by Noelle Adams
That was okay. She could still be a wife to him in any way he’d let her, for as long as she was alive to do it.
He needed her, whether he realized it or not.
That thought made her remember that the trial continued today. She turned her head to look at the bedside clock and saw it was almost six-thirty in the morning.
She couldn’t believe Paul had slept so long. The poor thing hadn’t even gotten out of his clothes. He must have been so tired last night.
An itch on her thigh started to bother her, so she shifted very slightly to try to scratch it, not wanting to wake Paul up yet. Her motion must have woken him anyway. His eyelids fluttered slightly before they lifted.
She was looking in his direction, and her face was only several inches away, so the first thing he saw was her.
He smiled at her groggily. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she replied, her smile deepening with something tender at the uncharacteristically sweet expression on his face before he oriented himself.
She saw on his face the moment he realized where he was. “Damn,” he breathed, rolling over onto his back and retrieving the arm that had still been slung over her belly. “I can’t believe I fell asleep. Are you all right?”
Emily gave a little snort at his predictable inquiry about her health. “I feel great. Not sick today.”
“Good.” He rubbed his face with his left hand, obviously trying to wake himself up.
For some reason, Emily was distracted by the sight of his wedding ring on his finger—her ring—and something she hadn’t noticed yesterday. He’d undone his cuffs and pushed the sleeves of his dress shirt up his arm when he was helping her in the bath. But the cufflink was still attached to his sleeve. He’d been wearing the Damascene cufflinks she’d given him on their wedding day.
For some reason, the sight of the wedding band on his hand and the cufflink she'd picked out on his sleeve made her chest tighten.
He dropped his hand, completely unaware of her diversion. “I should get up.”
“It’s still pretty early,” she murmured, surprised when her voice came out thick. She cleared her throat. “They don’t start up until nine-thirty, right?”
“Right.”
“Even I have enough time to be ready by then.”
Paul turned to look at her, his eyes sober. “I don’t think you should try to make it to court today. You haven’t had any time to recover.”
“But they’ll probably get to my testimony today. I have to come!”
“I talked to Hathaway, since we didn’t know when you’d be well. He said we could rearrange the witnesses so that I’d testify before you do. That way, you wouldn't need to be there until tomorrow.”
Emily rolled over on her side, frowning at him. “But Hathaway thought I should testify before you, didn’t he?”
“Originally, yes. But he can make it work this way, and it would give you another day to recover.”
“I don’t need another day to recover. I want to testify whenever it will be best for the case. I’m really all right, Paul.”
His eyes scanned her face with that scrutiny that left not the tiniest detail unobserved. “They still have to get through several other witnesses. There’s no way they’re going to need you until mid-afternoon. Why don’t you rest some this morning and come after the lunch break?”
Emily started to argue, mostly because she didn’t like to feel weak. Then she remembered that the last time she’d had a bout of fever, she’d slept for most of the following day. She might not be prepared to give articulate testimony after she’d gotten exhausted from sitting in court all day. So she said reluctantly, “I guess that would be all right, if you don’t think they’ll need me before then.”
“They won’t.” He relaxed on the bed again, obviously having no pressing desire to get up and start the day.
She scooted over a little and fit herself against his side, reaching to stroke his chest over his shirt. She didn’t know if he really liked it—he was always a little stiff when she initiated any touches—but at least he didn’t jerk away like he used to. She couldn’t help but think it might be good for him to open himself up to being close to someone again.
“I should get up,” Paul murmured, after a few minutes. His arm wasn’t really holding her, but it had ended up draped around her. “I need a shower.”
He did kind of need a shower, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. He also needed to shave. “It doesn’t take you long to get ready,” she said, “You have plenty of time.”
He let out a long exhalation, which she could feel in his chest. “They’re coming after me.”
Emily raised her head to look down at him, her hand growing still, her fingers spanning one side of his ribs. “What do you mean?”
He met her eyes. “My father’s defense team. They’re going to come after me. Decimate me to save my father.”
Her heartbeat had accelerated as she processed his words. “But that doesn’t make sense. You have nothing to do with his trafficking, smuggling, drug-dealing, and everything.”
“It doesn’t matter. They’re going to argue that I’m pursuing some kind of vendetta against him and have created this entire case because of my childish need to get back at him.”
“That’s ridiculous!” She was outraged by even the thought of it and horrified at the idea of Paul having to suffer through such a cross-examination. “How could you have fabricated the entire case? I thought they would try to cast doubt on my credibility, since I’ve got more direct evidence than you do. That’s what they did at the deposition.”
“I’m sure they’ll do the same thing. They’re not going to take it easy on you, but I’m going to be their real target.”
“But I don’t understand. They should go after me, not you.” Her hand was still resting on the curve of his ribcage—his body warm and substantial beneath her hand, the thin fabric of his shirt soft as it stretched over his skin.
“They’re going to use our marriage as evidence of my ongoing manipulations. They’ll argue that I convinced you to lie for me.”
“But you didn’t. We’ll just tell the truth. You haven’t done anything wrong, Paul!”
His eyes, for just a moment, were open wounds. “But I have. I’ve done so many things wrong in my life. And they’re going to dredge up every one of them.”
“But none of them have to do with the case,” she insisted, her voice growing slightly shrill in her absolute indignation. “Anything else will be irrelevant.”
“It won’t matter. They’ll make it relevant.” He gave her a little smile. “At least this means they won’t be as hard on you. I’d rather go through it than have you go through it.”
She choked on her outrage. “I’m supposed to be going through it. Not you.”
She sat up, breathing heavily and trying to think through what Paul had just told her. She hated Vincent Marino. Hated him. Not just for what he’d done to her, but for what he was still doing to his son.
When her eyes rested on Paul again, she saw he was gazing up at her with something soft in his eyes. “You look like you could strangle him,” he murmured, the corner of his lips twitching slightly. “Although I’m not sure your hands would fit around his throat.”
She wanted to smile back, but she frowned at him instead. “I’ll have you know my hands aren’t that little.”
Paul’s smile widened, and he reached over to pick up her left hand. He held it against his much larger one and gave her a significant look. Her hand did look small and pale next to his.
She just scowled at him. Then she couldn’t help but smile. She lay back down, wrapping an arm around his belly. She loved how the flat, firm muscles felt beneath her forearm and how it rose and fell slightly with his breathing.
“I should get up,” Paul said again, still giving no indication of actually moving. “I never stay in bed this late anymore.”
“It’s not even seven,” she murmured, idly stroking his belly the way she�
�d been stroking his chest earlier. She really liked how he felt this morning—relaxed, masculine, real, human.
The covers had slipped down when she sat up, and now they were pushed down to Paul’s thighs instead of his hips. As she was watching her hand slide over his abdomen, her gaze slipped lower, and she noticed a bulge at the front of his trousers.
She swallowed hard and managed not to jerk in surprise, sustaining her light caress.
Paul was hard. The knowledge gave her a thrill of delight and hope before she could talk herself down with logic.
It might not mean anything. Probably didn’t. Men woke up hard all the time, evidently. It was likely just an incidental thing and didn’t have anything to do with her. Paul had never shown any interest in her physically.
She’d offered herself to him, and he’d refused.
She’d tried to be as attractive as possible on the first night they shared a bed in Egypt, in the hopes that maybe sex would just happen naturally. For a moment, as they’d been talking in bed, she’d actually thought it would. He’d just wanted to go to sleep, though. She'd been very disappointed.
Paul was gorgeous, sexy, experienced, and charismatic in every way. And Emily wasn’t. She knew how much he cared about her now, but he just didn’t think about her that way.
He wouldn’t have gotten hard because she was pressed up beside him, stroking his belly.
Quite involuntarily, her hand slipped a little lower on his belly, just above the waistband of his trousers. She never would have been daring enough to move it even lower, but she wanted to. She really wanted to.
“Okay,” Paul said, a resonance to his voice she didn’t recognize, “No more procrastinating. I really do need to get up. I’ve got some work to do before court.”
She rolled over and pulled back her hand, feeling ridiculously rejected but trying to hide it. She watched as he got out of bed and headed out of her bedroom.
If he wanted her—if he wanted her even a little—it would have been so easy for him to make a move.
He must have just woken up hard.
* * *
It was late in the afternoon, and Emily had been in the witness stand for almost two hours now.
She was starting to feel like she might faint.
She was just so ridiculously tired. Two days of fever must have taken more out of her than she’d realized, and it was much harder than she’d expected to keep from getting angry when the defense attorney’s questioning became more and more aggressive.
Plus, she had to deal with it all in front of Vincent Marino, who was sitting quietly behind the defense table, his cold eyes never leaving Emily's face. She'd looked at him directly once, and his grizzled face and smug expression had deeply disturbed her, so she avoided looking at him again.
Hathaway's direct examination had gone fine. They’d practiced all of her answers, and she was able to express herself clearly, calmly, and convincingly. Even when the defense attorney, a smarmy man named Edgar Barton, got up to cross-examine her, she’d still felt fine. She’d responded to all of his questions—even his rude and inappropriate ones—without faltering.
But she was starting to feel really tired now. The room seemed to be getting hot, even though she’d felt perfectly comfortable for most of the afternoon. She’d gotten so thirsty that she’d finished the glass of water that Hathaway's assistant had poured for her when she’d taken the stand. No one seemed to care that her water was gone, but she still had a lot of talking left to do.
“So you’re telling me, Mrs. Marino,” Barton continued, “that you overheard evidence of a crime and were just going to keep it to yourself?”
“I was threatened by Mr. Marino, and I was scared. So, yes, for a while I kept it to myself.” Her mouth was dry now, and she tried to swallow to conjure up some saliva. There was an almost full pitcher of water on the defense’s table. And another one on the prosecutor’s table. And another one near the jury box. She would have thought that someone would be considerate enough to refill her glass.
“So you just woke up one morning and suddenly decided that justice was more important than fear?”
“No, I didn’t just wake up and decide that,” she said, coughing a little on the last word. She wondered if she could just ask for more water. Surely that wouldn’t be out of order. “He burned down my house.”
This statement got an objection, and there was a brief discussion until the judge sustained the objection.
“My house was burned down,” she rephrased. “And I was sure he was the one who did it. That’s what changed my mind.”
Barton must have finished with this particular line of questioning, since he moved suddenly to an entirely different topic. Hathaway had warned her that the sudden shift was one of the attorney’s most effective strategies, but she still had trouble orienting herself when he jumped to something entirely new.
“Did you know Mr. Marino before you overheard this alleged conversation?”
She blinked. “Yes. I’ve known of him all my life. Everyone in our neighborhood knew him.”
“But did you know him personally?”
“Personally?”
“Personally, yes,” Barton continued, as if she were not quite mentally competent. “Other than by reputation, did you know him personally?”
“I’d never had any personal conversations, but I’d seen him in person,” she said slowly, trying to figure out what he was getting at. “He came into my dad’s store a few times.”
This was evidently what he’d been waiting for, since he pursued it. “As a customer?”
“He might have bought something. I don’t remember.”
“What other reason would he have for coming into your father’s store?”
“He wanted to buy the store. He was trying to buy up the whole block.”
“And your dad sold to him?”
“No. He wouldn’t sell.” That was what she tried to say, but her mouth was so dry she could barely speak, and the room spun a few times as a wave of heat and fatigue washed over her.
She glanced over to where Paul was seated. He’d been watching her with a calm, steady gaze, but his brow lowered now, as if he recognized something was wrong.
Briefly terrified that she was actually going to pass out, she turned to the judge, since she didn’t know who else she was supposed to ask. “I’m sorry, your honor. Is there any way I can get some more water?”
The judge—an attractive black woman in her fifties—looked surprised but then nodded to the bailiff, who walked over, took Emily’s glass, filled it with water from one of the pitchers, and returned it to her.
Emily gulped it gratefully, feeling better as soon as she’d swallowed the water.
Barton hadn’t looked at all pleased with the interruption to his momentum, but he knew what he was doing. He closed the gap between the questions by repeating, “Did your dad sell the store to Mr. Marino?”
“No. He wouldn’t sell.”
“Why not?”
“His father had bought the property and opened that store. My dad thought it was his birthright, and he didn’t like the defendant.”
“Didn’t he?” He looked like she’d said something revealing, and Emily started to worry she was falling into a trap.
She took another gulp of water and tried to clear her mind, but she felt so weak her hands trembled a little.
“So your father and Mr. Marino fought?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, not real fighting. All my dad did was keep saying no.”
“So Mr. Marino continued to make purchase offers to your dad?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. It went on for a while.” Emily knew she was too affected by her illness when her eyes burned at the memory of those last months with her father, when he’d been so incredibly stressed with trying to keep his store above water and too proud to even consider selling to Vincent Marino.
“Did you resent the defendant for t
hat?”
“What?” Despite the water, Emily’s mouth and head still felt cottony.
“Did you resent Mr. Marino for the pressure he put on your father?”
“Why would I?”
“Did you love your father?”
“Of course.”
“So did you resent it when Mr. Marino started to squeeze him out of business in an attempt to persuade him to sell?”
Hathaway objected to something about the questioning, but Emily was too blurry to follow the details. She used the brief pause to try to pull herself together and get her mind to work better than it was.
When Barton started to question her again, he asked, “How did you feel when the defendant used his influence in the neighborhood to keep your father’s store from turning a profit?”
Emily stared at him, bewildered. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I don’t know how I can ask the question any clearer. How did you feel when Mr. Marino used his influence in the neighborhood to squeeze your father out of his business?”
“I didn’t know he did that.” She was absolutely horrified by the idea—by what Vincent Marino might have done to her poor father.
“How profitable was your father’s store in the last months of his life?”
“Not profitable at all. He was trying to keep it from folding.”
“And who did you blame for that?”
“No one. It was just one of those things.”
“You didn’t blame Mr. Marino?”
“I didn’t know he was doing anything.” A few embarrassing tears streamed from her eyes. “My dad never told me. I thought it was just one of those things.”
“You didn’t resent Mr. Marino for it?”
“Objection,” Hathaway interrupted. “Asked and answered.”
The judge sustained the objection, and the brief pause gave Emily a chance to hurriedly wipe away the tears. She was a wreck. She was doing a terrible job. Talking about her father like this—learning the truth about what he’d had to go through without her ever knowing—was heartbreaking. She didn’t dare look over to Paul. He would be so disappointed in her.
