by Ann Jacobs
Her eyelids drooped. Strands of hair slapped at her face, joining with the salty air to keep her awake—barely awake at that—in the cocoon of the contoured, buttery-soft leather seat. “What?” she asked when she heard Tony’s voice from what sounded like far away.
“Hey, are you okay?”
Kristine forced her heavy eyelids open. He’d stopped in the parking lot of a huge supermarket. “Where are we?” she asked, surprised when her words came out slurred.
“They’ve got a pharmacy. I’m going to fill your prescriptions. Will you be all right by yourself for a few minutes?”
“I—I think so.” It was all Kristine could do to put together three coherent words. She thought she saw Tony frown.
“Kristine, where do you live?” he asked.
Strange. She shouldn’t have to think about a question like that, but she did. “At 818 South Enderlin?” Why wasn’t she certain? Her head felt so heavy. Resting it against the back of the seat, she closed her eyes.
* * * * *
Kristine didn’t stir when Tony slammed the car door, or when he started the engine and drove away. The ER doctor must have given her one hell of a painkiller, to have knocked her out this way.
“You’re not going to help me get you home, are you, honey?”
When she didn’t respond, he reached over her and fumbled for the city map he kept in the glove compartment.
It didn’t surprise him to locate her street right here in Hyde Park. The realtor who’d helped him find his condo had steered him here first, telling him how fashionable the neighborhood of homes built nearly a century ago had become with Tampa’s young and affluent. Not fashionable enough, Tony had decided, to make him willing to cope with aged plumbing and termite-damaged wood. He’d had enough of that when he was growing up, more than enough to last the rest of his life.
He found her street, one of the last ones before Hyde Park ended at Howard Avenue. Whoever had plotted out the straight, north-south and east-west grid of narrow tree-lined streets had made sure all the streets flowed logically off Bayshore Boulevard, for which Tony was grateful.
Whatever the doctor had shot her with was still doing its job too well when he stopped in front of a white bungalow with an open front porch. The house wasn’t very big, and he noticed that it looked a lot like all the others on this block of not-so-elegant old houses.
“Here we are.”
Tony started to park at the curb, then reconsidered. He backed up and pulled into the narrow driveway that led to a detached garage behind Kristine’s house—and not just because he’d have a shorter distance to carry her to her door. He had a feeling she wouldn’t want him to advertise his presence. Even in a city the size of Tampa, he doubted there were more than two or three cars like his.
“You’ll probably sue me for this,” Tony muttered. He felt like a thief, rifling through Kristine’s black leather handbag, but he had to find her keys. If she slept in the car much longer, she was going to be sore when she woke up.
Finally. Among the rumpled papers, pencils, pens, and everything else she’d managed to stuff inside one fairly small container, he found a key ring. He grabbed the purse and her briefcase, got out of the car, and hurried to open the door. Once there, he shoved her purse and briefcase inside.
When he got back to the car, he noticed she hadn’t moved. “Kristine?”
Nothing. Not a sound. Only the regular rise and fall of her chest reassured him she was still alive. He bent, lifted her into his arms, and carried her inside. She’d probably want to kill him when she woke up and found him here, but right now she obviously shouldn’t be alone. He laid her down on a flower-patterned sofa, covered her with the shawl she’d draped over its back, and tucked one of its loose pillows under her injured leg.
Mentally flaying the idiot doctor who’d knocked her out, Tony opened the bag from the pharmacy and read the instructions on the bottles before setting them on the end table by Kristine’s head.
Before she could take those pills, she was going to need some food. He shot another wary glance her way and went to find the kitchen.
* * * * *
In her dream he was so sweet. Not the hard-nosed defense lawyer who tore her to shreds. Caring. Gallant. Her knight in shining armor. No. Not armor, but a black Ferrari. Tony Landry.
He lifted her easily. His heart beat strong and steady against the side of her breast as he carried her away from danger. Through her stupor Kristine fancied she smelled garlic and olive oil, heard something sizzling.
The scene changed. She was playing with Helen on some beach while Mom and Dad looked on. Happy dream. Happy memories. Then the horror began.
Years had raced by. Kristine was older. Eighteen, just out of high school and ready to take on the world. Home from another party, she bounded into the house. It was quiet. Too quiet. Cautiously she opened Helen’s bedroom door.
There was Helen, her eyes open but unseeing, stretched out on a ruffled white eyelet comforter. Dead. Kristine saw the bag of pure white powder. The rubber tubing. A hypodermic needle.
The cemetery. A blanket of pink roses covered the casket, wilted before her eyes in the summer sunshine. Her dad choked back anguished sobs.
“First Elaine. Now our baby, too.”
He wavered, clutched his throat. Tumbled to the ground, his death rattles permeating the silence. Workers began to lower the vault into the earth.
Alone. She was completely, miserably alone. Why had fate taken Helen and left her behind? Then she saw Tony, smiling, mocking her.
When she woke to the sound of her own screams, he was there. Tony cradled her in his arms. His touch calmed her, gave her comfort. Made her feel as though he cared.
Deliberately keeping his touch gentle, he stroked her back. As he soothed her, he sensed something about her…Vulnerability. That’s what it was, and it touched him more deeply than the practiced sophistication of the women he usually sought out.
She’d drenched the shawl he’d draped over her in sweat, tangling it around her body and injured leg. Her breath came hard, as if she’d run a marathon, the pain from her sprained ankle apparently ignored while she dealt with whatever horror had ripped through her mind.
“If you can’t go back to sleep, tell me about it,” he said when her racking sobs started to subside.
Chapter Five
“There’s no way I can go back to sleep.” No way Kristine could risk facing her failures again, not now.
For months after she’d lost Helen and her father within days of each other, that nightmare had haunted her every night. Then it had come less often, until for the past year or so, she’d been able to sleep in peace. Until today.
Had the nightmare come back because she’d failed to exact retribution from Manny Garcia? She imagined it had, especially since this new dream featured Tony Landry, the man who had foiled her effort to make things right.
The man who’d also starred in other dreams. Sensual, sexual fantasy dreams in which he’d aroused her, touched her…left her hot and wet and aching. She couldn’t tell him about those. And there was no way she intended to burden another living soul with the horror she had brought on herself eight years ago.
“Kristine?” He sounded genuinely concerned.
“I can’t talk about it.”
He stroked her tangled hair off her forehead, almost as if she were a child. “Were you dreaming about what happened this morning?”
“No.”
When Kristine looked into his dark eyes, she sensed concern. Guilt. “Tony, it was my fault you almost ran over me. Not yours.”
“Still I contributed to your being so upset you let a reporter get to you.” The slow, gentle pressure of his hand along her back lent credence to his apparent concern.
“I made some pasta. You need to eat before you take those pills.” He gestured toward the amber bottles on the end table.
The smell of a pungent tomato sauce filled Kristine’s nostrils, reminding her of the first, non-threate
ning chapter of her nightmare. The aroma of garlic and oil that had inexplicably followed a dream that Tony had been holding her tightly against his hard body, carrying her…
“How did you get me in here?”
He grinned, showing teeth straighter and whiter than any human being had the right to possess. “I dug through your purse and got your keys.”
“How long—”
“You were out a couple of hours. Whatever that doctor gave you for your ankle really did a number on you.”
“I guess so.” She shouldn’t have let the doctor order Demerol for her, because she’d known for years how sensitive she was to pain medications. That hadn’t mattered at the time, though, her ankle had hurt so much. She hadn’t complained when the emergency room nurse had brought the syringe and sent her off to a hazy sort of semi-oblivion.
“I hope I didn’t do anything embarrassing,” she said, imagining she might have acted out a fantasy and crawled all over Tony while under the influence of the drug.
“No. You just conked out. How about eating something now, before the shot wears completely off and you need one of those pills?”
She couldn’t say no. He’d gone to a lot of trouble, given up his entire afternoon to take care of her. “I could be persuaded to try a bowl of whatever that is you fixed. It smells good.”
“I’ll get it.”
When he brought two bowls of pasta and a couple of glasses of the iced tea she always kept in the refrigerator, Kristine noticed he’d gotten rid of his tie and jacket, and unbuttoned the first two buttons of what looked like a custom-tailored, pale blue cotton shirt. He’d also rolled up his sleeves halfway to his elbows, revealing muscular forearms dusted with more of the soft-looking dark hair she vaguely remembered having noticed on the back of his hand.
Tony looked totally confident, completely self-assured in a way she’d never have managed in unfamiliar surroundings. His vibrant masculine presence created a stark contrast with her late great-aunt’s fussy furnishings in the old-fashioned living room.
Suddenly she realized how pathetic she must look, dirt-smudged and ragged. How could she even dream a man like Tony would give her a second glance? She stared down at her torn dress and bare legs, imagining how awful her hair must look, tousled as it must have been by the wind. Kristine sighed as she picked up a fork and twirled spaghetti strands around it.
“You have many talents,” she said after taking her first bite. “This tastes delicious.”
“It was either learn to cook or starve when I was in law school,” Tony replied, his gaze on her hot and speculative. Seemed he hadn’t realized she wasn’t the kind of woman men looked at that way. “Do you really like it?”
“Yes.”
She liked him too, even though she shouldn’t. Not only was he way out of her league, he was the enemy. He used his talents to set criminals free.
Funny. When she looked at him, she saw only a gorgeous man who made her feel like a woman. Not a villain but a decent, well-intentioned man who had abandoned whatever plans he had this afternoon to take care of a wounded adversary.
Kristine forced herself to concentrate on eating. The sooner she could say goodbye to Tony Landry, the better. He made her forget why she’d become a criminal lawyer…why she had vowed to exact revenge for her lost family. When he looked at her as though she were a prize morsel he’d like to taste, she almost forgot she wasn’t the kind of woman likely to attract a hunk like him.
“You don’t have to stay,” she told him when he got up and turned on her TV.
“Don’t you want to see yourself on the news?”
She shuddered. “Not particularly.”
“Well, I do.”
Picking up the remote control, he settled against the cushions at the opposite end of the sofa and propped her splinted leg on his lap. “I’m anxious to see just how black they’ve painted me for getting Garcia acquitted,” he muttered, his lips twisting in a scowl.
The news story featured her as tragic heroine to Tony’s mustache-twirling villain, using his wily tricks to get Garcia—one of the press’s favorite targets—off the hook. Kristine sat up and stared, disbelieving, when the reporter on the scene for Channel Eighty-Four showed footage of Tony’s car careening toward her and reported the near miss, but not the rescue.
“That’s not fair!” she exclaimed.
“The press seldom is. Look.”
She followed his gaze to the screen, where the anchorwoman had moved on to a piece on the horrors of addiction to cocaine, the kind of a soft news report Kristine normally would applaud.
“You certainly don’t favor legalizing that poison, do you?” she asked when she noticed Tony’s disgusted expression.
He flipped off the TV and stood. “No. But I don’t like seeing my clients being convicted by the press after they’ve been acquitted in a court of law, either. It’s time for your pills. I’ll bring you some water.”
Clearly he had no intention of giving her equal rebuttal time. Kristine had to admit, the man was a master at getting in the last word, because before she could comment, he’d picked up their dirty dishes and disappeared into the kitchen.
When he came back and handed her a glass of water, that devastating smile had returned to his face. Lethal in its impact, it robbed her of the will to assert her own opinion. Docile now, Kristine took the pills and washed them down with a gulp of water.
“Thanks. I hope these don’t knock me out the way that shot did.”
Her gaze locked with his. His eyes changed color like a chameleon, first brown, then greenish gold when she viewed them in the muted light from the window. Mercurial eyes, just right for a man whose image shifted from moment to moment in her mind.
“I really do appreciate everything you’ve done. You must think I’m a klutz, and I don’t mean just in the courtroom.”
“I think you’re an angel.”
The skin between her breasts burned when she noticed him looking there.
“God, Kristine. I could have killed you.”
She glanced at her chest and noticed the jagged tear in what had been her good gray dress. Dried bloodstains, a small scratch just above the top of the plain white cotton bra he couldn’t help but see through the gash in the material. Embarrassed, she laid a hand over the part of her bare breast framed by the torn fabric.
“You saved me, Tony.” For a moment she wished the sight of her evoked his passion instead of his sympathy.
“So soft. So pretty.”
Very gently he lifted her hand and traced the length of the scratch Kristine guessed must have come from one of the sharp pieces of shell used as filler in the asphalt paving for Tampa streets.
Maybe he did want her. The intense look on his handsome face as he stroked her bare skin didn’t project sympathy, for certain.
“I’d better go,” he said, practically snatching away his hand. He stood and gave her an apologetic look.
Disappointment washed over her. She wanted him to stay, wanted to feel him touch her. Kiss her. Hold her against his hard, strong body and keep the memories at bay. She couldn’t ask, though. He wasn’t the white knight of her dreams, merely a stranger whose personal life had touched hers by a crazy twist of fate.
When he let himself out her front door, she smiled and waved goodbye.
Afterward, for what seemed like hours, Kristine lay there on the couch, her mind slowed by the medication she’d taken. The sting of losing her first case should have hurt more, but she felt only mild regret, faint amusement.
And she couldn’t hate the clever defense lawyer who’d thwarted her plans. He’d saved her from what could have been a very painful death.
When she giggled, the sound reverberated through her silent house. She had the feeling Tony had wanted to stay, that he’d sensed the same inexplicable pull toward her she did toward him.
Wishful thinking. That’s what it had to be.
She’d think of some appropriate way to thank Tony Landry for giving up his after
noon to play cook and nursemaid to her. Then she would forget him. After the disastrous way she’d handled the Manny Garcia trial, she doubted Andi would ever assign her another case where the defendant needed or could afford a lawyer of Tony’s stature.
Out of sight, out of mind. At least Kristine hoped that would be so. She needed it to be true, because now that she’d seen the caring side of Tony Landry, she couldn’t hate him any more than she could imagine a future with him.
* * * * *
Tony couldn’t get her out of his mind. He quit pacing the length of his office and picked up the clear crystal dolphin Kristine had sent with her thanks for his help the day he almost ran her down. Its graceful lines reminded him of her.
Hell, everything reminded him of her. In the three weeks since he’d left her house to avoid making a complete ass of himself, he’d spent more time thinking about her than he had about his clients and their legal problems. And he’d repeatedly mulled over the few words he’d been able to make out when she’d been in the throes of that nightmare and figured out exactly nothing.
Hell, he’d even called Gretchen and had her come up for a weekend. He might as well not have bothered. All he’d done was make a fool of himself, trying to rekindle a flame that had been fizzling for months—a flame that had died the minute he laid eyes on one young, blond lawyer. Kristine had something that turned him on. He hadn’t figured out what, but there was definitely something about her—qualities way beyond the glamour and sophistication that had attracted him to Gretchen.
He set the dolphin back onto his desk and picked up the phone.
Vernon Burnside, who joined Winston Roe the same year Tony had, grew up in Tampa’s society circles. “Got a minute, Vern?” Tony asked when his colleague picked up the phone.
It shouldn’t have surprised him when Vernon told him he’d come right over, but it did. Tony shook his head. He still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that since he’d become a partner the associates seemed to interpret his invitations and suggestions as orders.
