running down her cheeks from crying. Both of her upper arms had red welts on them and I could clearly make out finger marks on the right one. I wanted to run over and hold her, but I wasn’t exactly sure what she’d been through and I was afraid my approaching her would freak her out.

  “Landra, it’s Sam,” I said.

  She didn’t respond and I couldn’t tell if she even knew I was in the room. I could hear people coming down the hall so I waited until they got to the doorway and I held up my hand and motioned for them to be quiet. There were three men and a woman, and all of them stepped into the room and took in the scene. I noticed for the first time that a chair was overturned and that a large vase was broken on the floor. The woman gasped at the sight of Landra, and took off downstairs saying that her friend was a doctor. I turned my attention back to Landra.

  “Everything’s okay, Landra,” I told her. “I’m just going to come over there beside you.” I walked slowly across the room to the bed and then I knelt down in front of her. “Landra, can you hear me?”

  She wasn’t responding, and it was starting to scare me. I reached out and tilted her chin up so that I could look into her eyes. “Landra, its Sam. Come on, now. You’ve got to snap out of this. Come on,
Landra.” Nothing. “Landra!” I said louder. I took her by the shoulders and shook her and the jolt did the trick. The vacant stare was replaced by a look of confusion, then immediately by stark realization of what had just happened. She broke down sobbing uncontrollably. “It’s okay, Landra. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “He tried to rape me,” she sobbed.

  “It’s okay. He’s not going to hurt you any more.”

  At that point, two policemen walked in the room. The elder took one look at Landra and picked up his radio and stepped back out into the hall. The second officer approached us and I got up and took off my coat and wrapped it around Landra.

  “How is she?” the officer asked in a hushed tone.

  “I don’t know yet. She needs to get to a hospital.”

  “I’m going to need to ask her some questions. Are you her husband?”

  “No. I’m her friend. And her lawyer,” I added. “You can talk to her after she’s been checked out by a doctor.”

  Landra had been sitting there staring at the floor, still crying, but she looked up when I said that. “No, it’s all right. I’ll talk to him.”

  “I want to talk to her first,” I told the officer. I could tell he was miffed, but there was nothing he could do. “Could we have some privacy please?”

  “It’s okay Sam,” Landra said. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Landra, I’m speaking to you in my capacity as your attorney right now. And I’m telling you that you and I are going to talk in private before you speak to anyone. Do you understand?” She nodded her head without speaking. “Come on. We’ll go in the next room.”

  I helped her to her feet and she slipped her arms into the sleeves of my coat and wrapped it tightly around her body. I put my arm around her and led her to a bedroom across the hall and motioned for her to sit down in the only chair in the room, then I sat down on the bed facing her.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked her.

  “I’m okay,” she sniffed, but she wouldn’t even look at me.

  “Well, you don’t look like you’re okay,” I told her.

  “Is he dead?”

  “I think so.” I moved over in front of her and got down on my knee so that we were eye level. “What was your relationship with Drake Reeds?”

  “We dated.” Then she looked at me for the first time. “We were engaged.” She must have seen my shock because she immediately clarified, “We used to be engaged. We broke up back in November.” She was biting her bottom lip, trying not to cry.

  “All right, I want you to tell me exactly what happened up here and don’t leave anything out.”

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath before she started. “I came up here to use the restroom and someone was already in the one by the stairs, so I came down the hall to find another one. I guess Drake followed me up here because when I came out of the bathroom, he was in the room waiting for me. He grabbed my arm and tried to kiss me but I pushed him away. He said that he knew I wanted him and he started grabbing me and touching me and groping me. I was fighting to get away from him and I slapped him across the face and I think he just snapped. He reached out and ripped my dress and he threw me on the ground and was trying to get my dress up, but I was fighting him, kicking and punching at him. I managed to get up and to the door but he grabbed me and carried me back into the room. When he walked past the dresser I picked up a vase and hit him over the head and he let go of me and I shoved him. He stumbled into a chair and knocked it over and then he fell against the window and crashed right through it.” She looked at me again and this time she couldn’t hold back her tears. I put my arm around her and she leaned her head against me and broke down in gut wrenching sobs. “I was just trying to get away from him. I didn’t mean to kill him,” she sobbed.

  “It was self-defense, Landra.”

  I held her and let her cry until she had totally soaked my shirt. When she finally quieted down, I pulled her back from me and made her look me in the eye.

  “You’re going to give your statement to the police and then I’m going to take you to the hospital.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t need to go to the hospital, Sam. Really. I’m okay.”

  “Well, let’s talk to the police and we’ll take it from there. Wait here and I’ll get the officer.”

  I left Landra sitting there and went back to the room across the hall. There were two more policemen and all four were huddled together talking when I walked in.

  “She’s ready to give you her statement,” I told them.

  Two of the officers followed me back into the room where I’d left Landra. One sat on the bed and the other remained standing while Landra began to relate what had transpired between her and Drake Reeds before he landed face down on the pavement below. Landra had stopped crying but she was completely despondent while she sat there answering their questions. And the longer the questioning went on, the more distant she became to where finally, she zoned out completely and was seemingly unaware even of our presence in the room. She was staring at the floor with a vacant look on her face, just like she was doing when I’d first found her across the hall.

  “Ma’am?” one of the officers said. Landra startled and looked at him and then over at me.

  “You okay?” I asked her. She nodded yes, but I knew she was far from okay. The two officers moved into the corner of the room and conferred, then the one who had been doing the questioning came back over and pulled me aside.

  “We want to get some pictures and then you can take her home. We may have more questions for her later.”

  The officers left the room and returned after about five minutes with a camera. I helped Landra out of my jacket and I could see where the red marks on her arms were already turning to bruises, but when she pulled her dress down to expose the upper half of her left breast, the violence Drake had inflicted was even more apparent. There were purple bruises covering most of the breast where he had grabbed her. I tried to remain detached, but bruises or not, that was one incredible breast. Landra opened the slit of her dress revealing more bruises on her inner thighs, and again, I caught myself thinking in lecherous terms.

  When the police had finished snapping their pictures Landra put my jacket back on and sat down in the chair. The officers left the room and I went back to where Landra was sitting. “We can go,” I told her. I offered my hand and helped her up, and she leaned against me and wrapped her arms around my waist and cried into my chest again. “You’re going to be okay, Landra,” I told her. “Let me take you to the hospital.”

  “No. I just want to go home, Sam. Please. Just take me home,” she pleaded.

  It was against my better judgment, but I agreed. I took her home and followed her back to her bedroom. She went into the bathroom and changed into a pink robe and when she came back out she lay down on the bed and curled up into the fetal position. I sat down beside her and stroked her hair.

  “Can I get you anything?” I asked her.

  She shook her head no. “Will you just lie here with me and hold me for a minute?”

  “Sure,” I said, but this was going to take some restraint. I reluctantly lay down beside her and Landra scooted over closer and curled up against me. I put my arms around her and held her, while I tried to occupy my mind with thoughts of war and sports. It wasn’t working. She smelled too good and she was just way too feminine. Thank goodness she fell asleep almost immediately, so I got up and went into the other part of her house and made myself a drink.

  I walked around the house looking at all the photos she had sitting out on shelves and hanging on her walls and I finally sat down in front of the TV and channel surfed for the next hour. I kept going over in my head what had happened at the party and I felt guilty for not having gone up to check on Landra when she had been gone for so long. Would I have gone to check on her if I hadn’t seen Drake following her upstairs? Probably not, but who knows. As it was, I felt like a rat for having thought she was upstairs fooling around with Dr
ake while she was actually fighting for her life trying to defend herself from the creep. As far as I was concerned, the bastard got exactly what he deserved.

  I don’t know what time I dozed off, but it was light outside when I woke up. The sun was shining in through the mini-blinds and it promised to be another beautiful day. I wandered back to Landra’s bedroom and she was still asleep, so I went back out to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. It was just after 8:00 o’clock and I thought of Mrs. Howard and wondered how she would react to the conspicuous absence of my Suburban. Hell, by now, she had probably already called the Johnses and Landra’s grandmother to announce the impending wedding. My stomach growled at the thought of missing out on my muffins.

  “Hi, Sam.” I jumped out of my skin and Landra laughed. “I’m sorry. Did I scare you?”

  “Hell yes! What are you doing sneaking up on me like that?”

  “I didn’t sneak. All I did was walk in and say hi.”

  She had such a pretty face. Even after everything she had been through last night.

  “How are you?” I asked her.

  “I’m doing okay,” she said. She picked up my hand and held it in hers and she fixed her eyes on mine. “Thanks for your help last night, Sam. It was terrible. And I couldn’t have gotten through it without you.”

  “Yes, you could have. But you’re welcome anyway.” I gave her a hug and kissed her forehead.

  The phone rang and while Landra went to answer it, I found two mugs and poured the coffee. She brought the phone back into the kitchen and mouthed, “It’s Sara.”

  “Yes, he’s here. You don’t have to worry. Sam’s fine,” Landra said. She smiled at me and I rolled my eyes. “Oh, you have his muffins? Well, why don’t you save them for him and I’ll tell him to stop by your house when he gets home . . . Okay, Sara . . . All right . . . Okay, then I’ll see you later this morning.”

  Landra hung up the phone and smiled. “She was worried about you,” she said, and it was obvious that she found delight in my irritation.

  “And you love it, don’t you!” I accused.