by Beth Yarnall
“I can’t leave him out there,” I tell the cat.
No response. His glare tracks me as I go to the door and open it.
Leo’s hand is raised as though he was going to knock again. His jaw goes slack and now I have two sets of eyes staring at me from opposite sides. I don’t know what to do. I’m caught between what I should do and what I want to do.
“Wow,” Leo finally says. His gaze is everywhere, taking me in, from my freshly painted toenails to the soft bun at the top of my head. He offers me a small bouquet of white roses. “These are for you.”
“Thank you.” I love the smell of roses. I wonder how he knew that.
He’s the most dressed up I’ve ever seen him, in a button-down shirt and nice slacks. His hair is combed back from his cleanly shaven face and I can’t believe how handsome he is.
We stand there in awkward silence, taking in each other’s appearance. I have no reference for what I’m supposed to do here. What is the protocol? Should I let him in? I should let him in.
Opening the door wider, I wave him inside. “Come in.”
Leo’s gaze stays glued to me until he passes. He stops abruptly just inside the door. “You have a cat.”
I close the door. “That’s Oliver. He’s not really my cat. He just lives here.”
“Cora.” His voice is soft with shock. “Is that Cassandra’s cat?”
“I found him outside her apartment a few days…after. No one wanted him, I guess.”
Leo leans against the door, looking at me like he just can’t believe me. I don’t know where to look or what to do. Somewhere behind me I know Oliver is staring at me the same way Leo is.
Leo reaches for one of my hands, untwisting it from the bouquet that I’m practically crushing. “You took him in.”
“It’s more like he lets me feed him.”
He puts a hand to my cheek and leans in to kiss me. He smells good. So good. I close my eyes and kiss him back.
“I don’t know how you do it,” he says, as he ends the kiss. “But you constantly surprise me.”
I can’t tell from his tone if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
“That dress.” He steps back and studies me again, with that same kind of glazed look in his eyes. “Wow.”
“I should put these in some water.” I untangle myself from him, needing some distance. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to compliments.
Oliver flicks his tail and walks away. He’s not happy with me. I’m going to pay for this later, probably with a regurgitated furball on my pillow.
Leo takes a short stroll around my apartment. Such as it is. I was lucky to find this converted garage. It’s small, but it suits my purposes. I take care of the main house when the owners go out of town. In exchange, I pay next to nothing in rent. He stops to examine a photo of Beau and me that was taken just before Cassandra was killed. It’s my favorite pic of the two of us. I can see who we used to be before and I can almost remember how it felt.
I don’t have a vase, so I put the flowers in a blue jar I got at a garage sale and set them on my little dining table. They look pretty. I finger a petal. These are the first flowers I’ve ever gotten from a guy. How sad that is.
“Are you ready?”
No, I’m not ready. I still think this is a really bad idea on every level. But there’s so much expectation in Leo’s face I feel like I can’t let him down. Smoothing the front of my dress, I decide that I’ll see how tonight goes. It’s just one night. I can give him one night.
“Sure.”
He walks me to his car and holds open the door for me. His hands are a little shaky and I wonder if he’s anywhere near as nervous as me. That’s not possible. He’s probably been on hundreds of dates. I don’t hold that or his prior relationship with Savannah against him. He doesn’t owe me anything. It’s not like we’re a couple, anyway. We’re…I don’t know what we are. Whatever it is, it’s just for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll go back to the way things were.
Even as I tell myself this, I don’t believe it. I can’t imagine going back, and the truth is I don’t want to.
Chapter 12
Leo
Ho-ly. Shit.
I’m trying really hard to act cool, but Cora in that dress is killing me. When she opened the door I thought my head was going to explode. She did something with her hair—piling it on top of her head—making everything about her softer somehow. And her eyes, that intense, drop-me-to-my-knees blue, pinned me where I stood. I thought she was pretty before, but I was wrong. She is absolutely without a doubt the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.
And she’s going out with me.
I don’t know what I was expecting when I asked her out on this date. All I know is that she is so far out of my league and she doesn’t even know it. I steal another glance at her. I’ve been sneaking looks at her all night. I’m not the only one. Every guy we pass gives her the once-over, making me want to punch him in the face. If I’m not holding her hand, I touch her back or her shoulder to signal that she’s mine.
Except she isn’t, really. We’re on this date, attempting to have a good time, but I can tell her mind isn’t entirely on what’s happening at our small table in the corner of the restaurant. I figure she’ll break sometime before the waiter comes to take our order and ask me what happened with Beau. What her brother is going through is as much a part of her as the blue of her eyes. I have to accept that. He’s the other person at the table with us. The invisible uninvited guest. Everything she does is a means to the end of freeing her brother. Even this date we’re on is part of it. I don’t kid myself that she agreed to go out with me because she wanted to. I’m holding information she wants.
She lays her menu down and I know this is it. She’s going to ask me about Beau. We can’t have anything that’s just ours.
She takes a quick sip of water. “I hear you play baseball.”
I stare at her for a moment. What?
“You used to play with my friend Jamie Osborne’s brother Matt.”
“Yeah.”
She fiddles with her water glass. “What position do you play?”
“Pitcher. Or I did. I don’t play anymore.”
“Oh.”
“How do you know Jamie?”
“We’ve been friends a long time. Since elementary school.”
“So you know Matt.”
“He tried to make me eat a bug once.” She has a hint of a smile, so I know this is a good memory. “I got him back by putting snails in his bed.”
“That sounds like him. Good for you for getting him back.”
“Do you ever miss it? Playing baseball?”
“Sometimes. I’m too busy now with law school. It was fun while it lasted.”
“What kind of law do you want to practice?”
At every turn she catches me off guard. This is such a normal, first-date kind of conversation I’m having trouble believing I’m having it with Cora.
“I want to work for the district attorney’s office here in San Diego.”
“You want to put people like Beau in prison?” Her tone takes a dangerous turn.
“I want to put guilty people in prison.”
“How can you be sure they’re one hundred percent guilty? I’m sure the DA who prosecuted my brother thought she was doing the right thing. Especially when she asked the judge for the death penalty.”
I’m in deep shit here, with no way out. I should’ve seen this coming. “I won’t be like that.”
“Why a prosecutor and not a public defender? The system could use a hell of a lot more good public defenders. I know Beau could’ve used one.” Angry, she holds up a finger. “Just one.”
“I can’t undo what was done to your brother, but I can make sure that every case I prosecute is a good one.”
She sits back in her seat and glares at me. She hates me now, I can see it. I’m lumped in with the asshole who sent her brother to prison. I have to find a way to convince her I’m not the enemy. I ca
n do more good on the prosecutor’s side than the defender’s side. I know this. I have to make her know this.
“Cora, you should know me well enough by now to know that I will be better than the DA who sent your brother to prison.”
“You say that now and maybe you mean it, but when you’ve got a hundred and fifty cases that you’re expected to close with a conviction or a plea deal, you cut corners to do it. Did you know that close to seventy-five percent of all wrongful convictions are due to official misconduct, including prosecutors?”
“That’s not going to be me. Someone has to put away the bad guys, Cora, and I want to be one of the people who do that. They can’t be allowed loose in our society to perpetrate again and again.”
“And you’re fine with a few innocent people getting put away in the process?”
“Of course not.”
“It happens.”
“And dolphins get caught in fishing nets. But that didn’t stop you from ordering fish for dinner.”
Her mouth drops open and she glares at me like she can’t believe what a complete and total asshole I am. My whole body goes hot. I can’t believe that just came out of my stupid fucking mouth either. I’ve just equated her brother to so much debris that inadvertently gets swept up in the greater good of the justice system’s net. I thought Cora would be the one to ruin our date. But no, it’s me. I’ve fucked this up so badly I don’t see any way of recovering it.
And they haven’t even brought us our salads yet.
She snaps her jaw shut with a click I can hear across the table. Her lips flatten and the blue of her eyes is barely visible. I’ve seen myriad emotions on Cora. By far this is the scariest I’ve ever seen her. It’s worse even than her tears, and at the same time she’s so goddamn beautiful, glaring at me across the candlelit table, that I’m struck again by how fucking lucky I am to be in the same room with her, let alone out on this date.
“So,” she says, “basically your justice-system philosophy equates to: You can’t bake a cake without breaking a few eggs?”
“It’s not that simple and you know it. There is no black and white here. Our justice system is the greatest in the world and I have to believe that the vast majority of the people working in it are good and genuinely interested in seeing justice served. Otherwise what’s the point of it all?”
“A part of me knows you’re right, but the other part of me knows firsthand that our justice system is not just. It’s as flawed as the mortals running it. And when you involve people in everything from religion to our court system you invite greed, revenge, laziness, and ambition. People are selfish. They’ll put their own goals and desires before others in a hot minute.”
“Maybe I have more faith in humanity than you do.”
“You definitely do, because I don’t have any at all.”
The waiter appears at the table with our salads and slides them in front of us. “Freshly ground pepper?”
“No, thank you.”
“Yes, please.”
We can’t even agree on fucking pepper.
“Can I get anything else for you?”
We both shake our heads.
“Your dinners will be out shortly.”
The waiter is gone and so is the energy at our table. I’m not going to convince her to see my side and there’s no way I’ll ever see hers. We chew in silence, the clinking and clanking of our silverware unusually loud in the void. There are so many fundamental differences between us it’s a miracle we can stand to be in the same room with each other.
Cora sets her fork down and wipes her mouth. “What did Beau tell you?”
“He broke up with Cassandra because she was seeing someone else.”
“Did he know who?”
“No, but he said her friend Maisy might. I’m going to see if I can talk to her, maybe use the law-student-studying-a-local-case angle. I’m also going to try to take a run at Zelda to see if she might know where Mrs. Wheeler is.”
“What else did he say?”
“He said he gets phone privileges once a week and that if I have any more questions for him I should call instead of driving out there.”
“What did you say to him to get him to cooperate?” she asks.
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. What did you say?”
“He didn’t want to answer my questions at first. I reminded him how stubborn and relentless you’ve been on his behalf and that it didn’t matter what he said. You’ll never give up on him, so he may as well help out.”
“That’s not all you said.”
“No, but that’s between him and me.”
She eyes me like she’s trying to decide if she’s going to kick me in the nuts or punch me in the face.
“I got him to cooperate,” I say. “I thought you’d be ecstatic about that.”
“I am.”
“So that’s your ecstatic face?”
“No, this is my pissed-off-at-my-brother face mixed with my frustrated-with-you face.”
I laugh. She never does or says what I expect her to.
The waiter arrives with our dinners, sets them in front of us, does the usual can-I-get-you-anything-else thing, and leaves.
Cora stares down at her plate.
“Something wrong?”
“Fish doesn’t sound as good as it did when I ordered it.”
“Want to switch for my chicken?”
“Actually…yes.”
I swap our plates.
She looks so relieved. “Thank you.”
“I figured it’s the least I could do since I don’t seem to have a problem with breaking eggs and dolphin casualties.”
She pauses with a bite of chicken inches from her mouth. “I wasn’t exactly being fair with you earlier. I do know that you won’t be like the prosecutors who go after convictions no matter the cost.”
“Thank you. Besides complimenting my ass, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
She covers her mouth and laughs, deep-throated and sexy. This is the first time I’ve ever made her laugh. And only the second time I’ve ever seen her do it. I have got to get her to do it more often. Whatever it takes. She’s someone who should be laughing all the time. In the photo I saw of her and her brother at her place I could tell she once was someone who laughed freely and openly. I bet she never covered her mouth or somehow managed to look guilty doing it back then.
“You’re so gorgeous,” I fumble out.
She stops laughing, a bewildered expression replacing her joy. She looks down at her plate. “Thank you.”
She’s embarrassed. I’ve embarrassed Cora Hollis. I didn’t think it was possible, like not even remotely. She’s even blushing. This is a side of her I’ve never seen. I like it. A lot.
“So, cosmetology school?” I ask her.
“What?”
“You told that realtor you were in cosmetology school.”
“Oh, yeah.” She shrugs. “I had to tell her something.”
“Is that something you want to do?”
“Maybe someday.”
“Have you looked into it?”
“No. Even if I had the time, I don’t have the money.”
“Do you do your own hair?”
She nods. “And some of my friends’ hair too.”
“You must be very good if they’re willing to let you work on them without going to school.”
One of her shoulders goes up. “I haven’t melted off anybody’s hair yet.”
“Would you cut mine?”
“I could.”
“I’d pay you. I mean, I pay a lady now. I may as well pay you instead.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t have to pay me.”
“Do your friends pay you?”
“Or we trade.”
“So then why won’t you take my money?”
“With you it would be more like a trade. You got Beau to agree to talk about Cassandra. I owe you about twenty haircu
ts for that.”
Now I’m the one who’s embarrassed. “I didn’t do that to get something in return.”
“If you want me to cut your hair you’re going to have to let me do it for trade.”
“How about for dates?”
“Leo…” she starts.
I’ve taken it too far, but hey, it was worth a shot. “Just kidding.”
She looks at me for a moment like she’s trying to figure out if I really am joking or not. I’m not. Despite how disastrous this date’s been, I want to take her out again.
Somehow we manage to finish dinner and dessert without me pissing her off again and now I’m standing on her front porch with her. The moon is huge and low in the sky, hanging over us like a lantern. Cora by Moonlight. That’s what I’ll call this moment. I lean in for a kiss, but she stops me with a hand on my chest.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she says.
Yes, it is. It’s a damn good idea. “Why?”
“Look, I like you—”
“Oh, hell.” No good conversation ever starts that way.
“No, I mean it. I do like—”
I silence her with a kiss, backing her up against her front door. I pour everything I have in me into this kiss. I want her to know all the things I can’t say before she shuts the door on me, on the possibility of us. She kisses me back and I take advantage, using every ounce of skill I have to get her to change her mind. I want her to want me the way I want her.
Her arms wind around my neck and she brings me closer, threading her hands through my hair. It’s all I can do not to push things further than I know she’s ready for. I want to touch her. Everywhere. I want her to touch me. Bringing her tight against me, I use my mouth and tongue to say the things I can’t. The little sound she makes as she moves against me drives me crazy. If she keeps this up I’m going to break the promise I made to myself to go slowly with her. She’s not ready for everything I want to do to her.
I pull back with little nips and kisses along her jaw. She tilts her head, giving me more.
“Go out with me again,” I whisper, then bite her earlobe.
She makes a noise that I can’t quite make out.
I lick around the shell of her ear. “Cora,” I coax. “Go out with me again.”
