Attractive Nuisance (Legally in Love Book 1)

by Griffith, Jennifer

  “Tell me something. How old are you, Zane Holyoake?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Then you’re old enough to know that a twenty-seven year-old woman with a law degree knows her rights and when she should respond to a question or not.” She pulled a sandwich out of the bag for herself and took a huge bite. “Now, let’s get to work and build this guy’s coffin.”

  She gathered up her files and led him to the conference room where they set up their research shop, and where Zane sat six inches closer to her than was comfortable. Space bubble. He just had a smaller space bubble than she had. That was it. She sighed, did her best to ignore every brain Taser that shot off when his elbow grazed hers, and got to work.

  By lunchtime, they’d established a timeline of Veldon Twiss’s whereabouts for the last year, but they couldn’t yet find him anywhere farther back than that. They had him in northern Maricopa County, not in Scottsdale proper, but in the vicinity. He was living in hovels and didn’t have a job, but his bank records showed an occasional deposit in the $1000 range.

  “That could be his finder’s fee. He could have been working for a larger outfit.” Camilla chewed the top of her pencil then tapped it on the legal pad. “We could be onto a lead for a huge ring of Beemer Bandits.”

  “The Beemer Banditos.” Zane stretched his arms outward and arched his back. He let his arm come to a rest across the back of Camilla’s chair. It warmed her shoulders, and it took all her will not to relax against it. “But we still can’t place him in either Nevada or Colorado. We need lunch.”

  Oh, great. The old “let’s go to lunch” question was rearing its ugly head again. Her mouth went dry. It was the old internal argument again. Lunch, then lunch again, then dinner, then dating, then her heart spinning out of control, then the guy’s sheepish speech telling her he can’t propose, only to restart the tired cycle with the next guy. Camilla could hook them, yeah. But she could never reel them in.

  And Zane Holyoake looked far less reel-able than any guy she’d dated. Saying no to lunch was her only hope.

  He removed his arm from her chair and started texting something on his phone. Quickly she preempted the attack. “Hey, lunch would be great, I know, but I’m following a lead and waiting for a couple of calls right now so I’ll just stay here. You can leave if you need food. I can hold off for a couple more hours.”

  He set his phone down. “Done.”

  “What’s done?”

  “Lunch.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m having it brought up.” He gave her a friendly punch in the arm. “Duh. I know you, don’t I? That you are some kind of lunch-o-phobe. You’re allergic to restaurants. You have OCD and an intense fear of touching the door handle of a restaurant—or is it the door handle of a restaurant’s bathroom? Well, whatever it is, I’m fine with that. But food must happen. And I want to eat lunch with you. Get it?”

  He’d outmaneuvered her. And now she couldn’t make up some excuse about meeting someone else for lunch or wanting to go home to eat or some kind of special diet (she’d eaten the breakfast sandwich, which violated the rules of every special diet ever) or anything else. There was only one response.

  “Thanks.”

  And twenty minutes later they sat on the sofa in Falcon’s office, their lunch spread over the bulk of the boss’s coffee table, Camilla with her shoes kicked off. These heels were ridiculous. Why had she bothered to wear them—on a Saturday?

  “Where did you find this place?” Camilla took another bite of her pasta, closing her eyes as the parmesan and romano cheeses did a dance on her tastebuds. “I didn’t know Prescott had a restaurant with Italian food this good.”

  “It doesn’t.” Zane took a bite and slurped a twig of stray noodle into his mouth.

  She let her fork drop to her plate. “What do you mean? Where did it come from, then?”

  “It’s not poisonous, if that’s what you’re asking.” He had that crinkle at the edge of his eye again. “Somebody made it. Somebody really good at making pasta.”

  He’d better quit it and tell her. She took another bite. It tasted like her mouth had teleported to Florence to eat this sauce. “I changed my mind. It’s awful,” as in it filled her with awe at its awesomeness. This time she took a huge mouthful, and to copy him, spoke through it. “I wish I’d never tasted it.”

  “Why? Because now everything else you eat ever again for your whole entire life will be hollow and flat?”

  That was about right. She licked a little string of cheese from the fork. “I can’t stand this stuff. Are there any of those fast food breakfast sandwiches left?”

  “You know, you’re even prettier when you’re lying.”

  This time she really did drop her fork. It fell onto the carpet, and she couldn’t stoop to pick it up. He said she was pretty? Pretti-er? Even prettier? So he considered her pretty in general. That was the extrapolated meaning there.

  “Here. I think I have an extra fork somewhere.” He reached inside the picnic basket and pulled out another utensil for her. She took it while he picked up the one from the floor. He’d made this picnic, put it in a basket—highly unexpected. And the basket? It had charm. She tried to peek inside to see what label was on the pasta containers. Once this Veldon Twiss case ended, she might finally take a vacation day, and she knew where she’d spend the whole thing: bellying up to the pasta bar at whatever restaurant made this food.

  “Come on. You have to tell me.”

  He just shrugged, and suddenly she realized, it might be home made. “Was it…you?”

  He shrugged again. It was!

  “You’re going to have to give me the recipe. Or make this again for me, like every day of my life.” The words flew out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying. She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I mean. Yeah. This is delicious.”

  “It’s nothing. I mean, I don’t do a lot of cooking, to be honest. And I don’t know that I’d share the recipe.” He finished up his last bite and took both of their plates (china dishes he’d brought in the basket, impressive). “But I’m sure if you like it that much I could manage another round of pasta for you, Miss Camilla Sweeten, the sweet.”

  He’d better stop. She didn’t need this. Well, she did, but not from him. Lawyers—they had many layers; merely drop the “w” in their occupational title. Just when you think you’re following their line of reasoning and they’re your friend, they turn around and ruin you. She knew—she’d been doing it herself for five years.

  “Back to work?” Her stomach was so full she might get sleepy trying to research more information. It was time to wrench herself out of this food reverie.

  “So soon? I thought we could cozy down here on Falcon’s couch for a while. Maybe watch a movie on my phone, take a snooze. I’ll rest my head right here…” He patted her shoulder, and Camilla unwound a little inside. A movie and a nap sounded great. “I got up so early.”

  “Early? You rolled in after eight.” Then she thought again. “Ohhhh.” He’d gotten up and made this lunch. Who did he arrange for delivering it? Wow. Zane Holyoake. He thought this through—and he’d made their Saturday session into dinner and a movie. Like a date. Was this their first date? Mmm. He did have nice teeth and shoulders, and she loved the way his hair had that cowlick in the front where he slicked it up. Camilla and Zane. It sounded good together. The sofa sucked her backward, and she leaned her head to the side. Maybe they could watch a movie that had some nice kissing scenes. Those were almost as good as the real thing, she’d decided over the past couple of dry-spell years. Zane might see that, get an idea.

  Stop. No. This was not a date. This was work. She could not date someone in the office. Surely Falcon had a policy of some kind.

  Annnnnd, let’s not forget the issue of the lifted monster truck. Nope. She could never be with anyone who drove that truck.

  Even if it did smell like diesel.

  “I’ve got an email in at the sheriff’s office. Mayb
e they’ve sent back more information.” She broke away and headed back to her cubicle. Sure enough. And, wow. It looked like the sheriff’s office had done their due diligence on this one. They were coming over in a few minutes with paperwork. Shoot. She’d better straighten her blouse and skirt. Did her hair look mussed from the sofa? She didn’t want them to think—

  “Oh, ho. Look at that.” Zane leaned over her shoulder where she sat. She could feel his abs against her arm. Wow. Tight. Shoot—she had to focus! Things were at stake here. Important things. Zane pressed a finger against the computer screen, pointing to a detail in the sheriff’s office’s email. “Veldon Twiss, the Beemer Bandit? We are going to toast you like a marshmallow on a stick.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Evidence

  “Man, I can’t believe they identified his shoe print so fast like that. This sheriff’s office is good.” Zane paced back and forth, rubbing his hands together. “But there it is, right in the garden of the ice cream shop where the car was on display for the raffle. Nice work, Sheriff Woodston. Together, Camilla, you and I and this crack team over at Woodston’s office—we’re going to put this guy down. I can’t let him get away with what he did to those kids.”

  Camilla pulled herself together and focused on work, not the way Zane’s bicep flexed when he pressed his palms together in glee. Zane was right. This thief needed to face justice, especially for what he’d done to sick kids. That was just wrong.

  “There’s a transcript attached.” She clicked on it. “It’s the detectives’ first interview with Twiss.”

  “Good. See if there’s something in there we can use.” Zane clapped her on the shoulder and gave a little squeeze. His hands had nice strength. “Find something that seals Veldon’s fate and I’ll bring you pasta for lunch every Thursday for a month.”

  “Deal.” Bribes. She liked bribes that involved pasta straight from heaven above. Back at her desk, she printed out the document and took her pen and highlighter to give it the fine toothed comb.

  Unfortunately, nothing good turned up on the first reading—nothing pasta-worthy, anyway. Veldon doggedly professed innocence. He didn’t have an alibi for his whereabouts, but that wasn’t enough yet.

  Zane, now that lunch was over, may have professed excitement over the information from Sheriff Woodston’s office initially, but now he didn’t seem to be doing much of anything. For the third time in an hour he came and sat on the edge of her desk, between Camilla and her computer’s mouse so she couldn’t see the screen or do any work.

  “So. How about this one?”

  Oh, great. Another irrelevant story? She’d already shot down two of them. And she needed to concentrate here. Something in this transcript rang wrong to her.

  “Okay. When me and my brother were kids—”

  My brother and I, she corrected mentally. It wouldn’t do any good to say it aloud.

  “We’d go hiking in the desert all the time.”

  “You’re an Arizona native?”

  “Sure. Fourth generation desert rat.”

  Oh, she hadn’t known. Something about his suits and the way he did his hair, and the fact he’d come from Flagstaff, which was a university town, made her think he was, oh, she didn’t know, citified. “Go on.”

  “Okay, and so this once, we climbed to the top of this little cliff with an outcropping on it, and I was looking down over the edge and thinking, cool, this outcropping can hold my weight. And I bounced up and down on it and, crrrack! It couldn’t. And this whole slab of sandstone came breaking off.”

  “Oh, no!” A pang of fear shot through her. Camilla hated heights. This could not end well. “How high was this cliff?”

  “Only about forty feet.”

  “Forty feet!” That was like five stories high. Her face melted just thinking about falling that distance.

  “But I was drinking a Sprite at the time, see?” He mimed opening a soda can. “And for some reason this slab of sandstone stayed flat. Maybe my stance on it was balancing it. Like a surfboard.” He put his arms out and spread his feet apart, catching the wave. “And as I fell, the Sprite in the can came out the hole in the top, blub-blub-blub.”

  In her mind she could see the clear, bubbly beverage floating out the top of the can, like the films of astronauts drinking water in the space shuttle. “Were you terrified?” He could’ve died from that. Did he walk with a limp? Had he hit his head that day? Maybe that was what made him so laid back—the traumatic brain injury he sustained in his five-story plummet to the desert floor.

  “That’s just it. No. Time really slowed down, and I had all these philosophical thoughts. Life, its meaning, how I’d lived, whether it was a good life.”

  “Was it?”

  “It could use a little improvement.”

  “Couldn’t all of us do with some of that?”

  “Exactly.” He nodded, like she got him.

  “So, why are you alive to tell this story, anyway?” If it was even true. It just now occurred to her it might be a total fabrication. “Did your belt loop catch on a tree? Did your brother reach out and save you?”

  His eyes flashed to hers at the word “brother,” but then he blinked and said, “Kind of. At the bottom of the cliff was a bank of trees. The sandstone surfboard landed pretty flat on top of one, and then I kind of tumbled off into the branches. It still hurt, but I didn’t croak, thank goodness—my mom wouldn’t have handled it well. My brother ran for help.”

  Camilla could see that. Moms don’t want their sons to die in surfing accidents in the desert. “Was there any Sprite left in the can?”

  Zane did a double take. “Actually, yeah. There was.” He laughed a little—a single syllable chuckle. “I’d crushed the can in my hand, so not all of the drink spilled out. Good thing, too. I was pretty thirsty after the big scare. But I like how you think, Camilla. You appreciate the important details. Like Sprite.” He curled his index finger and chucked her chin with it. It turned her face upward to him.

  Okay. He was touching her face. Men didn’t touch the face of women they didn’t want to kiss. Ever.

  Zane Holyoake wanted to kiss her. The sides of her lips tingled a little. What would his lips feel like? Perfectly rough, like the skin on his hands? Did she want to kiss him back?

  No. She’d better make herself not want that. She had to change the subject. “What kind of trees?”

  “Mesquite.”

  “Those have thorns.”

  “Believe me, I know.” He lifted his shirt up on one side, showing two highly interesting things—one, a pick-up-sticks layout of scratch scars on his laterals, and two, a sneak peek at some quite nice abdominals. Not the idiotic I-spend-every-waking-moment-working-to-make-these-defined kind that guys with no jobs put baby oil on and took selfies of and posted on social media to lure in cotton-brained dates. Just…nice. Strong, like the rest of Zane.

  “Ouch,” was all she said though. “Thanks for the story. Now, I need to get back to this interview transcript.” She nudged him aside, and he got up from her desk. He pushed his shirt back down, and the look on his face showed he was conscious that she’d been looking. A triumphant look. Dang him.

  “But that’s the thing. What do you think? Can I use it?”

  Use what? The abdominal muscles? To woo the women of the jury? Even the least competent judge wouldn’t allow that. “No.”

  “Seriously? It’s such a good one. And I was thinking…if while I tell it I grab a soda can that we strategically place on our table as a prop, make it look spontaneous…”

  Camilla did her own one syllable chuckle. “Uh, no. This story, it is a good one. I’ll give you that.” It’d distracted her for a full five minutes. That, and the scar tissue. “But we’ve got to stay on point. We aren’t going to have the luxury of going off on tangents. We’ve got a case to make—a solid one. No messing around.”

  Zane frowned. “But it’s what I do. I do it really well.” He sounded like he meant it.

  “I have no doub
t, Zane.” Camilla knew he intended that last sentence to have several layers of meanings, and she chose to ignore them. He did mess around. But now was not the time.

  “Okay, fine. I will get serious. Mostly.” Zane picked a dead leaf off Camilla’s potted plant and threw it in the trash. Two points. “But you have to agree to go to the office party next weekend with me.”

  “No.” What she really meant was not just no, heck no. Today had already gone too far. Lunch. Flirting. The touching of her face. She was in real danger here. Being all officially on a date in front of the whole staff at the one annual social gathering—that’d put her squarely in the kill zone.

  “What was that? I think you meant, yes. You must have said it wrong.”

  “It’s not ‘opposite day,’ if that’s what you’re going to say next.” The fourth grader in him brought out the fourth grader in her. “You need to get down to work, regardless.”

  “So you already have a date set up. Break it. Make up an excuse.”

  She did not already have a date set up for the office party. She’d done everything she could to put the shindig out of her mind, despite the six emails a day from the planning committee and the neon flyers on every door and window. Going was too much pressure. Everyone would be there with their spouses, their kids, their common law wives. Not that Arizona had a common law marriage statute, but live-in girlfriends. For three years, Camilla had been the only truly “single” lawyer on staff, ever since Trey Mulcock quit and opened a florist’s shop in Camp Verde. He couldn’t take the pressure of being an attorney or attending the office party alone.

  “With this Beemer Bandit case going on, it’s so high profile, I imagine Falcon is going to cancel the festivities. I wouldn’t be surprised.” She picked up her highlighter and the copy of the transcript. There had to be something in here she was missing. And she hoped her body language showed Zane she didn’t want to discuss the party further.