Bringing Up Baxter (Forever Friends, Book 3 of 4)

by Webb, Peggy

No wonder she had the reputation of being such a hotshot. If she performed as well in the courtroom as she did in his chambers, she’d mow the competition down.

  Great Caesar in a salad, she was a magnificent woman. Even if she was a lawyer.

  Crash was in such a state of arousal that he was the one who had to collect himself. He could hardly move in his condition, let alone sit behind the bench and dispense justice.

  That was a laugh. Him, dispensing justice. In spite of his general distrust of the system, he still believed that the little man with his penny-ante crimes deserved a fair trial, and he believed he was the man who could give it to him.

  Maybe he was the best actor of all. Or maybe he was nothing more than a hypocrite and a fraud.

  When he could move, he poured himself a cup of strong black coffee, no cream and sugar. He needed a strong jolt of caffeine to fortify himself to face Philadelphia again.

  o0o

  In the ladies’ room, B. J. applied lipstick. Her hands were shaking so, she got it crooked. She fumbled in her purse for a tissue, then angrily wiped it off.

  “Good grief, I look more like a court jester than an attorney for the defense.”

  Her face was still flushed, her lips puffy from Crash’s kisses.

  “Crash, indeed.” Bending over she splashed water on her face. Dripping, she scowled at herself in the mirror. “The Honorable Judge Nathaniel Bridge Beauregard.” She saluted. “Sir!”

  She glowered at herself some more, then stiffened her spine, tilted her chin, and applied a perfect slash of Chinese red to her lips.

  “Nothing’s going to stop me from winning this case. Nothing.”

  Seeing Philadelphia in action, Crash would have thought she was a different woman from the one in his chambers if he didn’t know better. She knew her stuff. What was more, she had taken a frivolous case he called “The Rabbit Who Wouldn’t Stay Dead” and given it weight and dignity and humor.

  Crash didn’t know when he’d had as much fun, especially on the bench. Her client, Mildred Perkins, was on the stand, and Philadelphia was leading her through the series of events that resulted in her being sued for emotional distress by her neighbor, Fanny Lou Hankins.

  Philadelphia skillfully guided her client through a description of Mildred’s dog as being small, old, docile, and afraid to say boo at his shadow—not at all the kind of animal who would willfully attack her neighbor’s rabbit—and now she was down to the heart of the case.

  “Would you tell the jury in your own words what happened the day you discovered Miss Hankins’s rabbit in your yard?” Philadelphia said.

  Mildred Perkins fluffed up her recently permed hair, sending a waft of ammonia Crash’s way. He could tell by the way she sucked in her stomach and adjusted her glasses that she was going to ramble all over the place. Philadelphia knew that too. Her eyes gleamed with secret triumph as she turned her witness loose.

  By the time Mildred Perkins finished with her story, the jury would be so worn out with information, they wouldn’t know the rabbit from the dog.

  “Well, it was like this...” Mildred blew her breath out between her cheeks and plunged into her story. “I had oatmeal for breakfast, just like I always do right about eight o’clock, right before I let my little dog Tilly out. Fanny Lou goes to work at seven-thirty and I knew good and well she’d already put her rabbit in its pen. But just to make sure, I went out in the yard and checked.... I even called him, ‘Henry, Henry.’... He’d come when he heard his name, you know. Pet rabbits do that.”

  She paused to gulp from the glass of water at her side. “Seeing that the coast was clear, I let my little Tilly out. Not that she would have done a thing to Henry, anyhow. She was scared of that big ole rabbit. But Fanny Lou was always so nervous when Tilly was in the yard... and I didn’t want to do anything to upset Fanny Lou. Lordy, we’ve been friends for fifty years.... It plumb breaks my heart....”

  Putting a handkerchief over her mouth to stifle back a sob, she looked at her neighbor as if she couldn’t believe Fanny Lou would even think of such a thing as suing her for emotional distress, let alone actually do it.

  It was a perfect touch. Philadelphia couldn’t have had better results if she’d coached her client. Crash wondered if she had. Philadelphia was no slouch in the acting department.

  Just look at her now, as sleek and shiny and correct as a tin soldier in a display case. You’d never know that underneath that starched exterior beat the heart of a hoyden.

  “Go on,” she gently prodded her client. The timing was perfect. A small wait gave the jury time to shift their sympathies to Mildred. Too long would have put the focus back on the issue at hand.

  “Well...” Mildred drew a long breath. “When Tilly commenced to barking I ran outside to see what was wrong. I just couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it, that big old healthy white rabbit all bloody and dirty right there under the apple tree that Fanny Lou helped me plant.”

  She swiveled toward the jury. “It’s right smack dab on the line between our little houses. In the summer me and Fanny Lou pick apples together and make jelly.” She turned an aggrieved look on her neighbor.

  “And what was your reaction?” Philadelphia gently prodded.

  “Lordy, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Poor little Tilly was scared to death, barking and shaking, and I thought to myself, ‘Fanny Lou’s gonna have a heart attack if she sees that rabbit like this.’... I almost did myself. So I got a towel and wrapped that rabbit up and took it upstairs to the bathroom. Tilly was so scared she wouldn’t even go into the bathroom with me.

  “I like to never got that rabbit cleaned up. It took three shampooings, and then it took me another hour to blow-dry its fur.” She looked directly at the jury. “You shoulda seen it when I got through. It was as clean as a whistle. I took it and put it in its cage so it would stay nice and clean till Fanny Lou got home. I even propped it up with a piece of lettuce in its paws so it would look like it passed on natural.”

  “You were planning to tell your friend Fanny Lou about the rabbit when she got home?” Philadelphia slid the question in smoothly.

  “Objection.” Ralph Roberts was on his feet. “Counsel is leading the witness.”

  “Sustained.” Crash looked at Philadelphia, but he couldn’t be stern to save his soul. “Counsel will rephrase the question.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.” Her cool mask never slipped when she looked at him. He was disappointed.

  “What was your intent, Miss Perkins?” she said.

  “Lordy, I was going to race out the door the minute I heard Fanny Lou’s car drive up and tell her about Henry, but the phone rang—it was Effie Mae, she can talk the horns off a billy goat—and by the time I saw it was after five, Fanny Lou was pounding on my door, fit to be tied, screaming and carrying on like she’d seen a ghost.”

  Tears the size of golf balls sprang into Mildred’s eyes as she stared at the jury. “How was I supposed to know that rabbit had been dead for three days?”

  It took the jury only twenty minutes to reach a verdict of not guilty, but Philadelphia didn’t wait around for congratulations. As a matter of fact, she slipped out of the courtroom without giving Crash a backward glance.

  “A heart of stone, that’s what she has,” he muttered as he pulled off his robes.

  Margaret looked up from her typing. “Who?”

  “Female lawyers,” he said.

  Margaret perked up. She’d been trying to find somebody for her boss for years. She and her friend Maxie had hatched the plan for Crash and B.J. to meet in the mountains. Nature hadn’t taken its course. But there was still hope.

  “She’s got a face and body made by the angels,” she said, grinning.

  “You cagey old bird. Have you been spying again instead of doing the filing?”

  “Spying’s more fun. That B. J. Corban’s got guts as well as style. Why don’t you give her a call, Nat?”

  “I don’t consort with lawyers.”

  �
�Pshaw. You consort with whoever you take a notion to.”

  He thought about that for a minute. Crash prided himself on being a rebel, on flouting the rules, on being as free as the eagles he sometimes spotted along the Tennessee River.

  “If I get any calls this afternoon, you know what to do, Margaret.”

  “I ought to try my hand at writing a book. Lord knows, you’ve given me enough practice with fiction.” She grinned as he donned his motorcycle helmet. “Where are you headed?”

  “To see a dog about a woman.”

  Chapter Twelve

  B. J. called her ad for a secretary into the newspaper, then whistled for Baxter, locked up her office, and set out in search of a house to rent. Over breakfast Maxie had said, “What’s the hurry? I have plenty of room.” But B. J. didn’t see it that way. With the addition of Baxter the little house on Maxwell Street was getting crowded.

  B. J. had picked the rental agent out of the yellow pages, and Baxter hated her at first glance. He growled and strained at his leash and generally acted as if Opal P. Mclntyre was fair game for stray dogs.

  Opal started off being gallant about the whole thing.

  “That’s a cute mutt,” she said, bending down to pet him.

  Baxter took exception to being called a mutt and nipped at her snakeskin shoes. Fortunately she stepped back and he missed.

  “Are you all right?” B. J. said.

  “I paid ninety-five dollars for these shoes.” Opal swabbed at them with a lace-edged handkerchief, while Baxter sat on B. J.’s foot glowering at her. “Look at them now, spattered with dog spit.”

  “I apologize for his behavior,” B. J. said, though she was beginning to see Baxter’s point of view. “He’s generally very well behaved.”

  Opal straightened up and tucked the handkerchief in her purse. “I can tell you right now, Miss Corban, finding a place for you is going to be hard. Most rentals don’t take dogs.”

  B.J. imagined living in Maxie’s house forever, bringing up Baxter while she drifted into gray-haired spinsterhood.

  “Don’t you have anything?” she said, trying not to sound as desperate as she felt.

  “I know of one place....” She raked B. J. up and down, taking in the spit shine on her pumps, the Saks Fifth Avenue suit, the Majorca pearls. “I don’t think you’ll like it,” Opal added.

  “Show me.”

  Opal was right. B. J. hated the place. It was dark and drab and small, not fit for Baxter let alone B. J. She and Baxter consoled themselves with ice cream, then headed back to her offices on Broadway.

  Crash’s Harley was parked out front, and beside it an old blue Chevrolet with the back bumper wired on.

  “Can you believe his gall?” she said, and Baxter thumped his tail.

  Her heart was pounding so hard at the thought of seeing Crash, she had to sit in the car and collect herself. She applied fresh lipstick, then got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk trying to locate the enemy. Where in the world was he?

  A breeze stirred the forsythia blooming beside her doorway, a squirrel raced down the oak tree to scold Baxter, and a robin tugged at a worm in the azalea bed. But Crash was nowhere to be found.

  “Good riddance.”

  As she led Baxter to the front porch, she dug for her keys. Before she could fit them in the lock, the door swung open, and there was Crash, bigger than life and twice as exciting. Quite simply, he took her breath away.

  Baxter didn’t suffer the same malady. He leaped onto Crash’s leg, his tail thumping wildly. Crash scooped him up, taking up slack in the leash so that his thigh pressed B. J.’s. She couldn’t have moved if wild stallions were stampeding her.

  “There’s my boy,” he said. “How’s my big boy?”

  Crash petted and pampered and crooned to the little dog, while B. J. stood rooted to the spot, hot all over, suffering from dog envy and possibly premature menopause.

  Something was definitely wrong with her. Maybe she ought to see a doctor.

  “Yes, that’s my fine boy. Have you missed your daddy?”

  B. J. felt a jolt like physical pain in her empty womb.

  “How did you get in?” she said.

  “These antique locks are easy. And the system was a piece of cake.”

  “You penetrated my security?”

  “I can penetrate anything.” His eyes danced with devilment.

  Her heart pounded so hard, she figured they heard it all the way to city hall.

  “Aren’t you going to thank me?” he said.

  “Why should I thank you?”

  “You had clients waiting in their car.” He nodded toward the old Chevrolet. “If I hadn’t come along to invite them in, they might have gone to somebody else.” He winked. “A lavish display of affection might be appropriate.”

  “I ought to have you arrested.”

  She pushed past him, forgetting that they were still joined by Baxter’s leash. She was jerked back against him with a thump. He snaked an arm around her waist.

  “Steady there,” he said.

  His hot breath ignited the skin along the side of her neck and everything else she had that was combustible.

  It was unfair to put so much temptation in the way of a jilted woman.

  “Unhand my dog and get off my porch,” she said.

  “One out of two is not bad.” Grinning, he handed over Baxter, then held open the door. “After you, Philadelphia.”

  She couldn’t afford to make a scene in front of clients. That’s what she told herself as she walked into her own office on the arm of Nathaniel Bridge Beauregard, the naughtiest judge in town.

  B. J. could hardly concentrate on what her client was saying for wondering what was going on in the waiting room. Squeals of laughter came from that direction, followed by Baxter’s excited barking and Crash’s big, booming mirth.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Parker...” B. J. turned a page on her yellow legal pad and poised her pen above the paper. “Would you repeat that, please?”

  She hoped Mrs. Parker would think she was being thorough instead of inattentive.

  “This rabbit’s not really mine. See? He’s a wild one that I nursed back to health when he limped into my yard all mangled up.”

  Jo Nell Parker made every statement sound as if it were a question.

  “Let me get this straight. Your neighbor is suing you because a wild rabbit raided her garden?”

  “Yes. And when I heard what you did with Mildred’s case, naturally I came to you.”

  B. J. suppressed a sigh. In Philadelphia she’d defended accused criminals; in Tupelo it was accused rabbits. Thank goodness Stephen would never know.

  She studied her new client. Jo Nell Parker was a plain woman wearing a faded print dress, a sweater too small, and men’s work brogans with white athletic socks; she was an honest, hard-working woman looking to the courts for justice.

  Suddenly B. J. was ashamed of her self-serving thoughts. What she should do is call Stephen to say that she was finally doing something that counted: representing the underdog.

  “And you don’t own the rabbit?” B. J. said.

  “No, ma’am. I sure don’t. I turned it back to the wild.”

  “Did it have any special markings to distinguish it from any other rabbit in the wild, Mrs. Parker?”

  “Not a thing. It’s just an ordinary brown rabbit with a white tail, see?” Mrs. Parker twisted her hands together.

  B.J. came around the desk and put her arms around the woman’s shoulders.

  “You go on home and don’t worry about a thing. This case is a piece of cake.”

  “I don’t have much money, Miss Corban, but I’ve got a garden that’ll soon be full of vegetables.”

  “Are you going to have any cucumbers?”

  “Yep.” Jo Nell Parker was grinning from ear to ear.

  “There’s nothing I like better.”

  With her arm still around Mrs. Parker’s shoulders, B.J. walked toward her waiting room and the sounds of merrime
nt.

  Crash was in the middle of the floor with the youngest Parker boy on his back and two others climbing over his knees. Baxter was untying his shoestrings while the two little Parker girls danced around him chanting. “Ring around the roses, pocket full of posies.”

  He grinned up at them. “You’re not fixing to take my buddies, are you?”

  Mrs. Parker scooped her youngest off his back.

  “Scooter, get off his back. Lordy, they’re a handful.”

  “Just lively, that’s all,” Crash said.

  “I can’t thank you enough for keeping them occupied while I talked with Lawyer Corban.”

  “My pleasure.” He stood up and shook her hand, then swung the two little girls to his shoulders and escorted them all to their raggedy old car.

  B. J. figured the best thing to do was lock the door behind him. Instead she went to the window and watched while he bent down to accept each child’s sticky kiss.

  Her heart ached. She’d never even seen Stephen speak to a child, let alone get close enough to allow one to dirty his cheek.

  She was dangerously close to liking this man she’d been determined to hate. When he came whistling back up the sidewalk, she chastised herself for being a liar.

  Her toes curled under as he walked back through the door. Like was far too mild for what she felt.

  When he started back up the sidewalk, she left the window, sat at the receptionist’s desk, and pretended to be marking dates on a calendar.

  “That was a mighty fine thing you did, Philadelphia.”

  Leaning against her door, he was something straight out of an old Western, the gunslinger who bursts into the saloon to clear out the bad guys, then sweep upstairs to the bedroom to get his reward with the town’s floozy. B. J. licked her bottom lip.

  Once she’d played a floozy, way back in high school when she’d put her dramatic skills to use on the stage. Now she saved them all for the courtroom... or for occasions like this when she wanted to be the floozy who dishes out the reward but didn’t want Crash to know what she was thinking.

  “Thank you for baby-sitting.” She drew hearts around the edges of May, then a cupid hovering over the fifteenth.